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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 28 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/light-on-the-path-26/

Osho,We find that many intelligent people, like scientists, philosophers, and even politicians, express great admiration and respect for us individually and for the way we live together – but they refuse to understand that we point to you as the source of this. Where is the block?It is very simple to understand.To admire you is not difficult. In admiring you they are still higher than you. They are great intellectuals, scientists, politicians, artists, and their admiration in no way hurts their ego – in fact it fulfills it.But if you point towards me as the source of your lifestyle, of your individuality, of your way of being, then they will not be able to admire it. Then a tremendous jealousy arises. They cannot put me down; they can only accept me as a higher source than their own intelligence – and that’s where the trouble is.It is better not to point to me; and have a good relation with all those people. If you point to me then you immediately hurt their egos. They cannot accept me because I am hitting at the very sources of their conditioning. I am not accepting their intellectuality as intelligence. I don’t care about their Nobel Prizes, because those are all political games.I have no respect for any politician in the world because all politicians are mentally sick, and they are suffering from an inferiority complex.So if you point to me then certainly you hurt them, offend them. There is no need to do that. If they are admiring you, it is perfectly good. They expect to be admired by you in response. They cannot expect to be admired by me. Even if they admire me I am going to hit against their conditionings which are basically wrong, and which have lead humanity into a mess.So it is better not to mention my name.Osho,Gurdjieff said, “Blessed are those who remain where they are. Blessed are those who walk on the way, and go to the end – but woe to them who stop in between.”Osho, your world tour, especially to Europe, is a turning point for many of us. It seems that without you we've stopped in between.Please comment.Gurdjieff is right, but I will not agree totally with his first statement, “Blessed are those who remain where they are.” They are simply idiots.They may not be in misery, they may not be in great turmoil and anguish, but they are not blessed.I agree with the two other statements: “Blessed are those who travel to the end – but woe to those who are stuck somewhere in the middle.”Getting stuck in the middle is a very difficult situation. You have lost the world, and your roots in it, where everybody else lives; and you have not found a new world, new roots where you wanted to live. So you are without any roots, without any nourishment. You cannot go back, because that which is left is left, that which you have known as nonsense is now nonsense – you cannot make it sensible again.So going back is impossible. And you are stuck in the middle because you are not finding guidance how to go ahead to the end.Not much guidance is needed on my path, but as far as Gurdjieff is concerned, he is right. Without him his disciples will be stuck because he has never given a clear-cut direction to anyone. He has spoken in puzzles, and only he knows how to make any sense of them. So unless he is with the disciples, they are really in a state of woe – they are cursed. He has taken them out of their homes and there is no new home where they can be.But with me it is totally different: I have not been giving you detailed directions. You don’t need me the way Gurdjieff is needed by his followers – because I feel that kind of need is a sort of spiritual slavery.My whole effort has been to tell you the whole truth.You are feeling a little puzzled, not because you don’t know how to go forward; your puzzlement is coming from missing the nourishment that my love and my presence can give you, not from a lack of guidance.And particularly at this moment…because the whole effort of Anand Sheela and her gang was to create a very centered hierarchy, so everything got directed from above. And people like it, because that gives them freedom from responsibility. They are no longer responsible: whatever happens, the source of guidance is responsible – but simultaneously they are becoming slaves.Seeing this I had to come out of silence, because it was absolutely against my work. I want a deconcentrated world of sannyasins. They should be given a clear-cut direction, understanding. Their responsibility should not be taken away.They remain responsible.They remain free.They remain their own masters.And that’s what I am trying to do now – undoing everything that, in those four years when I was in silence, has been done to you. And it is not a difficult job to undo it.I would like all the communes that want to continue to be autonomous: not dependent on any central world headquarters; related, but not dependent; related just because they are sannyasins. The world headquarters is their headquarters. It is not somebody else dominating them and making them do things whether they like it or not.There are communes which are not satisfied with remaining together – they can disperse. They can have smaller groups, small centers, small ashrams. There are individuals who would like to remain individuals, not part of any collective group – they should be allowed, because my work is an individual work.Gurdjieff called his work “school” work. The individuals don’t count. The whole school together is needed.To me, each individual is enough unto himself. He lacks nothing – just a little understanding of himself, a little awareness, a little more consciousness, of which everybody is capable.And this is the purpose of my having a world tour – to make you aware that you are not dependent on anyone, that you are not part of any school work, that my approach is individualistic, that I want each individual to be absolutely independent in his spiritual growth.And it is far easier than school work, but it depends on what kinds of methods are used. Gurdjieff was using the methods he had collected from the Sufis – they are all school methods: the individual has to surrender completely to the group. The group evolves, and with the group the individual evolves. If the group is stuck, then the individual is stuck. Then there is no way for the individual to find his own way, because from the very beginning it was a kind of collective growth.My work differs totally from Gurdjieff’s. It is individual from the very beginning. Even though you are living in a commune, it is not that you are part of the commune – no. On the contrary, the commune is simply a name: it has no existence of itself. Because you love each other and you feel to be together…it is just living together.But your work remains individual.Your growth remains individual.And remember this, that the final freedom is possible only if from the very first step you are free. If you are not free from the very first step, you cannot hope for the last step to be out of freedom, because the last step is essentially the growth of the first step. What was a seed at the first step has come to a flowering at the last step.No sannyasin needs to feel that he is stuck in the middle. But right now the feeling may be there because I removed all the structure that was created to have a centralized system about everything – erasing individuality, dissolving it into collectivity. So there is a gap right now.So I want to meet all the sannyasins around the world to tell them, “You need not be worried at all. Wherever you are you can start growing individually.”And it is beautiful not to depend on others. It is dangerous to have a centralized system. It is efficient, but it is dangerous. It is efficient like any machine, but it reduces human beings to robots. Their individuality is not respected. They are respected as a part, as a cog in the wheel, but in themselves they are just a cog, of no use. Their use is only in the wheel. If they fit in the centralized system completely, then they are useful, and they will be praised, and they will be rewarded.It is good for politicians to work that way; it is good for dictators to work that way – and there is some element of dictatorship in George Gurdjieff.It is not just a coincidence that Josef Stalin and George Gurdjieff were born in the same place – the Caucasus. Both were Caucasians; both have the same tradition; both grew in the same kind of atmosphere; and both were really hard men. That’s why Josef Stalin got the name “Stalin.” It is not his real name. “Man of steel” – that is the meaning of Stalin.And the same was the situation with Gurdjieff, who was even far stronger than Josef Stalin. But they are coming from the same stock. Nobody has bothered to look into their backgrounds. They studied in the same monastery. They grew up in the same environment. They have the same kind of blood and the same kind of tradition. Their past is exactly the same.And the first effort of Josef Stalin, after the revolution, was to kill Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff had to escape from Russia. Gurdjieff was not in politics, and there was no need for Stalin to be concerned about him, but the concern was that such a strong man cannot be tolerated – it is dangerous. He is the same type and more powerful and any time he can create some difficult situation.The first group that was around Gurdjieff was all Russian – the refugees who had escaped from Russia because of the revolution; Ouspensky was a Russian…. The whole first group was of Russians. That too is symbolic, because the whole of Russia was turning into a dictatorship.Although these people had escaped, they had the same type of conditioning and the same kind of mind. And they had not escaped from dictatorship, they had escaped because they had enough money. And that was the trouble – that it would be distributed.So with all their money they escaped from Russia. This was the first group around Gurdjieff. And he created a small, dictatorial group. It was absolutely dictatorial: whatever he said had to be done. There was no question of any discussion, no question of the other individual thinking about it, no question of freedom. Even things that were absurd had to be done because Gurdjieff said so.You can see, anybody can see, it is absurd – but that was his way of working. He managed to use a dictatorial system to create a few really beautiful people, but none of them ever became enlightened. He created very strong people, very beautiful people; but if you look deeply into it, their strength was not of humbleness, their strength was of willpower. It was not of egolessness, it was of the ego.And all the methods of Gurdjieff strengthen the ego. They make it as strong, as powerful as possible. One feels one is moving, growing, but none of his followers has reached to enlightenment. A man like Gurdjieff has failed for the simple reason that everything was centralized: his word was law, and nobody could argue about it. There was no question of freedom. He wanted everybody to melt into the group completely – and the group was absolutely in his hands.It also reminds me of another failure – and that is of J. Krishnamurti. Gurdjieff failed because he destroyed the individual completely and made him only a part of a collectivity, and the collective soul had to grow.Krishnamurti is on the other extreme. He left the individual completely free – so much so that of those who have been following his teachings for almost sixty years, none of them has had the benefit of the love of the master, the presence of the master.Krishnamurti has given freedom, but he has removed himself totally out of your existence. Gurdjieff catches hold of you totally; and Krishnamurti leaves you totally – so totally that even his presence, his love, is not to be a support in moments when you start wobbling or in states when you start feeling discouraged. You can expect no help from him.Gurdjieff was a dictator. Krishnamurti is not even a friend, he is simply indifferent. What happens to you is your business, he is not concerned. His concern ends the moment he has said what he wanted to say. His concern is with his teaching but not with the real individuals. He is not in love with the people who surround him. He will not give even that much warmth that can keep you on the path in the nights when it is very cold.These are extremes – Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti – and extremes always fail. They fail for different reasons, diametrically opposite reasons, but they fail in the same way.I am exactly in the middle.I don’t want to dictate to you in detail the whole program of your life. But I want to be close to you in case you fall, in case you need warmth, in case just a gesture of love will keep you moving on the way.I will not take your freedom from you, because I want you to be ultimately free. But that does not mean that I have to be cold towards you.So I will be coming.And I don’t see that there is any great problem – just a little chaos. And out of this chaos something good will happen. I could have remained silent and there would have been no chaos, but then I was seeing that you were being exploited; that you were working twelve hours, fourteen hours a day; that your whole life had become devoted to restaurants, discos….There was no time for meditation. There was no inspiration for meditation. In fact, there was positively a condemnation of anybody who wanted time for meditation, time for friends or lovers…wanted to play his guitar. He was thought to be sabotaging the system. He was thrown out. So all creativity was being destroyed.The commune had become just a money-creating mechanism, and the sannyasins were being used just as slaves.It was difficult for me. I had tried it – to make those people understand that this was not the reason why the communes were brought about. I had tried to explain what my idea of the commune was, and said that this was not what was happening: “You may be earning money, you may be having houses, you may be making roads – but that is not going to lead people to enlightenment. Those roads don’t go to enlightenment!“People’s whole energy is being involved in it, and you have almost created a system which is cheating them. You are telling them, ‘Work is worship, so you don’t need any other meditation. The work is your meditation.’”And the people thought this must be my direction. It was not. When I failed completely to convince those people to change…. They could not change because they had no interest in meditation. They had an interest in having a big empire in the world, having big money, having great power.They did not want me to speak again.That was the breaking point – why Sheela left; otherwise there was no reason for her to leave. She did not want me to speak again because she understood clearly that if I spoke again it would be a disturbance to the system she was creating. She could stop others but she could not stop me. And when I am speaking to my people, who is going to listen to her and her group?So, because their whole system that they had created in four, five years, has been destroyed, you are feeling in chaos. But you are not stuck anywhere. You were stuck in that mechanism that was created; and if I had remained silent, you would have remained stuck – working your whole life…reaching nowhere.So before I help you to stand on your own, as individuals…. Whether you are in the commune or outside the commune, the individuality has not to be lost.Freedom is one of the basic values.Meditation has to be our innermost life.Then whether you are living together in a small group or a big group does not matter. But these things should be preserved.Remembering these things, you can live in a commune, or if you feel that the bigger group destroys these things…. It is difficult, because the bigger group has its own problems. Finance is one of the problems, because many sannyasins who join the commune have not contributed any money to the commune. Then the commune has to work more because they have to be fed, and they have to be clothed, and they have to be housed.And if you start…the bigger the commune, the more the problems will be – which are unnecessary. You will be in conflict with society. The politicians will become afraid of you, that you are so numerous that you can be dangerous to them. Then other religions may start feeling afraid of you, and they may start creating trouble, with cases in the courts – baseless, but they will waste time, they will waste money.And they will finally get you involved in such situations that you don’t have any time to play your guitar, sing a song, or just sit silently for a few hours. And that was your main idea in being part of the commune!This is something to be remembered – it has always happened. People had come together with a very beautiful idea, but then they get involved in something else, and there is no time for the basic idea so they go on postponing it. By and by they forget about it. Finally they are simply running discos or restaurants. But that you could have done without becoming a sannyasin. That was not the purpose of being a sannyasin.There are discos and there are restaurants, there are hotels – so what is the point?You had not become a sannyasin to run a hotel.So I want to see all the sannyasins, meet them, and make them aware what the purpose was for their becoming a sannyasin: that should never be lost sight of.If it can be fulfilled in a commune, the commune is good. If it can be fulfilled only in smaller groups, then smaller groups are good. If it can be fulfilled better when you live individually, alone – so that then you have to work only six hours a day, five days a week, and the remaining time is totally free for you….And to make it feasible I have allowed that you can now use any color of clothes; you can use the mala or you may not use the mala, as the situation permits…. Because if it comes against your job, if just because of your orange clothes you are thrown out from a school where you had a good job – where almost six months were holidays, and each year you have longer two-month holidays, when you could have always come to me….And that was happening in Pune. People were coming to me every year, once or twice. And they were earning enough, working less time, earning more, and having more freedom. Once they had done their work – six hours – they were free for the remaining eighteen hours. They were coming once or twice a year to Pune; remaining there for two or three months, and then going back.The same people, when they started communes, became so involved, and financially it became so difficult for them, that for four years many of them had not come to me. They wanted to come but in the commune they didn’t have money in their hands, they didn’t earn. The money was centralized in the commune – and the commune had its own needs.The commune does not have a preference for your need to go and be with me for two months – and it cannot afford it either. And you are working twice the amount of time you have ever worked; and you are without any money. You are left with no time of your own; and you have got into so many troubles – financial, legal, social, political – that it is just wasting your life.So if some commune is going successfully, and the people who are there are absolutely happy and contented, it is good. If some commune is going into bankruptcy and still they are pulling through somehow, they are breaking their own necks unnecessarily. Then it is better to let it go bankrupt – and you move alone, be separate.There were hundreds of small centers which have been destroyed by the group who wanted to make as many big communes as possible, because those small centers could not earn much, could not produce much. Now the whole priority has become totally different from my idea.It was beautiful – somebody was running a small center in his own home. He enjoyed it, he loved it that people came to his home to meditate. And people had no worry about making a place where they could meditate. They destroyed all the small centers and moved people into communes.The whole idea lost touch with my basic attitude.So I will be coming and reminding you why you have become a sannyasin. And that remains the priority; everything else is secondary. There can be communes, there can be small ashrams, there can be centers, and there can be individual sannyasins. And this way more people will be meditating, more people will be independent, more people will be able to come close to me.First I want to have a world tour so I can talk to everybody and bring them out of the unnecessary chaos. And second, I am not going to live in a commune anymore, but I will be living in a place where five hundred people at least can be accommodated all the year round. So people can come and be there for two months, three months, and can go; other people can come and go.We will dissolve those four ceremonies and make the whole year a festival – a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-day festival. So it is continuous; people go on changing but it is continuous. So people don’t lose touch with me – they don’t need to be directed in detail about everything, but they need to be given a clear insight so they can find out for themselves what to do as far as details are concerned.Gurdjieff was giving even small details; you were not even free about that. Krishnamurti is not even bothered about giving you an insight so you can find what you have to do.My own situation is that I don’t want to interfere in your freedom in any way. Still, I don’t want to leave you alone in the darkness, in the cold. Whatever I can do with my love and with my presence and with my words, I will do.And you are not in any way becoming obliged to me. On the contrary, I am obliged that you allowed me to give you a helping hand, that you allowed me to be close enough, that you allowed me to make some clarity possible for your eyes – you could have rejected it. It was out of your freedom that you have allowed me – it does not interfere with your freedom.So now the whole year will be the festival.And the whole world will be our commune.Every sannyasin will be carrying the smallest commune in his heart.So there will be some bigger communes, and some even bigger communes, but the priority of your growth has not to be lost sight of.Osho,You said that only a total discontinuity from the past can create a new man. How can this happen in practical terms?It looks difficult. It looks almost impossible, but it only looks so; otherwise it is very simple. You just have to watch within yourself what the connection is you are keeping with the old – and why you are keeping it. Is it just a habit because from the very childhood you have been taught certain concepts, ideas, certain religions, cults, creeds? – or is there some nourishment that you get from them? Or, on the contrary, are they sucking your blood?You just have to see within yourself about each thing – whether it is political, social, or religious – that you have carried from the past; that the past has given to you through education, and through other means in the society. You just have to see what the reason is that you are still holding on to it.And my experience is that nobody is being nourished by it, so there is no reason to hold on to it.Almost everybody is sucked by the dead, the old, the past. It does not allow you to be new, young, contemporary. It keeps pulling you back. It is not something friendly to you – you have just never looked at it and seen that you are carrying enemies within you, parasites within you. And you are simply carrying them because of old habits, because they have always been there – as long as you can remember they have been there. As long as you can remember you have been a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan.It is just a question of habit.So you have to see exactly what traditions and past inheritances are doing to you. You have to be very clear-cut, and then the thing is very simple. If you see that you are carrying parasites just because of old habits, that you are nourishing your own enemies who are destroying your life, your youth, your newness – who are making you almost dead before death comes – it won’t take any great effort not to cling to them. You will simply drop them, there is not much of a question. It is your decision to keep them or not to keep them. You will simply drop them.The moment you see that you are carrying poison, something destructive, which is going to spoil everything in your life – not because I say so; you have to see it with your own eyes – then it is so easy to get rid of the past. And the moment you are discontinuous with the past, you have immense freedom to grow.Suddenly you are fresh and young, free of the parasites, free of the burden, free of an unnecessary load, luggage which was nothing but junk. But you were carrying it because your fathers, your forefathers, everybody was carrying it.It is simply a question of seeing what the past is doing to you.Is it a friend or an enemy?And just the insight will do the work.I have heard about one patient who was having his session with the psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst had been trying hard for months to convince him that his whole sickness was imaginary. His sickness was that he was feeling continuously that strange creatures were crawling all over his body; and all the time he was just throwing them off. And there was nothing.For months the psychoanalyst was telling him that there was nothing: “You just look. I don’t see anything – and you go on throwing off those strange creatures which are just your imagination.” But the man had no time even to listen. While the psychoanalyst was talking he was just throwing…from all over the body.In this session he was sitting very close to the psychoanalyst. And as he started throwing off his strange creatures, the psychoanalyst said, “Wait! Don’t throw them on me!” Because for six months, trying to convince him, the psychoanalyst himself had become convinced that there must be something there – because this man is intelligent, he is a professor, and if he goes on throwing off those things, there must be something there. So he said, “Wait! You can throw them anywhere else, but you can’t throw them on me.”The psychoanalyst himself became convinced: “And I don’t want to deal any more with you, because I have started suspecting, once in a while, that some strange creature is crawling on me. I know that it is just imagination, but….”You have to see that even imagination starts being active. Seeing certainly is action. You don’t have to do anything after seeing. You see it, and that very moment you are disconnected from the thing if it is not nourishing you but torturing you. It is very simple.And it is one of the most fundamental things…to get rid of the whole past, to be absolutely discontinuous with it. Then you have a simplicity, a lightness, because there is no load. And you have a health of mind, of soul – which was sucked away, so that you had never had any experience of it.You feel new vitality and new blood running through your veins. And because you are now discontinuous with the past, you don’t have memories, psychological memories. If you want to remember, you can remember, but they are no longer a force on you. They don’t have any power over you so you have to remember them.Now there are no memories, no connections with the past. You have only the present, and you have a vast future. Of course you cannot do anything in the future, you can only do anything you want to do in the present. But it goes on: as the future becomes the present, your growth, your action, your intelligence, your creativity – anything that you are working at – keeps growing.And the pleasure of growth is immense.To be stuck somewhere is one of the most horrible feelings.Leo Tolstoy used to have a dream which tortured him his whole life – and it can torture anybody, that kind of dream. And it was not that he had it once, it was almost every night, the same dream – which is very rare. Very few people see the same dream, unless the dream is so significant that the unconscious has to remind you that you have to do something.His dream was that he sees a vast desert – as far as he can see it is desert…sand and sand and nothing else. Hot sun…the sand is almost burning. And two shoes – they are his shoes – are walking. He is not in them – that was the most horrible thing – just the shoes going on and on, and the desert is endless. So the whole night may pass and the shoes are walking on, and the desert never comes to an end. There is nobody in those shoes, but the shoes are his. And he would always wake up perspiring, trembling.This was his lifelong torture; and he was stuck with the dream. There was no way to move. He even started becoming afraid of going to sleep because he knew what was going to happen: the moment he falls asleep, the dream will be there. And it goes nowhere – just simply goes on and on. He talked to one of his friends, Chekhov – he was another great, creative novelist of the same caliber as Tolstoy – about the dream.Chekhov said, “Unless you do something, the dream will continue, because the dream wants you to do something. It is about you. And even in your dream you are trying to deceive yourself – that’s why you are not in your own shoes, so only the shoes have to walk. But the shoes are yours and you are in them. And this is something about your life. Anybody can see it – there is no need of any great psychoanalyst to analyze it.”Tolstoy had a wife who was a constant torture, but he was a man of no decision: he could not decide whether to divorce her or to continue. He had many children, and he lived like a poor man. He was a Christian, a practicing Christian. Although he was a count and had immense riches and had thousands of acres of land, he lived like a poor man, ate like a poor man, had clothes like a poor man.His wife lived like a princess and tortured him continually because he was being stupid: trying to practice Christianity by being poor because, “Blessed are the poor.” She would not even take him to social parties, to meetings, or to the royal family – no. She could not even stand to see him in his rags. And he had made himself a buffoon – the whole town laughed about it: “This is stupid. We have seen Christians – but that does not mean that you have to live like this.”And this man was one of the greatest creative novelists of the whole world; but he had no decisiveness about anything. Either renounce everything…but what is the point of living in a palace and wearing rags? having all his money in a bank account and never using it because he has to live like a poor man?So he was torturing himself, he was being tortured by the wife, he was being taunted by everybody – and he belonged to the highest strata of the society. Even the czar, the king of Russia, was continually taunting him: “What are you doing? We are also Christians, but that does not mean…. And if you really want to be a Christian, then renounce everything – be a Christian!”But the trouble with him was his indecisiveness. And that was his dream: that there is a desert, and he knows there is nothing else except this desert; it is hot and it is burning, and there is no end to this misery. The shoes go on walking – and only the shoes. That is very significant.It seems as if deep down he does not want to be poor, deep down he does not want to live the way he is living. Just mentally he has got the idea that he has to be poor. So he is not in the shoes but the shoes are his – that he can see absolutely. And the day Chekhov analyzed his dream, that very night he left the palace and went far away in a train to one of his small farms, which was in the forest, to live there. That was the only night – in the train – that the dream did not appear.But he was not young anymore. He was very old, he was weak, he could not live the life of a monk, of austerity. On the small station…he arrived in the morning, and the farm was far away; it was difficult for him to walk to the farm. So he was waiting for some vehicle.The stationmaster said, “By the evening some vehicle comes which takes the post office things, and it passes through your farm, so you can go in it.”But he died on the station platform, on a bench waiting for the vehicle. But before dying he was happy because that dream had not occurred, and a great weight had disappeared from his chest.So the moment you see something, don’t be indecisive. Act according to your insight, and life is very simple and immensely beautiful. We just have to be clear about what has to be left behind, what is unnecessary to carry; and what has to be done: that which you feel, not because Jesus says, or Buddha says, or anybody else says.But what you feel like doing – do it. Take the whole responsibility of doing it on yourself. And there is nothing much in it. You will be discontinuous with the past. And you will be the New Man.Everybody has the capacity to be the New Man or to remain the old. Just a clear insight and action according to the insight is needed.This much courage is certainly needed.I think that even though Leo Tolstoy died on a railway station as a beggar on a bench, he died very peacefully, very blissfully. In his whole life this was the first time he had taken a decision – and the dream had disappeared.It was simply an unconscious reminder, continuously, “Do something; you are unnecessarily caught in a net – you can get out of it. Nobody is holding you, you are simply sitting there.”Osho,The commune is no more; or, every sannyasin is the commune. But what about such institutions as the Academy, or Friends, which takes care of the publication and distribution of your words? Do they still have a function, and how can they function?They still have a function – and they will continue to function – but their function is not dictatorial. Their function is to serve the whole world of sannyasins and the people who love me.So their function is not to govern you, their function is to serve you.And they are not organizations, they are simply institutes. And their function has become more important now, because for all the languages that books are being translated into, it has to be seen to it that they are not mistranslated – that the translation is right, that it does not harm the spirit of the message.So it is a great work to take care of all the languages – we need the publication institute to check all the language publications before they are published.Now there are many countries…. Just yesterday, a Korean woman was here, and she informed us that more than thirty of my books are translated into Korean, and thousands of copies are available in all the bookstalls all over the country. We have to take care of things. There are countries which are not members of the Bern Convention: they do not believe in copyright. Korea is one of those that do not believe in copyright, so they can translate any book, publish any book.But we can at least keep an eye that the translation is done rightly, that the person who is doing the translation understands me. It is not only a question of copyright, it is a question that I should not be presented in a wrong way – which is possible. Because if they are just earning money, who cares whether the translation is right or wrong?I informed the woman, “You send…” Because we don’t even know: it may be happening in other countries. There are many countries which are not under the copyright convention. But we can help them, we can suggest to them, “We don’t want any money from you, any royalty from you, but we would like you to represent every book exactly, without any distortion.” And in many countries we will have to take publication into our own hands.For example, it happened in England that one of the presses had published eight or ten books. We came to know later on that it was a Christian press, but to us it was not a problem. To them it became a problem, because when I spoke against Christianity, they simply pulled out all those books that they had published before – books which have nothing to do with Christianity – and informed us that they could not publish our books anymore.The same has happened in Holland – another publisher, and for the same reason. When I was speaking on Christ, they had published twelve or fifteen books, and now because I have criticized him, they have simply stopped selling the books. They have informed us, “We will not sell them, and we will not publish any more books because ours is a Christian organization.”So it is going to happen everywhere sooner or later. Somebody will be a Mohammedan publisher, somebody will be a Hindu publisher, somebody will be a Christian publisher. So sooner or later we will have to take all our publication into our own hands. We will not be able to give it to others – they will not be ready.So the Academy, and Friends International, they will still have their functions: publication, keeping contact with all the sannyasins of the world – not control but contact; otherwise all contact will be lost.There is a need for an institute that keeps all the contacts, all the addresses, all the names of sannyasins; where they are, what they are doing. If we need them in some other place…. For example, if we want to keep an eye on all the languages, then we will need people with different languages to be in one place, at the headquarters.So Friends International will be the headquarters for communication for all the sannyasins. If I am traveling around the world, then somebody, some agency, is needed to inform you where I am; otherwise I may pass through your country and you may not even know.This is possible, because just now the pope has informed all the Christian publications in Italy, as he heard that I am coming to Italy, that they are not to give me any publicity – neither positive nor negative. They are not to even mention my name. Now, in Italy the pope has great powers – political powers – over the government and over the media.We will need our own media, our own agencies, our own publications to inform you. And for any information that you want, you need headquarters from where you can get that information; otherwise it will become impossible even for you to find out where I am.But their function is not to govern you; their function is to serve you, just to make me available to you as accurately as possible.We may need our own radio station somewhere, we may need our own television stations, because these people are going to be cutting off all sources, so that I cannot reach the public.Now there are countries like Germany who have already made laws that I cannot enter their country. Others may follow in the same way if they see that I am traveling around the world. Then they simply won’t let me in.And there are political pressures, religious pressures. So we need our own independent media which can continue to inform you and other people – so these people cannot do any harm.Now their only fear is that my words will reach people. This is a great victory for us. That means they have an absolute certainty that they cannot argue: they have no valid arguments against me. Such steps are only taken when you cannot argue; otherwise, what is the need?So this is the world we are in – which is dominated everywhere by rotten ideologies that have no logical support. And they will be trying to prevent us everywhere. And it is so easy.So before they start preventing us, we have to have our own arrangements. So rather than making a commune, my effort is now just to have a perfect publication department for all the languages possible, a satellite somewhere so we can manage radio stations all over the world without any difficulty, and headquarters from where you can get all the information – and through which people can be made aware of where sannyasins are.I will be living at the headquarters, and we will make arrangements for people so that they can come and be with me. If countries stop me from entering, then the only way is that I should be in some place where my sannyasins are close by, and they can come and be with me.So we have to have these small groups which are not a centralization of power, but are only functionally serving the whole sannyas commune around the world.And now every sannyasin is a small commune.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 29 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,There is a revival of interest in Nietzsche all over Europe, from both the pre-and post-war generations. Nietzsche's appeal seems to lie in his views still being contemporary.Could you please comment?It is good news.Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the philosophers with the most potential in the whole world, not only in the West, not only in Germany. His insights are significant for everybody. But he was misunderstood by all his contemporaries.That’s the usual fate of every genius.It is almost routine, not an exception but a rule, that the genius is bound to be misunderstood by his contemporaries, for the simple reason that he is far ahead of his time. So there is always a revival after the death of a genius. It may take one hundred years, two hundred years, but a genius always has a revival.It is unfortunate that by the time people start understanding him, he is no more. And he suffers the misunderstandings all around him his whole life. He lives almost alone, with no communication with his contemporaries; and by the time he is being understood, he is no more. He never comes to know the people who will understand him.So it was absolutely certain that Friedrich Nietzsche would have a great revival, and his words and his insights would be echoed all over the world – not only in the world of philosophy, but in the world of religion, morality, aesthetics. Whatever he touched, he always brought something absolutely new to it.And that’s the trouble – because for thousands of years people have understood a thing in a certain way. When a person like Nietzsche turns all the tables – which centuries have founded – and alone, single-handedly, fights against the whole past, it is a very difficult situation – and more so for a Western philosopher who has no understanding of meditation.He naturally gets very frustrated. It is bound to bring him insanity – the misunderstanding of the people. Everybody misunderstands him. In the world full of millions of people, there is not a single person with whom he can have a heart-to-heart contact, communion. He is in a desert – it drives him mad. That’s what happened with Nietzsche.He lived a life of immense frustration, because he was giving great insights to the world; and in return – only condemnation. He was bringing new light – and not a single friendly response…. Even his friends were not friendly about his philosophical approaches. That finally drove Nietzsche to madness; he died a madman.His death in madness is a condemnation of the whole Western approach. In the East people have been misunderstood, but because there was an underlying meditative silence and peace and contentment, and a deep understanding that this is just how things are – they are bound to be misunderstood – there was a natural acceptance of it. They were not frustrated, they were not angry; they were not going insane or committing suicide.But in the West it has been almost always the situation with every great philosopher – the misunderstanding from all corners, from all dimensions, and the deep expectation of the person of being understood. He is not a meditator; he cannot accept the situation of misunderstanding, that it is natural, that he cannot do anything about it, that he will be understood when the time is ripe.He will not be here…. But it does not matter whether he is understood or not: he is perfectly contented that whatever is true to him he is giving to the world. Now it is up to the world when to understand, or not to understand it. He is not dependent in any way on the response of people.But Western philosophy, Western religion both have missed the quality of meditation. And that creates a new thing. When a man like Nietzsche goes mad, the enemies, who are all around – the people who misunderstood him and drove him mad – take advantage of the situation of his being mad. They start saying that it is his philosophy which is basically wrong, that has driven him mad.His madness becomes a proof that he is a wrong man – that he is not only mad today, he has always been mad. Whatever he has said is insane. So it becomes a more solid ground on which to refute the person completely, to erase him completely – and that’s what happened with Nietzsche.But a revival was certain. You cannot continue to misunderstand something which has even a little bit of truth in it – and Nietzsche has tremendous insights. If they can all be understood, it will help the Western mind to change many things.For example, Nietzsche was the only one – even in his madness he would not sign his name without writing over his signature “Antichrist.” Even in his madness that much was absolutely certain to him: that he was anti-Christ, that Christ has created a tradition which is immensely dangerous to humanity, that he has polluted the human mind, even about small things.Where Christ had always been praised, people were surprised that Nietzsche would find a very solid criticism. For example, when Christ says, “If somebody slaps you on one cheek, give him the other too,” Nietzsche was the first man to say that this is an insult to the man who has slapped you.Now, it needs a certain intelligence to understand what he is saying. He is saying, in giving him the other cheek you are reducing him to subhumanity; you are becoming a god. Behave like a human being: give him a good slap the way he has given you one.And the argument that looked very strange to the Christians who were his contemporaries, was very simple: “In this way you are proving equality. ‘I am also a human being. If you hit me, then I will hit you. I am not a god, I cannot forgive you.’ All those who have been trying to forgive are very subtle egoists. They are enjoying reducing the other person almost to an animal. That is worse than hitting the man back hard! Just behave like man to man.”And you can watch it: the person who gives his other cheek – you can see in his eyes and in his face and in his words great pride and great ego. Even when Jesus himself on the cross asks, “Father, forgive these people, because they do not understand what they are doing,” he is still trying to prove on the cross the same thing for which he is being crucified – that everybody is ignorant and only he knows.Again, it was the insight of Nietzsche to see that Jesus’ emphasis is not on forgiveness, his emphasis is, “They do not know what they are doing. They do not know whom they are crucifying. They do not understand that they are crucifying the only begotten son of God.” In simple words, “These are idiots. Just forgive them – they are not worth punishment.”Even on the cross his ego is as assertive as it has ever been. He is not a humble man. Although he teaches humility, he never shows humility in his whole life. Then certainly his teaching of humility is just the teaching for making your ego so subtle that it can use humility as food, as nourishment. He is certainly not a humble man. There is no indication in his whole life of where he has acted in a humble manner.All his declarations that he is the messiah for whom you have been waiting for centuries, that now God has sent his own son to fulfill the promise…. These are not the words of humility, these are not the words of a person who is nobody.Jesus is not nobody – he is higher than everybody else. Even the prophets, Moses or Abraham or Elijah, are nothing; they are only prophets, just messengers. He is the only begotten son of God, and he says clearly that he was even before Abraham.Now, Abraham was alive almost three thousand years before Jesus; and Jesus is saying he was before Abraham. He is trying to say that he belongs to eternity, he is eternal, and all these prophets are just bubbles in time. He has always been and will always be – but prophets come and go.Nietzsche is the only man in the whole Western history who has a deep psychological understanding of Jesus Christ, and who has a very subtle analysis – far more subtle than any Freud or Jung can do. He has almost all the insights. He could have founded psychoanalysis. He could have founded communism. He could have founded anarchism.He is really vast, and in all dimensions he goes to the very roots. But people have understood one thing for thousands of years, and then suddenly there is a totally opposite interpretation. Rather than accepting the interpretation, they would prefer to reject the man. And he was rejected by the society in every possible way. He lived almost always lonely.His writing is also very prophetic, even the method. He does not write in the ordinary way philosophers have been writing down the ages, his writing is aphoristic. You can make a whole philosophy out of one paragraph, it is so condensed. And the man had so much to say that he could not manage to elaborate it himself, so he has just put it in the most condensed form. Just the method of his expression was making him a laughingstock in the eyes of other philosophers who were trained to write in a certain logical manner, giving every proof and every argument.But Nietzsche has to say so much that he cannot go into details of the arguments and procedures of how he has arrived – he simply writes the conclusion, and that conclusion is aphoristic. He then moves to another subject; and he goes on moving that way.But I love the way he writes. That should be ultimately the way of writing. If people are intelligent you need not go through all the arguments before you give the conclusion; just the conclusion should be enough. If they are sharp and intelligent they will immediately get all the preceding arguments that are not given to them; there is no need….He was not writing for children, he thought he was writing for philosophers. But he misunderstood: those philosophers were also not mature enough. They wanted the whole procedure. They could not immediately see the whole procedure in the conclusion; and he had to say so much that it was impossible for him to go into the whole procedure. In every direction and dimension he was touching the foundations.But whatever he has said is just in seed form. So it is natural that it took almost a hundred years…and now people can reconsider this man.People who are understood by their contemporaries are not geniuses, they are not great giants of intelligence. That’s why their contemporaries can understand them.This revival of interest in Nietzsche will bring many fruits of great importance.We have seen that he was misunderstood even by the people who thought they were followers of Nietzsche. For example, Adolf Hitler – he thought that he was a follower of Nietzsche.Adolf Hitler is just a retarded man, and the distance between him and Nietzsche’s intelligence is so vast; he could not even understand what Nietzsche was saying. So he picked at things which he wanted, just to have a philosopher behind him. And because Adolf Hitler picked him up, Nietzsche became even more condemned along with Adolf Hitler.It was not his fault – he had not chosen Adolf Hitler as his successor – but he became more condemned. Even to mention his name became notorious. He became so closely associated with fascism that even great thinkers would not talk about him, for the simple reason that he was a fascist.He is not a fascist. But when a person is so rich in giving ideas to the world, you can always choose from him things that suit you, and leave everything else that does not suit you.But one thing has to be remembered: he was misunderstood, and all the people who have been misunderstood have one thing in common – that nobody refutes them. It is as if misunderstanding is enough. Nobody has refuted Friedrich Nietzsche. Although he has challenged the whole of Christianity, the popes have been silent – because what he is saying is so clear that it is better to ignore rather than to refute it; you cannot refute it.It is good – it will help Europe to get rid of Christianity, which has been a calamity and has kept people retarded.It will also help people to think more aphoristically – which looks like the person is jumping from one conclusion to another conclusion. That’s how every great philosophical treatise should be written, because it is not written for children, it is not written for schools; it is written for the most highly intelligent people in the world. Its manner also should do them justice.I have a tremendous love for Friedrich Nietzsche, and a deep compassion, because the man suffered his whole life for the simple reason that he remained a thinker and he never went beyond thoughts; otherwise there would be no question of suffering.I am more misunderstood than Nietzsche, but it does not make me frustrated, it does not give me any trouble, it cannot drive me insane. I feel great compassion too, that it was a misfortune he was in the West.He should have been in the East, because in the East it is very difficult to avoid meditation. Sooner or later you are bound to stumble upon it, and particularly a great thinker like Nietzsche. If he had meditated too, he would have been in the same state as Gautam the Buddha – not less than that. As far as intelligence is concerned, perhaps he is more intelligent than Gautam the Buddha.If he had just had the meditative quality also, he would have given many more treasures to the world, and he would not have suffered through it. And he would not have given the chance to the people to say that whatever he has written is all insane. His madness became a proof for them that he was insane from the very beginning; it was just growing and growing and growing, and finally it exploded.From Friedrich Nietzsche much has to be learned.What I would like the people who are interested in Nietzsche to understand, is that they should not miss meditation the way Nietzsche missed it; otherwise they will become great intellectuals, but empty within, with no roots, with no great solidity.And the danger of madness is always there, because the mind’s full growth can only lead to madness – there is no other way. If the mind is developed fully, the person is going to be mad, unless, side by side, he is also developing no-mind, and no-mind becomes his base. Then he can use the mind as much as he wants; it leaves no trace behind.So this is my message to the lovers of Nietzsche: they should not become just intellectuals.Nietzsche can only make them intellectuals. And then they will fall into the same ditch in which Nietzsche fell – the ditch of too much intellectuality creating such a state that it is bound to drive you insane. And these people who are interested in Nietzsche are not of the caliber of Nietzsche either. So not only will they go mad sooner; their madness may lead them to suicide.This is the mind’s natural process.It is good that people have mediocre minds: mediocre minds cannot go mad. They do all kinds of stupid things in the world, but they don’t go mad; a mediocre mind has not the capacity to go mad. But a mediocre mind cannot be interested in Nietzsche, so the people who are interested are getting into a dangerous zone. If they are well-prepared, they will be enriched by Nietzsche’s insights. But the preparation is very vital, very essential. Nietzsche alone will drive these sympathizers to madness, to suicide.Before Nietzsche, they need a good centering in meditation; then Nietzsche can be a great joy. His every insight can give you immense clarity about things which are always clouded.The traditionalists don’t want the clouds to be removed, because those clouds are helping them – so they can go on telling people whatever they want to, and they can go on exploiting people and enslaving people.Nietzsche can be a great freedom.But without meditation, a great danger.Osho,Many small groups of sannyasins are forming around the world. Would you comment on Gurdjieff's words, that people who want to wake up, and who are living together in a group, can function as alarm clocks for each other?George Gurdjieff is right, but right only about his own system. It is true: if you are following Gurdjieff’s ideology and his methods, then a group is an absolute necessity; you cannot work alone.Then people can function as alarm clocks to each other. If somebody starts falling asleep, somebody can shake him up. When you are starting to fall asleep, somebody else can shake you up and wake you.Gurdjieff’s method is a school method. He himself was trained in different schools of the Sufis. They are all school methods. School methods have a difficulty – that you have to depend on the group, that if the group is not the right group they can function in just the opposite way: rather than being alarm clocks, they can all become drugs for each other. You may have watched it: if one person starts falling asleep, immediately something in you also starts falling asleep.Sleep is contagious.Awakening is not.It is possible that twenty people may remain asleep and one person awake, but his awakening is not going to be contagious. Most probably, seeing twenty people asleep he will himself fall asleep. So unless you have a very awakened master, the group method is not going to help much.But in Gurdjieff’s system the group is absolutely necessary; alone you cannot do it. For example, he had his school near Paris…. He told one of the new disciples to dig a trench. The whole day, from the morning – from sunrise to sunset – he was not allowed to go to eat or leave for anything; he had to dig the trench. That was the most important thing.Now, it needs somebody to watch; otherwise the man may rest sometimes. The whole day is a long time, a hot day…he may go to have a drink or to eat something; or under the tree there is such beautiful shade and coolness…he may fall asleep.Gurdjieff himself walked continuously the whole day, just by the side of the man. Now, when Gurdjieff himself was walking by his side continuously, the whole day, of course the man could not leave. By sunset he had made the big trench. And Gurdjieff said, “This is only half the work: now you fill it, and then you can go and sleep.”This was too much. Through great effort the whole day, against all temptations to leave it, he managed, because of Gurdjieff’s presence, to continue, knowing one thing, that it could not kill him: “I cannot die by just not eating for one day or not drinking water. I cannot die – that much is certain. So let us try.”Now Gurdjieff says, “It is only half the work – you have now to fill it completely, as it was before you started digging. Then you can go and do whatsoever you want.” And Gurdjieff remained there. It took a few hours for the man again to fill the trench – by midnight he was freed.That new disciple remembers that that night was the most precious in his life; and only after that night could he understand Gurdjieff’s methods.Man’s energy has layers. The first layer is for day-to-day work. It is soon exhausted, and you start feeling tired. If you don’t listen to this tiredness, and you continue, then the second layer of energy – which is an emergency reservoir of energy – starts functioning. Suddenly you will feel an onrush of new energy becoming available to you, which refreshes you continuously. You cannot believe what has happened: all tiredness is gone. You are more fresh than you were before you started the work.But the emergency reservoir also is not very big; it is only for emergency situations which don’t last for long. So for one hour or two hours you will be full of energy, more than ever; then again the tiredness comes – and this is a greater tiredness than the first one.If you don’t listen to this tiredness…it is really difficult not to listen to it, almost impossible. But if you manage not to listen – and that’s what Gurdjieff wants, that you continue – then you touch the third layer, which is vast, which is universal. And once that layer becomes available to you, you are a new man. Just within a day Gurdjieff could take you to the emergence of the basic power, of the basic energy, the universal energy in you.But for this kind of method you need a group. If twelve persons are working, then everyone is watching you. Then each person is watched by eleven persons; you cannot escape easily. Alone, it is impossible; you will stop after your day-to-day energy is finished, and you will feel immensely tired, hungry…. That will be the stoppage because there is nobody who can prevent you or whose presence can prevent you; nobody is watching you. So for Gurdjieff’s methods it is perfectly true that groups are needed.My method can be used in a group, but the group is not necessary; you can use it alone. Any group can become a dependence – so that you can work only in the group. Out of the group, you are back to your usual self. When you are in the group you are a certain person; when you leave the group you are a different person.I don’t want my sannyasins to be dependent.It is perfectly good to have small groups, but the methods I have given to you are individual; you can work alone. You don’t need anybody to watch you, because my method is that you have to be the watcher.Under somebody’s watching eye, out of fear of somebody – and of course when Gurdjieff himself is watching you, you cannot escape – but it is something like slavery. Although he is taking you towards deeper layers of your energy, there is some kind of violence, some kind of enforcement, enslavement.It is possible for you to do almost the impossible in such a situation. But once Gurdjieff is not there, you will become an ordinary person as you have been before. That has happened to almost all his disciples. Even though they have small groups, they are all mediocre, the same.Rather than helping each other to be awake, they help each other to fall asleep. When one starts snoring, rather than being an alarm clock, he helps you to snore too.It can function both ways. The group can be a space where you can become more alert; it can be a space where you can become more asleep. And because people started becoming more asleep in Gurdjieff’s groups after Gurdjieff’s death, those groups have disappeared. People have moved alone. But alone you cannot do those methods.This is a very spiritual kind of slavery.The master cannot guarantee to be with you forever; sometime he will be leaving. Then you should not be left in a space where you cannot function without him. And for that, a preparation is needed: from the very beginning you work alone. Even if you are working in a group, you are not dependent on the group; your work, your method, is basically individual.So my approach is individual.I am not giving you school methods:I am giving you individual methods, which can be done together with friends, which can be done alone. So you have freedom.But there is nothing wrong if sannyasins are making small groups, because those small groups cannot hinder the methods that I have given to you or the work that you have to do upon yourself. It is available in both situations – alone or in groups.But Gurdjieff had no idea – because he was trained always in schools. Sufis don’t have individual methods; all the methods are group methods. He was trained by Sufis, and he went from one school to another; he learned much from those schools, and he developed and polished many methods which had become old and were not contemporary.But he could not help many people, for the simple reason that he was the only person who was really awake. All the persons were working under him, under pressure – not out of freedom and joy – working with the motivation that someday they will become awakened like Gurdjieff.He was certainly a very strange and powerful man. When he was dying, he got up from his bed and started walking in the corridor. His disciples said, “What are you doing? You are so sick – it is better to rest.”He said, “It is not sickness, it is death – and I don’t want death to find me a weak person. I want to meet death not lying on the bed, but walking on the verandah.”He died walking. To the last moment he was still working. And he was certainly very awake because he could see death, he could see it was very imminent. But he was a very proud man – he did not like to die like every ordinary man, in the bed, he wanted to die in his own way.Whenever he was sick, he would go driving, and he would drive as fast as the car could manage. And everybody in the car was just freaking out, afraid that, “Now there is going to be an accident; now it is going to be…” because he never cared about any rules, the lights on the crossroads or anything. He would just drive in a mad way.Just ten years before he died, he had a very great crash. To avoid a truck, he crashed against a rock by the side of the road. He had so many fractures that it was an impossibility…doctors could not believe that a man with so many fractures could walk home. He came out of the car and walked miles with so many fractures. The doctors could not believe that a man could move even a few feet – and within fifteen days all those fractures were settled. He had immense power.All his methods are to bring you to the basic source of power. If that basic source of power becomes available to you continuously, it will transform your whole being. But it was not continuously available even to him.One of his disciples, Bennett, after the second world war, went to him very tired. He was coming from the war, utterly tired, almost ready to die, willing to die.Gurdjieff was very old, and it was just five years before he died. He asked Bennett to come close to him, and he took hold of both his hands. Bennett remembers in his biography that it was almost as if Gurdjieff was charging a battery from an electric source.“I could feel the energy rushing through me, but I also could see that Gurdjieff was becoming pale. I was feeling full of energy, all my tiredness gone, as if I had never been to the war. And there was a great desire to live and a great desire to achieve the ultimate – within seconds. And then Gurdjieff staggered, pale, as if he was going to fall, and went into the bathroom. After ten minutes he came back. He was okay. He was back to his usual health.”Bennett asked him, “What happened? You have given so much to me.”Gurdjieff said, “I can give you energy, but I am not yet continuously in touch with the original source, so I gave my own energy to you. And then I had to do a certain exercise in the bathroom to get in touch with the original source; otherwise you can live – I will die!”This is a totally different path than what I am teaching to you. It is a path of power.What I am teaching to you is the path of awareness.…Because the path of power has great dangers in it. It can crystallize your ego. It can make you feel very egoistic because you have so much power – you can do this, you can do that. And that is a danger.To avoid the ego even in ordinary life is so difficult. If you get in touch with extraordinary sources of power, it will become more and more difficult to get rid of the ego, because the ego will take possession of all your powers.My work is totally different: you have to be aware. And awareness is not a power. You have to be aware even of your powers. If you come across them, you have to be aware, and you have to remain detached, only a watcher.That’s where Gurdjieff and I use different words. His methods can be described as “self-remembering.” That’s what he uses – the word “self-remembering.” I do not want to use that word. It is dangerous because the self can be just the ego – it is playing with fire. I simply use the word “witnessing,” with no place for self, ego, or even a faraway cousin.Just to avoid the most probable possibility, you have just to be a witness. It may not lead you to power – there is no need – but it will lead you to understanding. That is what is needed.Gurdjieff’s disciples became power-oriented and forgot completely about just being watchful. But he was not telling them to be just watchful. There is a possibility of somebody becoming enlightened through his path also, but it goes in a very zigzag way, with more possibility of being lost than of reaching.What I have been telling you is something which cannot be misused in any way by you.And witnessing is a purely individual phenomenon.Osho,You have said that you are the beginning, that the beginning is mysterious, and that it may take thousands of years to prove what has been born.Please talk to us about the possibilities of humanity at this closing of an old cycle and the beginning of a new.The beginning is naturally mysterious because you can only see a seed changing into a sprout, but you cannot see what is going to happen later on – that the sprout is going to become a big tree with great foliage, thousands of flowers, fruits. That is still in the future.You can only remember later on that the beginning was just two small leaves, a sprout, and now you see a big, huge tree. There are trees which can live five thousand years, but in the beginning you cannot see all those possibilities. It is always retrospectively that things are understood.The old man has a few characteristics which will be disappearing from the New Man.The old man was attached to the crowd, different kinds of crowds – religious crowds, political crowds – and he wanted to be attached to more crowds. He created Rotary Clubs, Lion’s Clubs, just to be part of as many crowds as possible, because alone he was nothing. The more crowds he belonged to, the more he felt he was.Belonging to crowds was one of the basic characteristics of the old man. The New Man will have just the opposite characteristic: he will be alone.He will not like to belong to crowds – the family, the society, the church, the state, the nation, the race. He will hate to belong to any crowd; he will like to be just himself, alone. Because he will have a being, he need not collect a false being from crowds.The old man was always past-oriented. His heroes were always of the past: his saints were always of the past, his holy books were always of the past – the more ancient, the more valuable. The old man lived through the dead.The New Man will not look backwards; he will look forwards, he will be able to encounter the vast emptiness of the future.The old man was very afraid to look forwards because there is simply emptiness, nothingness; everything is in the past. The old man was very historically-minded.The New Man will be more courageous to look into the future, to face nothingness, because there is no fear in facing nothingness. If you have a certain centering, a certain grounding of your being, you can encounter nothingness blissfully, peacefully. He will live in the present – because you cannot live in the past, you cannot live in the future; you can only live in the present.The past man, the old man, has not lived at all. He was only making gestures of living, but he never lived, because his mind was never in the present.The New Man will be more grounded in the present, unconcerned with the past, more open to the future, to the adventure of the new. His whole ecstasy will be to discover the new, not to go on repeating the old…to be discovering something new each moment, creating something new, being something new.So the New Man will always be an opening, always an adventure. And because he will not be concerned with the old, all the discriminations of the past will be dropped from his mind – Hindu or Christian, black or white, man or woman. There will not be any evaluation that somebody is higher and somebody is lower. He will be more human than the old man has been.The old man was more animal, less human. The New Man will be more human, less animal, and the best of the New Man will have lost all animality in them. That means their life will be full of trust, full of love, full of compassion, full of gratitude, and a thousand and one qualities which the old man has been preaching but not practicing.The New Man will not be preaching these qualities, he will be practicing them. They will be simply his life.The old man has lived with all kinds of divisions – nations, races, religions. The New Man will live an undivided humanity, with all the sources pooled into one. And that will enable him to explore the universe.We have the capacity, but our whole energy is being wasted in fighting amongst ourselves on this small planet, earth. We have not explored this vast universe that surrounds us, which is such a challenge. And exploring it, the New Man is going to realize things which the old man could not even imagine.For example, if the whole earth is one, there is no question of wars. And if all the energy that has always been wasted in wars is available for some creative purposes – and it is immense energy…with that energy man can explore the whole universe.There is a possibility…. The scientists guess that at least fifty thousand planets have life. Now, what kind of dead and dull men have lived on this earth up to now, that they have not been able to make any contact with other living beings in the universe? It is our universe, but we have not even called this earth ours…just small fragments. And so much is waiting to be revealed that once the new man starts exploring….For example, if we can move with the speed of light…and I certainly think that there is a possibility. If light can move with a certain speed, why can’t means and methods be found so that man can move with the same speed as light? That is the ultimate speed.The greatest geniuses have been thinking that if man can move with that speed, then he will not become old. He can go searching, exploring in other solar systems, on other planets for a hundred or two hundred or three hundred years, and then can come back. All his contemporaries on the earth will be dead, their grandchildren will be almost near to death. But the adventurers who had gone on the journey will be just the same age as when they had left the earth. At that speed of light, aging does not happen.Now, great adventures are there. It is not only that we have this earth, that we have explored it all and we are feeling bored, that there is nothing to explore, that there is no America for Columbus. This whole universe is there for millions of Columbuses. For millions of years we are not going to reach the boundary, because there is no boundary. And one never knows – whatever scientific researchers have known is just a small fragment of the whole universe; they don’t have the whole idea of the universe.The New Man will be finding new ways in every dimension. The old man was always traditional, clinging to the trodden path. Now there are already thousands of inventions which are not being used because of the old man…because the old man is not ready to use anything new. While the old thing is working well, why bother? Why get into dangerous things?For example, in Japan, it is now fully proved by experiments that at a certain speed, trains rise above the earth 0.4 inches. So they don’t need rails – just in the beginning, at the start, before they take off. And they can go up to four hundred miles an hour very easily. That is the minimum, four hundred – we don’t know the maximum. And if trains can move above the earth, it will be a totally different experience. It will be really comfortable, far cheaper, and so fast.The trains are ready, but the old man is not willing to use them. It seems dangerous – four hundred miles per hour. It is the same danger…. When the first railway trains were introduced…the first day on the London station nobody was ready to sit in the trains. They were invited free, meals were given, but nobody was going to sit in them. And it was only an eight-mile journey, but nobody was ready to sit in the trains because the churches were saying that God never made trains, so it must be the work of the devil.This has been the way of the old man.If we can have contact with living beings, perhaps we may come across beings who have more senses than we have…because why should five senses be the limit? We cannot conceive – beyond the five senses – what will be the sixth sense?We cannot conceive beyond taste, smell, sight, hearing, touch. What could be the sixth or the seventh or the eighth or the tenth? Who knows? – because if we had four senses, we would not have been able to think of the fifth. And on every planet life must have grown differently because the climate is different, the situation is different.There is so much to explore and to learn and to make available to humanity, that the New Man will be basically adventurous in all dimensions. In medicine, in biology, in space travel, in meditations – in every possible dimension the New Man will be an adventurer.He will be very willing to go into it. He will be ready to risk all for the new. And then a vast world of experiences becomes available.We are living on a small planet, fighting with each other, quarreling over small things, while the whole universe waits to be discovered. And it may change everything on the earth. It may be that these explorations of the universe, of other planets, will finally help life to survive, because there is a possibility that by the end of this century the earth will change its axis.Now that will bring tremendous changes – in the climate, in everything on the earth. If just the Himalayan snow starts melting, then all our great cities, which are ports, will be drowned. Just the Himalayan snow is enough to raise our seas forty feet higher, if it melts. It has never melted, it is eternally there – but the change of the earth’s axis can bring it closer to the sun: it can start melting. Then New York and Bombay and Calcutta and Tokyo and San Francisco – all the big cities which are near the ocean will be simply drowned.Scientists are worried that the sun may be burning itself out. It has been giving light for millions of years, its fuel may be finishing. We may not know exactly when, but they don’t think it can last forever. A few million years is their estimate. But if the sun does not rise one morning, then everything dies as it is.It will be necessary that we have other planets available for people to be moved to. If any danger to the earth arises, if there is any danger to the sun, then there is no need to be in this solar system. The whole humanity can be moved to other planets. There is no need for this whole evolution up to man to go down into the water or to die out simply because the sun’s fuel is finished.The old man has nothing to give to humanity in such emergencies.The New Man will be capable.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 30 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Since my childhood, my most intense yearning was to have a friend. I had to wait for thirty years to have this yearning fulfilled; and then everything I wanted, happened. Now, since you have offered us the gift of being a friend, I often allow myself to feel and love you in a similar way as I feel and love this friend. Is it really okay?It is…!Osho,The longing for a better life, for a utopia, has been constantly in man's mind since he became aware of his consciousness. On the other hand he became more and more afraid of all his irrational powers. Can you please comment?The yearning for a utopia is basically the yearning for harmony in the individual and in the society. The harmony has never existed; there has always been a chaos.Society has been divided into different cultures, different religions, different nations – and all based on superstitions. None of the divisions are valid.But these divisions show that man is divided within himself: these are the projections of his own inner conflict. He is not one within, that’s why he could not create one society, one humanity outside.The cause is not outside. The outside is only the reflection of the inner man.Man has developed from the animals. Even if Charles Darwin is not right…His theory of evolution – that man has developed out of the apes – does look a little childish, because for thousands of years these apes have been there, but none of them have developed into human beings. So it is strange that only a few apes developed into human beings, and the remaining ones still are apes; and there seems to be no sign that they are going to change into human beings.Secondly, he could not find a link between man and the ape, because whenever things develop there are always steps, not jumps. The ape cannot simply jump and become a human being. There must be a process of evolution; there must be a few in between stages, and those stages are missing. Charles Darwin worked his whole life to find the missing link, but he could not find anything.But according to Eastern mysticism, in a very different way, man is evolved from the animals – not as far as his body is concerned, but as far as his being is concerned. And that seems to be more relevant. Charles Darwin has almost lost his ground in scientific fields. Now the anti-Darwinians are winning, and Charles Darwin is almost out of date. It was only a fiction.But Eastern mysticism has the same theory – not that the ape’s body develops into a human body, but that an ape’s soul or an elephant’s soul, or a lion’s soul, can develop into a human being. First the soul develops, and then, according to the soul’s need, nature provides the body. So there is no bodily evolution, but there is a spiritual connection.This is profoundly supported by modern psychoanalysis, particularly Carl Gustav Jung’s school, because in the collective unconscious of man there are memories which belong to animalhood.If man is taken deep into hypnosis, first he enters the unconscious mind, which is just the repressed part of this life. If he is hypnotized even more deeply, then he enters into the collective unconscious, which has memories of being animals.People start screaming – in that stage they cannot speak a language. They start moaning or crying, but language is impossible; they can shout, but in an animal way. And in the collective unconscious state, if they are allowed to move or they are told to move, they move on all fours – they don’t stand up.In the collective unconscious there are certainly remnants that suggest that they have been sometime in some animal body. And different people come from different animal bodies. That may be the cause of such a difference in individuals. And sometimes you can see a similarity – somebody behaves like a dog, somebody behaves like a fox, somebody behaves like a lion.And there is great support in folklore, in ancient parables like Aesop’s Fables, or Panchtantra in India – which is the most ancient – in which all the stories are about animals, but are very significant for human beings and represent certain human types.Charles Darwin may have failed because he was only looking for a link between bodies, physical bodies; and there may not be any link between physical bodies. But Eastern mysticism may be right that man has evolved spiritually from animalhood.Man still carries much of the animal’s instinct – his anger, his hatred, his jealousy, his possessiveness, his cunningness. All that has been condemned in man seems to belong to a very deep-rooted unconscious. And the whole work of spiritual alchemy is how to get rid of the animal past.Without getting rid of the animal past, man will remain divided. The animal past and his humanity cannot exist as one, because humanity has just the opposite qualities. So all that man can do is become a hypocrite.As far as formal behavior is concerned, he follows the ideals of humanity – of love and of truth, of freedom, of non-possessiveness, compassion. But it remains only a very thin layer, and at any moment the hidden animal can come up; any accident can bring it up. And whether it comes up or not, the inner consciousness is divided.This divided consciousness has been creating the yearning and the question: How to become a harmonious whole as far as the individual is concerned? And the same is true about the whole society: How can we make the society a harmonious whole – where there is no war, no conflict, no classes; no divisions of color, caste, religion, nation?Because of people like Thomas Moore, who wrote the book Utopia, the name became synonymnous with all idealistic goals – but they have not grasped the real problem. That’s why it seems their idea of a utopia is never going to happen. If you think of society as becoming an ideal society, a paradise, it seems to be impossible: There are so many conflicts, and there seems to be no way to harmonize them.Every religion wants to conquer the whole world, not to be harmonized.Every nation wants to conquer the whole world, not to be harmonized.Every culture wants to spread all over the world and to destroy all other cultures, not to bring a harmony between them.So utopia became synonymous with something which is simply imaginary. And there are dreamers – the very word utopia also means “that which is never going to happen.” But still man goes on thinking in those terms again and again. There seems to be some deep-rooted urge…. But his thinking is about the symptoms – that’s why it seems to be never going to happen. He is not looking at the causes. The causes are individuals.Utopia is possible. A harmonious human society is possible, should be possible, because it will be the best opportunity for everyone to grow, the best opportunity for everyone to be himself. The richest possibilities will be available to everyone.So it seems that the way it is, society is absolutely stupid.The utopians are not dreamers, but your so-called realists who condemn utopians are stupid. But both are agreed on one point – that something has to be done in the society.Prince Kropotkin, Bakunin, and their followers, would like all the governments to be dissolved – as if it is in their hands, as if you simply say so and the governments will dissolve. These are the anarchists, who are the best utopians. Reading them, it seems that whatever they are saying is significant. But they have no means to materialize it, and they have no idea how it is going to happen.And there is Karl Marx, Engels, and Lenin – the Marxists, the communists, and different schools of socialism, connected with different dreamers. Even George Bernard Shaw had his own idea of socialism, and he had a small group called the Fabian Society. He was propagating a kind of socialist world, totally different from the communist world that exists today.There are fascists who think that it is a question of more control and more government power; just the opposite pole of anarchists, who want no government – all the source of corruption is government. And there are people, the fascists, who want all power in the hands of dictators.It is because of the democratic idea that the society is falling apart, because in democracy the lowest denominator becomes the ruler. He decides who is going to rule; and he is the most ignorant one, he has no understanding. The mob decides how the society should be. So according to the fascist, democracy is only mobocracy, it is not democracy – there is no democracy possible.According to the communists, the whole problem is simply the class division between the poor and the rich. They think that if all government power goes into the hands of the poor, and they have a dictatorship of the proletariat – when all classes have disappeared, and the society has become equal – then soon there will be no need of any state.They are all concerned with the society. And that is where their failure lies. As I see it, utopia is not something that is not going to happen, it is something that is possible, but we should go to the causes, not to the symptoms. And the causes are in the individuals, not in the society.For example, seventy years have passed in Soviet Russia, and the communist revolution has not yet been able to dissolve the dictatorship. Lenin was thinking that ten or fifteen years at the most would be enough, because by that time we would have equalized everybody, distributed wealth equally – then there would be no need for a government.But after fifteen years they found that the moment you remove the enforced state, people are going to become again unequal. There will be again rich people and there will be again poor people, because there is something in people which makes them rich or poor. So you have to keep them in almost a concentration camp if you want them to remain equal. But this is a strange kind of equality because it destroys all freedom, all individuality.And the basic idea was that the individual will be given equal opportunity. His needs should be fulfilled equally. He will have everything equal to everybody else. He will share it.But the ultimate outcome is just the opposite. They have almost destroyed the individual to whom they were trying to give equality, and freedom, and everything good that should be given to individuals. The very individual is removed. They have become afraid of the individual; and the reason is that they are still not aware that however long the enforced state lasts – seventy or seven hundred years – it will not make any difference.The moment you remove control, there will be a few people who know how to be rich, and there will be a few people who know how to be poor. And they will simply start the whole thing again.In the beginning they tried…because Karl Marx’s idea was that there should be no marriage in communism. And he was very factual about it: that marriage was born because of individual property. His logic was correct. There was a time when there was no marriage. People lived in tribes, and just as animals make love, people made love.The problem started only when a few people who were more cunning, more clever, more powerful, had managed some property. Now they wanted that their property, after their death, should go to their own children. It is a natural desire that if a person works his whole life and gathers property, land, or creates a kingdom, it should go to his children.In a subtle way, through the children, because they are his blood, he will be still ruling, he will be still possessing. It is a way to find some substitute for immortality, because the continuity will be there: “I will not be there, but my child will be there – who will represent me, who will be my blood and my bones and my marrow. And then his child will be there and there will be a continuity. So in a subtle sense, I will have immortality. I cannot live forever, so this is a substitute way.”That’s why marriage was created; otherwise it was easier for man not to have any marriage, because marriage was simply a responsibility – of children, of a wife. When the woman is pregnant, then you have to feed her…. And there was no need to take all that responsibility. The woman was taking the whole responsibility.But the man wanted some immortality, and that his property should be possessed by his own blood. And the woman wanted some protection – she was vulnerable. While she was pregnant, she could not work, she could not go hunting; she had to depend on somebody.So it was in the interest of both to have a contract that they would remain together, would not betray in any sense, because the whole thing was to keep the blood pure.So Marx’s idea was that when communism comes, and property becomes collective, marriage becomes meaningless because its basic reason is removed – now you don’t have any private property. Your son will not have anything as an inheritance.In fact, just as you cannot have private property, you cannot have a private woman; that too is property. And you cannot have a private son or daughter, because that too is private property. So with the disappearance of private property, marriage will disappear.So after the revolution, for two or three years, in Russia they tried it, but it was impossible. Private property had disappeared, but people were not ready to drop marriage. And even the government found that if marriage disappears, the whole responsibility falls on the government – of the children, of the woman…. So why take an unnecessary responsibility? – and it is not a small thing. It is better to let marriage continue.So they reversed the policy; they forgot all about Karl Marx, because just within three years they found that this was going to create difficulty, and people were not willing.People were not willing to drop private property either – it was forcibly taken away from them. Almost one million people were killed – for small private properties. Somebody had a small piece of land, a few acres, and because everything was going to be nationalized….Although the people were poor, still they wanted to cling to their property. At least they had something; and now even that was going to be taken out of their hands. They were hoping to get something more – that’s why they had had the revolution, and fought for it. Now what they had was going to be taken out of their hands. It was going to become government property, it was going to be nationalized….And for small things – somebody may have had just a few hens, or a cow, and he was not willing…because that was all that he had. A small house…and he was not willing for it to be nationalized.These poor people – one million people were killed to make the whole country aware that nationalization had to happen. Even if you had only a cow and you didn’t give it to the government, you were finished.And the government was thinking that people would be willing to separate…but this is how the merely theoretical and logical people have always failed to understand man. They have never looked into his psychology.This was true, that marriage was created after private property came into being – marriage followed it. Logically, as private property is dissolved, marriage should disappear. But they don’t understand the human mind. As property was taken away, people became even more possessive of each other because nothing was left. Their land has gone, their animals have gone, their houses have gone. Now they don’t want to lose their wife or their husband or their children. This is too much.Logic is one thing…and unless we try to understand man more psychologically and less logically, we are always going to commit mistakes.Marx was proved wrong.When everything was taken away people were clinging to each other more, more than before, because now that was their only possession: a woman, a husband, children…. And it was such a gap in their life; their whole property had gone and now their wife was also to be nationalized. They could not conceive the idea because their mind and their tradition said, “That is prostitution.” Their children had to be nationalized – they had not fought the revolution for this.So finally the government had to reverse the policy; otherwise in their constitution…. In the first constitution they had declared that now there shall be no marriage; and the question of divorce did not arise. Just within three years they had to change it.And in Russia now marriage is more strict than anywhere else. Divorce is more difficult than anywhere else, because the government does not want unnecessary changes. That creates paperwork and more bureaucracy. So the government wants people to remain together, not to unnecessarily change partners. And divorce creates law cases about the children – who should have them, the father or mother; it is unnecessary.The government thinks of efficiency – less bureaucracy, less paperwork – and people are creating unnecessary paperwork, so it is very difficult to get a divorce.And as time passed, they found that there was no way to keep people equal without force. But what kind of a utopia is it which is kept by force? And because the communist party has all the force, a new kind of division has come into being, a new class of the bureaucrats: those who have power, and those who don’t have any power.It is very difficult to become a member, to obtain membership of the communist party in Russia, because that is entering into the power elite. The communist party has made many other groups – first you have to be a member of those groups, and you have to be checked in every way. When they find that you are really reliable, absolutely reliable, trustworthy, then you may enter into the communist party. And the party is not increasing its membership because that means dividing power.The party wants to remain as small as possible so that the power is in a few hands. There is now a powerful class. For seventy years the same group has been ruling the country, and the whole country is powerless.The people were never so powerless under a capitalist regime or under a feudal regime. Under the czars they were never so powerless. It was possible for a poor man, if he was intelligent enough, to become rich. Now it is not so easy. You may be intelligent, but it is not so easy to enter from the powerless class into the class which holds power. The distance between the two classes is far more than it was before.There is always a mobility in a capitalist society, because there are not only poor people and rich people; there is a big middle class, and the middle class is continuously moving. A few people of the middle class are moving into the super-rich, and more people are moving into the poor class. A few poor people are moving into the middle class; a few rich people are falling into the middle class, or may even fall into the poor class…there is mobility.In a communist society there is an absolutely static state. Classes are now completely cut off from each other.They were going to create a classless society, and they have created the most strict society with static classes.It is almost a repetition of Hinduism.What Manu did five thousand years ago, communists have done in Russia now. Manu made Hindu society into four classes. There is no mobility. You are born a brahmin; that is the only way to be a brahmin. And that is the highest society, the topmost class. Then number two is the warriors, the kings – the kshatriyas. But you are born in that caste, it is not a question that you can move. Then third is the class of the vaishyas, the business people; you are born in it. And the fourth is the sudras, the untouchables.All are born into their caste. That’s why, until Christianity started converting so many Hindus, particularly the sudras, who were ready, very willing to become Christians, because at least they would be touchable…. Amongst Hindus sudras are untouchable, and there is no way to get out of the structure.For your whole life you have to remain the same as your forefathers remained for five thousand years. For five thousand years there has been a stratified society. If somebody is a shoemaker, his family has been making shoes for five thousand years. He cannot do any other work, he cannot enter into any other profession. That is not allowed.Hindus were not a converting religion, because the great question was, if you convert somebody, in what class are you going to put the person? Christianity is a converting religion because it has no classification; you simply become a Christian. If Catholics convert you, you become a Catholic; if Protestants convert you, you become a Protestant.But in Hinduism you cannot be converted, for the simple reason: Where will you be put? Brahmins won’t allow you, and you would not like to be put with the sudras, the untouchables. So then what is the point of coming to a religion where you will not be even touched? Even your shadow will be untouchable. And a brahmin has to take a bath if the shadow of a sudra falls on him. The sudra has not touched him, but his shadow is also untouchable.Being the ancientmost religion, still Hinduism has not been spreading; it has been shrinking. Buddhism spread all over Asia, and it is only twenty-five centuries old. Hinduism is at least ten thousand years old, or more, but it could not spread, for the simple reason that birth is decisive. You can be a Hindu only by birth, just as you can be a Jew only by birth – and these are the two most ancient religions. These are really the two basic religions.Christianity and Mohammedanism are offshoots of Judaism; and Jainism and Buddhism are offshoots of Hinduism. Jainism and Buddhism are both the rebellion of the second class – the kshatriyas, the warriors – because they had the powers. They were the kings, they were the soldiers, they had the power – and yet the brahmin was on top of them. So naturally, sooner or later they were going to revolt, and finally they did revolt. Gautam Buddha and Mahavira are both from the second class. They wanted to be first class, they had the power, and the brahmins had nothing: Why should they be the highest class? So it was a rebellion.But it was a strange thing that although these two religions got out of the Hindu fold, only Buddhism could spread all over Asia. Jainism could not spread out of India. Buddhism managed to spread out of India: from India it disappeared, but it took over the whole of Asia. And the reason was that it was through Gautam Buddha’s very compassionate mind that he allowed anybody to enter into Buddhism.Jainas, although they had also rebelled against the brahmins, remained of the same mind – that they are higher than the other two classes. They wanted to be higher than brahmins too, but they never started converting anybody, because who would they convert? Brahmins will not be ready to be converted – they are already higher than everybody. Only sudras can be converted because they will be raised on the evaluation scale. But Jainas – Mahavira and his group – were not so compassionate as to take them in.So Jainism is not a complete culture – it has to depend on Hinduism for everything – it has remained only a philosophy. No Jaina can make shoes – some Hindu sudra has to make the shoes. No Jaina can clean the toilets – some sudra has to do that work.Although they rebelled against brahmins, their rebellion was just against the superiority of the brahmins, and they wanted themselves to be higher than the brahmins. But they were also not in favor of the lower classes being taken higher.And the ultimate result was that Jainas have remained a very small religion, confined in numbers. And because they left Hinduism, rather than rising higher than brahmins, they even fell from the second category. Because they left Hinduism, they were no longer kshatriyas. They were no longer considered to be warriors, and they could not be because of their nonviolence. They had to drop the idea of fighting, so the only way was to become business people.Lower you can go – nobody prevents you – so they had to go from the second class to the third class, and they all became business people. So the rebellion failed very badly. Jainas wanted to become higher than the first class; the outcome of their revolution was that they went from the second class to the third class.And they are absolutely dependent on Hindus. For their manual work they need workers – they cannot work. And because they became business people, slowly, slowly the Hindu vaishyas, the Hindu business people, and the Jaina business people came closer. Even marriages started happening between them.By and by they even had to ask brahmins to do their worship work – and they had money to pay for it. So brahmins worshipped for the Jainas – who are against brahminism, against Hinduism; but they had to use Hindus for everything. Their shoes are made by the sudras; their toilets are cleaned by the sudras. Their properties have to be protected by the kshatriyas, because they cannot take the sword in their hands. They cannot kill, so they cannot fight, they cannot go to war; they have their security force in the warrior race. And finally their priests – the brahmins came in from the back door as their priests.Manu tried this immobile society – which is still the same – five thousand years ago. That too was a kind of utopia, because he was thinking in terms of there being no class struggle this way.The class struggle can be dropped in two ways. Either there should be no classes; then there will be no class struggle…. That’s what communism is doing, but it has failed because a new class has appeared. The other way is that the classes should be so stratified that there is no question of one person moving into another class. No struggle will be there, so there will be no competition.The brahmin will remain a brahmin. He will remain on the top; whether he is poor or rich does not matter. The businessman will remain a businessman. Just because he is rich he cannot become a brahmin, he cannot purchase the caste. He cannot rise; he will remain third class, however rich he is. The sudras will remain sudras: they have to do all the dirty work and they cannot move from there.This was also a utopia. The idea was that if the classes are completely static, there is not going to be any struggle, competition. In a way Manu succeeded more than Marx, because for five thousand years his idea has remained in practice, and in India the Hindu society has never been in a class struggle.The poor are there, the rich are there, but that is not the real problem for the Hindu. His real problem is those four classes, which are absolutely static. But that is very dangerous because you prevent people from moving in a direction where they can find their potential fulfilled. A sudra may prove to be a great warrior, but he will never be allowed. A brahmin may prove a great industrialist, but he cannot lower himself.So it saved the society from class struggle, but it destroyed the individual and his potential completely. The genius was ruined. In just the same way it is happening in communism: the individual is destroyed, his genius is ruined. He cannot move upwards even if he has the capacity.There have been attempts all over the world to make a harmonious human society, but all have failed for the simple reason that nobody has bothered why it is not naturally harmonious.It is not harmonious because each individual inside is divided, and his divisions are projected onto the society. And unless we dissolve the individual’s inner divisions, there is no possibility of really realizing a utopia and creating a harmonious society in the world.So the only way for a utopia is that your consciousness should grow more, and your unconsciousness should grow less, so finally a moment comes in your life when there is nothing left which is unconscious: you are simply a pure consciousness. Then there is no division.And this kind of person, who has just consciousness and nothing opposed to it, can become the very brick in creating a society which has no divisions. In other words, only a society which is enlightened enough can fulfill the demand of being harmonious – a society of enlightened people, a society of great meditators who have dropped their divisions.Instead of thinking in terms of revolution and changing the society, its structure, we should think more of meditation and changing the individual. That is the only possible way that some day we can drop all divisions in the society. But first they have to be dropped in the individual – and they can be dropped there.It is almost like the fourfold division as Manu conceived the society. You have the conscious, you have the unconscious, you have the collective unconscious, and you have the cosmic unconscious. These are the four divisions within you; as you go deeper you go into darker spaces. Manu also divided society in four. The most conscious part is the brahmin – he makes up the topmost, the wisest part. But he starts with the society.When Manu first divided the society, somebody may have been a wise man, but it is not necessary that his sons and daughters will also be wise, that generation after generation the wise man will create only wise people – that is a stupid idea. So the first division may have been very accurate. He may have sorted out people correctly: the conscious people on the top, then less conscious people, then more unconscious people, then absolutely unconscious people.And if Manu calls absolutely unconscious people “sudras,” untouchables, there is nothing wrong in it; philosophically it is absolutely right. But practically he went wrong because he did not think that it would not always happen that the unconscious people would produce unconscious people.It happened that all the enlightened people came from the second class – that is from the warriors – not from the brahmins, which were the topmost class. It is very strange. Even Hindu incarnations – Rama and Krishna – they all belonged to the second class; they were not brahmins. Buddha and Mahavira – they were not brahmins.So the brahmin class has not produced a single enlightened person, because they became very self-satisfied. They were on the top – what more do you need? Everybody was going to touch their feet; even the king had to touch their feet. They were the purest people, so there was no urge to find more; it was enough. It was very satisfying and gratifying to their egos.Why did it happen to the kshatriyas, the second class? My understanding is, because they were second class, there was an immense urge for them to surpass the brahmins, and the only way they could find to surpass the brahmins was to become enlightened. Then only could they surpass the brahmins; otherwise they could not.The brahmins are the most learned scholars. The kshatriyas had to attain something which is higher than learning and scholarship. They had to attain something which is not given by birth, so brahmins cannot claim it. Just by birth nobody can claim enlightenment.And it only happened in the second class because it is part of human psychology that the closer you are to the highest class the more competitiveness is within you. The more distant you are the less hope you have that you can manage to compete with the brahmin. The businessman cannot think he can manage to compete. The sudra of course cannot even imagine or dream that he can manage anything. He is not allowed even to read; he is not allowed to be educated. He is kept completely enslaved in his unconsciousness, so there is no question of a sudra becoming enlightened.The businessman has another competition, and that is of money. That is a horizontal competition amongst businessmen. He is trying to compete to have more money, and he knows he cannot compete with the warriors: a businessman is not a soldier. And he cannot compete with the priest because a businessman is not a scholar.And the brahmins kept a complete hold on all the great ancient scriptures and literature. They were only to give those books to their children, to their descendants. And for thousands of years those books were not printed, although printing started in China three thousand years ago, and it could have come to India without any difficulty. People must have been aware – they were constantly coming and going to China. If Buddhism could spread all over China, it is impossible that they could not have brought back the mechanism and understanding to print.But brahmins were against printing. They were even against printing their scriptures when the Britishers came – three hundred years ago – and took over India from the Mohammedans. It was against their will that the scriptures were printed, because they were afraid that once they are printed, they become public property. Then anybody can read them, and anybody can become a scholar. They wanted to keep them to themselves, so there were only handwritten copies which were kept as a family tradition: so each family has its own handwritten copy of certain scriptures. The brahmins monopolized it.The kshatriyas, the second class, tried – and that was a great effort – to become enlightened to surpass the brahmins. But it is very significant to understand that by becoming enlightened they became divisionless, their being became one. And certainly they became higher than any human being who was divided. There was no question about their superiority.So even brahmins would come to the enlightened people without bothering that they came from the second class. So brahmins have touched the feet of non-brahmins – which would have been impossible. But once the non-brahmin has become enlightened then the brahmin knows that what he knows is only parrot-like. What this man knows is not parrot-like. He is not a scholar, he is really a knower. So hundreds of brahmins were disciples of Buddha, hundreds of brahmins were disciples of Mahavira.The world can come to a harmony if meditation is spread far and wide, and people are brought to one consciousness within themselves. This will be a totally different dimension to work with.Up to now it was revolution. The point was society, its structure. It has failed again and again in different ways. Now it should be the individual; and not revolution, but meditation, transformation.And it is not so difficult as people think. They may waste six years in getting a master’s degree in a university; and they will not think that this is wasting too much time for just a degree which means nothing.It is only a question of understanding the value of meditation. Then it is easily possible for millions of people to become undivided within themselves. And they will be the first group of humanity to become harmonious. And their harmoniousness, their beauty, their compassion, their love – all their qualities – are bound to resound around the world.My effort is to make meditation almost a science so it is not something to do with religion.So anybody can practice it – whether he is a Hindu or a Christian or a Jew or a Mohammedan, it doesn’t matter. What his religion is, is irrelevant; he can still meditate. He may not even believe in any religion, he may be an atheist; still he can meditate.Meditation has to become almost like a wildfire. Then there is some hope.And people are ready: they have been thirsting for something that changes the whole flavor of the society. It is ugly as it is, it is disgusting. It is at the most, tolerable. Somehow people have been tolerating it. But to tolerate is not a very joyful thing.It should be ecstatic.It should be enjoyable.It should bring a dance to people’s hearts.And once these divisions within a person disappear, he can see so clearly about everything. It is not a question of his being knowledgeable, it is a question of his clarity. He can look at every dimension, every direction with such clearness, with such deep sensitivity, perceptiveness, that he may not be knowledgeable but his clarity will give you answers which knowledge cannot give.This is one of the most important things – the idea of utopia – which has been following man like a shadow for thousands of years. But somehow it got mixed up with the changing of society; the individual never got looked at.Nobody has paid much attention to the individual – and that is the root cause of all the problems. But because the individual seems to be so small and the society seems so big, people think that we can change society, and then the individuals will change.This is not going to be so – because “society” is only a word; there are only individuals, there is no society. The society has no soul – you cannot change anything in it.You can change only the individual, howsoever small he appears. And once you know the science of how to change the individual, it is applicable to all the individuals everywhere.And my feeling is that one day we are going to attain a society which will be harmonious, which will be far better than all the ideas that utopians have been producing for thousands of years.The reality will be far more beautiful.Osho,I'm not sure whether I'm having some moments of meditation or I'm simply producing something which feels very pleasant inside. Does it matter if I don't know which is which, as long as I just keep trying to watch it all?No, it does not matter. If it feels pleasant, it does not matter. One need not bother which is which. If it is pleasant just go on producing it.That is a clear indication of getting closer to meditativeness.So every moment you can create of pleasantness, sweetness, blissfulness within you, is enough; you need not bother or think about it and waste time asking: “What is it?”…because in thinking you may get lost, lose track, lose the knack that you were using to produce it. So don’t waste time in thinking about it.If it is pleasant, it is good. If it is pleasant, it will end in blissfulness. The pleasantness should be taken as an absolutely certain indication: it is arrowed towards meditation.So no need to think about it. All that time that you will think about it has to be given to producing it more and more. Just remember that the feeling of pleasantness is not possible if you are not on the right track.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 31 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,you are the eternal, awesome silence and grandeur of the Himalayas. And yet you live in a fragile, human body, which is such a joy for us to be together with. In connection with you, and even more in relation to close friends, the question arises: can the playfulness of human love be bridged with reverence for the divine?The distinction is very old, but absolutely meaningless – the distinction between playfulness and reverence.They are not two separate things.If playfulness goes to its deepest core, there is a reverence arising out of it spontaneously. It is not a contradiction to it. But because all the traditions in the past have made them contradictory, the human mind has become accustomed to thinking in terms of them being two different things, with a gap which is almost unbridgeable.Playfulness is condemned by the past heritage of man, and respect for the divine is praised. It is the same problem in different words which I have synthesized in Zorba the Buddha.Zorba is playfulness.Buddha is reverence.They have been kept separate for centuries, and that has harmed both. All that is divine became too serious. It lost the human touch. It became stone dead. It is not a coincidence that all the gods finally turned into stone statues. Respect cannot allow them to be alive, give them the guts to be alive – you may find difficulties in respecting the divine.To be alive means to have a sense of humor, to have a deep loving quality, to have playfulness.We have made respect so contrary to life that the people we respect, we almost kill. We don’t allow them to be human – if they are human they lose their respectability. So our saints are almost dead; only then can we give them respect, which we think is divine. But it is not respect for the divine, it is respect for the dead.I am absolutely against all life-negative attitudes – and respect for the divine has been life-negative. To make it life-affirmative, playfulness, a sense of humor, love, and respect have all to be joined together.This is the great alchemy I am working at, which will produce Zorba the Buddha.It is almost inconceivable in terms of the past.The ambassador of Ceylon to America wrote a letter to me, saying that we should not call our discos “Zorba the Buddha,” because “it is insulting to Buddha.”I replied to him, “It is not insulting, it is bringing life back to the Buddha. You have made him a stone statue – we want him to be back in a human form, and Zorba is the most beautiful human form. And we don’t see that being alive like Zorba – playful, joyous about the small things of life – is against Buddha.” It is really the foundation of an authentic buddha.But we have been conditioned to insult life. It seems to be a strategy, so that our whole respect goes to fictitious gods. Life should not receive our respect; it is too mundane, too ordinary. Respect should be kept only for something beyond life. But beyond life there is only death.The people who love Zorba, the atheists particularly, are also against me, saying that I am joining Buddha with Zorba and destroying Zorba, because they cannot coexist. Buddha will not allow Zorba’s playfulness, his nonseriousness, his music, his dance, his love. Buddha cannot allow them, because Buddha himself cannot dance, cannot love, cannot sing, cannot play on a musical instrument, cannot enjoy anything.So the atheist association of America wrote to me – that I am trying to do the impossible. Buddha is going to destroy Zorba, “and we don’t want Zorba to be killed.” The Buddhists are afraid that Zorba will kill the Buddha; the atheists are afraid that Buddha will kill the Zorba – because this is how our whole mind is conditioned. And I want to have a breakthrough of all this conditioning, to come out of it and be respectful to life.Reverence for life is the only respect for the divine, because there is nothing more divine than life itself.Anything other than life is going to be dead, and there is no point in being respectful to the dead. It is dangerous, because your respect is going to kill your own livingness, your own qualities of life. At least it is going to poison them: you will feel a certain condemnation of yourself. If your respect is for the dead, then you cannot be fully alive.So let me make it clear to you: don’t call it “respect for the divine.” It will be better to call it “reverence for life.” And then there is no problem. Then playfulness is part of being alive; it is the overflowing energy of life. It can become a dance, it can become a song, it can become any kind of creativity.I wrote to both the ambassador of Ceylon to America and the atheist association of America, saying that it looks contradictory because of their conditionings – and that I want to destroy those conditionings; hence specifically I have chosen Zorba and Buddha, two polarities, and have put them together. And I want the New Man to live both together, without any contradiction.Once we stop thinking of respect for the divine and start thinking of respect for life, reverence for life, then the bridge becomes immediately possible. Then playfulness, then livingness, and all that is implied in life – very small moments of joy – suddenly take on a spiritual meaning too.Nobody has ever tried to give them any spiritual meaning. In fact, all the religions have joined in the conspiracy to condemn living moments in life and have made ideals which are lifeless. The more a person becomes lifeless, joyless, forgets laughing, forgets everything that life consists of – this is called the great renunciation – the more he becomes respectable as a saint.He is almost in his grave, not in his body.He has condemned his body.He has condemned his senses.Even the fragrance of a flower he has renounced. The beauty of a sunset he has renounced. The joy of being with friends, eating with friends or just chitchatting with friends he has renounced. He has no friends; he has only people who respect him. And there is a great distance between him and the people who respect him – and the distance is from life.So the whole past is full of life worshipping death, and life trying to achieve respectability at the cost of losing livingness. This has destroyed all of human nature, its harmony; and it has created a dichotomy between the soul and the body, between this world and that world.There is only one world: this world.And when you go deep into it, you find that world hidden in this world. There is no contradiction between this and that. This is the circumference, and that is the center. And to get to that, you have to dive deep into this.“This” means Zorba.And “that” means Buddha.Zorba is the circumference – Buddha is the center. But no circumference is possible without a center, and no point can be called a center without a circumference. We find no difficulty in geometry, but in life’s geometry we have created a contradiction between the center and the circumference.The mundane life is the circumference. It has to be enjoyed so deeply that you start finding in it the sacred, the divine. The divine is nothing but the depth of diving into this moment, into this world, into this life, into this body.Perhaps this is the greatest problem that man has to resolve. Without resolving it he can never be healthy, he can never be whole. As a Zorba he is half, just circumference – unaware of the center, not only unaware but almost denying the center.And the person who reaches to the center is forced to deny the circumference; otherwise he is not respectable. We tend to ask him, “Then what is the difference between us and you?” No buddha has been courageous enough to say, “The difference is in the depth, the difference is not in activities.”You love – I love. But your love remains superficial, only on the circumference. And my love reaches to the very center.You taste food – I taste food. But your taste is superficial. When I taste food, it has a depth.What I am saying, nobody has dared to say.Against the whole conditioning of humanity, even the buddhas have not been courageous enough to risk their respectability.Perhaps I am the first man who has risked all respectability – because to me respectability is nothing but subtle ego. I would rather be notorious than be divided, than be respected by people who can only respect the dead part, the deadness in a living man.This has created a kind of schizophrenia, from which the whole humanity is suffering. And because the whole humanity is suffering from the same disease, we tend not to see it.If one person suffers from a disease, we can immediately pick him out because everybody else is not suffering from it. But when everybody without exception is suffering, then it becomes difficult to call it a disease; it seems to be just part of nature.Schizophrenia has gone deep into your very blood, bones, marrow. That’s why we see a contradiction between the mundane and the divine, between playfulness and respect for the divine. It is a created contradiction, so we don’t need to synthesize them. In fact, in reality they are one, but we don’t allow them to be one.If somebody is in deep love with this life, we condemn him as a Zorba. He does not get the same respect as Buddha gets. There have been very beautiful people in the same category as Zorba, but humanity has not respected them; they have been condemned.In India there has been an ancient tradition, founded by a certain man named Brihaspati. He must have been a great teacher, so even his enemies have called him Acharya Brihaspati. But they have destroyed all his writings, burned all his writings.While he was alive, his philosophy was known as charuvak. Charuvak means sweet words. Perhaps he has spoken the sweetest words – which have been burnt – because he is no ordinary Zorba; he is one of the greatest philosophers India has produced. So his philosophy was known, when he was alive, as charuvak – sweet words, the sweetest philosophy possible, because he said to enjoy every moment of life, that there is no other world.Now we have no idea of his actual statements. All that we have are his distorted statements in the scriptures of those who have burned his books; in the books of his enemies, just to condemn him, to criticize him. It is not reliable, but still they must have some connection even though they may be distorted.For example they distorted…instead of calling his philosophy charuvak, they started calling his philosophy charvak. And those two words are totally different. Charuvak means sweet words; and charvak means one who overeats – just a philosophy of “eat, drink and be merry.” They changed the name, only a slight change, but it simply destroys the whole beauty. And whatever statements we have about this man are found in their books, which are certainly not exact.They have distorted them, just to condemn them. For example, he must have said that there is no other world – in the same sense that I am saying there is no other world. That world is only a fiction, and for a fiction, this world – which is a reality – has to be sacrificed. And then a man is given respectability. He is accepted as the awakened one, as a great prophet, as a great saint – as God incarnated.To fulfill our expectation, many people have lived almost not in bodies but in corpses. We have made such a strange demand, and they were not courageous enough to deny us. Those who denied – for example, Brihaspati – his books were burnt.In the critics’ books they quote Brihaspati as saying that you can enjoy this life even if you have to borrow money, because there is no other life; so don’t be worried that you will have to pay after life or that you are committing a sin.Now, this I certainly think is a distortion of the same fact that I am saying – that there is no other world. He must have said there is no other world. He must have said to enjoy this world as much as possible – there is no sin. But this seems to be a distortion. The critics have put the words into his mouth that you can drink as much ghee as you like, even if you have to borrow money, because there is no other life. Everybody dies, simply dies, so nobody is going to ask after life if you were a sinner or a saint. The only difference is herenow, whether you are enjoying or not.This seems to be not exactly what Brihaspati may have said. But it can give the indication that the man must have said that there is no other life, that this is the only life there is. And it continues on; there is no death, there is no god that you have to follow or worship or pray to. The only prayer is that you live a life of joy. Other than that there is no prayer.So although his name is mentioned in the Vedas as Acharya Brihaspati – master, a great master, Brihaspati – not a single book of the man has survived. And he must have had a great following. Down the ages there may have been many people writing on the same lines, but all their books have been burnt.In Greece there was Epicurus – the same kind of man. They mention his name as one of the philosophers, but they don’t give any importance to him over Aristotle, Plato and other Greek philosophers. He needs to be on the top, because he was trying, twenty-five centuries back, exactly what I am saying.He lived in a small commune which was known as the garden of Epicurus where everything was uninhibitedly enjoyed. There was no marriage; there was nothing which was sin, there was nothing which was virtue. All was about living as totally as possible. And they lived in a forest immensely joyfully – having nothing much.Epicurus is the first man to have created a commune, and to have created a commune of Zorbas. But nothing in Greek history is mentioned about the commune in detail – exactly what they were doing, what was their basic philosophy. It has been prevented by the religious traditions, by so-called respectability, civilization, culture – because Epicurus seems to be rebellious.And these people like Brihaspati and Epicurus can already be called “Zorba the Buddhas.”So what I am saying is not something of a synthesis, it is something which is very natural. We have divided nature into two parts; and both have become dead, because the Zorba will remain superficial, and the Buddha will become too serious and too dead. He will not be superficial, but he will be dead. So what is the point of attaining depth if it becomes death?Life should attain depth, and reverence for life should be the only religion in the world. Then there is no division, and man can be healed.This is a great challenge for the coming humanity.That’s why I go on insisting that we should discontinue with the past – it was completely sick. Man has lived a very sick life because he created a very sick philosophy, and he followed it very seriously. We should discontinue with that sickness, howsoever respectable and howsoever ancient, and rediscover man’s totality. And that can be done only when we join playfulness with reverence, when playfulness becomes a deep reverence; and when reverence does not lead you to die, to renounce, but leads you to rejoice, to dance, to celebrate.Osho,By now, millions of people are confused by your contradictory actions and statements. But also we, your friends, tend to diminish or simplify your words. Osho, what is at the heart of your contradictions? How can we enter your wild dance of consciousness?There are no contradictions – only apparently so.Logically you can find hundreds of contradictions; but I am not speaking logically. Once that is understood you can see that all contradictions disappear. They are created by a certain system of logic, and if you have the glasses of that logic on your eyes, you will see contradictions.I am not speaking logically.I have no respect for logic.I have respect for life.And life is vast enough to have contradictions as complementaries. Life cannot exist without contradictions.Logic is dead. It can exist very clinically, without contradictions. But it is a dead system – it is just a man-made system; it does not breathe.So there is a way to speak logically, which the philosophers have been doing down the ages. Their whole effort was not to get into any contradiction, into any inconsistency. Avoiding contradictions, avoiding inconsistencies, they have forgotten one thing – that their philosophy becomes dead. It remains logical, but it is no longer part of a living organism.My reverence is for life.And life needs the tension of contradictions; otherwise it falls flat. It needs man and woman – they are opposite polarities; they contradict each other in every possible way. That is their constant struggle, but that is also their constant attraction – their difference in everything.Now, nobody can say why life needs man and woman. It is possible to conceive just one sex – either man or woman. Nature will have to make a few adjustments for procreation, for reproduction – but life will disappear, it will lose its joy. It will become very pale and flat, colorless.Nature is always between two polar opposites – the greater the tension, the more life.So looked at logically, there is a contradiction. Looked at existentially, there is only complementary opposition – but it helps to make life more playful.You can play cards alone; there are games which can be played alone. And I saw in American jails – people have nothing to do, they are just playing alone with cards. But you don’t see any joy on their faces, because the other party is missing. There is no challenge, no adventure; they are simply deceiving themselves. In fact their game is not a game but just a deception. No one is defeated, no one wins; so there is no joy of victory, there is no pain of defeat. The game is flat.For twelve days I was continuously watching: in every jail so many prisoners were doing only one thing – just playing cards, because there was no other work and somehow they had to pass the time. And they are caged in different cells – so this is good, you don’t even need a partner. But you don’t see any changes in their faces.I was watching: while they were spreading their cards and finishing a game, I didn’t see any change on their faces. There cannot be, because there is no tension, no adventure. They can even deceive themselves in playing, but they know it. They can always be victorious but they know that they have cheated. But whom are they cheating?Life needs a certain tension to remain colorful. It needs a certain hide and seek – at least it always needs a polarity. That’s why, if you don’t look at my statements from a logical standpoint, you will not find any contradictions; you will find only living complementaries. But if you look through logic then it is not my fault, because I am not speaking logically.I am devoted to existence, not to any logic.And I want to be authentic and true to existence itself, not to any system of logic.That creates confusion in many people, but it should not create confusion in my people. And certainly they try to explain to other people that there are no contradictions. But they don’t know exactly why people see contradictions. They also see it, but they cannot accept it because then that seems as if they are being defeated by others.They should acknowledge that, seen through logic there are contradictions, because there are contradictions in life and existence. Put the logic aside and all contradictions disappear; they become complementaries and life becomes real play.Then they need not simplify, they need not try to change my words; they need not somehow convince the other that there is no contradiction. They should be clear about it: “Looked at logically there are contradictions; we don’t deny it. All that we ask is, please don’t look logically, because that is not the right way to understand this man.”“He is not speaking logically, he is speaking truthfully. So if there is contradiction in life, that will be reflected in his words. And he has no obligation to any system of logic. He is obliged to express existence as closely as possible.” Then you will not feel in a difficulty.There is no need to defend me.You cannot; there is no need. You can simply make the situation clear, that logically there are contradictions. But to look logically at a man who is not speaking logically is fundamentally wrong – when he is saying himself to look existentially. And then all contradictions appear to be helping each other; so much so that one cannot exist without the other.You can see that difficulty even when people try to create fiction – if they want it to have some quality of life. For example, they created God, which is a fiction – but immediately they needed a devil; otherwise God would be meaningless. He needs an opposite polarity, and both are struggling. It is a fiction – there is no God, there is no devil – but because they had to create God, they could not avoid the devil. No religion that has accepted God has been able to avoid the devil. Religions that have not accepted God, have avoided the devil completely.There is no devil in Jainism because there is no God. The devil comes in just to make God a reality – at least in appearance. He gives God life; without him, God is meaningless.And then there is tension and struggle between the two forces – the forces of the divine and the forces of evil. And nobody can win, because that will be the end of the game. They can only continue to struggle, but never at any point of time can any one of them win. Otherwise it would have been simple for God to finish the devil, rather than allowing him to corrupt the minds of millions of people and make them do things which they don’t want to do, and for which they will have to suffer in hell.Why not destroy this devil – just a single person – and all sin disappears from the world; everybody becomes a saint because there is nobody to tempt him. It is strange that God goes on allowing the devil to influence people. And the devil is more influential than God himself, because there is a majority of sinners, and rarely…a very small minority of saints. So God does not seem to be as convincing as the devil.But God cannot kill the devil, because in killing the devil he will be committing suicide. He cannot destroy sinners, because in destroying the sinners, he will be destroying the saints. He cannot destroy hell, because in destroying hell, he will be destroying heaven.These are contradictions. Although both are fictions, because religious people wanted them to be taken as truth, they had to make the polar opposite. And they both have to remain together, and they will always be together.Existence, looked at directly, has no contradictions. There are polar opposites which make tension and challenge and adventure, and give color and depth to things, to small things.And because I am speaking, not as a philosopher but as a mystic, nobody can object to my contradictions. All the mystics have been contradictory. They have to be, because they are not concerned with logic but with truth – and truth is whatever it is. They will say it.So there is no need to defend me. Otherwise even my people will feel angry at me, that I unnecessarily create trouble for them: I contradict, and they have to face people who show the contradiction. And because the minds of both are based on the same logic, they find it difficult: What to do? – the contradiction is there. They also look with the same eyes as the others are looking.They have to change their way of looking.Then only are they really my people.Then they will not be defending, they will simply say, “If you want to look at his statements through logic you will find thousands of contradictions. It is up to you: if you don’t want contradictions, don’t look through logic.”There is no need for argument at all.It is absolutely simple.Osho,i am a rasa addict, and I can see how this dependency leads to misery. The coolness of meditation scares me though. Can Zorba survive the Buddha, or can the Buddha really remain juicy?It has not been possible in the past, or only with very few individuals. With the majority of humanity it has not been possible – the coexistence of Zorba and Buddha in one being. But the difficulty is not in Zorba and Buddha, in being a materialist and a spiritualist simultaneously: the difficulty is in our idea of what is spiritual and what is material.We go with the division from the very beginning – we start with the split. Then the problem arises: Can Zorba survive Buddha? Can Buddha survive Zorba or remain juicy? We begin with the split.If you begin with the split and you accept the idea of division, certainly it will be very difficult for Buddha to be juicy, because he will fall from your respectability. You will not accept him as a Buddha. It will be difficult for Zorba to be with Buddha, because your idea of Buddha is too serious – and Zorba is not serious.You start with a certain idea, and then there is difficulty. It is created by you. Start living both together. In fact you are living both together without being aware of it. You are a spiritual being, and you have a material body; and both are functioning in deep synchronicity, without any conflict.Do you see there is any conflict between your body and your soul? You can’t even see where the body ends and the soul begins. They are one whole. Your awareness, your meditation, your physical health, your physical well-being – what is the conflict between them?Your meditation and your enjoying music – why should it be a problem? Your meditation will make you capable of enjoying music more than an ordinary man who has no idea of meditation. And your experience of music and its depth will help to make your meditation more juicy, more musical, not so dry, not so dead – more alive.Where is the contradiction?Why should there be any contradiction?Your love and your spiritual growth are the same process. It is just like you cannot walk with one leg alone; you need two legs to walk. There is no conflict. Both legs function in a deep synchronicity. And that two-ness is all over you. Both my hands are making one gesture. They are not making two gestures, they are making one gesture. Although the hands are two, the gesture is one – and there is no conflict. And both of your hands are connected with the two sides of your brain, and while both hands are making one gesture, both sides of the brain are speaking; it is not just one side.Man should be aware that many musical instruments can play together, and they will create one music; it will be an orchestra.So there will be no question that Zorba cannot survive Buddha. It is Zorba who is becoming Buddha. The Buddha is not somebody else; it is Zorba, finding not only joy in small things of life, but also joy in his own being. That’s all that a buddha is. And there is no contradiction.If I enjoy being silent, I enjoy speaking too, because whatever happens in silence needs to be given and shared in words – however difficult it may be. But my silence and my words are just two wings.If a man is dumb and deaf, do you think he will be in silence? Logically it would seem he will be in silence – that’s why I say logic is not relevant to life. The man who is dumb and deaf will not be in silence, because he has not known sound. Without knowing sound you cannot know silence. That is the basic complementary which looks contradictory in logic.When silence becomes sound, it is expression. When sound becomes silent, it is the gathering of the juice. When silence becomes sound, it is sharing. But they are both together, in a different way.People think that blind people must be living in darkness. That is logically right, existentially wrong. The man who has not seen light cannot see darkness. It is impossible. And if a man can see darkness, he is not blind. How can he see darkness? Seeing needs eyes.So the blind man does not have any idea of darkness because he cannot see light. When you close your eyes you certainly see darkness because you are aware of light. But the blind man has never opened his eyes and has never seen light; so he lives in a third space which cannot be named because there is no word for him. Seeing is nonexistential to him: he simply does not see, neither light nor darkness.What I am indicating is that where you see a duality between body and soul, between Zorba and Buddha, your question is: Can Zorba survive Buddha? Can Buddha remain juicy?In fact only a Zorba can be a Buddha, and only a Buddha can be a Zorba. Zorba alone, without being a Buddha, is very superficial. Buddha alone, without being a Zorba, has depth, but no life. Together there will be depth, and there will be playfulness – and life and love and celebration.So you need not be afraid of meditation; it will not kill your experience of rasa, it will enhance it. And your experience of rasa, juice, will enhance your meditativeness. Never be afraid of opposites. Don’t choose one; that’s where man has got into trouble. Choose both together and you will remain whole.Perhaps people will not see Buddha in you – so what? Who cares whether people recognize the Buddha or not? Certainly a buddha cannot care; he is not worried about recognition. Perhaps it will be difficult for people because they have always accepted a buddha who has killed his Zorba, who is almost a murderer of half his being.They have accepted, they have respected him. They cannot accept and they cannot respect…at least for the time being, till it becomes a universal phenomenon. It will not fit with their old categories.But you need not be worried. The worry is also coming from the old categories; somehow they are hanging in the mind: “If I become a meditator, perhaps it will destroy my rasa. All my juice will be finished; then I cannot love, then I cannot paint, then I cannot play music, then I cannot enjoy a joke.” This is sheer stupidity: the Buddha becomes more and more sensitive.Meditative awareness does not kill your experience of juice, rasa, it deepens it – although it is going to be difficult for the world to accept. But there is no need for any recognition. If you are fulfilled and whole, that’s what is needed. And if both are there – the Zorba and Buddha, the experience of rasa and the experience of meditation together – they will be just like darkness and light.Don’t choose between darkness and light, because choosing one is dangerous. If you choose light, you cannot close your eyes; your eyes cannot have a rest. You will drive yourself mad because your eyes continuously need to open and close. That is a moment of rest, cleansing. Any dust coming onto your eyes is wiped away. Your eyelids are functioning like wipers, always bringing liquid to the eyes and cleaning them, continuously keeping them clean so you can see with clarity.If your eyelids are taken away, soon you will be blind because your eyes will get dry, they will shrink. They will be covered with dust, they will lose all juice and life. And they are the most delicate part of your body. So your body is very protective. If you choose darkness, then you cannot open your eyes; then you are choosing blindness.And that’s how it has always been.People have been choosing.I teach choicelessness.And choicelessness means both together, both the opposites together; we are not going to choose one.In the Upanishads there is a prayer, the most famous prayer, but absolutely wrong. The prayer is: “Lead me from darkness to light.” That means, “Lead me from Zorba to Buddha, lead me from death to life, lead me from untruth to truth.” It looks very innocent – it is not so.If you have understood what I am saying, it is a very dangerous prayer. It is choice: choosing between darkness and light, it chooses light. But you need both. Light alone will drive you insane. You need the silence of darkness, the rest of darkness too.Light is a tension, it is tiring. Darkness is nourishment, it is rejuvenating.You cannot choose. Whoever wrote that prayer – which is the most famous prayer in Hinduism – is utterly wrong because he is making choices. He is choosing life against death. That is not possible.Life and death are in a dynamic relationship. Death is a rest and a renewal; life alone will become really boredom. Death is something closer to sleep, a deeper sleep which one needs between two lives, so the old life is completely erased, and you are clean again to be reborn, renewed, fresh. If you choose only life you will be only getting older and older and older – and bored. And if there is no death, it will be terrible.You would like to die at a certain point because you have experienced everything that life can give. Now how long can you go on repeating the same thing? – a hundred years, two hundred years, three hundred years, a thousand years…but a day is bound to come when you will wish, “Give me death! I don’t want life anymore because I want to rest.”And untruth and truth – they are not to be chosen. Untruth and truth, both are needed together, because the untruth makes you aware of the truth. The untruth also has a function to fulfill: without knowing the false, you will never know the true. You have to be capable of knowing both – and the man of awareness knows both.He knows what is untrue and what is true. It is not that he knows only the truth – awareness simply makes him aware of the distinction between the untruth and the truth. But he knows both, and he knows the essential relationship between the two – that they are as related as life and death, as light and darkness, and they cannot be separated.Don’t ask for one thing – remain choiceless.And choicelessness will bring the Zorba to Buddhahood, without destroying the Zorba and without taking the juice out of Buddha.And the world will be immensely enriched by people who have the depth of a Buddha and also the playfulness of a Zorba.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 32 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You describe witnessing as a knack. Often, late at night, when I am in a very relaxed state, witnessing happens. At other times, though, it just seems to be mind watching mind watching mind.Please comment on this knack.The moment I say that witnessing is a knack, it implies that there is no way to explain it, no way to teach someone about it, no way to train someone in it.That’s the whole meaning of the word knack.I can say things which are close enough, but they can never be exact descriptions of the knack. It is not an art, not a craft that can be explained in detail, step by step. But if it is happening to you, there is no problem. You should know what it is, you should know the taste of it.The problem is arising because you must be trying to do it; not allowing the knack to happen, but trying to make an art of it, so that you can control it. Man wants to control everything; it is part of his basic ego.The knack cannot be controlled. Either you know it or you don’t know it. You can play around it, and sometimes by chance you stumble upon it: suddenly you have come to know it. That is the moment when you have to be aware in what situation it is happening.In the night, when you are relaxed, you find it happening. That gives you a clue that relaxation, not an effort to attain witnessing, allows the knack to happen. At other times when you are trying, making an effort, an endeavor to get it, then it is mind watching mind watching mind. It is always the mind.Mind cannot get the knack.Mind can learn any art, any technique, any craft: a knack is beyond it. It is not its language, it is not its world. A knack is something beyond mind.So you have to be clearly aware: the thing is happening to you, the failure of the mind is happening to you. Whenever you are trying, you watch – then you find that it is mind watching another part of the mind. And then you find the one who has found this is also another part of the mind. And this can go on ad infinitum.Mind is capable of dividing itself infinitely. But finally you will find only mind – you will not come to meditation, you will not come to witnessing.So your failure is helpful. It says, “Don’t make the effort, don’t try.” Your success indicates that it happens when you are relaxed, when you are not trying. In relaxation, mind is no longer functioning. The mind is going to be in sleep, it is ready to go into sleep; it is not going into an effort because effort will keep you awake. You cannot fall into sleep by effort.Sleep and witnessing have something in common.You cannot make the effort – one thing. Every effort is going to be a failure – another thing. Unless you learn that every effort fails, you cannot get the knack. But once in a while when your mind is getting ready to go to sleep – in-between, when you are still awake, and the mind is relaxing to go into sleep – suddenly, witnessing happens. You have got the knack!Now don’t ask me what it is. That may destroy even your night witnessing, because you may start trying it. Just let it happen as it is happening in the night. You can, at the most, create the same atmosphere whenever you want it to happen, and wait. You cannot force it.One has to learn a great lesson – that there are things beyond you which you cannot force; you can only remain open, available, waiting, and they come.The moment you become tense to get hold of them, they slip away.It is just like, in the open fist you have all the air possible. With the closed fist all the air disappears. You may be thinking that with a closed fist you are catching hold of the air. No, it has slipped out. It does not belong to the closed fist, it belongs only to the open hand – and it is easily available. You just have to see when it happens, what the surroundings are.The surroundings mean you are going into sleep, you are tired of the whole day’s work – you don’t want to work anymore. In the gap, before the mind slips into sleep and you lose consciousness – the mind is preparing, is getting ready to go into sleep, but you are still awake – in that minute gap, witnessing happens.Now, you cannot try the knack.You can simply create the outer situation.In the day, anytime, let the mind go into relaxation. Don’t try – as if you are going to create witnessing: you are simply allowing mind to rest. And at a certain point, that same gap will appear, and in the gap descends the witness.This is the mystery of a knack – its strangeness and its simplicity too.Osho,Small children love someone running after them. Even though they run away as fast as they can, finally they want to be caught.Something similar seems to be going on between master and disciple. It is so hilarious, yet sad also, because with my fear of spontaneity, I prevent you from catching me, even though I want to be caught.Please comment.It is exactly the true description of what is happening between a master and a disciple. And the similarity with children is significant.The master has already become a child – the disciple is on the way to becoming a child. But this is the whole game of existence. It looks contradictory through the eyes of logic. That’s why I insistently emphasize that logic is not the way of life; it does not describe life. And what it describes is something dead.Life functions through strange contradictions.Small children run fast to escape being caught, but deep down there is a yearning to be caught too. Why this contradiction? Running away is a joy in that you are not able to catch the child, that the child is no more a child: he can run faster than you. He is proving his mettle.But no child is so uncompassionate that he will defeat you; so finally he wants to be caught. In the interval he wants to enjoy your failure. In the end he wants to give you the gift of success too.And something similar is always happening between the master and the disciple. It is a little more subtle and it is more complex because the running is not outward, it is something inner. And the disciple is not a child anymore. For the master the game is exactly the same.From the master’s side he will allow the disciple to run as fast as he can to give him the joy of knowing that he can escape. But the disciple cannot be allowed to escape – that would be against the compassion of the master, because if he is allowed to escape he will remain unreborn. He will never become a child, he will never become innocent; he will remain miserable.The master knows when to catch you, but he gives enough rope. The problem is the disciple – because master and disciple are not at the same stage of consciousness. The disciple is running – he has become a disciple just to be caught. There was no other need. He wants to be transformed by the master – and that can happen only if he is caught. But he is afraid of many things.He will lose his ego, his identity; he will lose his individuality: he will no longer be himself. The moment he is caught looks like a death; hence there is fear. He wants, desires to be caught because he can see the beauty of the master – his light, his newly-achieved, fresh consciousness. He would also like to have all these, so he wants to be caught. But the complexity is that he wants all these things while remaining himself, as he is. And that is impossible.And the master is not going to catch you – although he can catch you at any moment – he is not going to catch you unless you are totally willing, because it will be useless to catch you against yourself. There will be no point because there will be no communion.To catch you while you are resisting being caught is absolutely futile. The master will catch you only when he sees that you have dropped all fear, all anxiety. And your fear and your anxiety are all imaginary.You will certainly lose the ego.But you will gain the self.Ego is a false entity – you are not losing anything in fact; you are simply becoming aware that it had never existed. You had simply been forced to believe in it.And you will get your original self; so there is no loss, there is no question of fear. You are not going to lose your individuality either.But in a confused mind, which is basically the mind of the disciple…he mistakes his personality for his individuality, just as he takes his ego to be his self.Ego is a false phenomenon created by the society – so is personality. Ego is the false center that the society has given to you in place of your real being. And the personality is the false individuality that the society has created, as a circumference to the center of the ego. So you are caught in a net with the false personality and the false ego. And unless they both disappear, you cannot see what is behind the curtain of the false; you cannot see the original self, you cannot see your individuality.The master is certainly going to destroy your personality, but not your individuality. He will take away everything that the society has imposed upon you. And in taking away everything imposed by the society, he is simply taking that which you don’t have, but which you only believe you have. Once he has taken all the falsities, you will discover the original self, the original face.But the master gives as much rope as possible, because nothing can be done against you.So it is good to run a little bit, just as a game; but to go on running forever is stupid. That means you have taken your fear too seriously, not knowing that the fear is absolutely ungrounded. The master will make every effort to make you aware that your fear is ungrounded. You will lose only that which you don’t have. And you will get only that which you really have.The moment this becomes clear to you, you will allow the master to catch you. And unless you allow him, nothing can be done. The master cannot be impatient about it.The act of transformation of the disciple is an act of his free choice. If the master forces it upon you, it will be again something false.That is being done by organized religions. They don’t give you rope, they don’t allow you to run away. They catch hold of you immediately, as you are born, so that you cannot run away at all. Till you go to the grave, the organized religion keeps its hold on you – from the cradle to the grave.Even after you are dead, they take every step that you cannot escape. They don’t allow you freedom even after you are dead. They start from birth, and they continue to keep a hold on you through marriage till death comes over you. Everything happens in the church: the baptism of the child, the circumcision of the child, the marriage, the death. Finally, the last sermon over the dead body is to be given by the priest.The old religions don’t give you any moment to run away. And the people who choose teachers from traditional religions…those teachers won’t allow you any freedom. They will impose all kinds of falsities on you.And this is the beauty and the wonder, that you are not afraid of them! You are afraid only when you come across a real master.Who is afraid of the priest? Who is afraid of the rabbi? Nobody is afraid of those people – and they are doing every harm to you that can be done. But you accept it because all that harm goes on nourishing your ego, your personality.The whole function of organized religion is to keep you away from your real self, your original face, your individuality. The master’s function is different.An ancient parable in the East is that a lioness, while taking a jump from one hillock to another hillock, in the middle of the jump gave birth to a child. The cub fell, on the way, into a crowd of sheep. The sheep nourished the cub, not knowing that it was a lion – their enemy. And the cub never came to know that he was a lion because everybody around him was a sheep. So he walked in the crowd of sheep, just like a sheep.Sheep never walk alone; they walk as a crowd, almost stepping on each other, rubbing their bodies against each other. They are afraid to be alone; it is dangerous to be alone, any wild animal can catch hold of them – they have to be together.Lions walk alone, never in a crowd.Lions have a very big territory. They don’t want anybody to enter their territory. Sometimes it is an area of miles that one lion will have as his territory. No other lion can even manage to get in; otherwise there is going to be a ferocious fight till one is dead, or perhaps both are dead. And they walk alone.But this poor lion had no idea that he was a lion; he had no idea how he looked. He became bigger and bigger, but the sheep had become accustomed to him; they had been bringing him up from his very childhood. Although he was a strange sheep, he was a sheep because he used to eat grass, which lions don’t eat. They would rather die, but they will not eat grass.He used to eat grass – he remained vegetarian. He used to go into the crowd, just in the middle, to be safe, although he was taller, bigger, but without any idea of it. And he never roared once like a lion, because if you don’t have that idea, how can you roar? He dreamed like a sheep, feared like a sheep, was afraid of wild animals who could not do any harm to him.One day an old lion saw this scene. He could not believe his eyes! The young lion was so big, and he had never seen a lion and sheep mixing; there has never been any friendship, there is no possibility. The sheep were going with the lion without any fear, and the lion was also going with the sheep, afraid to be alone.The old lion could not believe his eyes. He ran after the crowd. Naturally, all the sheep started running and making the noise sheep make. And the young lion was also making the same noise. It took much effort; only with great difficulty could the old lion catch hold of the young lion. And the young lion was crying and weeping, just like a sheep.The old lion dragged the young fellow to a nearby pond. The young lion was very much afraid; he was not willing to go, he was very reluctant. And he was more powerful than the old lion. If the young lion had known that he was a lion, the old lion would not have been able to pull him to the pond; he would have killed him. But he was a sheep, so he allowed the old lion to pull him – although reluctantly, unwillingly, resisting – knowing that this was sure death, because many sheep had died, had been killed by the lions. Now his turn had come.But at the pond a miracle happened: the old lion said to the young one, “My son, just look into the pond” – where they both were reflected. And there was a sudden transformation, because the sheep was not a reality, it was just a false idea implanted by the society in which the lion was brought up. It was his personality, but not his individuality. It was his ego, but not his real self. It was just a mask, but not his original face.For the first time he looked at both the faces; and suddenly there was a roar. From the depths of his being came a great roar shaking the hills around.The old lion said, “My work is done. All that I could do, I have done – now you are on your own. Now you know who you are.”The master’s function is exactly the same.This parable is about the master and the disciple – not about the lion and the sheep. Every effort is made by the master so that you are not afraid of him. His love, his compassion…he does not make you afraid because he knows that already there will be great fear in you. If he creates more fear you will be running away faster than ever. He helps you in every way to drop all fear.And this is my final effort – to call myself your friend; not to be a “master,” because that very word creates fear. That very word creates distance. Then the disciple is always trembling with the idea that some day he is going to be caught; and who knows what is going to happen afterwards when his ego is destroyed, his personality is destroyed? Who knows whether something will remain behind or whether everything will be gone and he will become only a shadow? – the shadow of the master.To withdraw that fear also I want you to know that I am just a friend, and you can allow me to catch you. You can give it a try. If you feel that it is going to destroy you, you can tell me to stop even in the middle. I will stop…because without your will nothing can be done. Without your will, if something is done, you will undo it again. You will create the old falsities, and you will never come close to a master again in your life. You will find so many arguments, and you will be listening to the arguments from people who are not close to me.They create all kinds of arguments why they are not close to me. They have to prove to their minds that I must be wrong, that I am dangerous, that I am not the master you are searching for, that, “This man is a fraud.” All these ideas they will be creating and finding some proofs and supports for, so that they can remain far away.I have already attracted them; they have already been dreaming of being close to me, and they are destroying their dreams, their fantasies of being close to me. All their argumentation is not against me, it is against their own transformation. They are afraid: “It is better not to come close to such a person.”But those who have come close, they are also keeping as far away as possible, for the simple reason…the same reason. One day you will have to decide that it is a beautiful game to run for a little while – a good exercise – but don’t forget that you have to be caught too. And the master is not going to catch you against yourself. His very work is such that it prohibits him doing anything against your will.And once you are ready, courageous enough to go into the whole process of being close to the master whatever happens; once the adventure has taken possession of you – and sooner or later it does take possession, you cannot go on running forever…. Sooner or later you get tired of running. Sooner or later you start seeing your contradiction: that you are a disciple and you are running. Then either don’t be a disciple, or don’t run – this is contradictory.Sooner or later you start seeing the compassion of the master. He could have caught you, but he has allowed you to run. He has been waiting for the moment when you are willing to be caught. And that is a moment of tremendous value, when the disciple simply stops and wants to be caught. He has come to a very decisive moment.If it means to die as an ego, as a personality, he is ready. He wants to know whether there is anything behind the facade of personality, or nothing. He is ready to accept it even if there is nothing. The moment he is ready to accept even that, then there is no problem. If he is ready to die, then he will be reborn; and the rebirth is the coming back home. Then the disciple also becomes a child.And it is something to be understood, that two minds are two, but two persons meditating are one. Two persons thinking are two; two persons non-thinking are one because there is no distinction, no boundary – both are in the same state. Thoughts will be different, will draw a boundary of separation. But no-thought has no boundary and no distinctions, no differences.Two innocent beings are one.Once the disciple is reborn, he is no longer separate from the master inwardly. Inwardly he becomes one, because two innocences, two no-minds, two silences, cannot remain two.They are bound to become one because both are infinite.They are going to overlap each other.Osho,What is the difference between a disciple and a friend? Has the transformation amongst the sannyasins already happened?The distinction between a disciple and a friend has two sides to it. First, from the side of the master it has happened. I don’t have any disciples anymore. You can relax.From the disciples’ side it is going differently for different people. A few are relaxed – the transformation has taken place. A few are getting to be relaxed; a few are thinking to relax.A few are unwillingly accepting the idea because to be a disciple was better: the master was responsible. Now the whole responsibility is thrown on you – and nobody wants to be responsible. Everybody wants to get rid of responsibility.There are a few who have not even heard it. They have listened to me, but it has not reached to their hearts. They still remain disciples.So it will be different with different people, but sooner or later it has to be with every disciple, as far as I am concerned. He will have to come to drop the idea of disciplehood, and just be a friend.Your mind may give many arguments against it. You have to see through those arguments, that they are phony. For example, the mind may give very valid-looking arguments; such as, in going from being a disciple to a master to becoming his friend, you are losing reverence for the master.That is not true. In fact, a master who allows you to be his friend is worthy of more reverence than any master who does not allow you to be his friend, who keeps you on a lower level – almost in a spiritual slavery as a disciple – and demands of you that you surrender, that you be committed. He asks you to trust him, but he does not trust you; otherwise there is no need to say, “Trust me.”If I trust you, why is there a need to ask? My trust is enough: and my trust will know your trust, because trust creates a synchronicity, just as love creates a synchronicity.The masters who ask for surrender may be playing a game of spiritual ego. If they ask for commitment only to them, that means they are still living with the idea of possessiveness, monopoly, and they are afraid of losing you: you may get interested in somebody else. To avoid all those fears they want you to be committed so that you start feeling guilty if you feel some affinity with somebody else too.A friend has no possessiveness.A friend wants you to be happy, wants you to be free, wants you to have all the joys of life, and has no conditions. But a friend cannot take responsibility for you: he cannot be your savior.He can help you on the path, he can show you the path, but you have to be strong enough to follow the path, to go alone like a lion.Disciples go like sheep in a crowd. The bigger the crowd, the better the disciples feel; it is cozier, warmer, more comfortable. Just seeing that there are six hundred million Catholics, the pope feels that he must be a man of God; otherwise why should six hundred million people be following him?It is a strange game of the ego. The crowd of sheep makes the so-called master feel that he is the shepherd. And then he starts making the crowd bigger, because a bigger crowd will make him a bigger shepherd, who owns more people. That becomes his number, his trip.But these are not real masters. If the crowd leaves them, they will suddenly see themselves reduced to ordinary men – which in reality they are. It was the crowd which had given them a very magnified idea of themselves.If a master allows the disciples to be friends, he is dispersing the crowd. He is making a personal contact. He is giving you equal status spiritually although he knows that much is still only potential in you, and much work has to be done so that it becomes actual. But whether it is potential or actual, your spiritual status is not lower.That is the meaning when a master changes disciples into friends. He is giving you the recognition that you are as capable as himself. You may not be aware – that does not make any difference. At least to him it does not make any difference. To you it makes a difference that you are not aware, but that is the work that you have to do. And the work can be done more lovingly in friendship, in love, than it can be done in a certain relationship in which you are lower, inferior, a sinner – and somebody else is higher, superior, a saint.I don’t think the reverence for such a man who makes you his friends will be less. It will be more. So don’t listen to your arguments which will try to keep you in the old relationship.It has never been done, it is true, but you can see the result: the whole humanity is proof – so many masters and so many disciples…and the world is just in a mess. People are as mad as ever. No basic change in humanity has happened.Something in the fundamentals has to be changed. And this is one of the fundamentals: the relationship between the master and the disciple. It has to be changed. A new dimension has to be given to it. And once it becomes a transforming force, in the future no master will be able to go on playing the old game.This can become a milestone.But as far as I am concerned, it is absolutely a fact. As far as you are concerned, there are degrees. But it has to be in you too – a one hundred percent change from disciplehood to friendship. And you will see a miracle happen, because love has never been praised so much, friendship has never been raised so high; and my whole effort is to make everything that is mundane, sacred.Osho,I have heard you say, “Let go – no effort is needed.” but I am afraid of letting go because then I slip into my old patterns. Please comment.It is one of the difficulties. Letting go, one can slip into old patterns, old conditionings. Still, take the risk.The fear has some validity; you can fall back into your old patterns. But don’t be afraid, just remain watchful; and meanwhile, if it happens that way…. It is not necessarily so that it will happen to everybody, to fall into old patterns. Only those friends who have forced themselves into the new discipline will find it happening, that if they let go they will become their old selves.But it will be good, because that will show you that whatever you were thinking you had become, you have not become. It was just an enforced, controlled, suppressed, inhibited phenomenon. Letting go will make it clear to you.So it is going to help both kinds of people. Those who have grown up into the new lifestyle by letting go, they will go higher. Those who have forced themselves into the new lifestyle, and in whom there has been a resistance somewhere, a part fighting against it – if they let go, that part is going to take over. That too is good. You will become aware that what you were thinking you are, you are not.Watch the old pattern, and now don’t try to repress it. It has to be dropped – not repressed. Repression is through discipline, and dropping is through witnessing. Watch the old pattern as a witness. Don’t get identified with it.And as you move from the new lifestyle that you have forced, if you continue to watch and remain in a let-go, even when you see the old pattern emerging, that too will disappear, because that too is forced, forced by society. That too is not natural. And when everything forced has disappeared, only then are you your natural being.To me, to be natural is to be spiritual.All the religions have been teaching something very idiotic: to be natural is against spirituality. So everybody has repressed the natural self and has been pretending to be a spiritual self – which he is not. All the religions together have conspired against humanity to create hypocrites.My effort is to create the natural man – human, with no guilt, accepting all the frailties, failures the human being is prone to.In this deep acceptance of your natural being is the seed of your transformation. And when it comes by itself then it is a growth. When you force it, it is not a growth, it is just wearing a mask. And even before a mirror you can befool yourself wearing a mask: you can start thinking that this is your face.Letting go means your masks will slip down, your personality will slip down, your ego will slip down.Go on till all these things disappear, till the moment you find a crystal-clear naturalness, a spontaneity of being.So there is no need to be afraid. Most of you will find that whatever you have does not go – it is growth. A few of you will find that you have just managed something – it has not been a real growth; you have been pretending. Then you will fall into the old pattern.This time don’t make the same mistake again. Remain watchful and go on in the same process of letting go. Your old patterns are also false; they will also disappear. If the let-go is complete it will leave you in your natural self, in your authentic being. And to me that is the beginning of self-realization, the beginning of your enlightenment.But it can begin only when you have found the natural source of your being. Your pretended selves, your hypocrite patterns, your masks – they cannot become enlightened.Only your original face can become enlightened.So to be original and natural is the most important thing for a traveler on the path.Osho,What makes you laugh?You all!

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 33 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Putting together all your statements about one subject or question, there are not just contradictions, but such a richness of different viewpoints and angles from which you look at the question…So many colors. When you talk about a certain subject, something in me starts dancing, remembering some of the answers you have given before.What's happening?Every time one realizes something of the truth, there is a dance in the heart.The heart is the only testimony for the truth.And it cannot testify through words. It can testify in its own way: trough love, through dance, through playing music: nonverbal – it speaks, but it does not speak in language and logic.And this is a realization of a certain truth which many people go on missing. They think what I am saying is contradictory, because they are thinking – and thinking is a logical process. And logic can never see beyond contradictions; it has no way to bridge contradictions. Logic is a divider, not a joiner.The whole of humanity is divided by the mind: the Christian from the Hindu, the Mohammedan from the Jew, the Indian from the American, the German from the Italian. Mind goes on dividing – divisions within divisions within divisions. Even Christianity is not one, it is divided – into Catholics and Protestants. And the Protestants are not one, they are divided.Mind’s whole function is to go on dividing.The function of the heart is to see the joining link about which the mind is completely blind.When someone finds contradictions in my statements, he has no understanding from the heart; otherwise things will be very simple.I have been answering different people. When I answer somebody, I am answering him, his needs; and he is the focus of my whole effort. When I am answering somebody else, the question may be the same, but the questioner is not the same.A philosopher remains consistent because he answers the question. The mystic cannot remain consistent because he answers the questioner – and the questioners are always different. Their qualities are different, their receptivities are different, their potentialities are different. Their past is different, their present is different, their future is different – although the question may be the same.The problem is whether to answer the question or the questioner. If you answer the question and do not care at all about the questioner, your answer is going to be bookish; it has no spirit in it. It is not a personal communion.This is one of the reasons that none of the enlightened masters of the world has ever written a book. It cannot be just coincidence. They were immensely educated, cultured people, most of them from royal families – very rich, very talented. But what happened when they became enlightened was that they always chose the spoken word. And the reason is this: they didn’t want to answer the questions – in a book you can answer only the questions – they wanted to answer the questioner.In a book you cannot take care of the questioner. You don’t know who is going to read it – it cannot have a personal intimacy. It is not addressed to anyone in particular; it is unaddressed – just to whomsoever it may concern.None of the enlightened masters has ever written a single word. Consistently, in different parts of the world, in different times, they have always fallen upon the spoken word, because the spoken word has a warmth. The written word is cold, dead; the spoken word is breathing, it has a heartbeat.Hence there are bound to be contradictions. But they are not contradictions: they are simply different people responded to in different ways with different words. They are given what they need. The question is just an excuse. Behind the question is a living being.If the question is arising only out of the mind, then an enlightened master is not going to answer it, because that will be a futile effort. The mind cannot understand that which is beyond words; it can understand only that which is linguistically, logically right. It has no concern with existence, with life, with reality.Mind itself is a fiction.You can live without mind; you cannot live without heart. And the deeper you live, the more of your heart is involved. When your total heart is involved, then your questions have a totally different quality to them.And I am answering people, not questions; naturally my answers will be different. You can go on asking the same question every day: my answer cannot be the same every day because you are not the same every day. It may be the same questioner; but life is flowing, it is a river, a constant flux. People think of themselves as static. Only things are static; only death is unchanging – life is constantly changing. More life – and more change. Abundant life – and there is tremendous change each moment.So even if the same person goes on asking the same question, my answer cannot be the same, because in between his two questions so much water has flowed down the Ganges. Neither he is the same, nor I am the same, nor the existence is the same: everything has changed. The whole context is different.When one lives moment to moment this is bound to happen.Logic will think the answers are contradictions, and will miss the point. The heart will think they are different aspects, different colors of the rainbow – different viewpoints, different angles.And it will have a dance, because that is its way of saying, “Yes, I understand.”Osho,You have said, the wheel of truth needs to be turned again and again. Seeing the efforts of so many countries to prevent you from meeting your friends, the question arises: is the turning of the wheel more difficult than ever?It is more difficult than ever – but it is, at the same time, more challenging than ever, too. It is with more excitement, more ecstasy.It is difficult for the simple reason that the earth has become very small. Gautam Buddha, twenty-five centuries back, never moved out of a small state, Bihar, in India. He never even went through the whole of India. Just walking, he could not manage; forty-two years he was speaking, but he could reach only a small portion of the earth.The same is true about Mahavira, about Parshvanatha, and Socrates. Socrates never went out of Athens; there were different reasons. Athens was the only cultured city in the whole world, and if Athens was unable to understand Socrates, he knew it would be simply futile to go anywhere. Whatever he said would just go above their heads.When he was sentenced to death by the court, it was absolutely unjustified. The opponents had not been able to prove anything against him – and he had answered all the opponents so beautifully and so totally. But Athens was a city-state, a direct democracy: all the people had the right to vote, and all the people had the right to decide things of importance – and there could have never been a more important problem than whether to keep Socrates alive or kill him.Socrates was the cream of the whole Athenian intelligence. But when you ask the mediocre people – who are in the majority…they had heard Socrates’ arguments, but they could not understand. They were absolutely deaf. The way he was speaking was the way he had always spoken in his school; and that school was meant for the highest qualities of mysticism. Those qualities were not in the audience.It was a majority-decision that he should be sentenced to death. It seems the judge who had to declare the judgment of the majority did understand that something ugly was happening, because he could see Socrates had answered everything that had been asked and had satisfied the court completely; and that all condemnation about him was just false – it had no foundation in truth.Seeing this…but the majority voted that he should be poisoned; that was the Athenian way of crucifying a person – more cultured, more human. Seeing this, the judge gave alternatives on his own authority.He said to Socrates, “The majority has decided that you should be poisoned, but I want to give a few alternatives to you. You can leave Athens, never come back to Athens, so as far as Athenian people are concerned, you are dead – you will not be coming back. That will fulfill their desire. It is enough, more than enough, that you are not here. What harm can you do to the people?“Second, if you choose to remain in Athens – because I understand you, you may not like to leave Athens – then stop speaking. That too will be perfectly fulfilling to the people, because they say whatsoever you are teaching is corrupting the youth. So if you are not teaching, you are as dead as one can be; their purpose is fulfilled.”But Socrates said, “You are putting me in a very difficult situation. I cannot choose not to speak, for the simple reason that truth has an intrinsic quality: it wants to be spoken. You cannot hold it in; it is not humanly possible.“And I cannot go against truth just for a few years of life. I am already old – any moment death may come. So just for an uncertain, small period of life, I cannot go against truth, and I cannot do things just to save myself.“I will continue to speak the truth to my last breath, while I am alive. You are kind enough to suggest to me that I can leave Athens. You know perfectly well I cannot do that either, because if Athens – which is the most cultured city in the whole world – has decided to kill me, where do you think I can survive? I will be killed anywhere, and in a far more primitive way.“And I feel this time is perfectly suitable, because I have said everything that I wanted to say. This case against me has been of tremendous help to me: I have completed my work, I have used the court and given all the arguments that were incomplete. I have completed everything – now there is no need….“And in a barbarous place they will not be able to tolerate me even for one day. I am grateful to Athens: it has allowed me a long life. It is simply unfortunate that, although it is the most cultured place, it is still not totally cultured. And that has been my whole effort. But I love this place, and I would like to die here.”Socrates could not move out of Athens for the simple reason: who was going to understand him? A great discipline and training is needed to understand a man of the caliber of Socrates. He had a school where other teachers prepared people, and when they were ready, then finally they became students of Socrates. It was in the final stage, to give them the last touches, that Socrates was useful. He could not teach a person from scratch – that was simply impossible for that genius. So naturally he was confined.Buddha was confined to Bihar. One thing was language. He used to speak a local language, Pali, which was not understood anywhere else. Sanskrit was understood by the scholars all over India. Buddha could have used Sanskrit – he was perfectly trained, disciplined in Sanskrit – but he was against using a dead language.He was against the monopoly of the priests and the scholars who were insisting that all the scriptures should remain in Sanskrit so the people could not read them. You will be surprised: Sanskrit has never been a living language – it has never been spoken by people – and it is the mother language of almost all the cultured languages of the world, of the East and of the West. They are all sister languages, born out of a language which was never spoken by any people, except a few chosen scholars in the universities.Buddha was against speaking a language which had been used against the people, to keep them ignorant. He chose Pali, a language which people understood. It was a revolutionary step; before him, nobody had dared. It was thought that truth could be spoken only in Sanskrit. That’s what the brahmins in India have been saying for thousands of years – that Sanskrit is a divine language.Buddha made many revolutionary statements: one was that no language is divine – it is the experience of divineness…. Then you can use any language, and it becomes divine. And he proved it by making Pali a divine language, so all the Buddhist scriptures are in Pali. Language was a barrier.Even in India today, there are thirty national languages. In Buddha’s times there must have been more, because there were two thousand kingdoms in India. It was divided into two thousand small fragments. And he remained in one fragment.Secondly, he was prevented from moving on a wider scale, because rather than passing the same cities dozens of times in his life, he had chosen to walk barefooted.It was part of his compassion not to use vehicles, because all vehicles were pulled by horses or bullocks, and this was against his compassionate heart. It was violent. These animals should not be tortured. This is sheer exploitation of innocent animals; and man has done everything ugly to exploit them.Have you seen the difference between a bull and a bullock? The bull has a grandeur, a beauty, a wildness, tremendous strength; but castrated, he becomes a bullock. You cannot make a bull pull a vehicle – he is too strong and too wild. You will not be able to keep him on the road. He can run anywhere taking your whole vehicle and you, and you will not be able to do anything. He is one of the very powerful animals.But castrated…castrating an animal is ugly. He becomes weak. He loses his sexual energy; that is the only energy all the animals, including man, have. It is something to be understood, that the bullock is a poor animal: you can do anything to the bullock. You have destroyed all his beauty and all his grandeur by destroying his sexual energy.But that’s what religions have been doing to the monks, to the nuns. In the name of celibacy – it is just another way of turning bulls into bullocks, turning beautiful human beings into slaves.And you must be made aware of the fact that not a single impotent person has been creative in the whole history of man, in any direction. It is as if creativity is basically concerned with your sexuality. If celibacy is something spiritual, then the impotent person is absolutely celibate; but not a single impotent person has ever become enlightened, and it is a long history.The impotent person has never become a great poet or a musician or a painter or a dancer or a sculptor. He has not been creative because sexual energy is your creative energy. It creates life – that is only one natural way of using it. It creates everything else too, so it is not unnatural.On that point, all the religions have been angry with me – that I say that all these enlightened people were more sexual than ordinary people. They have to be: they need more energy to reach to the highest peak of creativity, to explode into light, to give a new birth to themselves, to become a new man.And we know perfectly well that all artists are more sexual, all creative painters are more sexual, all great novelists are more sexual. Poets, dancers, musicians – any dimension of creativity is bound to be connected with your sexual energy. Impotent people have not been able to contribute anything to life.Religions have been trying to castrate man in the name of celibacy, and that is one of the reasons that religious people have not been creative; otherwise for thousands of years your monasteries have existed, but nothing has come out of them. We have given the best men to the monasteries. Our most intelligent people, our geniuses have moved to the monasteries, but the monastery reduces them to non-creative people. They simply lose all power to create.Buddha was against using animals, who cannot speak, who are absolutely innocent. And it is a beautiful experience to see them in their wildness when they are totally themselves, untouched by man’s cruelty. He decided that he would move on foot. Naturally, that limited his scope.All these people had difficulties in moving what I have called the wheel of truth. But they were not having such great difficulty as it has become today.They had chosen small pieces of the world. Their work was intensive in those small pieces of the world; they managed. Now the world has become very small because of technology. You can move around the world without any difficulty and without torturing anybody.I think if Buddha was alive I would convince him to use a car or to use an airplane, because that is not using any living being. But man’s stupidity is such that Jaina monks, Buddhist monks, still continue the twenty-five-century-old idea of walking barefooted; barefooted because, in those days, all shoes were made of leather.Now it is not necessary. I am using shoes of synthetic leather – nobody needs to be killed. I have been telling Jaina monks, “You can start using synthetic leather.” Mahavira was against shoes for the simple reason that the best leather is from calves – the younger they are the softer is their leather. The older the animal…then you get leather which is not good. The best comes from the youngest animals, just born; you kill the child, then you get the best leather, the most comfortable and the most soft.But now there is no need….That’s what I call stupidity: they won’t listen to me; they don’t have any argument. When synthetic leather is available – you can even make shoes of cloth; shoes of cloth are available, shoes of rubber are available. These are made absolutely nonviolently. In the same way, vehicles run by petrol are not torturing any animals.But the old world was very big, and every enlightened master lived in a small corner. It was easy to move the wheel of dharma, or truth, in that small corner of the world. There were a few other things which helped to make it easy. One was that all these people came from royal families – which helped immensely: they were not opposed. Even by enemies they were respected – they were royal blood.No blood is royal, all blood is the same. You can take “royal blood” and ordinary blood – blood from a beggar – and go to the lab and inquire which one is the royal blood; they will not be able to make any distinctions. Blood is blood. It has its own distinctions, but royalty does not enter into it.But because all the Hindu incarnations, all the Jaina tirthankaras, Gautam Buddha – all came from royal families…they were heirs apparent. They were going to be kings and they renounced; and they remained in their own kingdoms or around there. Although they had renounced, people still respected them as kings. And they became even more respected because they had renounced: they became almost gods.Now royalty is disappearing, has almost disappeared. One of the heads of Egypt, Farouk, used to say that there are only five kings: one is of England and four are in the playing cards. That’s all the royalty that has remained. And soon there will be only four – the queens, the kings, will be only in the playing cards. Even though there are a few, they have no power.The new world is small. There is an international language which is understood by almost all the intellectuals of the world, the whole intelligentsia of the world.So it is possible – and that’s why I say it is a great challenge, because nobody has had this opportunity before – to move the wheel of truth throughout the whole world.All those old enlightened people were very local, but their difficulties were less. Now the difficulties are bound to be more.They can prevent me from being in America for no reason at all. Against their own constitution, against their own law, they can force me illegally, criminally, to leave the country. They can destroy the commune, cruelly, primitively.I have never entered Germany, and even before I even asked them for an entry visa, they made a law that I should not be allowed. They have been very precautionary.In my own country, India, they want to cut me off from the whole world, because I am not preaching Hinduism, I am not preaching any other Indian religion; otherwise they would have been very happy.One of the richest men in India, Jugal Kishore Birala, who is dead now, offered me unlimited help, a blank check, if I was ready to spread Hinduism in the world. I told that old man, “You must be mad! You cannot purchase me with blank checks – I will go on doing what I am doing. And I am absolutely against all organized religions. I want religious people in the world but no religions. I want a religiousness – a flavor, a fragrance – but not Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism.“There is no need for religion to be organized. Is there any need for love to be organized? Love is a personal affair. You don’t have organizations for love.“Religion is even more personal, because in love at least two persons are involved – it is interpersonal. Religion is absolutely personal. Only you are involved and it is simply your business. Nobody has anything to say to you. Between you and existence nobody should stand as a mediator.”He was very angry. I said, “You can be angry – that is your problem – but you invited me for dinner; and then you insult me by telling me that you are going to give me as much money as I want but I should preach Hinduism. And that is the last thing that I can do, because Hinduism is one of the most rotten religions.”Because it is the most ancient, naturally it has got to be more rotten. Its very foundations are rotten, so it becomes difficult.Hindu fanatics have made an attempt on my life. The same people who wanted me to be their ambassador-at-large, around the world, have tried to kill me. And now, when I came back to India, they informed all the Indian embassies around the world that nobody who is going to meet me or see me should be given an entry visa. No news media from the outside should be allowed to come to me. That’s a way to stop me from spreading whatever I feel and experience to be the truth.As the pope heard that I am coming to Italy, he immediately informed all news media that are Catholic and under his influence, that they must not even mention my name. They must not give me any publicity – positive or negative.So there are going to be difficulties. Everywhere the politicians will not like me to be there, because I am constantly speaking against the politicians, who have driven humanity to a point of global suicide – and they are still doing it.And all religions are agreed only on one point – they disagree on everything but on one point they are in absolute agreement – that I should be prevented, my work should be prevented, because it goes against their vested interests.So it is more difficult to turn the wheel of truth today, but it is more exciting too, and more ecstatic too. And even though there are people trying to prevent my work, from five nations I have received an invitation: they would like me to be in their country as a permanent resident, and they are willing to give all the facilities that I need.So it is not a state of hopelessness. If five countries can ask and invite me, that is enough to work with. Those five countries we can work with very easily and without any difficulty, because the governments themselves are welcoming me.Secondly, I am going to choose one of those countries for my permanent residence. There will be all the facilities for sannyasins to come there, and we can use all the news media – which were not available for Buddha or Jesus or Mohammed, and which are available to us. We can have our own satellite – there is no need to go into every country. But the message they cannot prevent.They will never allow me in the Soviet Union. They are persecuting my sannyasins there. I have never been there, but still I have hundreds of sannyasins in the Soviet Union, and they are going through great trouble with the KGB and other government agencies.Their books have been taken away, their tapes have been taken away, their videos have been taken away, and they are continually interrogated. Those agencies found at least two hundred sannyasins; they are not aware of more. They are torturing these two hundred to give them more names, more addresses: “Who are the others who are interested?”And they must be puzzled because I have never been there. But truth has its own way of working too. Now Russia is a very potential place, because they are tired of communism as no other country is tired of anything. For seventy years communism has been torturing them. And you cannot torture any country forever, for eternity; seventy years is more than enough. The time has almost come for the youth to rebel, and they are searching for something that can give them some indication of rebellion.They have translated my books. They are writing them by hand or cyclostyling them or typing them underground and spreading them on their own.So if there is some truth, it will have its way. Hindrances may delay it, but they cannot stop it.The wheel is going to move.It is only a question of waiting patiently, working patiently.All over the world there are sannyasins. There is not a single country where sannyasins are not – even in Mohammedan countries. Just because of its numbers, Mohammedanism is second to Christianity, but it has nothing of religiousness in it.Each Mohammedan can have four wives. In the first place religion has nothing to do with how many wives you should have or not. But prescribing four wives to every Mohammedan is such a stupid thing because women and men are equal in number; if Mohammedans start having four wives, then they will be depriving three men of having wives.Those three men are not going to just sit silently and do nothing…and the grass grows by itself! They will do something. There will be all kinds of perversions, there will be prostitution. And once you allow four – and Mohammed himself had nine wives – that gives license to other Mohammedans who can afford it. The Nizam of Hyderabad in India…it was a big state, Hyderabad, and just in this century – when India became independent – the king, the Nizam, had five hundred wives. He had five hundred wives because there is no limit: if Mohammed can have nine, and every Mohammedan is prescribed four…. And the Nizam was a rich man – perhaps he was the richest man in the world.He had in his state the most precious quarries for diamonds. The Kohinoor comes from there, the diamond “Hope” comes from there; all the best diamonds have come from Hyderabad, and each diamond that comes out of those quarries reached first to the Nizam. If he chose it, then it remained in the treasure; otherwise it was sold.He had so many diamonds. I have seen his palace, it is one of the biggest palaces in India. There was no question of counting the diamonds, the whole basement of the palace was full of diamonds. Once each year they were brought out on the terrace of the palace, and spread out – just to have some light. They were weighed; there was no way of counting them.And I have been shown the terraces – which were full when the diamonds were spread there. He had unestimated money in his hands. Of course, he could have five hundred wives – there was no problem in it. And Mohammedanism has nothing to say about this, that it is ugly, inhuman; that you are treating women like cattle.You can kill somebody – according to Mohammedanism – if he resists conversion. Because this the basic belief, that only Mohammedans will be saved. All the religions have the same basic belief, that only their people are going to be saved. It is okay if you just have the idea; but Mohammedans have the idea that because only Mohammedans can be saved, everybody has to be converted to Mohammedanism.Even if you have to cut off the head of the person, it is better to do that rather than let him live as a non-Mohammedan – because as a non-Mohammedan he will be doing things which will take him to hell. And strange promises – the person who cuts off the head will be rewarded because he is bringing people onto the right path. And the person whose head is cut off will also be rewarded, compensated: he is saved from hell. So in every way it is perfectly right to kill people for conversion.You will be surprised to know that India is the biggest Mohammedan country, because they have forced…. In almost fourteen hundred years of Mohammedan invasions, rule and slavery over India, they have converted so many Hindus. And anybody would be willing – rather than dying it is better to live as a Mohammedan.And when they were rulers, there was no question of finding any justice. They have destroyed India’s greatest treasures of sculptures, because Mohammedanism is against all those sculptures. Mohammedanism is against statues, so every statue has to be destroyed, because God cannot be represented in any form – and India had millions of temples with beautiful carvings and beautiful statues.A few have remained because they were either far away in the forests, in the mountains, and Mohammedans never bothered to go there…. A few others have remained because people covered them with mud – the whole temple. A few beautiful statues have remained because people sunk those statues in the wells. In almost every well you will find statues.I have been to a city which must have been the city of the craftsmen, the sculptors – only of sculptors and craftsmen, because it has thousands of statues, and not a single living human being. Out of fear of Mohammedans those craftsmen escaped, leaving their incomplete statues or completed statues because they were too heavy to carry.You will be surprised to know that in India we have one statue of Bahubali – one of the Jaina masters – fifty-two feet high. The whole mountain has been carved, because where can you find fifty-two feet in one piece of stone? So the statue has been carved in the mountain. It is still standing, rooted in the mountain.It is so big that, from wherever you see it, you cannot see it proportionately. They have made a staircase going around the statue, so you can move and look at the statue from all sides. Even the smallest toe of the foot is the length of your whole body – six feet. So when you are looking from below, you can’t imagine how big the head is. You can see it but you cannot imagine how big the head is – it is too far away from you.But the people who did the work must have been of immense genius. Everything is absolutely proportionate. From the toes of the feet to the head, everything is in exact proportion. They must have been very perceptive and it must have taken hundreds of years for hundreds of artists to make it. Because it is standing in a faraway mountain it has survived, but there must have been others.Thousands of statues are distorted, because once a statue is distorted then it is of no use for the Hindus or the Jainas or the Buddhists to worship it. It has to be perfect. Just cut off the nose or an ear and that’s enough – it is spoiled. Then they cannot worship it.Mohammedanism is still in a very primitive stage. It knows no argument. Its argument is the sword.I wanted to have a residence and a commune in Kashmir, because it is one of the most beautiful places in the world. But Indira Gandhi, who was immensely interested in me, suggested, “It is not right, you should not go to Kashmir. You will be killed. It is ninety percent Mohammedan.” And she was a Kashmiri. She said, “I will not suggest it and I will not help you, because I know they cannot tolerate you for a single day.”They know only one thing, and that is the sword. They know no argument, they know no discussion. They have not come to that human stage where you can discuss problems and come to conclusions openheartedly – discuss, not to prove anything but to discover the truth.I have been informed from Catholic countries that they will be unable to receive me, even for a tour, because the pope is against me and they don’t want to disturb the pope.For almost twenty years I have not been in any Hindu conference in India because Hindus became very much afraid – and that seems to be strange, particularly in Hinduism; a religion which has always been ready to discuss, which has a philosophical tradition.But now it seems, because Christianity and Mohammedanism and communism – which should be included in the religions, because it is just an atheist religion…. It has a trinity of Karl Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and it has a holy bible, Das Kapital, and it believes as faithfully in the words of Marx as any Christian believes in the words of Jesus.Marx is outdated as much as anybody else, although he is not very old. But in these hundred years there has been so much development in science and technology that Marx is absolutely out of date. For example, Marx proposes materialism as the base of communism and modern physics says there is no matter. Matter simply does not exist, it only appears to. That comes very close to the ancient Upanishadic approach to reality which says the world is just a dream. It is an appearance but not a reality.Modern physics comes very close to the Upanishads – it does not support Karl Marx, it goes absolutely against Karl Marx. But in Russia they go on teaching people – from the kindergarten to the university – materialism, materialistic communism. It is almost a religion.And these three religions – communism, Christianity and Islam – are covering almost the whole earth. You cannot enter Russia, you cannot enter China, you cannot enter other communist countries; you cannot enter Mohammedan countries….While I was coming back to India, I had to stay the whole night in Cyprus because Saudi Arabia would not allow me to fly over the country because it was some religious day. I said, “My flying over the sky has nothing to do with your religious day. You can celebrate, you can…. You must not be celebrating in the sky, you must be celebrating on the earth.”But no, nobody can pass over the country. And lately I have been informed, particularly because I was there in a chartered plane…. If somebody else had been there, they may have allowed them. I would have been flying thousands of feet above, but I had to wait for twelve hours in Cyprus till their religious festival was over, and then they let me move.So the world is full of crude, unintelligent, idiotic ideologies. It is difficult to turn the wheel of truth. But on the other hand, for the first time, the youth of the world is no longer interested in the past. It has lost its roots in the past. It has no respect for the past because it can see clearly that the past has been ugly, barbarous; and what man has done to man is intolerable.And tomorrow this new mind, the new generation, is going to be powerful everywhere. This generation is open to the future, and there is every possibility that the new generation will be able to understand what I am saying without any difficulty.So there is no need to be worried about the old generation. One of its legs is almost in the grave – I just have to wait in Cyprus for twelve hours more and the whole old generation will have gone into the grave!But the wheel is going to move.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 34 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why it is so difficult for sannyasins to have deep relationships with non-sannyasins?It is natural.To be a sannyasin means you are deprogrammed.To relate with non-sannyasins is bound to be difficult because they are programmed people. Their programmed minds and your deprogrammed minds cannot have anything in common. You will think them stupid; they will think you licentious, rebellious.There is no possibility of communication.It will become more and more difficult the more sannyasins get deeper into meditation. Then those people will not be able to understand at all. They will think that you have been corrupted, you have been brainwashed, you have been hypnotized. All kinds of condemnation will come upon you from their side.And from your side, you cannot conceive how people can go on believing in such stupid ideas. Everything they believe in will look idiotic – their God, their heaven and hell, and their churches, their prayers.You have become an outsider. You do not belong to the crowd. You have been able to see something of which they are not aware.It is just like a man having eyes trying to communicate with a group which is blind. There will be a thousand and one difficulties. You cannot mention colors, you cannot mention light; you cannot mention a beautiful sunset, because they will start laughing: “You are living in fantasies – these things don’t exist.”And for you the problem is that you know they exist, and you know that these people are blind and they need some treatment for their eyes. But you cannot force them; they don’t think they are blind. They simply think that this is how one has to be.And they are in the majority. They may even violently force your eyes to be destroyed just to help you, so that you don’t talk nonsense. You talk about colors and rainbows and flowers and sunsets and stars – which are not part of their mind at all. But they are powerful. They are in the majority; they have the government in their hands – they can do anything they want.And you cannot do anything against them, nor would the heart of a sannyasin like to do anything against them – you can only feel compassion for them. You can try to convince them, argue with them, but your arguments and your efforts to convince them are not going to lead you anywhere, because you are speaking two different languages.It is one of the most difficult things, and it has always been so. Not only to sannyasins, but to all people of greater perceptivity, greater sensitivity, the masses have been antagonistic.Vincent van Gogh…just a few days ago I saw a copy of one of his paintings in which he makes his stars like spirals. Nobody has painted stars like spirals – you don’t see them as spirals. He was condemned even by the painters of his day. All the critics were against him; all the painters thought that he was crazy. Every night you can see the stars, but have you ever seen spirals?It was just a few months ago that astronomers came to realize that every star is a spiral. The distance is so much – that’s why we cannot see the spiral. But it is strange how Vincent van Gogh got the idea. He was not a physicist – he had no instruments.It took one hundred years for scientists to develop delicate instruments, sensitive instruments which can see stars as they actually are. But he had painted them a hundred years ago exactly as they are finding them now. Their photographs and Vincent van Gogh’s paintings are exactly the same!But the poor fellow was not understood at all. He was turned out of his home because his parents were poor, and they said, “We cannot afford to keep you. You are now grown up. We have given you all the education that we could manage – now you can become a priest in a church. We cannot afford for you to be a painter.”His father was working in a coal mine; his parents were really poor, and you cannot say anything against them. And Vincent van Gogh’s first works are just coal sketches – but they are tremendously beautiful. Now even those coal sketches have a value of millions of dollars. But his parents would not give him money for paints, for canvases, and finally they had to turn him out.One of his friends took pity on van Gogh and asked him to stay with him until he got some employment. And he fell in love with the sister of the friend – just love at first sight. The first day in the house of the friend, he proposed to the girl. The girl simply laughed; they were more comfortably-off people – better educated, middle class, higher than Vincent van Gogh and his family.She could not believe that this poor beggar could even dare to ask her. Jokingly, she said, “Can you give me any proof of your love? Can you put your hand on this candle?” – it was burning by their side.He said, “Yes!” and he kept his hand on the burning candle. His whole hand was burnt. The woman got frightened: this man seems to be mad also! She pulled his hand away, but he said, “Why are you pulling it away? Let me keep it there until you say yes.”The whole family gathered there. They pulled him away from the candle – he had burned his hand for his whole life – and he was turned out of the house the next day.A man of great sensitivity – but no woman was ready to love him, because he looked crazy. Nobody was buying his paintings, and still he went on painting. His brother was employed – his younger brother – and was sending van Gogh the exact amount of money so that he could have his food every day. Each week he would send money – enough for one week only. And Vincent van Gogh would only eat four days in the week, and three days he would fast and purchase canvases and paints. And nobody was buying his paintings. People were simply laughing and saying, “He is simply mad! We have never seen such paintings. What is he doing?”But it seems whatever he was doing is going to come true, slowly, slowly. If his vision of stars is now confirmed by physics, it is simply a miracle that with bare eyes, he could see that they are spirals. Nobody in the whole of history has even thought about it, so you cannot think that he borrowed the thought from somebody. Nobody has seen stars like that. And he could not prove anything; he simply went on saying, “This is how I see them.” But everybody laughed, because they also could see the stars but they didn’t see spirals.This tremendous sensitivity…but he was misunderstood everywhere. And finally. when he was only thirty-three, they drove him mad. Hungry, starving, and everybody laughing and condemning…not a single painting was sold. His brother tried to send a man with money and said, “At least purchase one painting. He will have the consolation that somebody has purchased one painting.”The man went – he had no idea about painting. Van Gogh was so ecstatic that somebody had come finally to purchase a painting – so he was showing him all his paintings. And the man said, “Don’t waste my time – any will do. This is the money.”You can understand how much van Gogh would have been shocked. He simply said, “That means this money has been given to you by my brother – because you are not even looking at the paintings. I cannot sell any painting to you. These paintings are not for people who cannot understand them. And just tell my brother never to do such a thing to me – it hurts more.” And it was found actually that that was the case.Van Gogh died without selling a single painting. Now only two hundred paintings have survived, and each painting is worth not less that one million dollars; each painting has a certain quality that has never been found in any other painting.He became mad, but he continued to paint even while he was mad; in his madhouse he continued to paint. Even the paintings he has done in the madhouse are tremendously beautiful. Perhaps he was not mad; perhaps he was simply forced by the medical profession and other painters to feel that he was doing mad things.After one year he was released, because he was absolutely nonviolent; he created no trouble for anybody, he simply continued to paint. In fact he was not willing to leave because it was far easier in the hospital. The hospital was paying everything for his paintings, and he was getting food for seven days, so this was far easier than to be outside.But they forced him; they said, “We don’t think you are mad, and if you are mad then there is no way to cure you. You simply get out.” Outside he could not manage and simply committed suicide. He wrote a letter to his brother in which he says, “What is the point of living in a world where nobody understands you? And there is no hope that anybody will ever understand me – at least not in my life. It is better to withdraw.”So this is not only with sannyasins, it is an old story. People of immense qualities, but with a different perspective and different sensitivity than the ordinary mind has, have been tortured, and there has been no way to communicate.All that the sannyasins can do, rather than arguing with those people, is accept whatever condemnation they have and still ask them, “Do you see that we are happier than you? Do you see that we love more than you? Can you see that we are more silent, more integrated than you? We may be brainwashed, hypnotized – all your condemnations we accept.” Just raise the question, “Are you more contented than we are? – although we have nothing. Are you less worried than we are? – although we don’t have anything that makes us not worry, and we have everything that would make you commit suicide.”Don’t argue – simply make it clear to them, “We are homeless, we don’t have any money, we don’t belong to any society, we have abandoned all the nations, all the religions. Still, we are happy. We don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, but today is enough. When tomorrow comes it will take care of itself.”Rather than intellectual arguments, existential comparison perhaps may help them. Perhaps they may start thinking about it, that there is some truth in it. And that is the only possible way to bring them closer. And once they are closer and open and ready to listen, then there is every possibility of communion.First, you have to melt the ice – and that is the biggest problem. Once the ice is melted, then things become easier.So first, accept all their condemnation rather than retaliating, arguing against it. That will not help. What is going to help is to just accept what they are saying, then make an existential comparison and tell them, “You can think about it, and if you feel that we have got something that you have not got, we are ready to share it with you.”And those people are in misery. They may be pretending they are not, but they are in misery, they are in suffering. If you can just make a question arise in their mind, so that they can look at their fake masks and can see their reality for a moment, they will be ready to listen to you.There is no other way. You cannot force, you cannot argue, because on that ground the conflict cannot be resolved. It can be resolved only on existential grounds. And that’s where many sannyasins miss the point.If people say, “You are hypnotized,” you start arguing, “We are not!” No, you should say, “It is possible; you may be right, we may be hypnotized. But what do you think: being in misery and not hypnotized, or being in bliss and being hypnotized – what alternative will you choose? And what is wrong in being hypnotized? Have you ever been hypnotized? Do you know what it is? Have you ever experienced anything of it – or just heard the word?”There are millions of people who have just heard words, and they go on throwing those words around: hypnotism, mesmerism, brainwashing – and they don’t understand a thing they are saying.So rather than arguing, you can say, “If you know about brainwashing, I am ready: brainwash me, so I can see what brainwashing is. If you know what hypnotism is, hypnotize me, so I can experience what hypnotism is.”Make one thing certainly clear to them: “You don’t know – you are simply throwing words about.”I was a student of a professor, and there was always conflict with him for the simple reason that he went on throwing words about and he did not know what they meant. I would insist, “You explain that word. And I will not be satisfied only by an intellectual explanation. I am ready – brainwash me, hypnotize me, I am ready.” But he was just throwing words about.He reported to the vice-chancellor of that university that I was a continual trouble because I would contest each word, that he had to prove…. The vice-chancellor asked me to come to see him. The professor was present there – I immediately understood what the problem was.The vice-chancellor said to me, “Why do you create trouble?”I said, “I don’t create trouble. You just wait and see.” I asked that professor – he was a Bengali man, Professor Bhattacharya – I asked, “Have you read the book written by Ouspensky, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus?”He said, “Yes! It is such a famous book. I loved it when I read it.”And I told the vice-chancellor, “Phone the library and inquire if there is any such book – because I have simply made up the name of the book. There is a book Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, but it is not written by P.D. Ouspensky, it is written by Ludwig Wittgenstein – and this man has never seen the book. This is my whole problem in the class.“Do you think I am creating trouble or is this man the trouble? Can’t he be honest and say, ‘I have never heard of such a book’? But he cannot accept his ignorance – about anything.”The vice-chancellor phoned to the librarian; the librarian said, “P.D. Ouspensky has never written such a book. There is a book of this name, but the author is Ludwig Wittgenstein.”The vice-chancellor said to the professor, “You have to understand that if you don’t know, you should not pretend to know. And this boy has made his point absolutely clear.”I said to the vice-chancellor, “This has been happening almost every day. This man never goes to the library. I have looked through the whole philosophy department in the library: his name is not on a single book’s card. And I have looked in his house, because he lives by the side of one of my friends” – who was a professor of economics – “and the houses are joined together, they are sharing half and half. So I just made an arrangement with my friend, ‘Someday let me into his house. I want to see what books he has.’“And all that he has are magazines like Playboy, which I don’t think have any philosophy. I have not seen a single book which is concerned with philosophy – and he is a professor of philosophy! And do you think a professor of philosophy reading Playboy is going to discuss philosophy with me? He has passed his examinations – that must have been thirty years ago, but in thirty years philosophy has moved on further and further.”That was the last time that the professor allowed me in the class. The next day when I went into the class he said, “Listen, you may be right. Yesterday you put me in such a bad situation – I don’t want to argue at all. Either you promise me not to argue in the class or just don’t come to my class.”I said, “I always wanted not to come to your class because it is so worthless. But you have to give me ninety percent attendance.”He said, “I will give you one hundred percent, but don’t come to my class.”I said, “Can I come to your house sometime?”He said, “I don’t want to see your face!”I said, “It is up to you: if you have decided to remain retarded, what can I do? But once in a while I will try to come to your house, because I want to help you to come out of your retardedness.”He was very angry with the economics professor: “You allowed him in my house to look into my books – and certainly there are no books, just magazines and other things. He brought the whole thing before the vice-chancellor, and I felt so insulted!”I went to the vice-chancellor and I said, “This is the situation: he is willing to give me hundred percent attendance, but he does not want me to attend the class. And I want to inform you that this is absolutely criminal. You go to the class and check how many days I have been present.”The vice-chancellor did it; he went to the class at the end of the month, and I was marked as present the whole month. He asked Bhattacharya, “Are you sure that this person has been present the whole month?”Bhattacharya became suspicious that I must have been doing something behind his back. He said, “Yes, I am certain; otherwise why should I give him that percentage of attendance unless he was present?”The vice-chancellor asked the students. They said, “No, we have not seen him for one month.”Bhattacharya came to my room in the hostel that evening and said, “Please, come to the class from tomorrow. I am very sorry, and I accept that I don’t know anything about the latest developments in philosophy. But you have given me so much trouble that if you don’t come to my class, I am going to lose my job.”I said, “Don’t be worried – I will not do any harm to you. I simply want you to understand that you should not throw names around. You go on throwing names around like Martin Heidegger, Jaspers – you know nothing about these people, and I have been wasting my whole nights with these people. You simply stop! What is the point? – if you are not knowledgeable, accept it.“I am trying to become knowledgeable, and I think it honorable of you to recognize that you don’t know. I don’t think there is any disrespect in it, because one cannot know everything in the whole world. There are millions of things, for everybody, that he does not know. So you learn one thing: when you don’t know, you have to accept in the class that you don’t know.”That discussion with him…I went to the class the next day and he really accepted three times in one hour that he did not know anything about something. And afterwards he thanked me, “It was such a great release and freedom to say, ‘I don’t know.’ I have never known such a relief. It was a tension and anguish to tell a lie, knowing perfectly well that I didn’t know this man, this philosophy, and still saying I do – because this was my conditioning, that the professor has to know everything, at least more than the student.”I said, “Forget that, and there is no problem” – and since that day there was no problem. In fact, even in the class he would stop sometimes and ask me, “Perhaps you have some idea about this that you can explain to the class.”He had been a very disrespected person; he became a person very respected by the students – just by accepting that he was ignorant about some things. His humbleness created respectability.It is a difficult task with people, and you have to deal with different people in different ways. No certain method can be given, because it may work with one person, it may not work with another person. So you have to be very watchful about the person to see what will work.One thing is certain, that they are all in suffering, all in tension and anguish, and they all want to get out of it. So from there you have to find your clue, and the key. And if you are watchful enough, you can always find the clue and the key, and a communion is possible.And you have nothing to lose. That person really wants to lose many things – his misery, his suffering, his anguish. And he has nothing else; his whole being is full of hell.Don’t fight with the person. Try to accept whatever he is saying. Ask him questions about what he says and let him feel that he knows nothing about these things. Once he accepts his ignorance about anything, you have a loophole from where you can enter into his being.His knowledge is a protection of his personality, his ego. So first you have to make a dent somewhere. So just listen to him and ask a few questions, and you will be able to find where he is just absolutely ignorant. Then you can make possible a little space to connect through. And let him feel your love, your compassion, your peace, your blissfulness.It will take a little time for him to ask you, “What has happened to you?” But sooner or later he is bound to ask, because he is sick, and nobody wants to remain sick. If you can prove that you have come out of the ordinary sickness of human beings…Only then can a sannyasin have a communication with non-sannyasins.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 36 (Read, Listen & Download)

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BELOVED OSHO,I AM A SOCIOLOGIST. THAT MEANS I DEAL SCIENTIFICALLY WITH THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STRUCTURES, AND THE INDIVIDUAL. THOUGH I THINK THERE ARE SOCIOLOGICAL LAWS, AND THAT SOCIOLOGY CAN HELP US TO UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIETY BETTER, I AM MORE AND MORE IN DIFFICULTIES WITH SOCIOLOGY, IN THAT WAY OF THINKING, AND WITH THE SOCIOLOGISTS AS WELL. IT HAS BEEN A PROCESS LIKE THAT SINCE I HAVE BEEN A SANNYASIN. I HAVE THE FEELING THAT I CAN'T STAND IT ANY LONGER AT THE UNIVERSITY. CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT IT? The whole so-called philosophy of sociology is very superficial, for the simple reason that society does not exist. What exists is the individual. Sociology begins from the wrong end. It starts studying social relationships amongst the societies, amongst individuals. But they never bother about studying the individual -- who is the source of all the relationships, of all the societies, of all the cultures that have happened or ever will happen. Society has no soul. What can you study in it? It is almost as if somebody is studying Rotary Clubs. A Rotary Club has no soul, it is just a club where people meet. But the reality belongs to the people. And up to now sociology has not yet become a science. It pretends to be a science -- it is not, for the simple reason that it has not started from the right point. The right point is the individual. There seems to be some fear about beginning with the individual, because there are millions of individuals in the world, and every individual is unique. It seems easier to take them as a whole and just study from the outside how the whole functions. If it were a mechanical thing, the sociologist would have succeeded. But it is not a mechanical thing. It is not that the individuals are parts of the society. Society has no existence apart from the individuals. It is just in the individuals living together, relating together, that the society is created. The fear of studying the individual should be dropped, because although there are millions of individuals and they are all unique, their basic consciousness is the same, and the principles of the functioning of that consciousness are the same. Either the consciousness is awake -- then a person functions like a Gautam Buddha -- or the consciousness is asleep; then the function of the person is similar all around the world. What you do in your sleep does not matter much; your sleep is the same. It will certainly be difficult to study a Buddha, because he has attained an awakened uniqueness, and each Buddha is bound to respond differently, because his action is not a reaction. His action is purely action. You cannot make him do something; it is his spontaneity which is decisive. Secondly, he is not logically a consistent person. He does not owe anything to logic: logic has not given him anything. Whatever he has attained, he has attained by dropping logic, by dropping thinking. He functions out of his state of no-mind; hence he is unpredictable. And every science wants a subject to be predictable; otherwise what is the point of the science? The whole purpose of the science is to predict, and to predict accurately, a hundred percent; there is not even a possibility of any exception. And each awakened human being is an exception -- there is no rule. The sleeping people... howsoever different they may be, in their sleep all their differences disappear. A man may be a painter, a poet, a scientist, or he may have other talents which make him different from other people -- but they are all asleep. The asleep man is predictable because he knows nothing of response; he only reacts. You do something, and he will react -- which can be predicted. So sociology has a basic difficulty, and that is, it has to be divided into two parts: the first part should be studying the reactions, the relationships of the sleeping humanity. And there will not be any difficulty in making a science out of it. Every sleepy person is going to be jealous, is going to be full of hatred, is going to make every effort to monopolize, is going to be competitive, is going to suffer from an inferiority complex -- or a superiority complex, which is just the other side of the coin. His life is almost the same, down the centuries, around the world. Cultures are different, religions are different, civilizations are different, but the sleep is simply sleep. It does not matter whether you are asleep in the nineteenth century or in the twentieth century; your reactions will be coming out of your sleep, which does not know anything of time, of change. So the first part of sociology is not going to be difficult. But it is not the true part. It is the false humanity that you are trying to study. The true part is of those few awakened individuals whom you will have to study separately. There is no way to make a category of them: in every way they are unique. And you should not mix them in with the sleepy people; then it becomes a mess. Then things become more complicated. It is better to divide sociology into two parts. One that belongs to the people who are asleep -- and that is a very simple job. The second is the difficult job, but not impossible. You can study the awakened people -- although they are few. The first part will remain static; the second part will remain growing, because the more you will study new awakened people, the more light, the more dimensions will open up. To avoid these difficulties, sociology has chosen not to study the individual but to study the whole group, its mechanism. This is a simple device to avoid the difficulties, but it is not going to lead to the truth, and it is not going to make it a science. So I can understand the difficulty of a person who becomes a sannyasin, and who is a trained sociologist, who teaches in the university. Now he will be finding difficulties in which he is not clearly aware what is happening. The first difficulty is that he can no longer say that sociology is a science, because he is aware of exceptions -- the awakened people -- not only one but many. Secondly, he cannot accept the idea of studying society as a whole from the outside, because that is a futile effort. Society is not an organism. The individual is an organism -- alive; and you can study only the alive, and how the alive organism reacts or responds. Because sociology has not done any of these things up to now, and the sannyasin must be becoming aware that the whole thing seems to be wrong... I can understand him very clearly, because to feel one way and then to teach exactly the opposite of it becomes a heavy load. He knows that what he is saying is wrong; still he has to teach it according to the syllabus of the university if he wants to remain a teacher in the university. The same has been the situation with me. I was teaching religion, philosophy, logic, psychology; and with every subject there was trouble because it was not in tune with my own vision and insight. I struggled, for nine years continuously, to manage somehow -- and I found a way to manage it. The way was that first I would teach them what the syllabus prescribed. So every period was divided into two parts: half of the period I would teach them what the prescribed books said about religion, and the other half of the period I would condemn it and criticize it and tell them, "This is what I say, and I feel. Now it is up to you to decide: if you want to pass, listen to the first part; if you want to fail, listen to the second part. I am not responsible -- I am making it clear to you. It is just that I don't want to carry the burden on myself that I am teaching something which is absolutely absurd to me." I would teach them about philosophers with whom I do not agree -- so half the time for the philosopher and half the time for my disagreement. Now the students were getting very confused, and naturally they were agreeing with the second part because the first part was only in a dead book: I was alive and I was present, and I was destroying the whole structure that was in the dead book. And their problem was that whatever I was saying they also felt was right, but they could not write it in their examination, because the people who would be examining them would be looking for the first part; the second part was not written anywhere. So they were getting confused: "You have found a way not to be burdened, not to feel guilt that you are teaching something which you know is wrong. So it is good for you -- but what about us? Now we will be writing something that we know is not right, and we cannot write that which we think is right." It was a great struggle for nine years continually. Finally I thought it better to leave the university because it was creating unnecessary conflict in the minds of the students. And many who were the best failed, because they did not write what the books say; they argued according to me. But their examination copies were going to old and respected professors from different universities who had no insight, who simply looked for a repetition, an accurate repetition of the book. So the best students were failing, and the third-rate ones were passing, because for the third-rate there was no question of conscience. It was not a question of truth; the question was how to pass. So whatever helped to pass, they were writing; and whatever prevented it, they were not writing. They were not really interested. They were not seekers, they had just come to get a degree. Why be bothered? But the best who had really come as seekers... it was painful to me and hurting me. I argued with the vice-chancellor, "These students should not fail. I want to look at their copies." And I showed the vice-chancellor that their answers were absolutely right, although they were against the books. "But books don't have a monopoly. And the books were written fifty years ago, and in fifty years do you think everything has stopped, gone dead? that a full stop came when this book was written? In fifty years so much has happened in the world of philosophy, more than had ever happened in almost five thousand years previously. If you weigh five thousand years of philosophical thinking, and the last fifty years of contribution, these fifty years will still be weightier." He agreed with me, but he said, "What can I do about it? The examiners have failed them. And it is not a question of one student, it is a question of many students." So I said, "Then the only way is that I should leave the university, that I should start teaching what to me is true." And this is the situation of the sannyasin. It is better he leaves the university. It will become a bigger and bigger burden. The more he understands, the more difficult it will be. For example, I never could say to my students that psychology is a science. It is not. To become a science there is no possibility of having so many schools. Then there will be a single truth about any problem; not that Freud has one answer and Adler has another and Jung has another and Assagioli has another. What kind of science is this? But every book of psychology pretends that psychology is a science, because science has prestige: to declare it scientific is to declare it true. So the best way for the sannyasin is to get out of the university. His university is now the whole universe. And he should not teach anything that goes against his conscience, because the conscience is so valuable that it cannot be sold for anything. A job, a good salary, a respectable position, does not matter. And he should make it clear why he is resigning -- because the subject is not a science and it is pretending to be a science, and he doesn't want to pretend anything. The subject is basically wrong; it starts with society -- which does not exist -- and it avoids the individual, who really exists. It avoids the individual because to accept the individual as the source of study, sooner or later one will have to encounter people like Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma.... And that will be a totally different world. Whatever the sociologist has found amongst the sleepy people will be contradicted absolutely by looking at a buddha. So either sociology should be divided into two parts, or sociology should become two subjects: sociology of the awakened man, and sociology of the sleeping man. "And if it is not going to happen then I am not going to commit a crime against my own understanding and self." The sannyasin should make it clear to the university and to the news media. Perhaps there are other sociologists who are thinking in the same terms but have not been able to put it together, what their problem is. He may be able to create a movement which someday brings about an authentic sociology. Question 2 BELOVED OSHO, BEFORE I CAME TO KNOW YOU, I HAD NEVER HEARD ABOUT ENLIGHTENMENT. BUT I WAS SEARCHING FOR SOMETHING. NOW, AFTER FOUR YEARS OF LIVING IN A COMMUNE, I FEEL FURTHER AWAY FROM REACHING SOMEWHERE THAN EVER BEFORE. I'M JUST GRATEFUL TO BE HERE AND TO FEEL YOUR FRIENDSHIP AND COMPASSION. IS ENLIGHTENMENT STILL THE GOAL? IS THERE ANY GOAL AT ALL? This is a troublesome question. Enlightenment has never been the goal. Its very nature prohibits making it a goal. The goal is always in the future somewhere; and enlightenment is always now and here. Enlightenment is an experience in the present. But this is one of the troubles of the mind, that it makes goals out of everything. If you love the idea of enlightenment, then immediately the mechanism of the mind makes it a goal: you have to achieve it -- and that's where you go on the wrong path. Enlightenment is a by-product of the understanding that to live in the past is foolish, because it is simply memory. But millions of people are wasting their time in memories. Millions of others are living in the future. You cannot live in the future; it is making castles in the air. To understand that past and future are both nonexistential... all that you have got is a very small moment: this very moment. You don't even get two moments together. When one moment is gone, you get another moment. You always have only one moment in your hands; and it is so small and so fleeting, that if you are thinking of the past and the future, you will miss it. And that is the only life and the only reality there is. Understanding this whole process, one thing becomes certain: why the mind avoids the present, which is the real, and why it tries to get involved with past and future, which are not real. As one tries to understand that, one thing becomes clear: that in the present moment, mind cannot exist. Mind is simply a collection of memories of the past, and -- out of those memories -- imagination about the future. Mind does not know three tenses. It knows only two: past and future. Present is nonexistential to the mind. The existential is nonexistential to the mind; and the nonexistentials are existential to the mind. Hence the whole effort is how to get out of the mind, how to get out of the nonexistentials and to stand in the middle -- where existence is. How to be in the present? -- that is the whole knack of meditation. And the moment you are in the present, enlightenment is its by-product. Don't give it to the mind -- the mind will immediately make it a goal. Mind cannot do anything else. It cannot put it in the past because you have never experienced it, so the past is closed. You have yet to experience it; naturally, it has to be put somewhere in the future. And it always happens in the present. So forget about enlightenment. It is a by-product; you cannot do anything about it. This is the beauty of by-products: you have to do something else, and the by-product comes in. You have to learn to be in the present more and more. In other words: you have to learn to be in a state of no-mind more and more. It was for a certain reason that mystics called meditation "no-mind": if you call it meditation, again the mind makes a goal out of it. Then you have to achieve meditation. So it makes no difference whether the goal is enlightenment or meditation, the goal remains, the future remains, and goes on destroying the present. The mystics time changed from meditation to no-mind for the first time had a tremendous insight. Now no-mind cannot be made a goal: mind cannot make it a goal. It is simply absurd -- how can mind make a goal of no-mind? It will simply say it is not possible; mind is all, there is no no-mind. This was a strategy not to allow you to make it a goal. Very few people have understood the strategy, that that's why they have called it no-mind -- to prevent the mind from making it a goal. So be more and more in a state of no-mind. Just go on removing memories, imagination, to clean and clear the present moment. And as it deepens, as you become more and more capable of no-mind, enlightenment comes of its own accord. Enlightenment is simply recognizing your being, recognizing the eternity of your being, recognizing that there has been no death before, nor is there any death to come -- that death is a fiction. Seeing your being in its utter nakedness, in its absolute beauty, its grandeur, its silence, its blissfulness, its ecstasy -- all that is involved in the word "enlightenment." Once you have experienced that juice, mind starts losing its grip on you because you have found something which is qualitatively so high, so fulfilling, such a tremendous contentment, that mind feels its function is finished. It looks ugly, because it has only given you misery, worries, anxiety. What has been its contribution to you? Its grip loosens; it starts hiding in the shadows, and by and by it falls away. You continue to live, but now your living is moment to moment; and what you have got as a by-product in that small gap of no-mind goes on growing. There is no end to that growth. Enlightenment only begins, it never ends. Nobody has said this before. They have all said that it is perfect -- but perfection means it cannot grow. It has happened once, and all growth, all evolution, is finished. But as far as my experience is concerned, I can say very authoritatively that anything that you are stuck with permanently cannot remain ecstatic, cannot remain blissful. You will start taking it for granted. It was ecstatic because you had lived in agony; compared to that agony it was ecstatic. You have lived in pain, in wounds; against that, it was contentment, fulfillment. But now, day after day, month after month, year after year, life after life, you have forgotten agony, the taste of pain. And with that forgetfulness, your enlightenment will become just ordinary -- something that you take for granted, dull and dead. The ecstasy is the same but you cannot feel it the same. There has come a full stop, and life knows no full stop. But why have all these mystics insisted that it is perfect? -- because they were afraid. Logically they were not able to face the philosophers, the critics... because if you say it is imperfect, that means something more has to happen. You have not attained the goal -- something is still missing. So it is partial, what you have attained. If it is not perfect, it is partial. To avoid calling it partial, they said that it is perfect. But they forgot that some day somebody can raise a question against perfection. It has not been raised yet, but I am raising it: perfection is going to be dead, it cannot be living, because nothing is going to happen. It will be the same tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, for eternity. You will get utterly bored with your ecstasy, with your contentment, and there is no going back. You cannot find that agony again, those moments of misery again, because all that has fallen out of your being. There is no way back, and in the future, for as far as you can see, it will remain the same. I deny perfection. Enlightenment appears perfect because nothing seems to be missing at the moment. All that you have ever dreamed -- it is much more than that. All that you could have ever conceived -- it is much more than that. So it appears absolute, perfect, ultimate; but this is a fallacy. It will grow, it will become vast. New qualities will be added to it; and each time it is going to be a surprise because you have never thought about this quality. So I want it to be clearly understood by my people, that enlightenment is only a beginning, the beginning of tremendous evolution, that has no limits. Only then can you remain dancing, singing. And you can remain thrilled every moment, because one never knows what the next moment is going to bring -- new insights, new visions, new experiences. And there is no limitation to it. There never comes a point when you can say the journey has ended. The journey only begins, it never ends. Other mystics have not said it because they were afraid that if you say to people that the journey only begins and never ends, they will never begin it. What is the point of a journey that begins and never ends? Then do something else. Why waste your life in such a journey, where nowhere you will find a place where you can say, "I have come home"? But I want to be absolutely truthful about enlightenment. And I want it to be an excitement that it does not end. It is not something against it, it is something favorable about it -- that everything goes on expanding, everything goes on growing, everything goes on getting higher; and still the infinite sky is there, the infinite universe is there. And if the universe can be infinite, which is inconceivable for the mind... you cannot conceive the universe as infinite. Mind cannot conceive infinity, for the simple reason that mind functions through logic. It will say, "It may be far away, but somewhere it has to end. How can it go on and on and on? We may never reach the end, we may never find the boundary line where the universe ends -- that is possible because we are limited -- but that does not mean that the universe is unlimited." Logic cannot conceive it, thinking cannot have any justification for it. And if you start thinking, you cannot believe it. You can push on the boundary as far as you can but the boundary remains. But the truth is, the boundary cannot be there, because a boundary always needs two things: one on this side and one on the other side. You cannot make a boundary with only one side. You have a fence around your house because there is a neighbor's house. Your fence is not the end -- it is simply the beginning of another house. So if sometime logic forces you to conclude there must be a boundary, it has to be asked: What will be beyond the boundary? There must be something. Even though it is going to be nothing, that nothing will also be part of the universe. Why are you creating a boundary? That emptiness will also be the universe. Once you understand that every boundary needs two things -- something that it closes and something that it opens -- then you can have some idea that a finite universe is impossible. Only an infinite universe is possible. But for the infinite universe you need an infinity of growth, because if you come to a point where you think you have become perfect, you fall out of tune with the universe. The same logic has to be understood about evolution. It has to be forever and forever -- because again there is the question of a boundary. You cannot make any boundaries in existence. Boundaries do not belong to reality. One of my professors, Doctor S.S. Roy, had written a doctoral thesis on Bradley and Shankara -- both are absolutists, both believe in perfection. And his doctoral thesis was accepted, he got the Ph.D. But I told him, "You may have got the Ph.D., but if I had been one of the examiners of your thesis, you would not have got it, because Shankara and Bradley are preaching -- and you are trying to make a comparative study, that they are saying the same thing -- that there is a boundary at perfection. And you are saying it with so much emphasis that it seems you also believe in it." He said, "Yes, I have been studying Shankara and Bradley my whole life, and they have left an immense impact on me. They both are the greatest philosophers in the world." But I said, "They are just childish, that both believe there is a boundary at perfection. Then there is no growth possible. Perfection is death and life is growth." And I asked him directly, "Would you like to be perfect and dead, or imperfect and alive? That is the choice." He said, "I have never thought about it -- that perfection means death, and imperfection means growth. But when you say it, it sounds correct." And I said, "You just think: For how long has existence been there? It has not yet reached perfection. Growth has not stopped, evolution has not stopped, and existence has been for eternity. So what reason can there be to think that tomorrow it will be perfect? "The whole of eternity in the past has failed to make it perfect. What reason is there to think that just one day more is needed, or a few days, or a few years? We are always in the middle." I told him, "We are always in the middle. We will never know the beginning because there has never been one, and we will never know the end because there is not going to be any." We are always in the middle, growing. It is eternal growth, in all the dimensions. And the same applies to enlightenment. Question 3 BELOVED OSHO, A GERMAN WRITER, HANS-HENNY JAHN SAID ONCE: "DREAMS ARE THE BLOOD OF THE SOUL." CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS STATEMENT? It is just a poetic statement. It is beautiful -- "Dreams are the blood of the soul." But only in poetry. It is saying that the soul is always hoping, projecting, dreaming -- it is never contented. But as I said, it is only true and beautiful as poetry, but not as a statement of truth. Then I would like to say: Dreams are the blood of the mind. The soul has no dreams, the soul has no hopes. It is the mind. Perhaps he is confused between mind and soul. If he puts "mind" in place of "the soul," it becomes a statement of truth, because mind's whole life-blood is in dreams, in the future. But the soul is in the present. It cannot dream. Much happens to it in the future, but it is not that it dreams about it. It is always a surprise -- unexpected, undreamed of. So as poetry I can forgive it, but as a statement of truth it is simply stupid!

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 37 (Read, Listen & Download)

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BELOVED OSHO, FRITJOF CAPRA, IN AN INTERVIEW WITH SWAMI DEVA OJAS ABOUT THE NATURE OF SPIRITUAL ORGANIZATIONS, SAID, "THE COSMOS DOES NOT KNOW ANY HIERARCHY," THAT "THE BEST WAY TO ORGANIZE THEM IS AS A NETWORK, IN A LOOSE INTERACTION," AND THAT "SUCH A NETWORK STRUCTURE SEEMS THE BEST SOIL FOR THE SPIRITUAL GROWTH OF THE INDIVIDUAL, BECAUSE IT ENSURES THE POSSIBILITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL CONTINUING AND GUARANTEES ENOUGH TO DEVELOP HUMAN RELATIONS." PLEASE COMMENT. He is right, and that's what we are trying to do. Nature certainly has no hierarchy. Hierarchy is man's mind game, because without a hierarchy, the ego cannot feel nourished, it dies. In nature, everything has an opportunity, space, and there is nobody is being bossy. Nobody is master and nobody is servant. Nature functions almost as an organic unity in which individuality is not lost, but in which the ego has no chance to evolve; hence trees don't have egos, birds don't have egos. Animals of all kinds don't have egos. The problem arises with man. He can't think without putting someone above him and below him. The mind is very comparative. It is the comparison that creates a hierarchy. To destroy the hierarchy we have basically to destroy the comparative spirit. We should see each individual as individual -- incomparable. And that's what I am trying to do. Sannyasins should become more and more individuals, having a direct relationship to me, having a friendship with other sannyasins. That's how it will be a network. But nobody is higher and nobody is lower. This way will help to avoid organization and all its bureaucratic spirit. And it will give individuals freedom, space to grow on their own, But the trouble is double-sided. Individuals don't want to have that much freedom. So many questions have been coming, and they all indicate that people are afraid to dissolve communes, because with freedom comes responsibility. People love freedom -- but nobody wants responsibility. And they come together, they are inseparable. Because people don't want responsibility, they want to live in a commune where responsibility is taken by the commune. But they don't understand that the moment responsibility is taken by the commune, individuality is also taken; they are inseparable. They will find a certain feeling of being at ease in the commune, but they will not grow. It will not help for their spiritual development, because they have lost the basic growth by losing individuality, by losing responsibility. They are safer, secure -- but dull and dead. They always look up to somebody else to tell them what to do, what not to do. So organizations have not been imposed by people. It is impossible for a single pope to impose his will on six hundred million people. Something is in those six hundred million people which needs a pope, so they can feel that they are no longer responsible; the whole responsibility is on the representative of God -- and, finally, on God. They created God just to get rid of responsibility, unaware of the fact that the moment you lose responsibility, you lose yourself; you become a cog in the wheel. My insistence that there is no God is basically to give back responsibility to you. Without God there is no Jesus Christ as a savior, there is no pope to tell you what is right and what is wrong. There is nobody who decides on your behalf. In the beginning it may feel like a tremendous burden, but to get out of retardedness and to become mature, one has to take that burden. It is not against you; under the pressure of responsibility your whole individuality is saved. But without denying God, organizations cannot be denied, because God is the beginning of all hierarchies. And God is not part of nature because nature knows no hierarchy. So from every angle God does not exist. But man wants him to exist. It helps him to get rid of the whole burden and just be a retarded child. And for centuries he has lived in that state: there was God, and there were God's messiahs and their representatives -- and man was simply to listen, to follow. If he cannot follow, then he just has to go and confess the sin, and he is forgiven. So it was a very much easier way. But growth is a little harder. To accept that you are alone, that nobody is above you who can decide for you, that you have to take decisions every moment of your life, that every inch you move is your decision.... If you commit a mistake, you have to correct it; nobody can forgive you, because there is nobody at all. If you do something good, nobody is going to reward you. So basically and deeply the acceptance that "my act is my reward, and my act is my punishment, and I am totally responsible for whatever I am doing" -- this is maturity. You are not in need of a father figure. You are not in need of being part of a crowd. You can be yourself. I wanted the communes not to be hierarchical -- but it seems difficult, because every man wants a hierarchy. So the only way is to disperse people, and let them be on their own and work towards their spiritual growth. In the beginning it may look hard, but in the end it is immensely beautiful because then you become part of a non-hierarchical cosmos. In a hierarchy you will remain always bounded by human crowds; you will never get out of them. You will not be part with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains, with the stars -- because they don't understand the language of hierarchy. So once you have passed the initial shock, things become very simple -- more simple than they ever were in a hierarchical system -- because it is not only responsibility that is coming to you, freedom is also coming to you. Just to think of yourself as totally free and totally responsible for each act -- there is no judgment, no court, no God, no boss over you -- makes such an immense space available in which to grow. And then sooner or later you will realize that you are becoming part of a non-hierarchical existence, because existence understands freedom, it understands responsibility, but it has no way to understand hierarchy. A loose network is perfectly good, just to inform each other: if some help is needed somewhere, it can be given -- but the network should be very loose. It will not make you a crowd. Individuals will have space enough. And there is nobody who is a pope or an Ayatollah Khomeini or a shankaracharya. Each point in the network is independent. If he is in the network, it is his choice, his responsibility. If he wants to get out of the network, there is no barrier and there is no guilt. Capra's understanding is perfectly right. Question 2 BELOVED OSHO, GURDJIEFF SAID THAT A MASTER HAS THREE KINDS OF DISCIPLES: THOSE WHO ARE HELPFUL TO THEMSELVES, THOSE WHO ARE HELPFUL TO HIM AS THE MASTER, AND THOSE WHO ARE HELPFUL TO THE GROUP. IDEALLY, THE DISCIPLE WOULD FLOWER IN ALL THREE DIRECTIONS. OSHO, WHAT KIND OF DISCIPLES DO YOU HAVE? I don't have any kind of disciples. It is perfectly good for Gurdjieff because his method requires a dictatorial master who knows -- and the disciples, who know not. And then he divides disciples in three groups: one who help themselves; one who help themselves and help the master; and the third who help the group. In a school method that division is necessary; all those kinds of disciples are necessary. The master is alone, the group is big, so all developed group members in a certain way become part of the master. So those who are developed start helping the master in his work; he cannot work alone. But still there are disciples who cannot see beyond themselves; they help only themselves. And the third is the group who helps the group because the master needs the group to be together in a solid unity, with no factions. In a way it is some kind of spiritual fascism. But I don't have any disciples. I have only friends. I don't need anybody's help. If they give, it is their joy. It is not my need; it is their gratitude. I want simply to give indications of the path, and each one has to follow the path. And the path is not something ready-made and available. That is the most important thing to be understood. The path is created as you walk: just by your walking a footpath is created, but there is no footpath ahead of you. The master's function in my work is just to be loving, helpful, compassionate in times when you are discouraged and you need fresh inspiration, in moments when you feel lost and you need a reaffirmation, in moments where trust is shaken and you need to be again given roots. The master is simply like a gardener. His joy is to see all his plants come to flowering. There is no question of certain people helping the group -- not as a category. There may be a few people who will help the group because they love the master, they love the work, and they would like the work to spread. But I will not categorize them; on the contrary, I will say that each sannyasin functions in all these three ways at different times as the need arises. Sometimes he is working on himself, which is his basic work. Sometimes he is helping the master, out of gratitude; sometimes he is helping the group, out of love -- because they are fellow travelers. But these are not three categories of people, fixed. These are three qualities in every disciple, as far as my work is concerned. It is not dictatorial. You are with me because you love me. People were with Gurdjieff, not because they loved him -- most of them hated him from their very guts -- they were with him because they knew that this was the only man who could help them to grow. Their basic motive was their own growth. The people who are around me may have come, in the beginning, with the motivation of their own growth; soon that motivation drops away. Then they are with me because they love me -- and in love growth happens so quietly, so silently, without making any noise. It does not need any motivation. My work and Gurdjieff's work are totally different. I have immense respect for Gurdjieff -- he did much work to introduce Sufi methods to the West, which nobody else had done before. Sufi books were translated -- but books cannot help. It needs a living master to give life to those words and methods. And the people who were translating the books had no idea of the work. Their translations were literal, and their translations reflected their minds more than the minds of the Sufis who had written those treatises. For example, Omar Khayyam's RUBAIYAT... Fitzgerald has done a great job in a sense that he made Omar Khayyam world famous. In Persian he is not a first-grade poet; there are many greater poets than Omar Khayyam. He was not basically a poet, he was basically a mathematician. But he was a Sufi master, and he found it easy to express his Sufism in poetry. Of course, in mathematics it cannot be expressed. And this is not only so with Omar Khayyam; many mystics have found that poetry comes very close to expressing what they want to express. But their poetry is only a means -- they are not poets. For a poet, poetry is not a means but the end; and that is a great difference. They use the poetic formulation to express their ideas, which are more difficult to express in prose. But Fitzgerald absolutely misunderstood him: he took him literally. If Omar Khayyam talks about wine and women, Fitzgerald took it literally. And in a way, he misrepresented Omar Khayyam, but he helped thousands of people to enjoy the beautiful poetry. Fitzgerald is a poet, so he managed the original Omar Khayyam in a better, more poetic way. Reading the original you are not impressed by the poetry, it is negligible. It is just a substitute for prose -- a little better than prose, but not the heights of poetry. That was not the purpose at all. But Fitzgerald, out of misunderstanding, has created great poetry. He was a great poet himself. And then the misunderstanding of the Sufi symbols created a strange phenomenon. The saki -- the woman who pours the wine into your cup -- is God in Sufi language. And the wine that is poured is spiritual experience -- it is intoxicating; hence it has a similarity to wine. These poets have never conceived of God as man -- always as a beautiful woman; and their whole approach is to be lovers of that woman. When you think of God as father, things become more flat -- and what kind of relationship can you have with a father? In millions of houses the sons and fathers don't see eye to eye. They don't talk to each other unless it becomes absolutely urgent. The father is always afraid that if he says something, the son is going to argue against it. The father is aware of the gap -- he knows the son will not understand what he is saying; it is better to keep quiet. And the son is also aware that the communication is broken. So only when he needs money or something that the father can give him, does he come to the father; otherwise they avoid each other. They try not to come in contact in the house. When the father is out, the son will come in; when the father comes in, the son will escape. It is better, because otherwise there is an ugly argument which leaves a very sour taste behind. There is a book by Turgenev, FATHERS AND SONS, which is all about this whole generation gap that nobody understands. Fathers have their own world, sons have their own world. To call God "the father" does not ring a bell in your heart. That's why Sufis are absolutely against calling God a father. They are less against calling God a mother, because between the mother and the son there is still no generation gap, there is some understanding. The understanding has some psychological reasons: the son always wanted to be a lover to his own mother. And that can show you why he feels so against the father. From the very childhood the father has been taking his beloved -- the mother -- from him. The father is the enemy. All the societies all over the world enforce a certain respect towards the father. Remember, whenever a society insists that you should be respectful to your father, that means there is a fear that if it is not insisted upon, there is going to be disrespect; otherwise there is no question of insisting. If it is a natural phenomenon, then why so much insistence that you should respect the father, you should obey the father -- otherwise you are falling from your duty and obligations? Perhaps from the very beginning, people became aware that there is competition between the son and the father, that there is competition between the daughter and the mother. But the Sufis are not satisfied with calling God a mother either -- although it is better than father -- because they know that you cannot be a lover to a mother. You can love your mother but you cannot be a lover. And slowly, slowly it becomes formal; you have to love her because she is your mother. If she was not your mother you may not have even taken note of her. Their choice seems to be perfect -- that God is your beloved, and you have fallen in love with the beloved. But their symbols were not understood by Fitzgerald at all. He never enquired of the Sufis, "What do you mean?" He simply knew Persian as a language, and he was a poet in his own right. And when he came across Omar Khayyam, he was thrilled. Fitzgerald's translation is far more poetic than the original. You can't hope for mathematicians to be poets. So it is a very strange situation: it is all wrong, because he is taking it literally, that it is a man/woman love affair; it becomes something human. But he raises it to the most beautiful poetic expression. The original is symbolic, and he takes symbols as realities. So many books have been translated -- Hafiz has been translated, Omar Khayyam has been translated -- but nothing has helped as far as spiritual growth is concerned. Gurdjieff is the first man who, as a master, brings Sufi methods. But Sufism has come out of Mohammedanism -- it is an offshoot -- and Mohammedanism is a very dictatorial religion. Sufism has changed all the symbols, but some shadow of Mohammedanism continues to hang over it. So Gurdjieff's school is more or less a dictatorial school. On small things he was dictatorial. Every evening disciples would gather. He was a great cook, and he used to collect from the whole of the East different kinds of food, spices, which those people had never tasted in their lives. He himself would cook, and then he would start feeding the disciples -- every evening. He would force them to eat more and more; and you could not refuse, because it was not just a dinner, it was a school work. He changed everything into work. If he was saying, "Eat more," then there must be something to it. Unless people started vomiting, he would go on forcing them. And there is some basic idea that if you want a man to be truthful, stretch him to the very extreme -- either fasting or feasting. Many religions have used fasting; he used feasting. It is the same: it stretches one to the very extreme. The fasting man, when he comes almost close to death, suddenly realizes a few things which he had never realized. And when a man goes on eating and is so full that he cannot contain the food, and starts vomiting, he realizes for the first time something which he had never known. It is known only at the extreme. And after the food there would be wine, and again the same enforced order: "Drink as much as you can." Gurdjieff would go on filling people's cups: "Go on drinking!" And people would be saying, "This is too much; we are losing consciousness" -- but he wouldn't listen. By the middle of the night almost all the disciples were flat on the ground, saying things, uttering words, shouting, screaming. Very educated people -- professors, doctors, artists -- behaving in such a crude, animalistic way, you could not believe it. And Gurdjieff would be sitting and watching each one. From those moments he would get a clue as to what this man needed. It was simpler than Freud's method of years of psychoanalysis. This was far simpler -- because a master cannot work that way, that for years one student goes on, every day, taking up one hour, telling his stupid dreams while the master listens. And then he figures out, after years of listening, what is hiding in the man's unconscious. Gurdjieff's method was so simple: just let a person drink and come to a point where he loses all consciousness, and the unconscious starts speaking. In a single session he was able to derive conclusions which Freud was not able to in ten years -- because the unconscious immediately takes over. And Gurdjieff would provoke people to talk in that state. That was his basic understanding about the person, and it would be followed up: what kind of technique had to be given, what kind of person the man was. If he was an independent type, like the first kind of disciple, then methods would be given that he could do himself; there would be no need of any help from somebody. He could not work in a group -- he was too individualistic. Then there were people, Gurdjieff found, who were absolutely incapable of working on their own, they needed a group -- only in a group could they function. And he found people who could be a great help to the groups, or people who could be a great help to him. All the sorting was done out of their unconscious statements. If the statements were absolutely indicative that the person already had a developed consciousness, he could be a help to the master. He could go on growing himself, but he was far higher than others -- he could be a help. And the master cannot work on so many people. Gurdjieff had schools in England, in America, in France, in Constantinople, and underground disciples in Russia. So he needed people to be sent, but these people needed to be on a higher level. Of course they would not be the same as the master, but they would be better than the other disciples. They would be at least capable of helping them a few steps; then the master could take over. There were people who showed tremendous compassion in their unconsciousness. These were the people who could help the group. If they did not help anybody, they would suffer; their compassion would remain repressed. Compassion needs a certain expression. And there were people who were utterly independent. Even in their unconscious their statements were absolutely of their own. Each statement had their own signature. Even in unconsciousness they could not forget who they were. Now, these people did not need a group, they needed individual methods. So Gurdjieff had all kinds of methods -- what to give and to whom. And the ways he used to find... psychologists should be ashamed. There is no need to waste somebody's ten years and your ten years digging a whole mountain, just to find a small rat. Meaningless... it can be found in one night, it comes out itself. And everybody, in unconsciousness, behaves differently, so these three categories are found through the unconscious. But my work is a totally different. In the first place, it is not the work of a school. In the second place, it is not dictatorial. Work has to be dictatorial if you cannot explain it to people; and there is something in which Gurdjieff is handicapped -- he is not articulate. He cannot say exactly what he wants to say. He would write something, and then the disciples would read it -- and he would watch the disciples to see whether they were understanding or not understanding. Then he would write it again. One book would take almost twenty years to be written. Gurdjieff was not certain that he had been able to say what he wanted to say, because he had been brought up in Sufi schools where no teaching as such is available -- only methods. You simply do the method and you will get it; there is no need to talk about it. So he was absolutely handicapped as far as explanations were concerned. He could not explain anything that he was doing, or for what reason he was doing it. He was doing the right things, but he could not prove that they were right. Gurdjieff was not a philosopher, he was not a rationalist, not a logician. That's why P.D. Ouspensky -- who was a mathematician, a philosopher, a logician -- became his best spokesman. Even though he went against Gurdjieff, his books are the best introduction to Gurdjieff because he is articulate. Ouspensky did not know what Gurdjieff was saying, but once Gurdjieff gave him an indication of what had to be said, then Ouspensky could figure out the best way to say it. As far as I know, in this century Ouspensky was the most articulate man. His every sentence is so pregnant, so full of meaning and so clear; being a mathematician he could not be unclear. He does not write in paragraphs, he simply writes in single lines, because each line has such an independence and is so complete in itself that it does not need to be explained in a paragraph. He is one of the best writers the world has ever known, although after writing these books -- A NEW MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE, IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS, and THE FOURTH WAY, all of which are devoted to George Gurdjieff -- he disconnected himself from Gurdjieff. And one can see what happened. After THE FOURTH WAY, Ouspensky could not write anything significant. He wrote one book, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FUTURE MAN, but it is ordinary, no comparison with IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS, and THE FOURTH WAY -- they are giants. What happened to him? Those ideas were not his. He was only articulate, intelligent enough to put them forth in the right order; but those ideas were coming from Gurdjieff -- and he was absolutely inarticulate. You read a hundred pages and you may come across one sentence that seems to be meaningful. Perhaps he wanted to write just that one sentence, but he had to go round and round to find the right words for it. Nobody reads Gurdjieff's books, for the simple reason that it is such a torture to read them. You have to read a hundred pages of sheer nonsense and then you may find it, or you may miss because of your anger. You may find it if you are calm and quiet and patient. Gurdjieff has written books -- one-thousand-page books -- but such patience is needed. So even today Gurdjieff can only be understood through Ouspensky. But he was a great explorer of methods, and he knew most of the secrets of the Sufis. He learned those methods, and he could teach those methods. But he could not explain those methods, exactly what they did and why they did it. My situation is totally different. Whatever I say to you, I know exactly why I am saying it, what it can do to you. what its basic purpose is, and the essential change that it can bring to your life. I don't need any interpretation. I don't need any P.D. Ouspensky. I don't need any help, because whatever I am saying I have not learned from anybody. I have evolved it with myself through lives, so I know every nook and corner of it. I have not suddenly got hold of it. I am absolutely aware of how it begins and where it leads and what the pitfalls are. And I can make you aware. And everybody can work individually; there is no need... because I have worked individually. I have never taken anybody's help, I have never accepted disciplehood from anybody. I simply moved on my own, knowing perfectly well it might take a long time, it might take a long journey; perhaps I might be moving in the wrong direction and I may never arrive. But something in me never wanted to follow anybody -- I wanted to discover it myself. Only then would I be contented that I had come to the truth. So because it has been my own individual growth, whatever I can give to you needs no group; you can work individually. That's why it is easy for me to call you my friends, because I am creating in you the same desire -- to move alone, to go alone, to risk, and not to be dependent. Discovering something on your own has an ecstasy of its own, which no follower of Gurdjieff, or anybody else, can have -- there is no adventure, there is no search. My experience is that the adventure and the search does not only bring you to the truth finally; the very adventure and the search create in you a maturity which never comes to a follower. He may come to the truth, but he will come to the truth retarded. He will not come to it as a fully mature person.

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Light on the Path 01-38Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Light on the Path 38 (Read, Listen & Download)

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BELOVED OSHO, WHY DO I ALLOW HABIT TO DOMINATE CONSCIOUSNESS? Almost everybody does it, unless one becomes enlightened. The habit is the easier way to do a thing. The whole mechanism of a habit is that you need not be conscious about it. It has become a mechanical part of you, a part of your robot mind: it does things by itself. You can go on thinking other things, dreaming other dreams, and the habit takes every action to its end -- with more perfection because a habit is mechanical, and machines don't commit mistakes. So everybody is dominated by habit. And it is one of the most important things, to get out of this domination. It is moving from mechanicalness to consciousness. In the beginning it is very arduous. You are doing one thing, and at the same time you have to remain conscious -- so you are divided. Because of your division, your action may not be as perfect as when the habit does it alone; it simply knows how to do it. For example, if you learn bicycling, in the beginning it is very difficult, for the simple reason that you are too conscious, and there are many things to be conscious of. You have to take care of the handles, where they are moving, the direction. You have to take care of your legs, whether they are working on the pedals. You have to take care whether there are people on the road, cars or trucks. There are so many things to take care of, and you don't have any habit. So, many times you will fall down, but as it becomes more and more habitual... it is called the transfer from consciousness to the mechanical part of your being. It is being done every day: the conscious mind learns a thing and then delivers it to the mechanical mind; then the conscious mind is free again, and the mechanical mind goes on doing all the things. This is a natural way to make things simple, but as far as your growth of consciousness is concerned, it is against you. It is efficient, in tune with nature, but not in tune with a higher nature -- that is the cosmos, the conscious cosmos, where every action has to be conscious. So try anything that has become mechanical: do it consciously. You will have difficulties because the result may not be so good. Don't be worried about the result -- your concern is that whatever is done, is done with alertness. The action will take a longer time, but it will be more graceful. Work first on one habit until you have changed the habit back to the conscious mind; and then there is a tremendous joy. Then work on another habit. Once you have started working on different habits, after working on a few habits, it will become easier and easier to change them back to the conscious mind, from where they have all originated. Once a man's whole life becomes conscious, there is nothing more to be achieved. There is no repentance possible because whatever he has done, he has done fully consciously. There is no question of looking back. Memories are part of the mechanical mind. The mechanical mind accumulates memories the same way the computer accumulates memories, because the computer will have to do those same things again and again; it has to accumulate memories. As all the habits are transferred back to consciousness, you will be suddenly freed from the past; there is no question of carrying any memories. If you want, you can remember something consciously, but memories cannot float in your mind on their own, without your permission -- or even against you. And this is the intricate relationship: the past memories create the future. No one knows anything about the future; everybody knows about the past. In the past you have experienced things; you would like to experience them even better in the future. That's how you create the future and future desire. The more the past is there, the more you have to project into the future -- and between the past and the future you miss all that is real. It is immensely important that you get rid of the bondage of the past. Simultaneously the future also disappears because it was only a projection of past memories -- and you are left only with the present. Consciousness is always of the present. And because you are not in the present, you have to delegate actions to your robot. And mind is a robot. People go on doing things, and doing perfectly well, and that makes them feel as if everything is going right. But every machine does it. It is better to commit a few errors, a few mistakes, but be conscious. Humanity begins when you are finished with habits. Even if you have done the same thing many times, you always do it as if it is something new, with the excitement of the new, with the adventure of the new. And the excitement and the adventure fills each of your moments with tremendous blissfulness. Start from a small habit. There is a Zen story of a master who had a small boy attendant. The master had a continuous way... while speaking there would be moments when he would become silent and point his finger. It was always the old message: the finger is pointing to the moon. Whenever he came to a point where words could not do anything, he would be silent, just pointing his finger. He would not even say, "The finger is pointing to the moon" -- he would just make the gesture. It had become a joke amongst the disciples, not understanding what he was doing. The disciples, discussing in the restaurant or other places, sometimes would stop somebody and point a finger, and they would all laugh about it. The boy attendant was always there -- he had also become accustomed to the finger. He used to stand behind the master in case he needed him, and sometimes he would play a joke on the master. When people were listening to the master very seriously, from behind, the boy would just point his finger up -- and everybody would start laughing. The master was puzzled, "I have not said anything that makes you laugh -- what is the matter?" Finally, looking at their eyes, he found that it was the boy who was doing all the tricks; at any time he could do it. The next day the master appeared with a knife, and as the boy pointed his finger, he called him, "Come before me and do it!" Because the master was ordering, the boy raised his finger -- and the master cut it off with the knife and then said, "Now do it again!" The people were shocked, the disciples were shocked: this was too much! The boy had lost a finger -- blood was coming out -- and the master was asking him, "Do it again!" And in that moment of intense pain the boy's mind had already stopped working; he had never expected that this will happen. Whenever something absolutely unexpected happens, the mind simply has no way to function; it is not prepared for it. But in his silence, the boy could see that he had been foolish, and he could understand for the first time that it is not the finger that matters -- it can be cut off -- what matters is the moon. The boy, it is said, became enlightened in that very moment, fell to the feet of the master and thanked him. Many disciples could not understand it at all. First, cutting off the finger looked too violent, too inhuman. Secondly, the boy falling at his feet and saying, "I am grateful. I was not expecting... I was not here for enlightenment either, I was just a servant, but you have done a miracle. My whole being is silent. The pain is there, but I am only a witness." Start with very small habits; just don't do them habitually. Don't take complicated habits. And when you are working on small habits, change to something about which the mind is not programmed; then the mind cannot continue the habit. Do it in some other way for which the mind is not prepared. You will have to be conscious to do it. Everything can be done in many different ways. For example, you have always been writing with the right hand; try to write with the left hand. You will be immensely conscious because you have never done it, and the mind has no idea of how to do it. And the left hand is joined with a different side of the mind, which is not aware. It is not in communication with the side of the mind with which the right hand is connected, so there is no question of communication. You just write with the left hand. You will have to be conscious -- there is no other way to do it. And you will be surprised: the handwriting is different, writing is difficult; you make spelling mistakes.... Strange, because you have never made spelling mistakes before. The writing is not beautiful -- you are writing like a child who starts from scratch. This will give you a chance to be conscious about writing. And this time don't give it to the robot -- you write everything consciously, slowly, gracefully. And when you have succeeded in doing it, then move to the right hand; with the same consciousness start writing. And this way it can be done. About every habit you can find some way in which you have never done it before. It will increase your intensity, increase your consciousness and diminish the mechanical part. Finally the robot will end -- and freedom from the robot mind is freedom to grow. Machines cannot grow: Only consciousness can expand and grow. In Zen they have been giving koans to their disciples. That is just to break their habits. Those koans are absurd. "The sound of one hand clapping" -- it is simply absurd, illogical; it doesn't happen. But why have they been insistent on it? -- because the mechanical mind is absolutely incapable of conceiving it; it becomes dumb and gives a chance for consciousness to arise. If it was two hands making a sound, the mechanical mind would be perfectly capable: it has done it, it knows the way. The whole purpose of the koan is to take your freedom back from mechanical habit. So, strange kinds of koans have been developed. And that's why I say that Zen has reached perhaps to the most refined point of religiousness. Their methodology, their work, is no longer theological; it is absolutely grounded in your psychology and its transformation. So choose any habit and start; and then go on changing habits and releasing your consciousness from that involvement. For a few days you will have a little haphazard, confused state of mind. But that is only in the transition period when lifelong habits are going to be destroyed, and whatever consciousness has become implicated with them is going to be released. But it is tremendously worthwhile. Habit is easy -- consciousness is difficult, but only in the beginning. Once all habits are gone, consciousness is far easier and far more enjoyable. You start doing things -- each thing that you do becomes some new venture. In the world of habits it is all repetition. In the world of consciousness there is no repetition. Question 2 BELOVED OSHO, YOU SAID THE OTHER DAY THAT EVERY DISCIPLE WANTS HIS MASTER TO BE THE BEST MASTER IN THE WORLD, SO HE CAN BE THE BEST DISCIPLE IN THE WORLD. BUT YOU ARE THE BEST MASTER IN THE WORLD -- WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? You cannot do anything about it -- nor can I do anything about it! Question 3 BELOVED OSHO, WHEN I'M NOT NEAR YOU PHYSICALLY, MUSIC SEEMS TO BE THE EASIEST WAY TO FEEL YOUR LOVE. SOMETIMES, LISTENING TO CLASSICAL MUSIC, IT TOUCHES ME SO DEEPLY THAT THERE COMES A MOMENT WHEN I FEEL I CANNOT TAKE IN MORE JOY. SUDDENLY I REMEMBER YOU, AND ALL THE EXCITEMENT FALLS INTO A GREATER DEPTH, MORE CALM, SILENT, SOOTHING. NOW THERE IS NO MORE BOUNDARY TO JOY... AND SO MUCH GRATITUDE. PLEASE COMMENT. The first thing to understand is that music is a by-product of meditation. The first musicians, the pioneers, were really not trying to create music; they were trying to find some way to convey the silence, the beauty, the calmness, the soothingness that they had felt in meditation. They have worked in many ways; in fact all the arts have their origin in meditation, but music comes the closest, because music is nothing but a play between sound and silence. To the ordinary musician the sound is important. To the master musician the silence is important: he uses sound only to create silence. He raises sound to a high pitch and then drops it so suddenly that you fall into a deep silence. In the East the classical music is absolutely devoted to meditation. It has not forgotten its origin. But the origin must have been thousands of years back. There is no written record about it, so whatever I am saying is according to my inner experience. I have felt it, that I use language also in the same way... words to create moments of wordlessness. Basically it is the same technique. So it is possible: listening to music you may remember me. You may feel close to me, although I am not a musician. There is no superficial connection between me and music, but there is something deeply connected. The musician is using notes of music to create periods of silence. I am using words to create gaps. Those gaps are more real, closer to my experience than the words. But it is difficult for people to understand the gaps -- they can understand only words. So I have to trick them into the gaps. They come to listen to the words, but slowly, slowly they start slipping into the gaps. And finally they will find that they have been tricked: the words were irrelevant. What was really relevant was the gap between two words. It has been a problem with the television people, because they have a limited time -- ten minutes, fifteen minutes at the most. And they have been asking me, "You speak so slowly, and you give so many gaps, that our fifteen minutes are just equal to five minutes. You speak only five minutes, and ten minutes is going into the gaps. Can't you speak more usually and not give so many gaps?" And I had to tell them, "It is impossible, because my message is in the gaps. Words I can leave, and be silent; but gaps I cannot leave. Then there is no point in saying anything. What I am saying is those gaps; what you are listening to are the words." So because I am using the same technique... not being a musician, I cannot play any instrument; there has not been time for me to learn to play any instrument. I have been involved so much with consciousness that whatever time was available to me, I have given to consciousness. So I am the most unskilled person. I cannot sculpt, I cannot write poetry, I cannot play music -- all that I can do is in some way create the same technique through words. And that's why listening to music -- particularly classical music -- you may feel closer to me. You may feel very close. It does not matter what technique is used; the basis is the same. All the arts have their origin in meditation, and all the arts have moved far away from meditation -- and this is a calamity. Otherwise every artist, whatever his special art, should find a way towards meditation. But it doesn't seem so. On the contrary, most of the modern artists, musicians, dancers, poets, painters, sculptors, rather than reaching to meditation, end up in madness -- that is the other extreme of meditation. And the reason is because in the original sources the gaps were important, not the words. But as time passed words became more important than the gaps. If you are going to print a book exactly the way I speak, it will become too lengthy and people will not be able to understand -- what is the matter, why so many gaps? So in printing you will have to bring the words closer and drop the gaps. The same happened in music, the same happened in dancing. The dancer was trying to express his inner experience. He would go into a certain movement and then there would be a sudden stop, and he would become just like a statue. And that was the moment to understand. Gurdjieff had a group of disciples prepared for such a kind of dancing. He was giving a demonstration in New York. The people were in a frenzy, dancing, and Gurdjieff was standing by the side of the stage. Then suddenly he would say, "Stop!" And all the dancers would freeze immediately. The frenzy, the movement was all gone: utter silence, not only in the dancers but in the audience too. And that was the message. At one point he brought all the dancers very close to the edge of the stage, and then he said, "Stop!" Now, stopping there meant falling from the stage. But no matter what, that was their training: they fell like statues, and those who were present could not believe what atmosphere it created. Their minds stopped working. Two dozen dancers simply falling as if they have become dead! No movement was allowed. As they are, they have to freeze exactly; then whatever happens -- whether they fall or not, even when they have fallen and the position is uncomfortable -- they are not to change it. They have to remain just the way they are. And the people who were present reported that they had never seen such an immense impact on the audience -- not of the dance, but of the stoppings. And again Gurdjieff would say, "Begin!" And the whole frenzy would come back -- all the music and all the dancing. But he was trying to give to the people -- through dancing -- an experience of the gaps. As far as I am concerned, it is absolutely on the right track that you are moving. You have found a way of being close to me. Whenever you are silent, you are close to me. Whenever your mind begins chattering, you start going away. But modern music has fallen from grace because it has forgotten its basic purpose. It has forgotten its origin. It does not know that it has anything to do with meditation. And the same is true about other arts. They have all become non-meditative, and they are all leading people to madness. The artist himself is creating a danger for himself and is also creating a danger for those who will be his audience. He may be a painter, but his painting is crazy; it has not come out of meditativeness. You can see the modern sculpture -- it has lost all connections with its origin. The same is true about poetry. It is almost prose, it is no longer poetry. The difference between prose and poetry is becoming less and less. The difference was this: that prose was for mundane affairs, it had not come out of meditation. But poetry was not for mundane affairs. In poetry there are jumps from one line to another, from one paragraph to another. In poetry nothing is said, but something is conveyed. You can only have a feel of it, you cannot get hold of it. The best poetry is almost uninterpretable. One of the poems of Coleridge was part of some university syllabus. But the teacher could not figure it out, and he felt very embarrassed in front of the students. But he said, "There is nothing to be worried about. I know Coleridge, he is my neighbor. I will go to him tomorrow to ask exactly what he means, because I cannot figure out any meaning in this. It is beautiful poetry, but it has no meaning -- and without meaning what can I explain to you? I enjoy it, you can enjoy it, but there is nothing to be said about it. But then it cannot be in the university syllabus, where everything has to be explainable." The next day he went to Coleridge, and he asked Coleridge, "Can you please explain the meaning of this poetry you have written? I am embarrassed in front of my students because I cannot explain it." Coleridge looked at the poem and said, "Yes, when I wrote it two persons knew what it meant; now, only one knows." The teacher said, "Then certainly you must be the one." He said, "No, I am not the one. When I wrote it I knew what it meant, and God knew what it meant. Now only God knows! You forgive me. I had written it -- it will be better to say that it has been written through me -- but I am not certain what it means. I love it, and once in a while I read it, I sing it, I remember it -- it is one of the best of my poems -- but don't ask about the meaning, because only one knows, and that is God. "If you meet him ask him, because I am also feeling very embarrassed. You are not the first person to come; a few others have also come before with the same question -- and only about this poem." And what he said is very significant: "When I wrote it two persons knew the meaning. Now only one knows, and that is God." And when somebody says, "Only God knows," it means nobody knows. "God" is just a substitute for "nobody." The best painting will give you a glimpse of silence -- just looking at it, it will create some tranquility in you. But that is no longer true about modern painting. If you go on looking at a modern painting you will start feeling crazy, you will start feeling nauseous. It is not a coincidence that a man like Jean Paul Sartre writes a novel called NAUSEA. The whole modern artistic world is suffering from nausea, and they are simply throwing up, vomiting. Their paintings are their vomit, their poems are their vomit. This was not the case with classical art. It was the most beautiful flowering of their beings that the artists offered. It was not nausea, it was fragrance. You could understand it, you could feel it, but you could not make it explainable. You could not hold it in your fist -- it was very slippery. In the East it has been a tradition in all the arts, in philosophy, in religion, that great masters would discuss in the open, publicly, whatever they knew about. Great musicians would play their music in public -- that too was a debate. And it was really a very cultured phenomenon; there were no hard feelings. It was not a question of "me" winning -- defeating the other; the question was of deciding what the truth was. Whoever won or was defeated was irrelevant: truth should always win. So the person who won the debate was accepted by the other with great reverence as his master. It was not enmity; it was gratefulness: "You made me aware that I was moving in a wrong direction." The same was true about musicians. There is a famous story about Tansen. He was the musician in the court of Akbar. Akbar was very interested to have the best from all directions in his court -- the best musician, the best poet, the best philosopher, and so on and so forth. He had chosen Tansen, and Tansen was perhaps one of the greatest musicians the world has ever produced. Akbar had given orders that where Tansen used to live, throughout the whole neighborhood, nobody could play music. It would be a disturbance to Tansen. Anybody playing music there would be put into jail, or he had to accept a challenge and come to the court and face Tansen with his music. So many people came and were defeated; Tansen had certainly something higher to give. But there was a man, Baiju Bawara. His name was Baiju; bawara means mad. People thought he was mad, so his full name became Baiju Bawara. His whole ambition was to come to a point where he could defeat Tansen -- he was a great musician himself. He worked hard for twenty-four hours a day. For the final touches he went to Haridas, the same man who was the teacher of Tansen. Haridas was very happy: "I never thought that another man like Tansen would ever be my disciple. But you have the quality. Just one thing is missing -- you have a desire to defeat somebody, and that is not very musical. That is making your being unmusical. "You have beautiful instruments and you have beautiful art, but your heart is not in the music; it is in defeating somebody. And unless you drop that idea you will never be equal to Tansen. He has no idea to defeat anybody, that's why he goes on winning." It was very difficult for Baiju Bawara to get rid of the desire, because that was the desire through which he had devoted his whole life to music. But if the master said so, then it was better to wait. He forgot all about Tansen, slowly slowly. And once, when Haridas became very old, be became sick; and he had a kind of paralysis of the legs, so he could not go from his small cottage to the nearby Krishna temple. And without seeing Krishna, he would not eat anything. Many physicians tried to treat him. They could not do anything. Baiju Bawara heard about it. He came running from his village, and he played early in the morning, when Haridas used to get up. The music that he played and the song that he sang means: "My eyes are thirsty to see you. Give strength to my legs; otherwise you will be responsible if I cannot see you. Don't leave me." And Baiju Bawara sang with such beauty and played with such greatness that Haridas stood up, went to Krishna's temple where he was playing on the steps, and worshipped Krishna. Coming back, he told Baiju Bawara, "Now you can go and have a competition with Tansen. Now you don't have any desire of competition or winning. And if your music can heal my legs, you have got the master key." But Baiju Bawara said, "What is the point? I have fallen in love with music. I have forgotten all about Tansen. It was a childish desire. And you were right -- I would have been defeated; and you are also right that today I would be victorious. But now there is no desire; I don't want to be a court musician. And the very idea is ugly, it is not part of a musical mind. You were right -- that kind of desire.... "Now music has become my meditation. It is not for competition. It is not to be victorious, to be famous. It is enough unto itself." Haridas said, "Baiju, you are really bawara! You are really mad. Now is the point at which you can win." Baiju never went, but because Haridas himself had said, "This is the point at which you can win," it was absolutely certain that he had gone higher than Tansen. And in refusing to go in for a competition, he showed that now his music was not part of the marketplace, it was something sacred. Now it had become his meditation. If music moves rightly, it will take you to meditation. So your experience is perfectly good. Let it happen more and more. Question 4 BELOVED OSHO, I HAVE BEEN AROUND YOU FOR SO MANY YEARS, AND ESPECIALLY THE LAST FOUR YEARS WERE SO BEAUTIFUL. TEARS OF JOY AND GRATEFULNESS FILL MY EYES. MY EYES SEE NO CHARM IN THE WORLD EXCEPT YOU. THERE WAS ONLY ONE DESIRE -- TO BE PHYSICALLY AROUND YOU -- AND IT IS STILL THERE, EVEN MORE THAN BEFORE. WHY IS IT SO? It is natural; and it will be fulfilled. There is no question about it.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Ken KashiwaharaGood Morning America, ABC– TV, United StatesOsho,First of all, thank you very much for speaking with us tonight.A number of years ago you adopted a vow of silence. Recently, you have decided to speak out to your supporters and then to us here today. Why have you decided to speak out now?I live spontaneously; I never decide anything beforehand, I keep tomorrow open. If I feel like speaking, I speak. If I feel like being silent, then there is no other way than to be silent. And I never ask myself “why,” because no “why” is answerable. All answers are arbitrary. So I simply go on floating with the river, never asking where it is going, why it is going, where it is going to end. And this is my basic approach to life: a total let go.Was there a reason that you decided to adopt the vow of silence in the first place, or was there also no reason?There is never any reason, I don’t live by reason. I simply allow things to happen. I don’t know why I became silent. I don’t know why I started to speak again, but I enjoyed being silent and I’m enjoying being out of silence again. I don’t know about tomorrow. I may be silent, I may be speaking. I may not be here at all.When you went before the Immigration Service for a visa as a religious leader, the comment was made by the officials of the service that, how could you be a religious leader if you didn't speak? Did that have any influence on you at all?No, nothing influences me. Nor do I want anybody to be influenced by me, because the very fact of being influenced is a kind of mental slavery. I keep myself totally free from influences, and I never influence anybody, never try to convert, convince anybody.I am – for the first time – one who can claim to be religious. The whole past and its religions have been pseudo, false. To me religion has a totally different meaning. There is no God, there is no heaven and hell. All those past religions have exploited man with fear of hell and greed for heaven, and all those religions have kept man retarded, dependent on God – a big daddy somewhere above who is taking care of you. This made man irresponsible, this made man unintelligent.My religion is basically centered around consciousness, silence. Silence has its own way of communication. Just as words speak, but can be misunderstood – they are misunderstood – silence also speaks. It can be misunderstood. To understand silence, the other side, the receiving side, should also be silent. Then there is a meeting of the hearts. Something starts falling into tune, harmony, a kind of synchronicity. Nothing is said, nothing is heard, but everything is understood. Lovers know it; just sitting side by side saying nothing, something goes on moving between them.Osho,If you were to explain to someone listening and watching who knows nothing about you or your religion… What is your theology, what is your belief, what do you stand for, what are you trying to achieve?I have no system of belief. I have no catechism like the Christians, and I don’t have any dogmas, principles, theology. If somebody wants to understand me he will have to learn meditation, learn being silent and sit with me, live with me. There is no other way. All those belief systems are nothing but a process of conditioning you.A belief simply means you don’t know, still you believe. My effort here is that you never believe unless you know. When you know there is no question of believing; you know it. I destroy all belief systems and I do not give you any substitute. Hence, it is not easy to understand me.You have no philosophy of life?No philosophy of life. I have life itself. There are people who have philosophies of life, but they don’t have any life.Your philosophy, if there is one, has been expressed in “the three L's,” love, life, laughter. Is that a philosophy of life?No.Could you explain that?It is just a consequence of being silent and in tune with existence: love arises in you, life becomes abundant – laughter too, for no reason, just because this whole existence is so hilarious. This is not philosophy, this is the consequence of being silent.Is it to enjoy life and not worry about tomorrow?There is no tomorrow. If there is a tomorrow, you cannot stop worrying about it. Tomorrow never comes, it is a process of worrying. Nor is there any yesterday. One is no more, one is not yet. All that is in our hands is the present moment, now, here. And this is a miraculous experience. If there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, and this very moment you are silent, all worrying disappears. All imagining, dreaming, projecting disappears.And it is not that you have to enjoy this moment. That rejoicing arises out of this moment. But you are never here, you are always somewhere else. You are never in the now, you are always then. Otherwise, everything is available but you are absent. I want my people to understand a very simple fact – not a philosophy, something existential, not philosophical – be present to this moment and then see what happens.Osho,Let me ask you about something you said a moment ago. You said you didn't believe in controlling people, and have no control. But do you not have either control or tremendous influence over three hundred and fifty thousand of your followers?I don’t have any control. I don’t give these half-million people who love me any discipline. I don’t give them any commandments. I insistently emphasize that they are not my followers, but only fellow travelers. It is up to them to go a few miles with me or not to go. If they join with me, I’m happy; when they depart, I say goodbye.If they look to you, they worship you, would they then not do whatever you tell them?From my side, I am trying that there should be no worship. They should not be influenced by me. But if they worship and if they go on being influenced, they are not understanding me.Osho,Who is the “Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh”? How did you become the “Bhagwan”?The word bhagwan means “the blessed one.” When people started feeling my blessing throbbing in their hearts… When they started feeling that something has happened to me of immense value, which they would like to share; they started calling me “Bhagwan.” I could not deny it because it was a fact, I was the blessed one.How did you know that you were the blessed one?How do I know when I have a headache? I know it.When did you know it?Thirty-two years ago.How did you know it?That question is absurd. When you are sick, you know. How do you know? When you are healthy, you know. How do you know? That “how” is absurd, you simply know it.Was there a vision?No, there is no question of vision. Vision is always objective, of something else. It was an experiencing. Not even an experience, but experiencing. I was full of it. I was it. And since then, not for a single moment have I been otherwise. It was not something that happened and disappeared. It was a transformation. It has remained with me.Did you know as a child, for example, that you would become “the enlightened one”?No. I never knew, not even for a single moment before. But I was searching from my very childhood. I was seeking and trying in every possible way not to be influenced by any religion, by any ideology; because if I already have a faith, am already believing, the search stops. The inquirer has to be very alert and aware that no belief enters into his being. He has to remain open and agnostic, knowing perfectly well that he does not know. From that space of not knowing, the search, the seeking, arises. But who can say when it is going to be fulfilled? It is unpredictable.Osho,Do you consider yourself a god?My God! There is no God, so how can I consider myself a god? God is the greatest lie invented by man.Why?Because man feels so helpless, so afraid of death, so burdened with life’s problems. Because he has been raised by a father, by a mother, and those were the beautiful days; no responsibility, no worry, somebody was taking care of him. That psychological childhood is projected into all the religions: God becomes the father. And there are a few religions in which God becomes the mother. It is a simple psychological projection of a child. It has no basis in reality.And whenever you are afraid, whenever you are in trouble, you start seeking help. No help ever comes. Even Jesus on the cross was waiting for the help to come, and finally got disappointed and shouted, “Father, have you forsaken me?” A great doubt must have arisen in him, a great question. Nothing is happening, and he was believing all these years that God would come to save him, his only begotten son. Nobody came. Jesus Christ must have died in utter disillusionment. I don’t have any illusion, I cannot be disillusioned.But he also said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”That was again the same mind. I call Jesus’ mind sick.Why?Because his whole life, whatsoever he was teaching and doing, was just nuts. Only a crackpot can claim to be the only son of God. And then, preaching to people that he is the savior, and whosoever is with him will be saved, and whosoever is not with him will fall into hell – eternal hell, all these things… His behavior: he cursed a fig tree because he and his disciples were hungry and there were no fruits on the fig tree. In fact, it was not the season; it was not the fault of the fig tree, but he cursed the fig tree.I cannot conceive of this man as sane. And this prayer to God, “Forgive these people because they know not what they are doing,” is again out of that same arrogant, egoistic idea. I don’t think that it is out of compassion. It is the emphasis of Christians for centuries that out of compassion he prayed even for his enemies. But let me repeat his sentence, “Forgive these people because they know not what they are doing.” In fact, it was not an act of compassion; he was still condemning the people that they knew not, and he knew.But haven't there been some teachings handed down from Jesus which form the basis of much that is good in civilization today?Nothing. Not a single thing has come out of Jesus which has helped humanity in any way. All those teachings have proved not blessings, but curses. They are beautiful words and because they have been repeated so often, you have – and everybody has – forgotten the implications of them.He says, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” It looks beautiful, but basically it is ugly. It is a consolation to the poor. It is an exploitation of the poor. It is giving false hope to the poor, and the ultimate result is that the world has remained poor.Who would not like to inherit the kingdom of God? Jesus says that even a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot enter through the gates of heaven. Now this man is responsible for all the poverty in the world. He is condemning richness, he is condemning the creativity which can make the world rich.I am all for richness in all dimensions, and I cannot say, “Blessed are the poor.” That is just what Karl Marx said: the opium of the people. It is possible to use beautiful words, but if you go into the implications… What are the Christians doing today and what have they done for two thousand years? They will open orphanages, they are against birth control, they are against abortion.Some of them.Those who are not will soon be expelled. They are being expelled. And those who are… For example the pope himself is against abortion, against birth control. He is against the greatest revolution in humanity – the pill. Population goes on growing, poverty goes on growing, and who is responsible for it? I think these people are criminals.The pope?The pope. He should be behind bars.Why?Teaching such stupid things to humanity: go on producing children, they are gifts of God. He is responsible for Ethiopia, he is responsible for poor India. Anywhere poverty happens, these people are responsible. On the one hand, they go on increasing the population, which is already too much, in the name of God. But the real thing is that they can convert only the poor to Christianity. I have never seen a single rich man being converted to Christianity in India; beggars, orphans, prostitutes – these people get converted.Is there any part of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, any of the established religions that you think are good?Nothing. I want to be completely finished with the whole past, I want it to be erased completely. I want a discontinuity with the past. Only then the new humanity is possible; and a new world, and a new man. So I categorically say everything is wrong. And the proof is there: the whole world is in a mess. These are the people who have given to the world principles, ideologies, systems on how to live. This is the outcome of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Mohammedanism. This is the outcome.Osho,You say the whole world is a mess. What is it that you're trying to create in man, in the world?I’m simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I’m saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you.How?Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes. That’s my method of meditation. It is not a prayer because there is no God to pray to. It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts passing before you. Just witnessing – not interfering, not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say “this is good,” “this is bad,” you have already jumped into the thought process. It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are for a great surprise: you are not the mind, you are the witness, a watcher.This process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion, because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. A moment comes when there is no thought at all. You are, but the mind is utterly empty. That is the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment when for the first time you become unconditioned, sane, a really free human being.Osho,Am I going to… Yes, I am… I got fascinated by it, sorry.Since you came to this country a number of years ago, there have been a lot of things written – alleged – about you and the Rajneeshees. Since this is the first time you're speaking in public, I'd like to get you to set the record straight about some of these things that have been said.For example, it has been written and people have talked about you as a “free sex guru,” believing in promiscuous sex with violent encounter sessions and mind control. True or false?Do you think sex should be charged for? Should it not be free? Should it be paid for?To me, sex is a simple, beautiful, natural phenomenon. If two persons want to share the energy with each other, it is nobody’s business to interfere. And to say “free sex” implies that you want sex also to be a commodity, that it has to be purchased – either from a prostitute for one night or from a wife for the whole life, but it has to be purchased and paid for.Yes, I believe in free sex. I believe that sex is everybody’s birthright to share, to enjoy. It is fun. There is nothing serious about it. The people who have been talking about me as teaching free sex are really pathetic, they are sexually repressed people.I think what they were implying is the image of wild sexual orgies going on.No orgies are going on. And if people should want an orgy, it is nobody’s business. If a few people want group sex, what is harmful in it? If two persons can enjoy, why cannot ten persons enjoy together? Once we think of sex as natural, joyful fun…That’s why I call the pill the greatest revolution since fire was discovered, because the pill has freed sex from all nonsense, seriousness, marriage, legalities. It has made man enjoy sex for the first time as man, and unlike the other animals who are in a biological bondage.No orgies are happening here, but I am not prohibiting them. It is up to the people; if they feel like having an orgy, so far so good. But these people are also conditioned by your society. They also have the idea of relationship: one to one. They also have the monopoly, monogamy, planted in their minds.Is that not good?It is absolutely unnatural. Man is not a monogamous animal at all. He is polygamous and everybody knows it. You may have the most beautiful wife, but that does not mean you don’t get attracted to other women, that once in a while you don’t dream about other women. Somebody may have the best possible husband. That does not make any difference. Man is by nature polygamous. Monogamy is enforced on him.Are you saying that man should follow his polygamous instincts?He should simply follow nature wherever it leads. Polygamy is perfectly good. In fact, there is no need for monogamy or polygamy. I’m a little further ahead. I see the relationship of love or sex as an absolutely free phenomenon.Osho,You seem to be saying – and I believe you've suggested before – that people should not have any so called “Western hang-ups” about sex. Recently you predicted that AIDS will kill two-thirds of the world's population, and you told your followers to engage in celibacy or have sex with one partner. Why?AIDS is a totally new phenomenon, and the old religions are again responsible for it.Responsible for AIDS?For AIDS.Why?They are responsible for everything that is wrong. Homosexuality and all kinds of perversions were created by religious people, by teaching celibacy. Now to force men or women to remain celibate is taking them against their biology, chemistry, physiology – their whole nature. It is impossible for them. They will find some way, and it will be perverted.Nuns were kept in one monastery, monks were kept in another monastery. There are monasteries still where no woman has ever entered. Now these monks are the original homosexuals. These nuns are the pioneers of lesbianism. All kinds of perverted things have brought AIDS as the ultimate result.I’m not telling my people to be celibate because celibacy has any spirituality. I’m telling them: if you can be celibate without any repression – just out of sheer understanding – you are not going to be rewarded in heaven for it, you will just be careful about your health. That is enough reward. But if you feel that celibacy is difficult for you, then use all possible methods to protect, to prevent AIDS, it is going to kill the larger part of humanity.Why do you believe that?Because it is spreading so fast. And it will spread; just one contact with a person who has AIDS is enough, and then those contacts will go on spreading. Just the other day I was looking into it because we are having a festival; fifteen thousand people are going to come here from all over the world. Now it was a problem, many people could bring AIDS and destroy the whole commune.We tried to find out: two sannyasins had it confirmed, and we asked them how many other contacts they had. One woman had fifty contacts; those fifty people may be carrying AIDS and may be having other contacts. That’s why I have said to remain with one partner. It is nothing to do with monogamy, it is just pure hygiene, health. I am saying it on medical grounds, there is no religious basis to it.Osho,Let me move on to another subject: again in keeping with some of the things that have been written and said about you and the Rajneeshees, and that is the fear when people see your bodyguards carrying weapons – submachine guns – and rumors that there are large caches of weapons here on the ranch. Is that true? And if so, why are the weapons kept here?I’m not a man like Jesus Christ, I will not carry my cross on my own shoulders. And I’m not suicidal – Jesus must have been suicidal. I love life, my people love life. I’m not afraid of death; I will enjoy death as much as life, but my people don’t want me to leave the body now, and they have every right to protect me. I’m not going to prevent anybody who is going to assassinate me. Why should I prevent my people from protecting me?If the assassin is free, I’m not going to interfere. And the people who love me and want to protect me, I’m not interfering with them either. This is something between those who love me and those who hate me. This is their business, I am simply out of it.Yes, there are guns, but not as according to the rumors. Those rumors are too exaggerated.Large numbers of guns?No, not large numbers.Do you expect to be attacked? Are you afraid of attack?I am not afraid of anything. I have been attacked many times before, I can be attacked at any time. I’m not concerned about it, but my people are concerned. Who am I to prevent them if they love me and want to do something? And I have around me one of the most intelligent groups of people.Jesus had only twelve fools – uneducated, unintelligent, fishermen, carpenters – and he himself was uneducated, uncultured. When he was crucified they all escaped; they were not in love with Jesus, they were hoping that through Jesus they would enter paradise, and enjoy paradise.I give no hope to my people, no promise to my people. They are not going to gain anything as reward.So why should they stay here?They stay here because meditation is its own reward. There is no other reward beyond it.Osho,In fact, recently you seem to be painting a very pessimistic future of the world and mankind, when you warned that a cyclone of destruction both natural and manmade will hit the world, and that the Osho religion will provide a “Noah's ark of consciousness,” allowing your supporters to survive.It is not pessimistic, it is simply factual.Could you explain that? What does that mean?It simply means, that all the centuries that have passed have been bringing this day closer and closer. Religions have been talking about peace – and fighting and killing and murdering, burning people alive. On the one hand they will say God is love, on the other hand they will be burning living people. Christians have been killing, Mohammedans have been killing, Hindus have been killing. It is a strange phenomenon that Buddha was born in India, but in India there are no Buddhists. For twenty-five centuries there have been no Buddhists. They had to escape because Hindus were killing them.But what are you saying will happen with this cycle of destruction?We have destroyed the harmony of nature through our unguarded scientific experiments. We have now, in the hands of politicians – who are the most mediocre people in the world – such immense energy to destroy, that they can destroy this whole earth seven hundred times. Now if just one politician goes nuts, that’s enough – and they are all nuts… So I am not painting a pessimistic picture of the future. I am not a pessimist, neither am I an optimist; I am simply a realist.Osho,A moment ago you said that you were not pessimistic; yet, if I may read another quote wherein you said, “This world is not worth saving. Once in a while I think it will be better if the Third World War happens and destroys this whole stupid humanity.” Isn't that pessimistic, very gloomy?This is optimistic!Why?Because if something has gotten so rotten, it is better to be finished with it.You think the world should be destroyed?The world has become almost a madhouse. If we cannot change people’s consciousness, if we cannot destroy the boundaries between nations, the boundaries between colors, and the boundaries between religions – if that is not going to happen…I am trying on my own whatsoever I can; but one cannot simply forget reality. The world is divided into nations, into religions, all fighting and trying to kill each other. One cannot forget America and Soviet Russia, ready to destroy the whole world any moment. This is simple realism. As I see it, this humanity, if it is not going to change, is not worth saving.But you, as a religious leader, shouldn't your role be one to enlighten and to help to change…That I am doing.…rather than to say the world should be destroyed?…that is part of my effort, that makes the thing emphatically clear: either change, or the world is going to be destroyed. So your change is absolutely necessary. It is not something that can wait: “Tomorrow we will change.”Osho,Let me go back… I know we're running out of time.When you first got here to Oregon, your supporters said that you wouldn't take over the town of Antelope. Yet now Rajneeshees are in control of the town and the residents there have charged that they were forced out. There have been suggestions that perhaps the Rajneeshees really want to take over the entire state of Oregon. True or false?I want first to make it clear that I am not a Rajneeshee. You should ask Rajneeshees – that is their problem. I am an outsider. I am just a guest here, not even a resident. I am not even living in the City of Rajneeshpuram, but outside the city in a guesthouse. I am not a Rajneeshee, I don’t belong to any organization. Now, whatsoever they are doing, you should ask them.Well, would you want to see them take over the state of Oregon?I would like them to take the whole world! – because I feel that they can manage this world better than anybody else. But I am not interested. I am not a politician, and that is not my concern.Osho,There is a perception that you and your religious following are extremely wealthy. Is it true, where did the money come from?My people are rich. In fact, only the very rich, educated, intelligent, cultured can understand what I am saying. Beggars cannot come to me, poor people cannot come to me; the gap is too big. They can hear me but they cannot understand me. So it is natural: I am the rich man’s guru.Isn't that a contradiction with the traditional perception of a life of austerity led by religious leaders and ascetics?I simply think those traditions just rubbish. There is no question of contradiction; I am simply against them. I don’t want to be consistent with them, I want to drop all connections with the past. They have done enough harm.My conception of a beautiful, flowering being is not that of austerity, it is of luxury. He will enjoy all that is beautiful in the world – great paintings, great music, poetry. I don’t conceive of him standing on his head in the hot sun of Oregon, fasting, slowly destroying himself. To me, all religions of the world up to now have been sadomasochistic. My religion is, for the first time, life-affirming.Osho,One thing I think people on the outside remember about you when they read stories or see you on television is the fact that you own so many, or have so many Rolls Royces. Why is that?How many?Eighty?No.Forty?Ninety. And they are not so many.Why do you need ninety?I don’t need even a single one. And they don’t belong to me, either. But my people want 365, one for every day. And I go for a drive only for one hour. But if my people want it, if they are happy and rejoice doing it, I don’t want to destroy their joy. It is perfectly okay.Couldn't you tell them to give their money for something else, other than for Rolls Royces?All other religions are doing that. Let them do that as their work, let me do my work. All other religions are looking after the poor. At least leave me alone to look after the rich.Osho,There have been fears expressed, as you know, ever since you first got to Oregon, that Rajneeshpuram might turn into another Jonestown.That’s absurd.Are there any similarities between you and Jim Jones?There is only one thing between me and Reverend Jim Jones, and that is of absolute opposition. He was a Christian, and Christians are too cowardly to take the responsibility for whatsoever happened in Jonestown. From Jesus till this Pope the Polack, all are responsible for it, because Christianity is a death-oriented religion. The cross is its symbol.There is nothing in common between me and Reverend Jim Jones, everything is opposite to him.People think the power you have over your followers…I don’t have any power. I don’t have any position. I don’t even know my people by their names.But you see them out there every day as you drive by.I see them, but I don’t even know their names. I don’t relate with them personally, I don’t talk with them personally. What power? I don’t have any power.You can see that they're devoted to you.That is their thing. I am not exploiting their devotion for any power for myself. I could have declared myself the only begotten son of God, then it would have been a power trip. But I say I am simply an ordinary man just like you. And I emphasize it again and again so that my people can understand that if this experience can happen to me, it can happen to them, too. It is nothing special, it is absolutely natural and ordinary.So you see no similarity between Rajneeshpuram and Jonestown?Not at all. But I see every similarity between Jonestown and the whole world.That the whole world will end up like that?They are trying. Seventy-five percent of national incomes is going into making more and more weapons, nuclear weapons. Even poor countries are trying to create nuclear plants. They are all in tune with Reverend Jim Jones. Except Rajneeshpuram, the whole world has a similarity with him. This is the only place absolutely opposed to destruction. We believe in creativity; we don’t believe in the creator, we believe in creativeness.And my people are creative, they have changed the shape of this desert. With all the hindrances from the state, the government, the politicians, the religious people; still, they have changed it into a small, beautiful oasis. If no barriers are created, we can make it one of the most beautiful places in the world.Osho,A number of Oregonians have expressed a concern, however, that you will eventually attract up to one hundred thousand people to live in this city; and that it's simply a matter of time before you call all three hundred and fifty thousand of your supporters to come here to live.I may.You may?Yes.When?Anytime. Tell the Oregonians that their fear is perfectly right; tremble, have nightmares, I can call my followers anytime.And you may do it.But I may not.Some environmentalists say that this land simply can't support that many people, that it would hurt the land if that many people lived here. Are you concerned about that?The people who say these things, have they ever come here? Just four years ago there was no water; we managed two big lakes, small ponds all around – enough water. And we can create more lakes, more water, we can make more land ready to be cultivated. It is only a question of effort, devotion, and the joy of creation. Those people are simply jealous, lazy, lousy, and nothing else. And it is our problem, not their problem. If my people die because there is not enough water, because the land cannot support them, then it is my problem, not their problem. I will not come to them for help.Osho,Why do you feel you engender such hostility on the part of your neighbors and other Oregonians?There are no neighbors. We are alone here, and we want to be alone here.People in nearby towns.We don’t want even to relate.Why do you think there is this hostility?It is not hostility. It is simply that we want to be left alone.No, on the part of some people who live in Oregon, some Oregonians.Now that is their problem, and you have to ask them. We don’t have any hostility toward them. All that we want is to be left alone to do our thing. They are hostile because this land was available here for fifty years, and they could not make anything out of it. And within four years we have made a beautiful place where five thousand people are joyously living, luxuriously and comfortably living. They are simply jealous and hostile because they know we can manage to have one hundred thousand people here. And to them, number is power. To us, there is no question of any power trip.Isn't it really because you're different that they don't understand you? That people dress alike, wear various shades of red, wear beads?There are so many other reasons besides. There was a time when the Christians were treated by the Jews the same way; just to be a Christian was enough to be a criminal.Osho,Why do your people wear various shades of red? Why do the people here wear various shades of red and beads?I want them to be recognized, by me and by other people. I want them to face the world…that they have dropped out of it. I want them to be clearly individual; that they don’t belong to this rotten world around. The day I see that there is no need, they will wear all the colors. It is nothing spiritual, nothing religious; it is simply an identification card put all over the body.Osho,There have been those who have accused you and the people living here of obscuring the line between church and state. Is this a religious city, or is it a city that should, for example, qualify for school aid? What are your views on the separation of church and state?This is not a religious city; the city has its own functions, religion has nothing to do with it. Religion is an individual phenomenon. It has nothing to do with the streets, the houses, the maintenance of the city. Religion is purely individual. The city is taking care of the collectivity of the community. They are two separate dimensions, they don’t overlap, they don’t meet anywhere.But everybody living here believes and follows you.Nobody follows me because I don’t have any followers. If somebody is walking behind me, that does not mean he is a follower. If somebody feels that what I am saying is true and experiences it as true, what does the city have to do with it? The truth of the individuals living in this city is their private experience. The city is for other purposes, mundane. It has nothing to do with religion.What I am saying is true only about Rajneeshpuram, that there is no mixing of state and religion. About the outside world that is not true; everywhere state and religion are mixed. Otherwise, why should the Bible be in the courts for somebody to take an oath? What does it mean? Every Bible should be thrown out of every court; it is mixing it with religion.And do you think the people who are presidents, premiers, governors, are not prejudiced in favor of some religion? Are they capable of discriminating, so that when they are in the office they are no longer Christians? It has not been our experience here.Osho,Let me go back, if I can, a number of years, because there have been some things written about it. Why did you leave India?For health reasons. I never wanted to leave; India may be poor, may have its troubles and problems, but it has a beauty of its own.There were stories at the time that you were forced out. Is that true?That is nonsense; I can go back there, nobody can force me out of anywhere. If Oregonians cannot force me out of Oregon, do you think Indians can force me out of India?Osho,Do you plan to leave Oregon?No, I never plan anything. But I can leave any day, or I may never leave.Do you think the Immigration Service is hoping you will leave the country?They are waiting, perhaps. They can wait… And if I don’t want to leave, I will not leave. I will go on fighting till the end, I will not leave. If I want to leave – even if the whole of America begs me to stay here – I’m not going to stay a single moment. Nobody forced me out of India; in India I was living with my commune, ten thousand sannyasins were living with me. It was my health that was getting worse and worse.Osho,Are you recovered now? Are you better?Not completely. I am feeling better, but it is just on the boundary line; at any moment a small thing, and the trouble can arise.Osho,What does the future hold for you and for Rajneeshees?I never think of the future. We are happy now.Osho,I must tell you that I am not feeling well tonight because I've stopped smoking.I knew. You must be feeling nervous; one hour more, and you will be in a nervous breakdown. Smoking is a difficult thing for people to stop.Osho,Very! It's very bad for you, because of what you were talking of before – it takes over control of you. Never mind for the health reason, but for that reason alone, people shouldn't smoke – says he now!Can you tell me a little bit, just briefly, of your daily routine, what you do here?I am a very lazy man. I call myself the lazy man’s guide to enlightenment; I don’t do anything. In the morning I have started talking again, as I was doing for thirty years. I love it, it is not a lecture, a prepared speech, or anything. People ask questions, and whatsoever spontaneous response happens in me, I tell it to them. And because I am not concerned at all about any consistency, I have made it clear to my people never to say, “Yesterday you said this, and today you are saying this, and these seem to be contradictory.” I always insist whatever I am saying right now is the truth.You've been described as a person of contradictions. Are you?I am. Because life is full of contradictions and I am in tune with life.I am not in tune with Aristotle. Aristotle, I think, is a disease; I call him “Aristotle-itis.” Life is very different, it is not a logical system. Now, modern physics has come across facts which baffle all the scientists, because they contradict Aristotle’s logic and Euclid’s geometry. They have no obligation to perform according to the logic man has created. They just go on their way doing their thing in their own way. I am not a logician, and I have never claimed that I am not a man of contradictions. “I am big enough…” as Walt Whitman once said, “I am big enough to have all the contradictions in me.”And yet, there is a possibility that all those contradictions may become a deep harmony. They may not remain contradictions, they may become complementaries to each other. That’s how it is in existence; that’s how it should be in life.Now, give him his cigarettes![Following is the text of an interview given on the same day by telex]Jo McManuesWestern Mail, AustraliaOsho,Why after all these years have you decided to speak with the press?I am a spontaneous person. I live moment to moment. There is no question of deciding because I am not a doer at all. Things have been happening in my life. I go on witnessing them; I am a watcher on the hills.Osho,Are you planning on coming to Western Australia to visit or to resettle and live here?I never plan anything, so everything is possible.For people who don't understand or accept the Rajneeshees' teachings, what would you say to give them a clear understanding, and is it important to you that non-sannyasins do have an understanding?I have no teaching as such. My function is that of a deprogrammer. I destroy people’s so-called belief systems but I do not give them another substitute program. I want them to be completely free to act on their own.As far as the people who do not understand me are concerned, I do not care a bit. What is happening around me is simply beyond their intelligence and it is not my responsibility.The public has focused strongly on the fact that you have many Rolls Royces and live a luxurious lifestyle. Why do you have so many cars and what do you say to the critics of your lifestyle?I do not say anything to my critics. That is part of my lifestyle – to live undeterred in absolute freedom without thinking of any consequences. I am the poorest and the richest man in the world because nothing belongs to me. As far as the Rolls Royces are concerned you should ask my disciples around the world, because according to them they have managed only ninety Rolls Royces, which is not enough – they are planning for 365 Rolls Royces.I believe that not to live a luxurious life is only for the retarded. To me, the blessed are not the poor but the rich. Religion happens only as a flowering of ultimate luxury. The poor man’s religion is a poor religion. And the whole world of religious leaders, political leaders, social workers – they are all trying to help the poor; nobody is looking at the poor rich men. I am the only one who is caring for them.Rajneeshees I have met have a seemingly inner peace. What would you say is the reason for this?It is not just that my people are seemingly at peace, they are peaceful; and once you are freed from your past and its garbage, you can also be immediately in the world of peace, serenity, and blessedness. It is a natural phenomenon which your culture, society, religion, civilization, educational system all have conspired to destroy – because a peaceful individual cannot be enslaved by the vested interests, neither can he be oppressed and exploited.And remember, the moment you are free of the past you are also free of the future, because the future is nothing but the unlived past projected. These two are the causes of your disturbed neurotic life. Once past and future disappear, there is only this moment, the now and the here – these two words are the only reality. Your gods are bogus, your heaven and hell are religious fiction. My people are finished with all this nonsense, hence they are at tremendous ease, every moment at home. They are not going anywhere because they know that whatever is, is here and now.Osho,Many people in Australia are afraid Rajneeshees will brainwash them and their children. Why are so many people so afraid and how important is it to you that non-sannyasins understand Rajneeshees?They should be afraid because that’s what actually we are going to do. We do complete mindwash; brainwash is nothing compared to it. As far as I am concerned I do not care whether anyone understands me or not. It is his problem not mine. If he understands, he will go through a transformation. If he does not, then I am not going to interfere in his life, which is nothing but hell.Osho,What is the basic philosophy of the Rajneeshee religion? And is it a religion?It is not a philosophy, because philosophy is nothing but intellectual gymnastics. The truth is not to be discovered by argumentation, the only way to know it is to be utterly silent. And the philosopher’s mind is full of junk which prevents him from knowing the truth. The truth is not something outside, it is our innermost being.It is not an ordinary religion either. I call it a religionless religion, to emphasize the fact that I have nothing to do with the past pseudo-religions. It is religionless also because it has no belief system, no catechism, no holy book, no god, no prayer. Its trust is not theological but existential.We love existence, we do not worship any man-invented god. We dance with the wind, but we do not pray in man-made churches. We are utterly contented with the flowers, with the rivers, with the stars…and it is more than one can contain, the beauty of it, the blessedness of it.Osho,Why is it that Rajneeshee communes around the world have no problem to be financially successful?It is simply the result of understanding that life is to be lived in totality, intensely, intelligently, without any fear, without any guilt. Once you are free of guilt, the idea of sin, the fear of hell, the greed for heaven, your intelligence starts functioning at its peak. It will create everything that you need, all the comforts, all the luxuries.I say to my people that a camel may pass through the eye of a needle but a poor man cannot enter into paradise. I stand for all dimensions of luxury. Money is only one dimension; there are also scientific creativity, art, poetry, music, and these are all always available for an authentic courageous man. My communes around the world are proving this simple fact.What do you say to people who criticize you and your followers because you seem to do little or nothing for suffering people in the world?I say to those critics, it is up to you: if you want to serve the suffering people why are you wasting time criticizing me and my people? – just go to Ethiopia.The people who are suffering in the world are suffering because of themselves. They have lived stupidly, they don’t listen to reason. They go on producing children. The poverty in the world is created by these suffering people themselves. We don’t take any responsibility and we don’t have any time or energy to serve idiots. We don’t have enough time to live our own life.The starving nations like Ethiopia or India are still listening to people like the Catholic pope or the Hindu shankaracharya, that birth control is sin, that abortion should be made illegal. Now these are the people who should go and serve the people in Ethiopia or anywhere else. They have to accept the responsibility of it.I am in favor of complete birth control for at least twenty years, so that the population of the world can be reduced to one-fourth. But the great servants of the people will not allow it to happen, because if there are no poor people, no orphans, no starving nations, what will happen to these people like the polack pope, Mother Teresa, et cetera? Just for their glory they need the world to remain in poverty.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Erich Widdeman & Rainer WeberDer Spiegel, Hamburg, GermanyOsho,I don't know what Sheela has told you about the way we like these discussions to go. We do a complete write-up, edit it, and then send the text to you or to your confidants to be reedited. These interviews are not meant to be question and answer, but rather a controversial discussion. For you, it is an opportunity to get rid of prejudices against you and your religion.There will be a couple of questions which have been asked many times before, for which I apologize.No problem. You just ask whatsoever you want, and in whatever way you want. And a question may have been asked thousands of times, but I have not given the same answer again and again and again. My answer has been different a thousand times. So you need not be worried; this is my business. You just ask.That might be one of the reasons you're being judged by the public so controversially, because your answers are not always the same on the same subjects.But I am controversial! It is not a judgment of the public, it is the reality.You say that it is not your answer that changes, it is the reality that changes?Yes. It is reality that changes, and I change with reality. I am certainly controversial. There is nothing wrong about the public thinking me controversial.Is there anything you are really angry about? Any controversial issue?No.You're beyond all this controversy?I just enjoy it.Your followers call you “Bhagwan.” How should people who do not belong to your group address you?They have to address me as Bhagwan.What does Bhagwan mean?The blessed one.What is the difference between the meanings of “the blessed one,” “the enlightened one,” and “the awakened one”?There is no difference.So it's also true that a blessed person is a continuous laughter?That’s true.And also every enlightened person is a continuous laughter?That’s true.Osho,Would you please for our audience give a brief rundown of your biography and your first enlightenment? What happened, and how?I don’t have any biography. And whatsoever is thought to be biography is utterly meaningless. On what date I was born, in what country I was born, does not matter. What matters is what I am now, right here.Osho,Something that matters, for instance, for the American immigration authorities is whether you were adopted by an Indian gentleman who is an American citizen, for instance. Could you elaborate on that?Everything has been explained to them. All the documents have been given to them. Now it is for them to decide. If they decide against me, I am going to fight up to the Supreme Court.That means they have not yet accepted the explanation?For four years those lousy people are just sitting there, doing nothing – no decision this way or that.Osho,I understand that your real estate agents have started purchasing property in the Himalayas. Is that true? Do you plan to move?No, I don’t plan to go anywhere. I am going to be here.Whatever happens?Whatever happens.But you are still buying property in the Himalayas?That is my Indian followers making a commune, just as I have communes all over the world.For their own use?For their own use.OshoThat means whatever happens, you have decided to fight to stay here?I will fight to the very end.Will it be a hard battle?It is going to be.Will it be just a legal battle, or will there be other means involved?I would like it to be legal, but if they force me, everything can be involved.That means even armed resistance?Not from my side.But from the side of your sannyasins?No, not from my sannyasins’ side either, that is my side. But if anybody tries to be violent in any way with us, we are not nonviolent people. We are neither violent nor nonviolent, we are simply human beings.But if violence erupts, you are…We will answer tit for tat.Osho,Okay, that's a very straightforward answer.What do you do all day?Nothing, just nothing.Where do you do nothing?Just sitting in my room, in my chair, enjoying myself.And writing books? Did you write all the books that carry your name?I have never read any of my books.That means you have ghost writers?No, those are my discourses, and my sannyasins edit them. They are published but I have never read them. What is the point? – they are my words.Osho,How come just now somebody has published something called The Osho Bible? That's a big title for a book.Bible simply means “the book.” It is not a big thing.Well, it also has an allusion toward the founder of a religion. Are you about to found a new religion?I am the founder of the only religion. All other founders were all hocus pocus.Why is yours true?Because I find them all – Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Mahavira – you name the person and I will show you why he is not the founder of a religion, but is simply exploiting people’s gullibility.Would you explore that with Jesus?Jesus, in the first place, knows nothing of religion. He never meditated in his life; whatever he was doing was prayer. Prayer means you have already accepted the existence of God, to whom you are praying. Your prayer is based on a belief, and all beliefs are ignorant. Knowing is something else. If you have experienced a headache, then you know it; but if the whole world goes on talking about headaches and you have not experienced it, just for etiquette’s sake you may believe in it. But that belief is ungrounded.And they also take an aspirin.If you believe too much, perhaps you may take an aspirin, then things become worse than before! Jesus’ whole ideology is based on belief.Where I suppose yours, I think……is on experience. I don’t say to my people that you have to believe in anything that I say. I explain my experience, you can try to experience. If you find it right there is no question of believing in it – you know it. If you find it wrong, of course, there is no question of believing it, either.Osho,Apparently your religion does not have a set of dogmas.No.However, are there some sentences which might help us to understand the essence of your religion?No.Well, for example, you teach selfishness.Yes, because it is natural. And I teach to be natural.Yes, lion eats man. So do you teach the survival of the fittest?It happens. It is not a question of my teaching.When you say it happens, you are never concerned with whether these things are good or bad?There is no question of good or bad; there has never been a question of good and bad. The fittest survives, and the fittest writes all the histories and all the judgments. And of course he is right; might is right. And being German, you will understand it better.Well, you maybe understand it as well, as you occasionally have a strong preference for Hitler.I love the man! He was crazy.So are you, you have said.I am more crazy than him.That's why you are a bigger or greater man than him?No, not bigger or greater – just crazier.Osho,Last time when we talked to Sheela, I wanted to have some clarification of a sentence in which you said, “Hitler, in the end, failed because he was only a tool in the hands of higher powers.”Don’t bring in Sheela or anybody. Only I am here; be direct.She said, “Ask this question to Osho,” which I have now done. Could you explain this sentence to us?Ask directly, don’t bring anybody in. Don’t make it unnecessarily complex, ask directly. Why are you afraid of asking the question directly? Are you afraid of people in Germany?Not really.No? Just ask directly.It was only a polite reference to Sheela.Don’t be polite to me, because I will not be polite to you.I was only being polite to Sheela.Sheela is no longer concerned here.Okay. The question is: “Hitler was an instrument in the hands of magical powers. This is why he was victorious only up to a certain point.” What does this mean, and who are these magical powers?Adolf Hitler was very much concerned about astrology. He was not listening to his generals on where to attack, when to attack. Rather he was listening to his astrologer on what was the right time, and what was the right place. The generals were puzzled because astrologers have nothing to do with military science. But for five years continuously he went on winning, simply because the leaders of the opposite nations – Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin – were following the rules of military science, and he was just going according to something which is not part of military science. They could not conceive where he was going to attack. They could not conceive where they should gather their forces. Finally, Churchill had to import astrologers from India to England.Apart from military aspects, how would you judge him morally and politically?Morally, he was as moral as Mahatma Gandhi.As Mahatma Gandhi?Yes, because I consider both absolutely immoral. In fact, he was more a Hindu than Mahatma Gandhi himself.In what respect?In his life, in his way of living.Because he was a vegetarian?He was a vegetarian.But he was not nonviolent, as Mahatma Gandhi was.Mahatma Gandhi was also not nonviolent.Just wait a bit, let me finish with Adolf Hitler. He was a vegetarian, he was an early riser in the morning, and went early back to sleep. He remained a bachelor almost his whole life – he married only three hours before he died. He was not a drunkard, he was not a smoker. He was a puritan in every possible way and he lived a life of discipline, living just as a saint lives in a monastery.You asked me if Gandhi was nonviolent. That was a political strategy – but he was not nonviolent. He declared that after India became independent, armies would be dissolved. But when India became independent and he was asked about armies being dissolved, he remained silent. He was really a cunning man; his secretary said that it was his day of silence.Osho,May I bring your attention back to Adolf Hitler: is it true that you have a certain amount of anti-Semitism in common with Hitler? There was a joke related by Sheela… I don't know whether it's true: you are supposed to have told the joke of a tiger who stuck his nose into the ass of another tiger, and when asked why he did it he said, “I just ate a Jew and I want to get rid of the bad taste.” Is that true? Is the joke properly related?It will be good if you don’t bring Sheela or anybody in between me and you. Be direct.Did you tell this joke? Is that your joke?I cannot remember. For thirty-three years I have been speaking constantly, two hours in the morning, two hours in the evening. Perhaps there is no single individual alive who has spoken as much as I have spoken. So, ask the question!Do you like Jews or don't you like Jews?I love them – what is the question of liking? I have among my sannyasins more Jews than anybody else; almost forty percent of my sannyasins are Jews.From Israel, or American Jews?From America, from Israel, from Europe, from Germany.That means you don't have any national, any racial prejudices?I don’t believe in the very concept of nations, or religions. I don’t draw any line between one human being and another. And if I have told any joke which you think is anti-Jewish, then I have also told jokes which are anti-Hindu, anti-Mohammedan, anti-Christian. In fact, I have been telling jokes which are against me! Jokes are just jokes, they are not a philosophical standpoint.Osho,You said your religion is the first and last religion. So after you there will be no more need for any religion anywhere?Yes.Does that apply to after your death?I say it is the first and last religion for the simple reason that I don’t consider old religions authentic religions. They were pseudo; they pretended to be religions, but they were not religions.Because they were religions for the poor?No, because they were religions of superstition. Not a single religion has been able to prove God’s existence. Not a single religion has been able to give any proof for heaven and hell.That doesn't mean God doesn't exist, if you can't prove that he exists.It does not mean that, it simply means you cannot go on worshipping something for which no evidence exists in the whole history of man.Osho,So, maybe for an outsider it is correct to put the core of your religion into the words: “Find your own ego, find your own self.”No, not your own ego, but your own being. And there is a great difference between the two – not only different, but they are absolutely contrary to each other. The ego is the false idea in you, created by the society: you are a Jew, you are a Mohammedan, you are a Nazi, you are a communist, you belong to this family, this is your holy book, this is your name, you have to remain attached to your tradition, convention.All these things contribute to your ego. Out of a combination of all these your ego is created. Your being is not given to you by the society, church, education, family – nobody. Your being you bring with you when you are born; it is existential.Is this why you have said… And probably have done… Is this why you have said, “I have to destroy all your egos”? – meaning the egos of your followers.Yes.So, the twenty or thirty people sitting right behind me have no ego anymore?You can just look and see.Well, they don't really look like it, but you're still working on it, aren't you? I mean, if this is your aim, your target…Do you, the teacher, notice that somebody's ego has been crushed, disappeared, vanished, or whatever happens?Yes, I immediately recognize it.You sense it?Yes.Does your pupil sense it?[to those sitting there] When did you all realize your egos had been destroyed?My disciples are at several stages of development. Somebody’s ego has completely disappeared, somebody’s ego is just on the boundary to disappear, somebody’s ego is still trying to survive, somebody else is trying not to let it go. So they are at all stages. But I try to explain to them where they are, and where they have to move from there.Osho,Would you agree to call this method of treating people totalitarian?No, because I am not giving them orders to follow me. I am simply sharing my experience. I have not called them here, they have come on their own. It is their decision to be with me; it is not my decision that they should be with me.So how do you make people give up the family, their property, their home?I don’t.But you must have an idea why they are coming here. They give up everything they had before, just to be close to you. They even give up their personality, and what are they getting for it?Whatsoever they feel around me, they are on their own accord ready to leave everything behind. But I have never told a single person to leave his family or leave his job. I am not in favor of renunciation. All the old religions were in favor of renunciation; they were telling people to leave the family, to remain celibate. They were telling people to move to the monastery, they were taking people out of the society. I have never told anybody to do anything on my order. But if, being with me, they start feeling that something that they are carrying is stupid and they drop it, that is their business.Osho,The vast majority of your followers are coming from Western civilizations – from the United States, from Western Europe – but hardly anyone is coming from your own home country, hardly any Indians. Or am I wrong?India is a dead country.Mentally or physically?Both.You call a country with such a big cultural tradition mentally dead?It had once, but for two thousand years – slavery.Osho,What happened to the tax case, by the way? Is there any new development?I have no idea because I have never paid any tax. I have no income, either.You have no income?No income.What are you living on then?Just my friends – I am their guest. I have been a guest for thirty-five years continuously – in fact my whole life. In the beginning I was a guest in my family, and after that I have been a guest in other families.Osho,Just one more question concerning the motivation of people coming to join you. I have the feeling that principally frustrated Western youth are coming, who seem to be the more obedient kind of customers, who don't ask too many questions. Aren't the Indians, for instance, more practically minded?Do you think you are an Indian? You are from the West.No. I don't feel to be the kind of frustrated Westerner but maybe the percentage of that type of people…Do you see anybody here more frustrated than you?No, no.Go to the commune and see if you can find a single frustrated person.Not here, but they seem to be dissatisfied with Western civilization.They are dissatisfied because they are intelligent people. Only buffalos don’t get frustrated.There are a number of intelligent people in your own home country, too, why don't you attract any of them?I’m telling you, India is a dead country. Everything which is born has to die one day – even civilizations are born and they have to die. But it is very difficult for people to drop the corpses of the ancient past; their glory, their tradition. They go on carrying the corpses on their shoulders. They are very traditional, very orthodox, and completely closed to anything new. They have the idea that their scriptures have all the truth that is possible. There is no need for them.We have the impression that the majority of your followers are – I don't mean it negatively – dropouts from Western civilization.No.I read a book by Andres Elten, and he described the feeling that he was completely dissatisfied with Western civilization, and…Will you call Jean-Paul Sartre a dropout?Who?Jean-Paul Sartre. Will you call Bertrand Russell a dropout?In the Western sense, ja.Bertrand Russell, a dropout?In the Western sense, ja, I would call him a dropout.In no sense can you call Bertrand Russell a dropout. On the one hand you give a Nobel Prize to the man, and on the other hand you call him a dropout.Well, life is full of contradictions. By dropout I mean…I understand perfectly what you mean. Anybody who is intelligent, is a little aware of the situation of the world, of the society, of the family, is bound to be a dropout. Dropping out is absolutely positive. If the house is on fire you run out of it – that is not escapist.Osho,But you feel that your way is the only way to salvation?No, I don’t say that I’m the only savior, or the only salvation, but…What alternative would you suggest then?I don’t suggest any alternative.Well, you called for the creation of what you call a new man.I simply explain to them what I have experienced, and if they feel themselves somehow falling into a kind of synchronicity with me, then it is up to them – whether they want to be with me or go back to their home. I never persuade anybody to be here, I never prevent anybody from going; it is all up to them. This commune is completely free.But yet, you say you are trying to form the new man.I am trying to form a new man, which is just an idea. It is not that a new man can be made like a sculpture. I am just explaining what a new man should be.There have been many explications by Lenin, by Marx, even by Adolf Hitler, but no one ever managed to create the new man.Because all their ideas were not right, they did not fit with existence, they all failed.What's the difference between your new man and Nietzsche's superman?The superman is a fascist idea. A new man is not superior in any way; a new man is really the most ordinary and simple man. Just try to understand one thing: that I want man to live naturally, ordinarily, without trying to become superior, without going into a pilgrimage toward paradise. Just here and now, and enjoy whatsoever life gives to you. Be creative, be intelligent – but this is not making you a superman. Nietzsche’s superman created Adolf Hitler and the whole stupidity that followed. The new man is not the superman.Osho,What happens if you die? Will there be a successor?Who cares?Your followers.That is up to them.Will they vote for one? Will there be an election?I have nothing to do with it. The moment I die…How will he be chosen?You have to understand me: I don’t care.So you have no responsibility whatsoever for your church?No responsibility whatsoever, because every responsibility makes them slaves, and then I am totalitarian.Osho,Once you said when you go, “many of you will go with me.” What do you mean by that?When did I say it?I don't know when you said it, but I read it in one of your scripts. It was, ”If I go many of you will go with me.” Does that mean that if you die that others will have to follow?No. If you have read it somewhere, you must have read it wrongly, out of context.Osho,That's a very interesting question because it keeps cropping up in The Osho Bible, as well. You are strongly for what you call death control – euthanasia. You say that a man has the right to go to the medical board to be freed from his body.Yes.So that's why I'd like to keep to this topic. Also, your first enlightenment started with a…You are not keeping to any topic at all, I am trying to keep you.I have to entertain my readers, not only you.I am not concerned with your readers, I am concerned only with the truth that I can impart to you.What's truthful about death control then?Once there is birth control, there has to be death control. It is just the logical consequence of birth control. If you try to control birth you are only trying to control one end – what about the other end? You are preventing new children being born, it becomes absolutely necessary that people should not be just vegetating in hospitals. They want to die; if they want to die, this is their birthright. And medical facilities should be provided to these people.I think I have the very point here. The Osho Times quoted you just recently, saying, “I teach you to realize suicide so that you can go forever.” What does that mean, does that mean you are teaching suicide as part of your religion?I am simply saying that nothing is wrong with death. It is as beautiful as life. If you have lived, and you feel that now life has no more to give to you, and you feel that you are tired, exhausted and spent, then what is the point of being forced to drag on because an old idiot, Hippocrates, created a medical oath for doctors that they should always try to save the man? The man wants to die; he is hanging between life and death, and they go on trying every way to keep him alive. Who are you?Would you also commit suicide, under certain conditions?If I feel like now there is no work for me, I will. There is no problem in it. I am master of my own self: nobody is to control me.And would you encourage someone else to follow you?No, I never encourage about anything. I simply explain myself, I never encourage anybody.You are a great admirer of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. You said something like, “He committed suicide for the simple reason that he had painted everything he had wanted to paint. To the whole world it seems like suicide, not to me. To me it simply seems a natural end. The painting is completed, life is fulfilled.”Yes, absolutely.By the way, would you like to own a painting by van Gogh, in addition to your ninety Rolls Royces?No. I own nothing.But who is there to decide whether this euthanasia should be done? It's an important question – maybe not for you – but if death control is exerted, who should do it? A committee of doctors? A lawyer? A politician?Politicians, certainly not. Legal experts have no business in deciding about life and death. But the medical profession should be freed from the Hippocratic Oath; that their function is just to save, whatsoever the situation. Their function is to serve, whatsoever the condition. If the person is still capable of living a meaningful life, if he is still wanting to live, if he has still the lust for life, help him. But if a person has nothing to live for and he is telling you that it is time for him to be freed from this body…You keep saying you have no influence, and you're not trying to influence people, but you keep writing thick books, and you're holding interviews.I will continue, but I am not trying to influence anybody.But can't you understand that people are afraid of what you do? Someone said in an interview, “If Osho told me to commit suicide I would immediately take a gun and kill myself.” Isn't that an evil kind of influence?What he is saying is from his side. He is not saying that I am going to tell him to, because I don’t tell anybody even to drink a glass of water or a cup of tea!There are other means of influencing people, just…No, I am not. I am consistently making them alert not to be influenced by me; I may be wrong. What that man has said is his trust.There is a book written by you, the title is Dying for Enlightenment…That’s perfectly good.But don't you think that people might feel encouraged by such a title, and what it contains?No, that dying means the death of your ego.The death, enlightenment through death?Yes, that means the death of your ego, not the death of you.Osho,Another thing you try to destroy is conscience.Yes, the conscience that has been created by the society; because that is the only way to free the consciousness – and these are two different things, except in the French language. In French, there is only one word – conscience – for both consciousness and conscience. But they are two different things. Consciousness the child brings with himself. Conscience is given by the society, the family, the educational system and everybody else.Isn't it conscience that refrains people from going round hurting other people?It is conscience that has been creating all the wars in the world and killing millions of people.Maybe there are different types of conscience.All the consciences: Mohammedans have done that, Hindus have done that, Christians have done that. All the nations have been… For three thousand years there have been five thousand wars in the world, and they are still preparing for the third, total war. This is the conscience of your presidents, of your prime ministers, of your leaders, of your popes, of your priests. A man of consciousness cannot do anything wrong. It is impossible.Osho,Is Mother Teresa a woman of conscience? I mention the name because I have a quote…Can’t you find anybody better?It's very good for a start, that remark; and you called her, by God, criminally minded and idiotic!Yes.Do you think that's the right thing to call someone who dedicates her life to helping the miserable in the world?The people who devote themselves to helping the miserable keep misery alive.They are trying to fight it, at least.No. They are simply exploiting misery for their own glory. Misery can be destroyed completely, but it cannot be destroyed by Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa wants more orphans, Mother Teresa wants more poor people so that she can convert those people to Catholicism. It is sheer politics.There are plenty of poor people, plenty of miserable people in India.All the religions have been exploiting and doing the same thing. I don’t make any distinction between those religions.You wouldn't approve good-heartedness as…?No, not at all. I approve only of one thing: if you have plenty – abundant life, joy, anything – and you want to share it, and if that sharing is a joy to you, share it. It does not matter with whom you share. Whether the other person is rich or poor, Hindu or Mohammedan, Western or Eastern, if you are full of fragrance, you will share it. There is no other way. When the cloud is full of rain water it showers.I do not teach serving the poor, I teach destroying poverty. And we have the means in our hands to destroy all poverty. But the politicians will not allow it, the priests will not allow it, because they will both disappear with poverty, remember.Who is “we” – mankind, or the Rajneeshees? You say “we” have all the means in our hands.I mean the intelligence of mankind. I am not a Rajneeshee.I still find it difficult to accept the fact that it would be a big step forward for mankind if conscience is destroyed.All that conscience has done up to now has been simply ugly, destructive. We need a better concept – and that is consciousness. Consciousness is a purification of your being through meditative methods; that’s my whole work. Then whatever a conscious man does is right. Then there is no question of choosing for him.He may kill?If he feels it right, he may kill.That's quite far away from civilization as we understand it.You are not civilized, and where is civilization?Right here in America.Nowhere does civilization exist. It is just an idea that humanity has been hoping for. What exists is barbarism with clothes covering it, masks hiding the real faces of people. But true civilization does not exist.Osho,Did I really understand you correctly? Anybody who has reached consciousness may kill if he feels like it?I am saying the man who has become totally conscious cannot do anything wrong. Whatever he does is right, there is no question of choosing right and wrong.Disregarding the effect on the community?There is no question for him; he sees where the door is, and he moves. He has eyes of his own, he does not need to borrow eyes and insight from others.That means in practical terms, if it comes to the worst, and the Oregon police sends many police to get you out of here because of legal reasons, you would resist by means of arms – even at the risk of killing people?We will decide in the moment. We never plan.But if it happens, you would be prepared to kill people?No. We will see in the moment what we can do; whether it is right to stand before them with our chests open and tell them to kill us and prove that they are civilized, and prove that they are democratic.Yes, provided this is a civilized democracy.It is not.The American society is not democratic?No society anywhere is civilized as yet.That means you wouldn't approve of an independent judgment of an Oregonian judge if he decides to expel you…I have seen their judgments.That means you wouldn't approve – if they decide to expel you, you would resist?I will resist, certainly.By any means available?Certainly.Even at the risk of creating bloodshed, like Jonestown?It does not matter, nothing matters: if somebody is being nasty to innocent people who are not doing any harm to anybody, then, whatever happens…Yes, in a democracy it's up to the judicial authority to decide what is harmful and what is not.We will go on fighting up to the Supreme Court of America, and even if we see that…So, if you lose there?Then we will fight.With the arms you are collecting already?No, we don’t have arms to fight America.So what are the arms for? I read a quote somewhere, I think it was from a Senator. He said: “They have arms for a combat regiment, like a combat regiment in Vietnam.” What are the arms for?Just two dozen arms for the police, which are declared to the government? You think they are enough to fight America? Then what is the Soviet Union doing?You mean the two dozen guns you have.They are just cowards.They said it's enough for a regiment in Vietnam.No. They are absolutely absurd.You are such a loving community, why does your police force need arms?We are such a loving community, that’s why. We don’t want this loving community to be destroyed by idiots. In four years in this commune, no crime has happened, no drug has entered, no theft has happened, no murder has happened, nobody has been raped, no violence. These few arms and policemen are part of the Oregon government.In case a crime did happen, do you have the judicial means to deal with it?We have every judicial means, we have four hundred sannyasins who are legal experts. Perhaps nowhere else would you find such a big legal firm. And these four hundred legal experts are going to fight to the very end.Osho,How in your community is deviation treated? If somebody does something the rest of the community doesn't feel right, what happens?He is taken to the hospital.Against his will?Otherwise he is told to leave. If he does not want to live here in communion with people, he is free to leave. If he wants to live in communion here, and if the community feels that something is wrong in him, he goes to the hospital. And in four years nobody has resisted, nobody has been taken to the hospital forcibly.Osho,You perform your own marriage and death ceremonies, would you please describe them to us?I do not perform anything, my people do everything. I am just a non-doer – just good for nothing. My people do everything. If they want to perform marriage, they will perform marriage. If they want to perform divorce, they will perform divorce. It is up to them, their business – nothing to do with me. I am completely an outsider. Let me repeat: I am not a Rajneeshee, I don’t even live in the City of Rajneeshpuram. I live outside in a guesthouse, I am not a resident.Well, at least they don't put you a “dog tag” on your arm, like they do with other visitors.I’m not a visitor.What I'm trying to say is that it seems simply stylish and very coquette to say, “I have nothing to do with this community.”It is true, what else can I say? – I have nothing to do with it. I have never performed a single marriage, I have never gone to any service for somebody who has died.But if you drive along the street, they stand and cheer.That is their business and their joy. Just now they were standing outside – I had not asked anybody to stand there – and they will still be standing there, just open the door and see. Nobody is telling them to. For two hours those loving people will be waiting for me.You said once, “It is dangerous to be a part of my commune, you are taking a risk.” What kind of risk does everybody take who joins you?The risk is of dropping all the rubbish that everybody carries and thinks is very valuable – all kinds of crap. Your religion will disappear, your nationality will disappear, your whole idea of racism will disappear. Your belief systems, your political ideologies will disappear. Here you will be just a simple, innocent human being. I believe in the individual.Innocence also means irresponsibility.Yes. It means both; it means irresponsibility to those who have been forcing responsibility on you. But in fact it means responsibility, because a person who is totally free is responsible for whatever he does. He cannot say, “My commander-in-chief ordered me,” or, “It was from the pope, what can I do?” “It is from Jesus, the only begotten son of God.” He has nobody to dump anything on. All responsibility is his, so whatsoever he does, he has to take the responsibility upon his own shoulders. So to him it means responsibility, but certainly to others it will look like irresponsibility.Perhaps he can also be manipulated easier?Everybody is being manipulated everywhere and very easily.Osho,Two days ago you were asked whether you were trying to spread your power or your influence over the whole of Oregon. You said you want to try to spread it over all of the United States. Was that misunderstood?No, these are not my words. They had asked, “Are you going to take over Oregon?” The question is stupid, and a stupid question does not need…But what would be your honest reply to that stupid question?I told the person that I would love them to take over the whole world, Oregon is too small.But there is a certain risk for the Oregonians, that you'd take over the whole of Oregon.There is no risk for anybody from my people.But they feel it's a risk.They are just cowards.But you brought in truckloads of displaced persons and drunkards and whatnot just to increase your voting power. Can't you understand that people are a little bit afraid of your tactics?We did not vote at all. They were absolutely creating that whole situation.But why did you bring in all these people?They are still here.But they were not sannyasins… Were they?A few of them are still here, a few of them have become sannyasins. Those who wanted to leave have left. We brought them because we wanted to share something with them. Next year we will bring someone else. Next year… Every year after our annual celebration we have enough money to share.It just so happens that this coincided with the election date?It was just a coincidence, and we did not vote at all.Osho,So it was the same kind of coincidence when you discovered that you were adopted, when it just came in handy for the immigration authorities?No, it is not a question of my declaring it. I myself was not aware up to that point that I was adopted in my childhood. It was a secret pact between Swarupananda and my father. They were friends, and it was just superstitious astrology. Astrologers said that if I was not given in adoption I would die, and I should be given to somebody who does not belong to my family, does not even belong to my caste, to my religion… To somebody utterly a stranger.But somebody must have known that all the time.Only Swarupananda and my father; those two persons knew it all the time. My father is dead, so Swarupananda was the only person who knew, and who had all the documents. So when he declared it, I came to know about it.Well, I'm quite amazed by that high rate of coincidence.It is not a coincidence, it happens in India every day. If people are told by astrologers that their children will die, it is good to let them be adopted – that way they think they are going to deceive the stars and death, and everything. It is foolish, but it happens every day. And they kept it a secret pact between themselves.Until they could use it, or until somebody could use it.There was no question. Yes, my father told Swarupananda, “If there is a need any day, you are authorized, he is your son.”Osho,You predicted World War Three for some undisclosed year, I think between 1984 and 1999. Have you got any more precise idea now, could you predict exactly when it will happen?No, it is not a prediction.Or your feeling?It is simple reasoning.A vision. How…?No, it is not a vision.But how real is the vision? Could we rely on it, or is it just an idea?I don’t say rely on it, I am an unreliable man. What I said is a simple, logical conclusion of the world situation.A conclusion of what? Of political events of recent years?Yes, political events, nuclear weapons.Have you got anything particular in mind: SDI, or AMEX, or Pershing?No, it is just the whole mess in which humanity is. The politicians go on creating more and more weapons to kill and sooner or later they are going to explode.But you couldn't say who is more responsible, and who is less responsible?Everybody is responsible.Do you have some advice for the politicians?One piece of advice: that all nations should dissolve into one global government. The only way to avoid the Third World War is that there are no more nations, but only one world.Osho,In that context you have said you were going to save the elite of the world by creating underground shelters. Furthermore, that only sannyasins will survive the war, and that all the rest of mankind will perish, commit suicide or degenerate into monkeys. So, is this the prospect of what the world will look like after that war?If the war happens, then only a few people are going to survive. Perhaps even they will not survive.And the sannyasins will survive? Are you preparing for it? Are you constructing shelter, a nuclear-proof shelter?The state is preventing us from making anything – from making even a house. And we are fighting the case in court.Are you building bunkers for…?We will make them once our case is finished.You will start building.We will.Nuclear-proof bunkers?We will. I would love my people to survive.But are you taking practical steps?We are fighting in the court, what more practical step do you want me to take right now?No, practical steps against dying in a holocaust – not against surviving in Rajneeshpuram, against being expelled from Rajneeshpuram.Are you part of the peace movement?No, I am not interested in the peace movement. They have never succeeded, and they are utter nonsense.Osho,Is it true when the Osho Times writes “Everyone who dies in Rajneeshpuram or within twenty-four miles of its boundaries will be enlightened”?That’s true.Is it true? What exactly is meant by twenty-four miles, why not twenty-two?At one hundred degrees, water evaporates, why not at ninety-nine? It is simply a law of existence, you cannot ask why. This is a law of existence, that if there is one man in the state of absolute enlightenment, his being there creates a certain vibe in the twenty-four-mile radius around him. In that radius…When did that happen before, when Buddha died, or…?Yes, Buddha also had exactly the same twenty-four-mile radius.What about Jesus?No.Mohammed?No.Other religious leaders?None, except Buddha.And you.There have been many others whose names are not known; but these people – Jesus, Moses or Mohammed – were not enlightened. But there have been many: for example, Kabir, in India; Farid, a Mohammedan in India; Bodhidharma, an Indian in China; Chuang Tzu, a Chinese; Lao Tzu, a Chinese. It has happened around many people in different countries, and I have spoken on all these people. I have spoken at least 350 books and I have talked about these people, their methods, what happened in their lives, and what happened in their death.But these people, Mohammed, Moses, Jesus were themselves not enlightened. Jesus was a mental case; thinking that he is the only begotten son of God, thinking that he is the savior of the whole world, telling his people that he will come back to save them. And the things that he did – condemning, cursing a fig tree because he and his disciples were hungry and the fig tree was not welcoming them with fruits. It was not the season, it was not the responsibility of the fig tree, and this man cursed the fig tree. You think this man is sane?Osho,This is a very important question, not a very philosophical one, but a question that interests large crowds of people and readers in Europe: In Pune you favored unlimited sex as a kind of birthright and so it was exercised. Now, as I understand from what I have read, it seems to be the contrary: you say sex is only allowed with rubber gloves and even kissing is forbidden. What made you change your mind?Because of the facts of life. In Pune I had said to my people that sex is simple, natural, a joyous game which you can enjoy. Don’t take it seriously, it is not sin, it is not a crime, but don’t impose yourself upon anybody. When two persons are willing to be together, it is their absolute right to enjoy a sexual meeting.But you'd rather they turn it into consciousness, you said.Yes. I would love that slowly their meditation grows so that even while making love…Like the Christian monks in the monasteries?Christian monks in the monasteries have been masturbating and nothing else.They are not turning it into consciousness?They cannot because they are repressive people. If you repress your sex, you can never become meditative. The moment you become silent, immediately sexual fantasies will come up.Is it a matter of age or is it a matter of stage of consciousness? You say you are not opposing it directly, but you wouldn't favor it the same way as you did in Pune?It is exactly the same as it was in Pune. There is sexual freedom but a new disease, AIDS, is spreading. Now we have to take notice of it, and to my people I have said that if you want…How is your own sex life? Are you still active?My sex life?You were active before in Pune?I have been active all my life.Till now?But now it is enough, I’m finished with it. I enjoyed it before my enlightenment, and I enjoyed it more after my enlightenment. And I proved one traditional idea wrong: that an enlightened man cannot enjoy sex. It is something of historical importance. But now I am completely satisfied – very!Osho,You're not a very healthy man these days, are you?I am not. My body is fragile, my back is bad.Will you have to undergo another operation?The possibility is always there, because I have allergies to many things: dust, perfume, smoke.Has it become worse since you came here, or has it improved?No, it has improved. Oregon’s dry climate has been immensely helpful. I am grateful to Oregon – not to Oregonians – my asthma has almost disappeared because there is no humidity, and my back is perfectly good.How are you medically treated?I have my two physicians of my own.Do they do massage, or what do they do?No. If my back is bad – as it was in India – then they were massaging it, giving me traction, giving me medicines for it. For my asthma they were giving me medicines. So whenever it is needed, whatsoever is needed…So you are not opposed to pharmaceutical products?Not at all. I am absolutely in favor of all the sciences, and I am against all religions.Osho,May I please jump back in discussion to a point we had some time ago: we were talking about doctors and you said they should be freed from the Hippocratic Oath, in favor of science. Now, if doctors are not bound by the oath, they can do human experiments, can't they? It's perfectly all right to experiment with human beings?It is absolutely right, in fact, it is needed. Not to experiment with human beings is dangerous.Experiments with human beings are often brought about against their own will. So, for science one should sacrifice human beings?It is not a question of sacrificing. People like Mother Teresa should offer themselves in the service of humanity. And there are six hundred million Catholics, they should offer.I was not talking about India and Mother Teresa, but about human engineering.I am also talking about human engineering. You were saying, “Should people be forced against their will?” No, but people could be invited, and there would be enough people.Osho,Should they be forced to be sterilized if it's necessary population-wise – as happened in India?If the population becomes a problem for the whole country, then it is up to the country to decide. They should vote for it, for absolute birth control.You are for it?I am not for it. I’m saying that country should vote for it; the whole country should decide if they want to die starving. It is up to them.Would you favor sterilization?Not against anybody’s will.Not against his will but, for instance: would you try to persuade somebody here in Rajneeshpuram, because the family and children do not fit into the framework of this community?I never persuade. I simply explain the situation and my people are intelligent enough that there is no need for persuasion.Do they exercise sterilization here?Not a single baby has been born here in four years.Due to sterilization of women here?Every kind of birth control method is being used.Is sterilization widespread here?In India it was.And in Rajneeshpuram?No.Not many women are sterilized because of the unwanted consequences?No, they can use other birth control methods. There is no question.Osho,Is that the way your relation toward the community works: you explain the situation, and then somebody else makes the consequences and does the dirty work?No, everybody has to take his responsibility. I simply…Except for you.…explain the situation, the consequences. And everybody has to think what he would like for himself.And you call that not having influence on the community?It is absolute democracy, nowhere does that exist except here.I may be old fashioned, but my notion of democracy is two people arguing a point and reaching a conclusion.But when you have somebody who can see the light, then of course he is not going to grope like a blind man. Your idea of democracy is the idea of people who are blind. So blind people are arguing about the shape of the elephant; they are arguing about whether light exists or not. And to what conclusion can they ever come?If you are not responsible for what your community does, it works the other way round, too: basically your commune isn't responsible either. So nobody in this valley is responsible for anything.Everybody is responsible for himself, nobody is responsible for anybody else. That’s why I don’t call it even a community, I call it a commune. And I make a distinction between the two words: a community is a certain kind of contract between people, a commune is open, without any contract.Yes, it's lawlessness.It is lawlessness, because there is no need of law.Osho,Tell me one more thing: how can a community survive without the family, without children?It is surviving.For a certain period, yes, but…Who cares? I’m very irresponsible about the future. I don’t bother at all about tomorrow, if tomorrow the whole world simply evaporates…You won't have finished your atomic bunker.…I will say goodbye. Good morning, America!Osho,That would be a fun, very good final sentence, but finally we have to draw your attention to some material questions: It's probably a question you have been asked a hundred times, but concerning your Rolls Royces… We understand that you are preaching a non-materialist ideology, yet you are enjoying a luxury life with Rolls Royces and a diamond wristwatch.No, your understanding is wrong.Pardon?Your understanding is wrong, I am utterly materialistic,Are you materialistic?Yes, because to me matter and spirit are not two different things. Existence is materialist-spiritualist; it is together, there is no duality.But being materialist at the expense of others is what others have described as exploitation. Would you approve of that?Not at all. I don’t possess a single Rolls Royce – you were talking about Rolls Royces, I don’t possess any.Who owns them?My people possess them.But you use them.They allow me for one hour. If they don’t allow, I will stop.You go every day and say, “May I please…”?Every day I go for a ride for one hour and my people allow me. I am not against riches, and I am not against luxury – but I am not asking anybody.But we see others are…You were talking about the watch.Is it original diamonds, or is it imitation?Are you a jeweler?Is it imitation? I'm not an expert on jewelry, but it looks rather genuine. Is it?It is not. To me, diamonds or stones are the same.I see.I enjoy it, it is beautiful; and it has been made by my people. It is not Piaget, but they have defeated Piaget. And these are all ordinary stones.Do you know how many Osho enterprises there are in the world?No, I don’t know and I don’t bother.But nevertheless you enjoy a kind of luxury. Would you agree with that?I am a perfect showman.Even if you don't own them, if you want to hire a Rolls Royce…I wouldn't be able to afford it.Not one, my people have managed to have ninety.But it's very uneconomical to have ninety Rolls Royces, have them in the garage and use one a day.We don’t bother about economics, economy, future. They are going to have 365.But wouldn't it be better to let your people enjoy the fruits of their work a little bit more, spread it a little bit more?That is up to them. My commune has hundreds of other cars, hundreds of buses, four planes, they have everything. It is not that only I am enjoying luxury – they have everything. It is simply that out of respect they will not use a Rolls Royce. And I am using it because I have tried all the cars and only the Rolls Royce seat suits my backbone.And a Mercedes wouldn't be good enough?I have tried it; it was not good enough. Not even other Rolls Royces, which are far more costly. I had a Corniche; it didn’t suit me. That was the costliest Rolls Royce. Then I had a Commarque – in cost that was the number two Rolls Royce; it didn’t suit me. Now I am on the third grade, the Silver Spur.But you would not, in special regard to our German readers, recommend a Mercedes for wealthy people with backaches?No, I have used it, I would not recommend it.I doubt very much whether we will be able to print this, because they have big advertisements in Spiegel, you know.You have to print it!All right, we promise.I love Germans, I have amongst my sannyasins a large number of Germans. And they are the most stable, intelligent, reliable, responsible people in the commune.They also provide the most money into the funds.Certainly.And were they also the most frustrated before they came here?I don’t know what they were.We're trying to build a bridge toward current German civilization. Do you have the impression that frustration – that's what Andres Elten wrote – frustration with civilization drove them to you?There may be some truth in it, because as man becomes more intelligent, more alert, he starts looking for meaning in life; and he does not find it – hence frustration. Then he starts looking for some way…So Germany is first in intelligence but only second in making cars?Certainly. You have not yet been able to create a Rolls Royce.We are trying hard, you know.You can try hard.Osho,Do you know who decides who comes comparatively close to you, who surrounds you in your study, in your everyday life? Obviously, not five thousand or two thousand people can be around.No, in the morning everybody listens to me, the whole commune together. In the evening my secretary comes, if there is any problem for which she needs guidance from me. In the day Vivek takes care of my food. She comes only when I give her a call to bring my food or my tea. Otherwise, I remain completely alone.Do you happen to know why the people sitting here have the privilege of seeing you tonight?No, that is Isabel’s decision. People who are editing, people who are part of the publicity department, people who are concerned in some way with our magazine, with our newspaper, with our newsletter; these are the people Isabel has collected, because they need to be here.In your Bible you told a nice, moving little story about a billionaire – an old man of sixty-four or so – who tried to join the movement or to join the commune, and then had to struggle with his family. This was in 1984, has he joined now?I told the story you are mentioning this morning?I can't recall his name, but it's a long episode in The Osho Bible.What exactly was it? Tell me.It's a story of an old man, a billionaire, who…Yes, I remember now. I am such a materialist, the moment you said billionaire, I immediately remembered. He was here, he still comes almost every month. His family is very disturbed because he is the head of the family and head of the businesses and corporations, and they are naturally worried that if he becomes a sannyasin, he may start donating to my Rolls Royce collection. But nobody is interested in converting him to be a sannyasin. In fact, he was amazed that nobody has even asked him to be a sannyasin.For almost a year he has been coming here. His family is worried, but nobody here is bothered. Here, nobody takes any interest in anybody’s personal life: why you are not a sannyasin, why you don’t become a sannyasin. If you have been coming for a year continuously and doing all the groups and the therapies, you must be somehow thinking of becoming a sannyasin? – even that is not asked.Osho,Just let me ask one last question that I asked Sheela before.Drop Sheela completely.No, I'm not asking her, I just want to ask you the same thing because I'm interested in what you think about it.Just ask directly.Yes. Why is it you have only women in your inner circle, in your inner power circle? Are you convinced that they are more intelligent, or that women are generally more intelligent than men, as Sheela put it? Or is there any other reason for it?There are many reasons. The woman is not more intelligent than man. But because the woman has not been allowed to use her intelligence for centuries…She kept it fresh.…she has kept it fresh. That’s why she looks superior and more capable. Otherwise, there is no question; it is just a land which has not been used, not been cultivated, she gives better crops. Woman has always been symbolized by the earth, that’s why the husband… The word husband simply means the cultivator.I would like to compensate because women have suffered for centuries. Man has done sheer inhumanity to women, they have been treated worse than cattle. So in my commune, I have allowed them to express and come up with their whole potential. One thing is certain, that they are more loving.And as far as religion is concerned, a loving person has more possibility to grow than a man who is stuck in his head with logic, ideas, philosophies. The woman is free. If she falls in love, she is more courageous than any man. And to be with a master is a kind of love affair – for men, for women, it makes no difference – these people love me.But not in the real sense of the word.In the real sense of the word.Not only philosophically.Not in the unreal sense of the word to which you are accustomed.Osho,You said once that death would be a new door opening, with the whole of life condensed, a new dimension opening. On the other hand, you sharply attack any Christian or any other belief of life after death. What's the difference between a new dimension opening after death, and life after death?The difference is that I am not saying that you have to believe in it, I am saying it is my experience. I am not telling you either to believe or disbelieve. I am simply telling you my experience, and side by side continuously insisting that you are not to believe in anything. I remember my past lives, so I know absolutely that life goes on and on. There is no end to life, only the body changes.Osho,Which past lives do you remember, and which ones do you like best?The best is this moment.And which ones do you remember?I remember many: sometimes fragments, sometimes a few incidents, sometimes the whole series. But it is pointless.Tell us some.It would be meaningless.But we are curious.I am not curious.If it's meaningless, it doesn't…the same as so many of your statements.No, because they will be simply stories for you – what is the point?Osho,Well, if nothing is the point of anything – which is the whole point of your religion – you are completely unattackable.I am.We quite understand that.Completely unattackable – because there is no point, no principle, no dogma. I will attack everybody and nobody can attack me. That is simply true.[the journalist’s tape recorder clicks off]Good! Now that was a coincidence.This is a coincidence, right.No more questions, thank you.Good.It has been a great pleasure talking to you.I enjoyed it.We are not yet enlightened, but we are quite satisfied with our interview.One day you will get enlightened too.Hopefully.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sally HaleAssociated Wire Services, Portland, United StatesOsho,Can the Rajneeshees and their neighbors in Oregon ever coexist peacefully?Never.Peter GillinsUPI Wire Services, USAOsho,On ABC's morning interview program the other day, you said that you considered yourself to be the guru of the rich and you would leave it to the other religions to take care of the poor. In light of that, do you think you have an obligation to pay taxes on the money that your followers give you in the form of donations?Nobody has given anything to me, and I don’t accept anything from anybody. Whatsoever I use is loaned to me just for the time being. I am wearing this watch only for these two hours.Should your foundation be required to pay taxes on donations? Do the rich need charity – which is the purpose of tax-exempt status?Those rich people are intelligent enough to pay their own taxes. I don’t have to take care of that. I myself have never paid any tax because my work is concerned with outcome, not with income.Mark HaasKATU TV, Channel 2, Portland, Oregon, United StatesOsho,Last year you brought the poor and homeless into your commune presumably to help them, then why do you accept the Rolls Royces that you accept, when perhaps that money could be used to help the poor and homeless that you wanted to help last year?I have not accepted a single Rolls Royce. Those Rolls Royces are owned by the sannyasins. And remember clearly that I am not a Rajneeshee; you can see from my clothes. I am just a guest here, and if my host feels to take care of me and enjoys it, who am I to interfere with it?Greg Hoy7 Network Australia TV, AustraliaOsho,This morning you explained to us the difference between yourself and history's self-professed prophets and messiahs. You explained that you were not special at all and that you did not wish to place yourself on a high pedestal. Does it occur to you that there may be those that see the regal way you dress as opposed to those who follow you, see your jeweled, borrowed watches and now-famous borrowed Rolls Royces and think that you have very successfully placed yourself high on a pedestal, and it's an elevation you obviously enjoy?I am certainly successful, I am going to be more successful, and I greatly enjoy my people, whatsoever they offer. But you must remember these are not real diamonds, and this is the cheapest, most beautiful watch in the whole world.This is made by my own sannyasins – artists, craftsmen, jewelers. The same watch from Piaget is half a million dollars. This watch, as far as dollars are concerned, is not more than one hundred dollars. But if you want me to sell it to you, I am not going to sell it to you for ten million dollars. This is a work of love, and love cannot be purchased.Richard DraperKOIN TV, Channel 6, Portland, Oregon, United StatesOsho,Ten days ago you told a group here – and I quote – “We have to deprogram America from dirty politics, from fanatic religions, from all kinds of hypocrisy.” How do you propose to deprogram America?America is too small a thing for me, we are trying to deprogram the whole world. I have my people around the world trying to deprogram every country, every religion, from all the conditionings that have been forced upon them.And remember one thing: don’t get confused when I use the word deprogramming, because there are psychologists who are trying to deprogram people. They are not really deprogramming, they are re-programming. If a Christian moves out of the Christian fold, he is brought back forcibly to the deprogrammer, who reprograms him back into Christianity.I am simply deprogramming and then leaving you alone to your own consciousness, your awareness, and to do whatsoever your insight allows you, your responsibility feels. It is you who have to be decisive about yourself. Neither the Bible, nor Koran, nor Gita; neither Jesus, nor Buddha, nor me – nobody is going to dominate and manipulate you like a puppet. A deprogrammed person is one who is no longer a puppet, who has declared his independence from the bogus God and his prophets, messiahs and incarnations.We are already doing it. If you want to see how we are doing it, come to these people, be with these people, live with these people and you will understand it. There are things which can only be experienced. Don’t be afraid, because you will be deprogrammed; only through deprogramming you will know what it is and how it is done. You are welcome.Jon TuttleKGW TV, Portland, Oregon, United StatesOsho,As we understand, there are just two Rajneeshee communes left in the United States. Across the country we hear reports that both membership and donations are on the decline. It appears that to date America has looked at Rajneeshism and said, “No thank you.” Did you come to the wrong country at the wrong time?Whenever I would have come, it would have been the wrong time. I cannot come at the right time – in spite of all the watches given to me, I either come before time or come after time. But this is the fate of a person like me.The message that I am giving will always be misfitting the existing society. But I enjoy to be a misfit, it means I am still alive. Those who fit completely, comfortably, are just small parts in a big mechanism. I have belonged to no society, to no country, to no religion. I will always be a misfit even amongst Rajneeshees, because I am not a Rajneeshee. It is just their love and their tolerance that they allow me to be here. Otherwise I don’t follow anything of Rajneeshism.I can’t follow anything, I simply live moment to moment. It is perfectly true: I have come at the wrong time, but that is the way, the only way I can come. But we will try to change the time. I am not going to fit with your dead and rotten society; I am going to change it.The other half of my question was whether this was the wrong country. Was it a mistake to come to the United States?All countries are wrong, because the very idea of a country is idiotic. This whole earth, this whole world, is one.Don LattinSan Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, United StatesOsho,I would like you to elaborate on two things you said in Pune on what happens when religious movements become institutions – when Buddha becomes Buddhism or Rajneesh becomes Rajneeshism. You warned that once a religion becomes organized, violence enters into it. Organization is going to be violent; it has to fight its way. I wanted you to comment on that, in light of the weaponry we see and the security forces in Rajneeshpuram.The other thing you said on that subject which I found very fascinating was “We have to learn one thing, not to institutionalize religion. When the master goes, let the religion go.” I wanted you to comment on that in the light of the announcement that was made here last summer that three committees were being formed to oversee Rajneeshism once you – if you – leave your body. Thank you.Your question needs no answer, because the answer is all over the place: look at the guns around me; look at the organization of Rajneeshism – and I am still alive, I am not dead. But I am fighting with everybody, not only the people who are not Rajneeshees. I am fighting with every Rajneeshee too.Don’t get institutionalized, don’t become an organization; remain an organism. Whatsoever I have said is absolutely true, and you can see the organization and the guns as evidence of it. And when I am going to die – who cares what happens? Please at least let me die peacefully.Mr. Romano GiachettiEPOCA Magazine, ItalyOsho,I live in New York, but I am Italian.That is great. In America everybody is a foreigner!I have been in this city eight hours now, and I have a number of emotions, most of them strong. But I was following your lesson this morning and many things that you said that brought me back to Italy. My… This is a serious question!Just ask it, don’t say it’s serious – you say it is serious you have already destroyed its seriousness. Just say it.Among the many things that you said that impressed me, there were a few that brought me back to the culture that I thought I had left in Italy, namely that God doesn't exist; that any religion that is organized means exploitation of people. There was one Italian thinker, Antonio Gramsci, who has said many things that were very similar to yours, especially the one about God, the one about religion, and above all the one about the new kind of consciousness that we need if we want to change life on the planet. But he was one of the founders of the Communist Party.Do you see any possibility for the birth of a new consciousness in the framework of communism, of all the systems that exist on the planet?There is every possibility – not only possibility, but I would say almost certainty of its happening. Even in a communist country consciousness cannot be prevented from growing, from spreading; love cannot be prevented. In communist countries they can nationalize your house, your money, your other commodities, but they cannot nationalize your being. That is the same everywhere, it makes no difference. And to bring consciousness to its highest peak, any place is as good as any other place; the question is basically of the individual’s decision.I have sannyasins in the Soviet Union, of course they cannot come into the open, they are underground sannyasins. They are being persecuted, but persecution somehow always helps people to spread the message and their number is growing every day. My books are prohibited in the Soviet Union, but my people are writing them by hand or making typescripts, and they are moving from hand to hand, from one person to another person. In fact in the basements where my people in Soviet Russia meet, they are more excited than anywhere else, because for the first time certainly they are doing something that gives them their dignity back.Communism has nothing to do with God, heaven, or hell, communism is an economic theory. In fact, they should not interfere with religion, religion is not their domain. But Karl Marx is their Holy Bible, because he said there is no God, there is even no consciousness – because what consciousness we have is only a by-product. The moment we die, consciousness is finished.They have not explored within, they have not meditated; they have simply believed in Karl Marx, in Das Kapital. So I include communism also in all the other rotten religions. It is a different kind of Christianity, a different kind of Hinduism, a different kind of Buddhism – and they all are bent upon destroying the individual. All the religions of the world, communism included, are bent upon destroying the individual, his freedom.I am trying my best, even in communist countries, and the message is reaching. And the problem is not as big as it appears: even if there are only two hundred enlightened people in the whole world, the Third World War is not possible. So the work is not that big, we can manage it, we will manage it, and I am absolutely certain about it.Jeff McMullen60 Minutes, AustraliaOsho,Who is the better showman, in metaphysical terms if you like, you or President Ronald Reagan?Nobody can beat me. I am the best showman in the whole history of man.If that is true, what kind of show do you enjoy? Is this theater, or circus?This is my circus, my carnival and I enjoy it immensely.Marilyn DeutschPublic Broadcasting System, United StatesOsho,I'd like to go back to the idea that you have said you are the rich man's guru. You know of suffering on this earth and starving people in Africa. Do you hurt with the knowledge that other people suffer so and die from starvation, or have to sleep on the streets?I know, and I know also why they are suffering – they are suffering because of your priests and your politicians. Still all the religions are against birth control methods, they want abortion to be made illegal. Pope the Polack continuously says, “These children are sent from God, so we cannot prevent them.”I am not responsible for the poverty that you see on the earth. If the world listens to me the poverty can disappear immediately. But they are listening to the wrong people, because they have been accustomed to listening to them for centuries. The Hindu shankaracharya, the Mohammedan caliph, the Christian pope, howsoever they may be different in small, meaningless matters, are absolutely together – that people should continue to produce more and more people. Then this world is going to die, naturally.My few Rolls Royces – which are not mine, I just use them – I can give to Ethiopia. Do you think Ethiopia will be saved? If you are certain, then take all the Rolls Royces from here, and give them to Ethiopia. Ethiopia is created by the pope, and I have to sell my Rolls Royces? What kind of logic is this?Why should I bother about the people who don’t listen to me, if they are starving? They are not even ready to understand me, to listen to me. I am saying this from my own experience.India – I have been there, for thirty years continuously moving around the country, a wandering teacher. Nobody is ready to listen. They are ready to throw stones at me, they are ready to throw shoes at me, they are ready to throw knives at me, they made attempts on my life – and when these people start dying I have to sell my Rolls Royces? I am not going to do that.Whether there is Ethiopia or not does not matter at all. What does it matter? If India disappears it will be unburdening the whole world, bringing a little more richness. In fact this world needs one fourth of its population, and the only way is for absolute birth control for twenty years. And abortion should not only be legal, it should be rewarded.You should stop giving Nobel Prizes to criminals like Mother Teresa, who is increasing the world population by saving the orphans. You should give your Nobel Prizes to people who can bring this whole world to one fourth of its population.Like yourself? Do you think you deserve a Nobel Prize?I do not, because what will it do – only two more Rolls Royces!Peter CosterAustralian Newspaper Service, AustraliaOsho,Why do you think such a disproportionate number of attractive young women are drawn to you?I am not a homosexual; I am heterosexual. I love women and they love me. What I am saying to them is absolutely appealing, because I am speaking against all the male chauvinists of the past. I stand for absolute liberation of women from man’s hold, even to the extent that there should be no marriage, because marriage is a bondage, a life-long bondage.People should live naturally just as all animals live – no marriage, no divorce, no quarrels, no problems. Have you seen a henpecked camel? And on the other hand, have you seen any man who is not a henpecked husband?You have repressed the woman, you have taken away everything from her. They were not allowed to be educated, they were not allowed to be economically independent, they were not allowed even to go out of the house, they were not allowed even to show their face to other human beings. These people who have continuously killed the spirit of the woman are the worst criminals we have known, but they are worshipped. They are worshipped by men, because they have given men power over half of humanity.Here, everybody is absolutely free. If two persons feel like making love, and they both agree, then it is nobody else’s business to prevent them. Anybody preventing them – any law, any court, any politician, any priest – is simply going beyond its limits.My community is a community of love. And of course, as I have said, I am the greatest showman in the world. Women are bound to be attracted to me.Osho,You talk of physical love without ambition among sannyasins. Are you celibate?No, why should I be? I am just natural, why should I be unnatural? If you want to meet celibates you go to a Catholic monastery, and you will meet celibates doing nothing but masturbating. I don’t see that anybody can be naturally celibate, he is bound to become a pervert in some way or other.I am a simple, natural man, I follow my natural instincts in every way. I have loved many women – perhaps no man may have loved so many women. In the beginning I used to keep count; then I dropped it because what was the point?Osho,Why do you think outside people feel threatened by this community or you?I don’t care at all; the outside does not exist, we are absolutely contented and happy herenow. They should take care of themselves. We are not hostile to them, we are simply unconcerned. They are hostile toward us.Remember one fundamental law of life: if they are hostile, have hate toward us, sooner or later they are going to fall into my trap – because hate can turn into love very easily, just as love can become hate very easily. But my people have nothing to do with them. We are not hostile to them, we are not against them, we never think about them.For five years I have not seen a single newspaper, I don’t read. I don’t see television. I don’t know what is being said about me; I don’t care, because I have no desire to be a respectable great master, a messiah, a prophet. I am just an ordinary man. And I am notorious enough – what is the point of reading it again and again?Bruno GlausWorld Press Institute, SwitzerlandOsho,My question refers to the worldwide famine crisis. Don't you think your lecture this morning makes the economic system and the current governments very happy, because that's exactly what they think also? I quote: “Starvation is a way of natural balance” or, “Helping the poor is destroying their license to heaven.” That's exactly the way they see the world.They must be quoting me.Don't you think that by this view your community stabilizes the current political and economic system?No, my community is so much more intelligent, that there is no need for nature to balance it. Here, in four years not a single baby has been born and four sannyasins have died – I am not going to overburden the earth. It is simply the way of nature to establish harmony.It is in fact absolutely true, that service to the poor has been the basic cause of poverty remaining for centuries. You go on throwing a few crumbs from your table, and those poor people go on hoping for more, and your priests go on telling them, “Just wait a little. After death you are going to be in paradise. In paradise, even a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but no rich man can enter the gates.”They console the poor to remain poor, they make him happy because the rich man will suffer in hell. They make the rich man happy because their consolation of the poor prevents revolution. The rich man goes on contributing to make big cathedrals, churches, because he knows that if he can manage here, he will be able to manage there too – if even a camel can manage, do you think Rockefeller, Morgan or Ford will not be able to manage? They are certainly far more intelligent than a camel.I am certainly against poverty, and I want to destroy it completely. But to destroy it completely one thing has to be understood – that all preventive measures should be taken.People not giving birth to children should be rewarded, people giving birth to children should pay higher and higher income tax. People are doing just the opposite – if you have more children, you pay less income tax. This is strange: government policy is for family planning, and on the other hand if the family is bigger you support the bigger family and you don’t support the person who has no family.The priests and politicians are responsible for keeping poverty somehow alive. They are still doing it: send help to Ethiopia, send help to India. It fulfills the ego of the super-rich countries, and it also keeps those poor countries in a subtle, mental slavery, always dependent on you.If I am listened to, it is so simple a matter. We need one world government; we don’t need any countries. We need one government, one world and that government, that world, can easily see where the problem is.Even a poor country like India, where people are starving, is exporting wheat to other countries. It seems we are living in a madhouse: Indians are dying, starving, and they are exporting wheat. But they have to export, because they want to make nuclear weapons. From where are they going to get nuclear plants? They need money for that.Seventy-five percent of the national incomes of all countries goes to war, either fighting or preparing for fighting. If the world is one, seventy-five percent of the income of the whole world is immediately released. Poverty disappears like a dewdrop in the early morning sun.Mary CatherineOsho Times, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United StatesOsho,What do you have to say about politics?Do I have to say? I curse it, it is the calamity that has made us live for centuries in suffering. Politics is absolutely unnecessary. But politicians will not allow it to become unnecessary because then they lose their presidencies, their White Houses, their Kremlins, their prime ministerships.Politics is not needed, it is really out of date. It was needed because nations were continuously fighting – in three thousand years there have been five thousand wars. If we just dissolve the boundary lines – which exist only on the map not on the earth – who will bother about politics? Yes, there will be a world government, but this government will only be functional. It won’t have any prestige to it, because there will be no competition with anybody. If you are the president of the world government, so what? You are not higher than anybody else.A functional government means like the way railways are run – who cares who is the president of the railways? The way the post office is managed and managed perfectly – who cares who is the head postmaster general?Nations have to disappear, and with the disappearance of nations politics itself disappears, it commits suicide. What remains is a functional organization that takes care. It can be made rotary – like a Rotary Club – so sometimes a black man is the head, sometimes a woman is the head, sometimes a Chinese is the head, sometimes a Russian is the head, sometimes an American is the head – but it goes on moving like a wheel.Perhaps no longer than six months should be given to one person, more than that is dangerous. So for six months be president and then go down the drain forever. And no person should be chosen again. It is simply poverty of intelligence that you go on choosing the same person as president again, and again and again. Don’t you see it as poverty of intelligence? You don’t have any intelligent people? You have just one dodo to go with?In one world there is no need for political parties, either. Individuals should decide individually. There is no need for any political parties, it is very destructive of democracy. Although people say that democracy cannot exist without political parties, I say to you democracy cannot exist if political parties are there, because they have vested interests.Each individual is free to run for any post or to vote for anybody he feels right. And whoever comes out may be far wiser than your presidents and prime ministers. Perhaps because he is going to be there for only six months he cannot waste his time: inaugurating this university, inaugurating that bridge, inaugurating this road, inaugurating all kinds of nonsense and wasting time… And parliament is simply arguing about absolutely meaningless affairs as if they have eternity in their hands, a small bill takes years to pass.A man who has only six months cannot allow this stupidity, he will choose scientific advisers, experts in different fields. For example, in economics he will find all the best economic minds in the world to advise him. He has not much time, he cannot go on with third-rate politicians who know only the art of lying and nothing else. If he has to decide about education, he will ask the advice of the great educationists of the world. But right now strange things happen…In India, when I was there, in Morarji Desai’s government a man became the education minister of the central government. I know the man. I have seen many idiots, and he is only number two – because Morarji Desai is number one. He is the education minister, he is going to decide the whole educational system of the country.But he decides nothing, the bureaucracy goes on running in the same way. They go on playing the small games of back-biting, of pulling legs, of making every effort to reach to the top. Just a single formula I give to you: one world.Osho,Many politicians have asked if you are running this place.No, never. Who wants to fall back in all that bullshit? – it was so difficult to get out of it. It took many lives for me to get out of it all – and you are asking me to again take a dive into the bullshit? No, absolutely no!Enrico FranceschiniLa Republica, ItalyOsho,I am Enrico Franceschini from La Republica, an Italian newspaper.I love Italians, except their spaghetti!If I may first follow up on the question concerning communism that a colleague of mine asked you before. You said this morning that messiahs, prophets, incarnations of God are cheating us, keeping us repressed and preventing us from rebelling against the status quo. You said that poverty and hunger are not a blessing. But communists have said these same things for many years and have tried to do something to eliminate poverty and hunger. What do you think?Yes, they have tried to eliminate… Not poverty, but richness. And they have eliminated it. Now the whole of communist Russia is equally poor. That gives a certain satisfaction of course, but it is not my goal. I want to destroy poverty. I am all for the rich man, I am the rich man’s guru.Osho,If, as you said this morning, you are just an ordinary man, why should there be a buddhafield around you that makes the grass greener, and puts more birds in this valley?It always does around an ordinary man. To be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in the world. You can go around the world and you will never find an ordinary man. Everybody is exceptional, everybody is special, everybody is imagining himself to be something big.I am just an ordinary man, that’s why the buddhafield exists around me. Become an ordinary man, and see.Osho,Since to laugh is so important to you and to this community, is there anything in the arts, like movies, literature, that makes you laugh? Do you like Woody Allen?I am so happy that I am continuously laughing with my sannyasins – and there is no reason. Sometimes even I am surprised they are laughing, but I join them in their laughter. To me, life is not rational, it is very irrational. I enjoy everything – except spaghetti.Tarcisius MunakuWorld Press Institute, KenyaOsho,One correction: I am from Zimbabwe, not Kenya.That’s okay. Wherever you are from, I am glad to see a black man. To me black is beautiful, and I am all for the black people, although they have not started coming to me; perhaps they are so poor, so downtrodden, that they are involved in their own misery. But take my message to them – that I would like as many black people as possible here.I was going to ask how you can explain the lack of followers with black skin in this community? Not from Africa, but from the United States.The world has been divided into the East and the West. Now it should be divided between the North and the South. The South has been completely denied, ignored, it has not been able to grow in intelligence. It has the same potential as the white people of the North – perhaps the black man has more potential than the white man.One thing is certain, that the intelligence of black people has not been used for centuries, perhaps never. So it is absolutely raw, unused, ready to burst forth. They are not coming to me for the simple reason…That you don't go to them.…that me and my teaching are difficult for them to understand. Poor people may turn Catholic, may turn communist, but they cannot become Rajneeshee, because the poor people have hopes with the Catholics – yes, after life, after death. They have hopes with the communists in this life – of course it is a big bargain, but they are certainly impressed by those things.What I am saying goes above their heads for a simple reason: you cannot ask everybody why they do not understand Mozart’s music… But what can Mozart do about it? You have to learn classical music, its delicacies – only then you can understand Mozart. I am speaking in favor of luxury, richness in all dimensions of life. Naturally the poor, wherever they are, will not feel in tune with me. But in fact, I am the only person they should feel in tune with. I can drag them out of their poverty.Just look at my communes around the world. We have hundreds of communes around the world, and they are all living richly, joyously. We would like the same for you and for your country and for your people. But it is a very strange phenomenon, that you tend to listen to those same people who are the cause of your poverty, your degradation, your slavery.In India I had experienced it; I was talking to people to make them free of all mental bondage, all spiritual slavery, but they were turning against me because they think their spiritual slavery is not slavery, it is something holy, a divine heritage.It is very difficult. I can very easily reach people who have known the taste of richness and have found frustration in it, those who are educated and have found that all this education is worthless. It does not give you wisdom to live; it gives you only knowledgeability, that can make you somehow vegetate.The gap is big, even in India. Here you will see all white people, in India it was the same. All white people, ten thousand sannyasins from all over the world, were living with me – but the Hindus were trying to kill me. They made attempts to kill me. Before ten thousand white people a Hindu stood up and threw a knife at me. That is their response. I can understand it, because I am speaking against their tradition, and they are so burdened with tradition they cannot imagine themselves free.[sound of doors banging]Has some black man reached there?Sheela, Osho’s secretary replies: Today one of the press persons is reported to have come with a gun to see if somebody else had a better show than he did, then he was going to shoot you.That’s great. Shoot me before all these media people. I would not like to die in a dark dismal room lying on a bed. Shoot me! This is the right moment. I have done everything that I wanted to do, I have experienced everything that is possible to human consciousness. There is nothing to lose. Shoot me this moment. Gather courage, don’t be afraid. I will tell my guards not to prevent you. My guards are not to shoot the person. Assassinate me, because Jesus missed the media… At least don’t let me miss the media.Osho,How do you know there is hunger and starvation in Ethiopia when you don't read the newspapers, when you don't watch television? Where do you get the information?Just from your questions – that’s enough for me. I answer your questions, that’s enough. I don’t want to go into details. I have a vision of my own, a clarity. I am just like a mirror; you come before it and the mirror will reflect you. The mirror is not a photograph – the moment you are gone, the mirror is again empty.I am just an empty mirror: you ask the question, I will respond with my totality. But my response is pure, it is not the response of a scholar. It is not out of knowledgeability, information, it is simply the clear insight of an ordinary man.John Ng’anga ThuruoWorld Press Institute, KenyaGreat, I was thinking there is only one. Two… Two is too many!Osho,You described prophets, Jesus and other messiahs as liars. What makes you think that what you teach is the truth?I am not teaching anything, so there is no question about my teachings, nobody can ask whether they are true or not. I am teaching only methods. I don’t give you any dogma, any philosophy that you can discuss and argue, and find out whether it is true or not. I give you only a method. Practice the method, and you will experience what I am saying. Your experience will prove that what I am saying is truth.These people here are here because they have experienced something. They have left their countries, their families, they have left everything they had, just to come to me.And look at me. This is stupid; when you are asking a question, looking here and there is simply stupid. Just look at me! And listen to what I am saying, because when you are moving this way and that, you are not listening. Perhaps you are thinking that it is nothing.I am listening.Then you must have understood what I said: I have no teachings, I have only methodologies. I am a scientific person; science has only experiments, I have only experiments.Those who are courageous enough go through the experiment, and if they find something there, it becomes their truth. It is not my truth. I don’t emphasize to believe in me. Even the method has to be accepted only as hypothetical.This is very pleasant for me because I don’t have any principles: nobody can contradict me, nobody can criticize me, nobody can say that what I am saying is not true. To say that, he will first have to go through the experiment, the meditation, the silence, the joy, the blessing, and he will know. And I have never come across a single person who has followed the path and has not reached. Existence is very compassionate.Osho,The followers love you so much – I have seen that – and you must be aware of a community like this that lived in Jonestown, Guyana, who committed suicide some years back. Don't you think that if you ever told them to take a potion, they would do so?They love me, I love them; how can I help them commit suicide? Reverend Jim Jones was a Christian. And the whole responsibility of Jonestown’s suicidal act is the responsibility of Christians from Jesus to Pope the Polack. All Christians are responsible for it because they have been teaching that all that is beautiful is beyond death. Jesus was doing the same as Reverend Jim Jones, they belong to the same category. Jim Jones was only repeating Jesus. Jesus was saying “You are all going to be with me, and soon I will come back and take all of you into the glory of God.” Two thousand years have passed, the guy has not been seen again.Nevil AschenNational Public Radio, United StatesOsho,Is it planned that the leadership of the Osho foundations and organizations are all female? Is there a reason for that?Yes, there is a reason. I love women, and I want to give them all that has been taken away from them through the whole history of man. This is just a little compensation. The women are running this whole circus of mine, and they are doing it beautifully. There are other reasons also: a man is more head-oriented. He thinks: for and against. It is really very difficult for a man to say a total yes or a total no. He is a split personality. Some part of him says yes, some part of him says no.The woman functions through her heart, which knows no division. If it says yes it is total, and yes is beautiful only when it is total. If it says no it is beautiful. Anything which is total has a beauty. Anything which is half-half, fifty-fifty, is schizophrenic.So not only are the women, who are in a biologically feminine body, running the show, but also the men who are here have become more feminine than they would ever have imagined. They have become more graceful, more loving. Their heads are no longer in the way, they have fallen deep into their hearts. In fact, all my sannyasins are women!Howard Sattler6PR Radio, AustraliaOsho,You have been continually telling us that you have the greatest circus in the world and as we know, great circuses travel. I wonder if you would respond to stories from the southwest of Australia that you are about to tour the circus there, and that the circus is going to set up its big top there near a little timber town called Pemberton.Spread the rumor that I’m coming!I wonder if you would like to tell the people there, particularly the Christian leaders who have been leading a legal and a moral battle against your people over there, what they can expect if the circus comes to town? What is your message for them?They are going to be shocked by my message. Make it clear to them that my coming to Australia is going to create an immense turmoil in the whole continent, because I don’t believe in their morality – it is all hypocrisy. I don’t believe in their values, which are only a mask, and I’m going to hammer on that mask as hard as I can.My whole work is to reveal your original face to you. Naturally, if you hammer on somebody’s mask he freaks out, because he has been thinking that that mask is his face. So the first response to me is always that of shock. But if he has some guts – which I think Australians have – if they have some guts, they will wait to see what is behind the mask. Let the mask slip and you will be surprised: your personality was just mumbo-jumbo. This is your individuality, your true being – and it brings freedom with it, it brings wisdom with it, it brings a new kind of morality with it.So just tell them to get ready!We're ready! Thank you.Tom SeniorKPTV, Portland, Oregon, United StatesOsho,Getting back to your wristwatch for a second: as an enlightened master, why do you care what time it is?Just for your sake: I know the heat; my people are suffering and in the heat you must be suffering. I can continue forever. I am sitting in an air-conditioned place, you are not. It is just a little bit of concern for my people and for you all, who come from all over the world. I don’t want you to be ascetics. I want you to enjoy Rajneeshpuram, not to suffer in the heat here. Otherwise there is no problem, I can stop looking at the watch. You seem to feel offended by it: if that is so then it is great, because to offend is my whole work.Carlo SilvestroGrazia Magazine, ItalyOsho,What kind of love is possible between a man and a woman? Is there any possibility of a relationship between a man and a woman not entangled in the usual pattern of sadomasochism?It is a very significant question. Ordinarily, religions have made it impossible, they have destroyed any beautiful relationship between man and woman. There was a reason to destroy it: if a man’s love life is fulfilled, you will not find so many people in churches praying. They will be making love, early morning love, on Sundays. Who bothers about the idiot who is preaching in the church?If people’s love lives are of immense content and beauty they won’t bother about whether God exists or not, whether the philosophy preached in the Bible is true or not. They are so contented with themselves. Once in a while it happens that I pass on the road and two lovers are hugging, they don’t even look at me. I feel so happy; they must be in an immensely groovy place.Religions have destroyed your love by creating marriage. Marriage is the end, not the beginning – love is finished. Now you are a husband, your beloved is a wife. Now you start trying to dominate each other, it is politics, no longer love. Now every small thing becomes a point to be argued.And marriage is against human nature, so sooner or later you are going to be fed up with the woman, and the woman is going to be fed up with you. And it is natural, there is nothing wrong in it. That is why I say marriages should not be there, because marriages make the whole world immoral. A man sleeping with a woman, and they do not love each other but still are trying to make love because they are married – this is ugly, disgusting. This I call real prostitution.When a man goes to a prostitute, it is at least straightforward. He purchases a certain commodity. He does not purchase the woman, he purchases a certain commodity. But he has purchased the whole woman in marriage – for her whole life. All husbands and all wives without exception are caged, trying to get free of it. But sometimes in countries where divorce is allowed and they manage to change the partner, within a few days they are in for a surprise. The other woman or the other man proves an exact copy of the one they have left behind.I remember hearing about one man who married eight times – of course, it must have been in California. When he married the eighth time, after two days he recognized that he had married this woman once before. And then he started thinking, “What have I gained by changing women? It all comes back to the same rut.”Stability in marriage is unnatural, monogamy is unnatural. Man is by nature a polygamous animal, and anybody who is intelligent will be polygamous. You can’t go on and on eating Italian food – once in a while you want to visit the Chinese restaurant!I want people to be completely freed from marriage and marriage licenses. The only cause of their being together should be love, not law. Love should be the only law, then what you are asking about is possible. The moment love disappears, say goodbye to each other. There is nothing to fight for: love was a gift of existence, it came like the wind, it has gone like the wind.You will be grateful to each other. You may part, but you will remember those beautiful moments you had together. You may remain friends, if not lovers. Ordinarily lovers become enemies when they part. In fact, they become enemies before they part – that’s why they part.Ultimately, if both persons are meditators – not just lovers, but trying to transform the very energy of love into a meditative state… And that is my whole approach toward man and his relationship with woman. It is a tremendous energy, it is life. If, while making love to your woman, you can both move into a silent period, utterly quiet, no thought passing through your minds – as if time has stopped – then you will know for the first time the real taste of love. That kind of relationship can remain for the whole life, because it is no longer just biological attraction, which fades away sooner or later. Now you have a new dimension opening.Your woman has become your temple, your man has become your temple. Your love has become your meditation, and this meditation goes on growing, and when it is growing you start becoming more and more joyful, more and more nourished, more and more strengthened. There is no relationship, there is no bondage to remain with the woman. But who can renounce joy? Who can ask for a divorce when there is so much joy? People are asking for divorce because there is no joy, just despair: a twenty-four hour nightmare.My people here and around the world are learning that love is only the jumping board. There is much more ahead of it, which is possible only if two persons remain intimate for a longer period of time. With a new person, you begin again from scratch. And there is no need for a new person, because now it is not the biological or the physical aspect of the person, but you have come into communion spiritually.To transform sex into spirituality is my basic approach. And if both are lovers and meditators they will not mind, once in a while, if you visit a Chinese restaurant, or she goes to visit some continental restaurant! It is not a problem. You love the woman; if she is feeling happy once in a while with somebody else, what is wrong in it? You should be happy that she is happy, you love her. Only meditators are capable of dropping jealousies.Be a lover – that is a good beginning, but not the end. Go on trying to be more meditative. And be quick, because your love may be finished the day the honeymoon is finished. So meditation and love should go hand in hand. If we can create a world where lovers are meditators too, then there will be no problem of continuous torture, nagging, jealousies, hurting each other in every possible way.Love without meditation is bound to turn into hatred any moment – beware – but love with meditation will become deeper and deeper, more and more intense. And perhaps two persons will feel together so attuned, a kind of at-one-ment, that they would love to be together forever.But that is not a condition. Any day, if one partner decides, “Now I am moving from this crossroad, away from you. Thank you for all that you have done. I will remember all these beautiful moments, but I cannot continue” – that’s enough. No court is needed to decide for you that you are married, to decide for you that you are divorced. What an insane world we are living in, even our love is not free.And when I say that love should be our freedom, they condemn me all over the world as “the free-sex guru.” Certainly I am all for freedom of love. And in a way they are right: I don’t want sex to be a commodity in the market. It has to be freely available – just two persons agreeing, that’s enough. And this agreement is only for the moment: no promises for the future, because they become chains around your neck. They will kill you. No promises for the future, just relish this moment. And if next moment you are still together, you will be able to relish it more.So I don’t use the word relationship. I use the word relatedness. You can relate, but don’t create relationship. If your relating becomes a lifelong process, good. If it does not, that is even better. Perhaps this was not the right partner, and it is good that you separated. Find another partner, there must be someone somewhere who is waiting for you. But this society does not allow you to find out who it is who waiting for you, who is the person who will fit with you.They will call me immoral. To me, this is morality, what they are trying to practice is immoral.Grazie, Osho, I hope you come to Italy soon, too.Burt RudmanKOMO Television, Seattle, Washington, United StatesOsho,We're here to do a story on your personal secretary, and I was hoping that you might be able to describe your personal relationship with her, and perhaps why it was with Sheela that you spoke during your vow of public silence.What does he mean?Sheela: He wants to do a story on me, and he would like you to tell him why…You can just see Sheela. She is so beautiful, do you think anything more is needed? I have chosen her as my secretary because she has lived with me for many years, and I have seen not only her physical beauty, but also her spiritual beauty. I have seen her intelligence, I have seen that she can manage this whole commune of crazy people.Osho,She was discussing with a German magazine recently the fact that the reason that most of the people in the Rajneesh Trust were women was because women are more intelligent than men. Do you share that feeling with her?That’s true. Even if a man wants to function more intelligently, he will have to acquire some feminine qualities. As a man, he is just a barbarian.To acquire some feminine qualities – and just see, all qualities are feminine: love, compassion, sympathy, service, sharing – all qualities are feminine. Even if a man wants to function at the highest peak of his intelligence, he will have to be guided by his heart.And we are suffering so much because we have ignored the heart, we have completely bypassed the heart. Our whole educational program is how to bypass the heart – the feeling part, the emotions, the sentiments, the smiles, the tears – and just go directly to the head. And the head is the most insensitive place in the whole of existence.Inside the skull there is no sensitivity at all. Even if a bullet is put inside your skull or my skull under anesthetic, and I wake up, I will not feel that there is anything inside the skull. The skull is completely insulated in a way – it is insensitive. That’s why all of science has gone on in an insensitive way and has become a curse rather than a blessing.The heart has to be the master, and the head has to be the servant. Just because physiologically the heart is lower and the head is higher, does not mean that the head is superior. The superior part of your being is your heart. The delicate, the nice part, the most beautiful part, is your heart. So whenever anybody starts moving toward the heart, the heart guides the head. Then whatever you do, you do with sensitivity.That’s why I said that all my sannyasins are women in essence. They have accepted the heart as the master and the head as the servant. As a servant the head is perfectly good, as a master it is absolutely wrong.RamateerthaOsho Times, GermanyOsho,I was shocked hearing you support the production of test-tube babies, saying they could be geniuses, more beautiful and healthier than human beings. Surely the beauty of our inner being is all that matters? Or were you joking?No. Very rarely I am serious, and at the time I made that statement I was very serious. I mean it – because the man that has been created by blind nature, blind biology, has not proved a real growth for humanity. You can see it.Charles Darwin says that monkeys became man. But, since that time – that must have happened a million years ago – for these one million years man has not created something better. Monkeys were far more intelligent: at least they gave birth to humanity. Human beings seem to be absolutely impotent. They go on creating carbon copies of themselves. This has to be stopped.I have heard: it happened in an office… The orders from above came that the office is too cluttered with old files – thirty years, fifty years old – they should be destroyed. But make sure that every file’s carbon copy is kept. But what is the point? Why destroy the originals?Man has been meeting with women accidentally up to now. Hence, you feel shocked – anybody will feel shocked. I can understand – you think that a baby should receive the mother’s womb, the warmth of the mother, the care of the mother, the love of the mother. But, you know, there are many other things also in the mother: her nagging, her hatred, her jealousy, her stupidity. He will get all those things too.And we can see, the specimens are available all over the world. This is what has come out of your human relationship: Adolf Hitler is born out of your human relationship, he was in a mother’s womb. Joseph Stalin is born in the same way. And all these criminals – Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Mussolini, Mao Tse-tung, Nadirshah, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan – history of full of these monsters. They have also come out of loving women.I don’t trust any more in blind biology. I trust more in a conscious human being. It is better to give the birth of the child to a test tube, where we can choose the best semen, the best egg. And there is no need to be worried because they are anonymous; in fact, every hospital should have a bank. Just as they have banks for blood, they should have banks for semen and eggs; and they should look into the best semen-cell and the best egg, meeting in a very clinical way – in a test tube. They will not have the heritage of your ugly past. They will be fresh beings and we can program those eggs and the semen cells so that more health, more life, more intelligence becomes possible.One of the great poets in India was Rabindranath Tagore. He was the thirteenth child of his father. In each love affair the man releases millions of living cells. Only one of them will become Ronald Reagan, he will reach the female egg. They all rush – it is really a great rush… Millions of living beings, although they are very small and you cannot see them with your eyes – and it is a big race, bigger than any race that happens on the earth.Thinking of their size, the track between the semen and the woman’s egg proportionately is two miles long. If they were your size, the track would be two miles long. A two-mile track…and they are fighting hard to survive, because there is not much time. They are always close to the Third World War. They can only live two hours, not more than that. And only one cell reaches the egg and the egg closes. It rarely happens that two cells reach simultaneously – that’s why twins are born.Rabindranath was the thirteenth child of his father. The other twelve proved just idiots, nobody even knows their names. Now, it is a long blind passage. If Rabindranath’s father had stopped after the twelfth child – which seems to be a good point to stop; one dozen is enough, more than enough – then you would have missed one of the most beautiful beings on the earth: a great poet, a great painter and a great human being – in every way beautiful.But in a test tube it is so easy. Those twelve should have been discarded. We have chosen Rabindranath to be the first child – and who knows how much more potential would have been in him if he had also got the best female egg. Nobody knows.We don’t know the potentiality of humanity, give it a chance. What I am saying is, give it a chance. It looks inhuman in the beginning. Everything new looks inhuman in the beginning. Did you know, when the first railway train moved from London to a nearby station – just eight miles’ journey – nobody was ready to sit in it, even for free. Lunch was served free, but nobody was ready to enter the train because the priest in the early morning said in church: “God never created a railway train; this is unnatural, this is dangerous, this is inhuman. Don’t sit in it.”What do you think would have happened if people had stopped? There would have been no trains, no cars, no airplanes, no rockets to reach to the moon, and we have to reach to the stars. We need stronger bodies, we need more intelligent people, and we need people who are clean of all old crap. That is possible only if we make a clinical, medical arrangement for the birth of man. I am absolutely in support of it.Bob ChaseKEX Radio, Oregon, United StatesOsho,For the last years we've been told that the reason for the vow of public silence was because you had nothing more to say, that you had said it all in your teachings and writings. Is your feeling now that there is something new to say, that the past bears repeating – or is it that you enjoy the showmanship in the setting that you have here today?Your question implies so many things. First, my silence was not because I have said everything. My silence was because I wanted to drop those people who were hanging around my words. I wanted people who can be with me even if I am silent. I sorted out all those people without any trouble. They simply dropped out, three years was enough time. And when I saw all those people – and they were not many, but they were hanging around my words. I don’t want people to just believe in my words; I want people to live my silence. In these three years it was a great time to be silent with my people, and to see their courage and their love in remaining with a man who perhaps may never speak again.When the work was done, when those people had left, there was no need to remain silent. I am back again, and I have much more to say – and I will always have much more to say. Even on my deathbed, or in the chair being assassinated, I would still be saying something. I will not die silently.And I enjoy talking to my people, I enjoy their response. And, of course, I am a showman. Everybody is, they just don’t have the guts to say it.Prem IsabelPress Relations Bureau, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United StatesOsho,I'm not a journalist, but I deal with journalists all the time. I have a question that everybody asks me but nobody asked you today. And that is, during the time you didn't speak, Sheela was speaking all over the place, and many people got offended by her comments. Everybody asks, “How come Sheela is your spokesperson? How come Sheela makes those statements? She is antagonizing people.”Would you please say something about this?I was also very much offended by Sheela. Whenever she came back, I hit her hard, because she was not the way I would like her to be – really outrageous! She was falling below the standard. And I was continuously telling her, “Don’t be worried, we don’t have anything to lose. We have the whole world to gain and nothing to lose. Be outrageous!”There is a saying: no news is good news. It is half – the other half I have to make: if no news is good news, then good news is no news! It has to be sensational. I have been sharpening her like a sword. “Go, and cut as many heads as you can!” I agree, I was also offended.Kathleen StoneKBND Radio, Bend, Oregon, United StatesOsho,You have said you have no interest in the outside, no interest in politics. Why then did you take over the town of Antelope, or your followers, your community? And why did you say you would like your followers to take over the world?I am not a Rajneeshee, first, you have to remember.I understand that.And I have not taken over the dead city of Antelope.But your followers…They are not my followers either, they are my fellow travelers.I have such a big caravan, if a few people decide to make a dead city alive, why should I interfere? They should try to find other dead cities around and make them alive with laughter and joy. That’s why I said – because the question was asked to me, “Are you going to take Oregon?” – I said, “No, it is too small a thing. I would like my people to take over the whole world.”But that was simply a joke and I love jokes.Penny AllenEsquire Magazine, United StatesOsho,A number of your sannyasins have told me that they sense a certain ripeness in this moment. They feel that the fruit of Rajneeshism is ripe now and ready to be plucked from the tree. Do you feel this also, and is this why you have chosen this moment to address the questions of the press?Yes, they are right, And this is the right moment to declare to the whole world that our tree has blossomed and the fruits are ripe, and to invite them to come and share with us. It is true.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Jeff McMullen60 Minutes, AustraliaOsho,Of the many extraordinary things that you say, the one on which I would never debate you is that you are an ordinary man. How ordinary a man are you?Extraordinarily.Are you the new man that you say the world needs?Yes.Do you put yourself on a plane with other great men: Jesus, Buddha, Krishna?No, I am just myself and I don’t belong to any past, past prophets, messiahs. I am the beginning of a new man, absolutely discontinuous with the past. I have nothing to do with Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Krishna, Buddha. To me they are all dead and of no use for the future new man. In fact, they are the barriers for the new man to be born. I am fighting against all those fellows.Are you a god?No, there is no God. God is the greatest fiction created by cunning priests, and the new man is not going to have any God. The new man is enough unto himself. No God is needed. God is needed by retarded people.Was Einstein retarded? He believed in a God.Then I will have to explain to you that Einstein was a great physicist, he was a genius, but as far as other directions of life are concerned he was below average.I am reminded: he was traveling in a bus. He gave money for a ticket, the conductor returned change to him. He counted it and said to the conductor, “This is not right, you are cheating.” The conductor counted it again and he said, “Mister, it seems you don’t know how to count.” And this is the greatest physicist of the world.It is a strange phenomenon that the great scientists are very stupid as far as religion is concerned – they are absolutely ignorant about it. Even the ordinary man is more aware of religion. The expert is basically to be understood as a man who knows more and more about less and less. The ultimate expert is one who knows all about nothing. The religious man is not an expert. His situation is just the opposite: he knows less and less about more and more, and ultimately he comes to a point when he knows nothing about all. And that nothingness has been called nirvana. It is not ignorance, it is innocence.Osho,Let me try you on some other “not so ordinary men.” If I give you a name, perhaps you could give me one of your words of wisdom for each of these people: Mahatma Gandhi.He was the most cunning politician the world has ever known.Adolf Hitler.He was the most idiotic politician the world has ever known.Pope Paul.He should be behind bars.Mother Teresa.It is time for her to jump into a lake.Osho,Your followers laugh and yet, with the kind of very unsettling raw statement that you make, you clearly disturb people who see that sort of statement as profane.I love to disturb people, because only by disturbing them can I make them think. They have stopped thinking for centuries. Nobody has been there to disturb them, people have been consoling them. I am not going to console anybody, because the more you console them, the more retarded they remain. Disturb them, shock them, hit them hard, give them a challenge. That challenge will bring their capacities to the climax.How would you feel if the Hells Angels – a motorbike gang, leather jackets, helmets, a terror gang – how would you feel if the Hells Angels rode into Rajneeshpuram and disturbed your tranquil oasis?We will enjoy them, we will receive them as our guests. They cannot disturb us, nobody can disturb us. Even if they throw an atom bomb on Rajneeshpuram, the atom bomb will have a shock, because we will be celebrating, dancing, enjoying. Even death cannot disturb us; we will celebrate it. We celebrate it: whenever a sannyasin dies – even when my father died – we danced, we celebrated. We enjoyed a beautiful departure, a goodbye. So there is no question. Anybody can come, he will have an appropriate welcome.Then why the armed guards and the perimeter around your existence here? Surely not anybody can come?Those guards are the responsibility of the Rajneeshees, I am not concerned. I don’t interfere in anybody’s life, I have never interfered in any way. If somebody wants to assassinate me, I am the last person to give him any resistance. I will simply welcome him. I will say, “Glad to meet you. Shoot me and let me be free from the body and its cage.”But if people who love me want to protect me, I am not going to interfere with their work, either. Those guards have nothing to do with me. They are managed by people who love me. Now, I am an outsider to both – the assassin and the guard. It is between them, they have to settle it. I am simply an outsider.A technical limitation of film, we have to put a new magazine on.Okay.Even in the atomic age.Okay.Osho,Hollywood isn't easy. You seem very fond of the Wild West here in America. Do you have an equal affection for the wild west of Western Australia? Do you have any intentions of going there and taking your followers there?I never function through intentions, I am a man of spontaneity – so beware. Any time I can come with my whole circus. I may never come. I never decide for the next moment; one moment is enough to live at one time, and nobody can get two moments together. We always get one moment, so why bother about other things? – because while we are bothering about other moments, this moment will be gone, empty, unlived, and that is the misery of humanity. They go on thinking of tomorrow and today is disappearing. We are the people who are living in the present. So it is possible.But not likely.It is likely.Not at this moment.Not at this moment. But perhaps tomorrow morning.Osho,You do love this theater, you said that. You laughed yesterday… It is a circus. But in another moment will you tire of this circus, the trappings?No, never, because it is such a beautiful circus, and continuously changing. New flowers, new seasons go on coming. I am not tired of it. And the people who make my circus are not the animals of a circus; they are the most intelligent people of this earth, the very salt of the earth. They go on creating something new every day. It is always new, and it is always new also because I never compare anything. Yesterday is gone, I don’t bring it back to compare with today. Tomorrow has not come, who cares? It is always new, fresh.People get tired because they go on comparing. And comparison means you have lived this thing many times, you have seen this rose flower many times; so slowly, slowly you become blind to it, you start taking it for granted. I take nothing for granted and my people take nothing for granted, so every moment we are ready for any surprise.The day I left India, I informed my people to prepare immediately, I am going to leave. It was a shock! Ten thousand sannyasins were settling there, making arrangements, purchasing houses, lands. And with twenty-four hours notice I told them to make arrangements, that I was leaving. And ordinarily I never come back to any place that I have left in my life. So I am not tired or bored, I am rejoicing in it as much as possible.There is a slight technical problem with the film.You seem to have very ancient equipment in Australia!This is Hollywood. This is film as distinct from mere television, mere videotape. But the final look – you talk of beauty and goodness – well, the beauty of the film is still the excellence, I think, which is why we take a little more time. But when we get there, it is worth it.That is good.Osho,You sound like you will not go back to India. Even if the moment were to change, that doesn't seem to be a place you would be drawn to again?Nothing can be said about it. But in my whole life I have never gone back. The places I have left, I have left. So looking at my crazy behavior of the past, it is very unlikely that I will go to India. But then one never knows, I am not a reliable person.That is your most reliable quality.We have had a very peaceful time here for… It has only been a few days but…Come again and again.…given the madness that we parade around in for most of the year it's been very enjoyable. Thank you for sharing it with us.Come whenever you feel like having a holiday.You have so many Australians here already, what do you think of us?I love you. I see a beautiful human being in front of me, open, available. I don’t see you as a prejudiced man. I don’t see you as unintelligent, and I see every possibility of growing more and more into higher and higher consciousness. I don’t predict ordinarily, but I see one of my potential sannyasins sitting here in front of me.Osho,Did you follow others, as others now follow you?No. I have never followed anybody, and I have never allowed anybody to follow me. These are my fellow travelers. My sannyasins are not my followers, they are my friends.Osho,I think I am just a fellow traveler too. I am an ordinary man, I am an ordinary storyteller. When I ask about Australians and you say we are open… I think we are open. When Sheela came to Australia, she has learned your skill for how to unsettle people, she has made people burn. Is that really necessary? What do you win with that, wouldn't you have more support to show…?We don’t need any support, I am not a politician seeking support. I want to share something, but that is possible only when you are shocked and disturbed in your sleep. I have to wake you up, and Sheela has been doing a good job of shaking people and waking people. She prepares the ground for me. When she has done enough, then perhaps I may come there to find people with whom I can relate heart to heart. And there are millions of people in the world who need just a little bit of shaking and they will be awake. Their sleep is not very deep.You do seem to like to shake the rich most. Maybe it is the jingle of the coins from the pocket you like to shake loose.The reason is that the poor man is fast asleep; otherwise he cannot tolerate his poverty. He needs deep sleep, he needs some opium – given by the politicians, by the priests. His sleep is not just ordinary sleep, it is narcotic. The rich man needs no consolation from anybody. The rich man is not worried about heaven and hell. He knows he can purchase everything – the priest, his God, his heaven, his hell – everything can be purchased. He is not in the same situation as the poor man, he can be easily awakened. Between the poor man and me there is a great distance.And the black man? There are few blacks here.A few blacks have come, because they are as beautiful people as anyone. The problem is, once a person comes here and just gives us a little chance to shake him and wake him, he is not going to leave the place. So those few black people had come just for three months to live with us – we had invited anybody to come and live with us for three months. They have remained. Many have gone, but they go on continuously writing to us that they miss it and would like to come back, because for the first time they had been treated as human beings.For the first time a white man has hugged a black woman or a black man has hugged a white woman, made love to a white woman. For the first time he was not thought to be second rate. He was respected, just the way everybody else is respected. There was no discrimination.The problem is, people are afraid to come, because the politicians are making them afraid. The religious leaders are making them afraid, creating all kinds of rumors, preventing them from coming here because they know perfectly well that anybody who comes here with open eyes, an alert mind, is going to fall in love with this place.Osho,It is very peaceful, any visitor here finds it peaceful. One of the rumors about the place is about that side of free love: if there is this much free love here, why the rubber gloves in the hotel rooms? What has changed?It is being careful about my people. They should take every precaution that they don’t get AIDS, which is spreading fast, and there is no cure for it. Once you have AIDS, you have only two more years to live at the maximum. That is the maximum, most probably within six months you will be finished. I would not like my people to be finished that ugly way. Love is free, AIDS is not free.Osho,You are more certain about some of these things than scientists that I have talked to. What is it, how does an ordinary man become a guru, an Osho, with such clarity and certainty about these things?Only an ordinary man can become so certain, so clear. The extraordinary man is so much burdened with his ego, with his knowledgeability, with his schizophrenic mind, with all kinds of arguments.I am reminded of Immanuel Kant, one of the most important philosophers of the West. A woman fell in love with him and he said, “I will have to think about it.”Now, you don’t think about love – either yes or no – but Immanuel Kant is a big philosopher. He thought about it for three years and he managed to find all the arguments for marriage and against marriage. The trouble was, they were equal. After three years he went to the woman’s house and knocked on the door. He had gone to say, “Forgive me, I cannot decide. The arguments are equal, fifty-fifty.” But the woman was not there…Please finish.Let them change [the film.]Talking to Australians will not be like Good Morning, America. We don't plan to exhaust you. There is enough wit and wisdom and magic and theater already in what we have, to fill twice the length of our television program. But there are one or two more special questions that I would like to bring to you, if you could.Okay.Osho,The dam that you have here is named after Gurdjieff – this is not the question for the camera, but I am curious about it – he was also a fellow traveler on the road. Was he to you at least, if not an inspiration, a remarkable man?He was an immensely remarkable man, in fact nobody else has been so remarkable in this century. But he was an ordinary man. He never claimed that he was a prophet, he lived just like an ordinary man – but he was most remarkable. His insight and clarity are just inconceivable.He moved, whereas you sit still – do you think one is superior? He seemed to be a traveler; whereas you are traveling here, but you physically rest anywhere. It seems not even very important to you, where you are in that sense. Do you think one is a superior choice to the other, or…?No, there is no question of any superiority. It is just with whom your heart starts beating. It is just a question of liking, loving – somebody may like Mozart and somebody may not like him. Somebody may like Vincent van Gogh and somebody will think him crazy, mad.[noises are heard, caused by problems with the video equipment]If you are ready, I have to finish my answer.He still has his hands in the magic bag.So when he is ready please tell me, because I don’t forget anything.You can talk about things that you don’t want to put on the film.Osho,Without giving you the wit and wisdom of yet another ordinary man, one thing might be useful – maybe more to the Rajneeshees – but I think the toy soldiers that you have here are a little silly. I know that they are doing it out of love for you, but it would seem to me out of kilter with the serenity of the place. Probably the more peaceful side of what you do here in this oasis in the desert is enough defense, without the Wild West trappings. That seems to me what governments and armies do, and I don't think that the Rajneeshees need to be the same as the rest.You have not been here long enough, and you have not seen… I have been attacked many times.Here though, or in India?In India. Efforts were made to poison me, to kill me. I know those guns are silly – in an age which is nuclear, they are carrying toy guns. But what is the harm, if they enjoy and they feel that they are doing something?It doesn't upset you?It is perfectly okay. Let them enjoy. They are toys, but what they are doing – their love is not a toy. They cannot have nuclear weapons, otherwise they would have nuclear weapons too. Whatsoever they can…[the film is ready]I come back.Would you like me to pick up on where we were talking?Yes.Osho,You said that Immanuel Kant couldn't choose…Yes, that will do.…between one very simple matter of love. Could I interject and ask you something on that?Just wait, let me finish because I had not finished it.He knocked on the woman’s door. There was no woman, an old man opened the door and recognized Immanuel Kant. Kant asked about the woman, he said, “She was my daughter, but she has been married for three years and she has two children, too. She does not live in this town anymore. What business do you have with my daughter? You go and think a little more.”Thinkers are the most clumsy people in the world, most indecisive. I am not a thinker. I simply see, and whatsoever I see I say it without bothering about the consequences. I am an absolutely open person – there is nothing private in me.Osho,The same question then, that Immanuel Kant had to answer: the yes or no about love. Are you in love with Sheela? Is she your…?I am in love with so many women around the world. Sheela, of course, is one of them, but I cannot point out a single woman that I love. I love – and my love is not addressed to anybody in particular. And I have loved so many women, I don’t think anybody else could have managed it. Even Gurdjieff is far behind me in that matter. He loved many women, but not more than a dozen.If Sheela is that special, is Sheela the power behind the throne? Is she the heir apparent to your spiritual kingdom?No, there is no power, no kingdom. I am here, she is just a fellow traveler, as others.It is a kingdom with more Rolls Royces than any other city in the world.That is true. I am a man of very simple taste; I like the best of anything – this is certainly true. I would like this city to be in many ways the only city in the world which has that capacity. Certainly, we have ninety or more Rolls Royces, no city of a comparable membership can claim that. In every way: we don’t have a single beggar, we don’t have a single thief, we don’t have any crime, no murder in four years – in America, where twenty percent of the presidents are being murdered – no prostitution.In many ways this place is unique, and we are going to make it more and more unique and beautiful. Just the stupid politicians cannot understand a simple thing: that we are not doing any harm to anybody. Don’t prevent us from doing things which are not harmful – but they go on, they are so afraid.The governor goes on speaking against us and we have been inviting him, “First just come and visit. Be here and see the people and the place, and then if you feel to speak against us, speak against us. We have no problem with that. But at least be acquainted, at least be a gentleman.”It doesn't feel like Jonestown to us.It is just the opposite of Jonestown. They were death-oriented; we are life-oriented, we love to enjoy everything. They were just an unintelligent group of people – mostly black, uneducated, knowing nothing – following this man who was telling them, that if they go with him they will enter into the kingdom of God.We are creating the kingdom of God here. In fact, we are waiting for God to knock on our doors some day and say, “Let me come in.” We are just the opposite. Reverend Jim Jones and his people are really the logical conclusion of Jesus and the Christian theology.Not the logical conclusion of the power of one man over a group of people?That was exactly what Jesus was doing, that is exactly what the popes have been doing – that is why I say he is the logical conclusion from Jesus through all the popes and all the Christian theologians. They have all been trying to prove the power, the glory of Jesus, his special-ness and his special connection with God… And if you follow him then you need not worry about the future, he will take care of you.Here I teach people that nobody can take care of you. I am not your savior. I am not going to help you in any way to enter into the kingdom of God, but I can explain to you how we can live here in the kingdom of beauty, love, joy. To me God is a dead word. It is a dirty word, a four-letter word.I think I would prefer to end our interview with the beauty of something you said earlier, rather than the ugliness of Jonestown.I would like to talk to you a little more, if we can turn the microphones off – they need to get a few more shots of us sitting here, if we can continue talking…Okay.Do whatsoever you want to do.For our purposes we are trying, in the space of the very condensed television program, to get your essence. It is trying to compress what you have been saying – for fifty-three years or fifty-three lifetimes – into a sixty-minute program, which is almost an impossible task. But we think that we have caught for the sake of our film some of the magic and the tranquility of this experience.Good.Osho,I hope you don't mind my saying that I enjoyed the circus and the theater of it as much as…maybe that is close to a spiritual feeling, but to me you are truly one of the funniest people that I have ever met.That is right.You have a wonderful sense of humor. And where did you learn such timing?I have never learned anything, I just go on doing naturally whatsoever I feel to do. Whatsoever I have to say, I say – because I don’t have any obligation to anybody, and I don’t have any commitment to anybody. I don’t belong to any party line. I am absolutely free to be funny, to be shocking.I don’t even bother about contradicting myself, because to me it seems that a man who remains consistent his whole life must be an idiot. A growing person has to contradict himself many times, because who knows what tomorrow brings in? Tomorrow may cancel this day completely, and I am ready to go with life with no hesitation.Did you love those contradictions when you were a debater many years ago?I have always loved the contradictions, because for me contradictions have something of tremendous value. They appear contradictions to the intellect, but the deeper you go into them, you will find they are compensatory, they are not contradictions.They somehow depend on each other: if one disappears, the other will not be there. For example, if there had been no British rule in India there would have been no Mahatma Gandhi – no possibility. If there had been no Adolf Hitler, forget all about Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin. Life exists in such a way that it makes contradictions, complementaries. I have always loved them.Osho,Would you be happy then, if some of these people who now follow you wandered off to some other sphere of discovering what is, to them, themselves?I will be happy and I will bless them to go there, because they have come here to seek some truth, some tranquility, some sanity. If they feel they can get it better somewhere else, I will be the first person to send them and help them to go. I have been doing that for years. In fact, I have had to do it in such a way that they don’t feel they are leaving me. Even against their will, I had to bless them and tell them to go.I knew that they loved me, but now their minds were in difficulty; they wanted to go somewhere else, but their love for me had become an attachment. I had to destroy that attachment – only then could they go. And I have been destroying many attachments for their sake, because I don’t want anybody to be a slave. Out of freedom they have come to me, out of freedom they should go. And if they want to remain here, out of freedom they should remain here. This is not a concentration camp, it is a meditation camp.Good.This has been not so much an interview as a conversation.No, I loved it.I will find out later how much is on the television film, but…Do whatsoever you feel like doing. Just remember one thing: I love you, and whenever you feel alone, sad, tired, come here. Again and again, come here.Good.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sheela: I have some champagne, some cigars.That’s good.Sheela: What would you care for?Good. Keep them by my side.Sheela: The silver ones are Brazilian and the others Romeo and Juliet Havanas.Good. Yes…Howard Sattler6PR Radio, AustraliaOsho,You have the champagne, I have the water. You say you're an ordinary man. Where does that place the rest of us?You will be drinking water and I will not be touching the champagne. There is the difference.Osho,You and particularly your Rajneeshees have created quite an impact on Western Australia – where I come from – through a lot of things: their commercial endeavors and their efforts to start a community school in our southwest. The people of Western Australia want to know about you, about your people. Could you tell them what sort of person you are?I don’t know at all. I just live moment to moment, so you cannot confine me into a personality You cannot define me, you cannot predict me. I don’t even know myself what I am going to do tomorrow morning. I am simply as open as existence and as indefinable as existence itself. So people have to figure out whatsoever they want – I am available. There are people who love me, there are people who would like to kill me. They have chosen different parts of me, they have focused their eyes according to their prejudices. But I am not in any way concerned about the opinion of others. I don’t have any opinion about other people, any judgment about other people.Are you a threat to their existence and their futures? Many people have been told you are.Perhaps. If you don’t understand what I am saying, I am certainly a threat. But if they understand what I am saying they will rejoice, there is no threat. In fact, I want to make these people contemporaries. They are not: somebody is hanging two thousand years back with Jesus Christ, somebody is hanging even farther back with Moses or Buddha. These people certainly will feel me a threat because I belong to the present.I want them to come to the present, otherwise there is no hope for humanity. These people are simply walking corpses, burdened with the whole load of the past – ugly, superstitious. Certainly I am a threat to their superstitions, I am a threat to their rotten theologies. I am a threat to their concepts about morality, God, religion, about everything they have that is out of date. Certainly they will feel threatened because that’s how they have become identified in their own eyes, and it is always difficult to change.Whenever a man like me is there, there are not two ways: either you have to be with me or you have to be against me.Does that mean that they have to become Rajneeshees?No, there is no need: they have to become contemporaries, that’s enough. Rajneeshees are not an alternative, they are simply the groundwork for the contemporary man to begin with. Once the world has understood that we have to live in the present, not in the past, Rajneeshees will simply dissolve. It is not something that I would like to remain forever and forever, it is a simple device to challenge people, to bring them to their senses. And once our work is done… They don’t need to become Rajneeshees, they need to become contemporaries, and the moment they are contemporaries, our work is done. Rajneeshees will simply melt and dissolve into the whole world.Osho,You certainly challenge people's traditional values, and that's one of the things I believe makes your job more difficult. Do you think that you could be a little bit more moderate and look for the end result rather than the immediate reaction?I don’t care about the end result. My whole concern is not diplomatic, nor political. I am simply responding with my totality to anything that comes in front of me. I cannot be cunning. What you are saying to me – be a little more cunning – I cannot be.You're not a politician, are you?I am not a politician, that is the ugliest thing that can happen to a man. I am not diplomatic: I do not want people to be manipulated politely. I am not a hypocrite: I simply say the truth as it is. If it hurts, it is your problem. If it creates enemies I am not worried, because the enemies are on the first step to becoming my friends. They have already recognized me in their hate. They have already recognized their defeat and death, now nobody can save them. They cannot ignore me – if they can ignore me, then there is no threat for them. That’s why I have to be intense, fiery, and I have to hammer hard on each traditional value, because the only thing that I would not like is to be ignored.You certainly won't be ignored, I can assure you of that.Thank you for the compliment.Osho,You have a situation where I come from in Western Australia where your Rajneeshees have got to get approval from governments, from politicians, to go ahead with their projects. What's your advice to them if the politicians are against you?Fight.With guns?No, legal methods are available. Those politicians themselves are claiming that they are democratic, use their own democracy and fight with them. They are saying that their judicial system is fair? Use it and fight them. Guns are just barbarous.You would never use guns or condone that sort of…?I myself will never even touch a gun. My advice to the people who belong to me is, “Be intelligent, use your intelligence.” And against those idiotic politicians it is a simple matter: we are going to use their own devices for their own destruction. We need not use any guns.Osho,Your personal secretary created an incredible impact in Western Australia. Certainly she was probably number one entertainment for around about a month on radio and television. But I understand that you are a little bit unhappy with the way she handled things – you thought she could have been a bit tougher.She could have been.I don't believe it.And I have been very tough with her because I don’t see any limit anywhere, you can go on in any direction infinitely. Sheela is never going to satisfy me. She is doing her best, but I would like her to do a little more, more…Well, perhaps you should come next time.First she has to go on preparing the ground for me. One day I am going to come.To Australia, to Western Australia?Certainly. When Sheela comes, that means I am coming.She's getting us ready, is she?Yes, she is coming again. She will go again and again, and prepare the ground. She will hit people more and more, and their values more and more, so they become ready. Because when I come, then comes the final hit.All your opponents will be almost knocked out by then.Just tell your people, “Be ready.”What will you do when you get there?I cannot say that now because I don’t know myself. When I go there and I see the situation and I feel the atmosphere, then whatsoever happens in me as a response… I never prepare myself for anything. I am not an actor – no rehearsal, I simply start the drama without knowing what is going to happen. We will see it. And up to now everything has gone well.I have been told that one of the reasons you live in Oregon is because the weather suits you, because of your medical condition.Yes.The weather in Western Australia is almost the same as Oregon.That’s great! It may become my permanent residence.That's not going to be good news for your opponents.Certainly not, but wherever I am the situation is the same. I will find my friends, I will find my enemies. Both belong to me; in fact they are two polarities, complementaries. There is nothing wrong in it.Osho,You said just a little while ago that you are not an actor. But a lot of people might class you as one of the great comedians of this world.I am.Where does the talent come from?Just because I don’t expect any respectability from anybody, so I can act the way I want. I can be funny without any trouble. I have nothing to lose, because in the first place, I have never expected the world to praise me and give me Nobel Prizes, and this and that. I have everything that I need – it is within me, and I am completely fulfilled. Now I can be crazy, mad, a comedian. I am absolutely free to be anything, I can afford anything, even to be a madman. But it is within my control, and I enjoy the whole show so much.You enjoy the laughs?Yes.More than anything else?Yes.Osho,You've suggested that perhaps you are a madman. I don't think you are a madman at all. But there are madmen around the world who are religious leaders and I'd ask you, if I could, to comment on some of them: the Ayatollah Khomeini?I said to you that I can be a madman, and that is possible only if I am not mad. I can enjoy being mad, but I am not mad – that’s why I can enjoy it. The madman has become identified with his madness. One thing is absolutely certain about every madman: he will never accept that he is mad. The religious leaders are mostly mad people, fanatics, and just because they are mad, fanatic, they gather all kinds of idiots around them.Whole nations sometimes, like Iran: a whole country.Yes, because most human beings are retarded. Scientifically, the average mental age of a human being is below thirteen. Now if thirteen is your mental age, you may be seventy years old but you can be exploited, you can be conditioned for any nonsense. You can be made afraid of hell, for which no evidence exists. You can be motivated: your greed can be aroused for heaven, for which no evidence exists. You can be conditioned to pray to a God who is the greatest lie in the world.The wonder of wonders is that even in your supreme courts – where you have your best judges, the cream – the oath has to be taken in the name of God. The oath to be truthful, in the name of the greatest lie! None of those judges have seen God, none of those judges have any idea what God is, but it is being used. Most of humanity is so mediocre that it can follow any madman. The madman just has to be a little methodological, and the religious madmen are very methodological.There is no contradiction in being methodological. Methodology does not need intelligence. Now, what is the methodology of Jesus? – “I am the only begotten son of God.” And the mediocre people are going to believe it, because to not believe in it is to go to hell and suffer for eternity. Nobody wants to suffer for eternity – as it is, one is suffering enough already. One wants some relief. Even if the relief comes after death, one wants to live peacefully and joyously, not starving, not sick, not old, not ugly.Naturally a simple methodology: “I am the only begotten son of God, I can save you, I have come to save the whole world, those who believe in me I will choose for paradise, and those who don’t believe in me will fall into an abysmal darkness of hell.” A very simple methodology – and the suffering, the poor, the starving, the uneducated, the downtrodden, the oppressed, exploited are ready to cling to any hope.Why?Because there is nothing in their life. It is so empty that if there is no hope for them, they will commit suicide. Then there is no other way – for what should they go on, continue dragging their empty lives? Just to suffer? Just to get hit, just to be crushed under the boots of people who are in power? The hope helps.And that is the methodology of all the religions: Give people hope. But the strategy is very cunning: keep the hope beyond death – because they know perfectly well that hope in this life cannot be fulfilled, and then these same people who are their followers will kill them. So keep the hope beyond death – you can never be caught, nobody comes back from death to say that these people are lying. So they go on lying, and the more a lie is repeated, day by day, year by year, century by century, for thousands of years, it almost starts sounding as if it is true.So the pope is a fraud?Certainly, absolutely. All religions up to now have been a fraud; they have deceived people and because of their deception humanity has continued to suffer. Otherwise, we have enough intelligence. If we can reach to the moon, do you think we cannot manage enough food for humanity?Osho,Perhaps we are spending too much money reaching the moon.That, too, is foolish: if you cannot feed people here, what are you going to do on the moon? Seventy-five percent of every nation’s income – even poor nations – is going into construction for the coming war. Everybody is getting ready.Is it going to happen?If all these people are getting ready and are getting excited about it, any fool can start it. My effort is that it should not happen, but the only way to prevent it is to make human beings more alert so that they cannot be exploited by priests and politicians. And that’s what I am doing. Naturally politicians are against me – all kinds of politicians. It is a miracle: the capitalist is against me, the socialist is against me, the communist is against me, the fascist is against me. It is simply a miracle.But you're a capitalist here, running a commune.I am not a capitalist. I use capital as a servant, it is not my political ideology. I want people to live richly in every possible way: luxury should be available to everybody. I don’t want people to become equally poor and call it communism. I want people to become equally rich, and then whatever name you want to call it, you can call it. Names don’t matter.Is that sort of wealth available to the people of India, the sort of people that Mother Teresa tries to help?These people like Mother Teresa, who have been helping the poor for centuries, are really the causes for poverty continuing. The poor cannot be helped the way Mother Teresa is helping. This is not help, this is politics, because all those orphans she helps are transformed, converted into Catholic Christianity.In fact, Mother Teresa would be out of a job if there were no orphans in India. She needs more orphans. That’s why they are all against birth control methods, against abortion. Otherwise, from where are you going to get orphans? They need the poor, because without the poor whom are you going to serve? And without service you cannot reach heaven. This is a simple strategy to reach heaven.I love one story:It happened in China that a man fell into a well. It was the annual fair so there was so much noise that nobody took any note that he was shouting, “Save me!” A Buddhist monk passed by, he looked into the well and told the man that there was no need to cry and scream.“Accept whatsoever is the case, be contented. In the next life you will be fulfilled a thousandfold.”The man said, “I am not here to listen to philosophy. I am dying and you are talking philosophy. First, please help me get out.”The Buddhist said, “It is against my religion to interfere into the actions and the consequences of somebody else. You must have committed some sin in your past life. You have fallen into the well, be happy that your sin is finished, your punishment is over. But I am not going to take you out, because tomorrow if you murder somebody then I will also be responsible for it. I am not going to be responsible for any murder.”And he went away.The man could not believe it, “These Buddhists talk about compassion. I am dying and he talks philosophy. I am not in a state even to understand what he is saying.”And after him came a Confucian monk. In the old days in China the wells had no walls surrounding them, so it was very easy to fall into them in the darkness, there was no preventive measure.The Confucian monk said, “Listen, you are the proof of what my master has said. My master has said that every well should have walls around it. Don’t be worried, I am going to create a great revolution in the whole country, so that every well is well protected.”The man said, “But when will the revolution happen? And when will all the wells have walls? By that time I will be gone.”The Confucian said, “You are not the question – individuals come and go. It is a question for the whole society. We cannot bother about a single individual, we think in terms of the whole civilization.”And he went away to create a revolution.And then came a Christian monk with a bag hanging on his shoulder. He took a rope from the bag, threw it in, took the man out. The man was immensely grateful, fell at his feet and said, “You are the only religious man. But tell me how you guessed that somebody has fallen into the well. And you came with a rope – why are you carrying a rope?”He said, “We carry everything in this bag for emergency purposes, anywhere. Somebody will need to be served, and our lord Jesus Christ has said that those who serve will receive immense rewards in heaven.”Now, think of a world where nobody is in need of anybody’s service: everybody is happy, healthy, comfortable, luxurious. What will happen to the great Christian servants and saints? They will simply be out of a job. They need poverty to remain, it is their very source of becoming saints, holier than thou.I don’t say to my people, “Go and serve the poor.” Service, to me, is not a beautiful word. I say to my people, “If you have something, share it. But remember one thing: there is no reward beyond it.” Enjoy sharing – that is the reward. If you pull somebody out who is drowning in a well, that’s a great joy. What more reward do you want? You saved a life; you should be immensely happy. The reward is in the act itself and the punishment also is in the act itself. They are not extrinsic, they are intrinsic.But all these religions have been telling people that the reward is somewhere far away – beyond death – and punishment, too. Neither can it be proved, nor can it be disproved; hence their business goes on and on, and mediocre people go on following it.If all these religions disappear two things are possible: either the poor will die out of poverty… Ethiopia will disappear, so what? – it is better that Ethiopia disappears from the earth, rather than thousands of people dying in hunger. With hunger you don’t die in a day: a man can live hungry for three months, he will become just a skeleton – and what is the point of these three months of torture?So, there are two alternatives if all these great servants of people don’t interfere: either countries like Ethiopia, India, other poor countries will disappear… Let them disappear, this earth cannot manage so many people.Osho,What would you say to the millions of Australians who have donated to buy food for Ethiopians who are dying of hunger, dying of war?It does not help: it simply will save a few Ethiopians, who will produce more Ethiopians.We should stop aid to Ethiopia?You should stop completely, because the world needs only one fourth of the population that it has right now. Only then can people be peaceful, living comfortably, joyously. There is no need – what is the point? I have been in India for fifty years, and for thirty years I have been teaching people that birth control is absolutely essential, that abortion is absolutely essential. And they were throwing stones at me, knives at me, shoes at me; that was my reward.In places like India and perhaps South America, oppressed countries, should there be a moratorium on all births for, say, twenty years?That’s what I said, that there should be total birth control for twenty or thirty years.That’s what I was saying, that there are two possibilities: one, the poor will disappear. Please don’t serve them, be compassionate. Your service is not compassion, your service is your greed for heaven. You are using people and their poverty for your own joys in heaven – beautiful women who are always young, who don’t even perspire and don’t need any deodorant.In the Mohammedan heaven there are rivers of wine. You cannot get water in the Mohammedan heaven, only wine. Here it is a crime, here it is a sin and the same thing that is sin here – Mohammedans are against alcohol – by a miracle, the same wine becomes virtue, saints are enjoying it. To look at somebody else’s wife with lustful eyes is sin, and your saints, what are they doing in heaven? They are not married, there is no marriage in heaven. They are enjoying all kinds of women.Either let the poor die – be compassionate – or if you are really compassionate, then stop this wastage of your energy and money for war effort, drop these boundaries between nations. Let there be only one government – which is enough. There is no need for America and Soviet Union and India and Ethiopia, just let there be one global government.Who would be its president, Ronald Reagan?Certainly not!You?No! Not I, because I don’t want to get into any stupid mess. Not Reagan, because if the world is one, people will find a better man, a wiser man. Because the world will be available to choose, they will not choose Reagan, with a chimpanzee as his friend. There are wiser people in the world.The moment nations are not there, war is impossible. So seventy-five percent of the income of the whole world can change the whole scene – there will be nobody who is poor. There is no need for anybody to be poor. And if there is one world, all scientific effort will become creative. Right now it is destructive, right now it prepares only for war; but when there is no need for any war, all scientific minds will take a 180-degree turn. It will be creative; we can create so much that nobody will bother about paradise.What's it going to take for this to happen? You're enough of a realist to know that it won't happen tomorrow.I don’t know, I am simply saying that these are the two alternatives. Either let the poor die and don’t make a fuss about it, or, if you are really concerned, then let the nations disappear so there is no need for war. Scientific efforts will automatically go for making more comfort, more luxury, more health, longer life.I am not concerned what happens, I am simply saying these are the only two alternatives; there is no third alternative. And I am telling my people to spread the word all over the world. We have been here four years and a not a single baby has been born – just simple intelligence is needed.But why no babies here? People here could afford to procreate.No, if they want to live really joyously and luxuriously, there is no need. If they want freedom and equality between man and woman, then it is better to avoid babies.But surely the human race will die out of existence if everybody does that?No, no, I am not saying that. My proposal is that people stop this accidental creation of babies and start looking for a more scientific way. Any man, any woman who wants a baby, should be given permission by the medical board. It does not matter if the medical board says to the husband, “You are not the right person for this woman. You will have to take some semen, either from the hospital bank or from somebody we propose, to make this woman pregnant. Then your child will be a genius.”So you're attracted to the test-tube baby program?I am absolutely in favor of the scientific production of children.A master race.Right now it is mass production – and accidental. That will not be mass production and it will not be accidental; it will be intelligent, and we will not be producing in a factory. There is no need for so many people to be produced, we need only a few people. And as science goes on serving humanity and human needs, on the other hand people will be living longer and longer, and we will need fewer and fewer new people to come. It is an absolute certainty that we have the capacity to live at least three hundred years.There is no question of mass production. And even if you want to call this mass production, so what? If it is better than your individual, haphazard way of production, not knowing what you are doing, not knowing what is happening.You are making love to a woman, absolutely unconscious of what is going on in the biology, of what kind of child is going to be born: blind, deaf, retarded, mad, sick from the very birth, crippled… You call it an intelligent way? The intelligent way will be that we can manage that the best human seeds meet together from the very beginning. And we can program – now it has become possible. We can program the egg and the semen cell for anything. It is a question of giving a certain program.I am fifteen thousand miles away from home, and even now I think I can hear people screaming that you're trying to destroy their freedom of choice.Let them scream, it will give them good exercise. I call it Dynamic Meditation. I am always for scientific, intelligent efforts because all religious and political efforts have failed. Now there is only one thing left, and that is science – let us try it once. If that too fails, it means life is impossible on this earth, perhaps it has come to its point of death.Osho,If your predictions are correct it will be AIDS that will reduce and contain the world's population, because you have said that it will kill two-thirds of the people. People here have gone to extreme lengths to stop it infiltrating your community: there are condoms and rubber gloves supplied to all. Medical scientists, however, are closely monitoring AIDS, and they say that only a few thousand people will be affected. How do you know it is going to kill so many people?It is absolutely clear, simple arithmetic. It is scientifically certain now that there is no remedy for AIDS. The man who has it is going to die within two years’ time. Two years is the maximum limit – he may die within six months or two months or six weeks or today, but he cannot live more than two years. And medicine has nothing to help him – there is no way, because AIDS is not an ordinary disease. It is a very strange disease, it simply destroys your resistance against diseases. You become vulnerable to all infections, all contagions. There is nothing inside you to fight against it, it is as if the very life force has disappeared.And the man who has AIDS can have many contacts. Before he became aware, he may have had many contacts, sexual relationships. He must have given AIDS to those people, and they will be spreading it. And now it is known that it can be given to a person even by kissing – not even sexual intercourse is needed – because saliva carries the disease. Kissing should be absolutely illegal.What's the alternative?Rub noses – there are tribes who don’t kiss, they just rub noses and enjoy. I don’t see that there is any problem, and noses are more hygienic. Find some other alternative. But kissing cannot be in favor of human life anymore. It can pass – they suspect – even through breathing. That’s why I say it can spread like wildfire.I would not like my people to die from AIDS. Dying is not a problem: I am not afraid of death, but death should be a celebration, it should come out in a joyful, blissful mood. We celebrate death here, we dance, we sing. This is the final goodbye to the person whom we have loved and with whom we have known many beautiful moments. What more can we do? But dying from AIDS will not be a celebration.What do you think of homosexuals? – because they have been blamed for spreading most of the AIDS.They are all perverts. But the religions are responsible for homosexuality, it is a religious perversion. The first homosexuals happened in monasteries where men were not allowed to see women, in nunneries where women were not allowed to see men. There are monasteries where for one thousand years not even a six-month-old female baby has entered – it is not allowed. Sometimes I wonder! A six-month-old female baby is not allowed to go inside – are there monks living there, or monsters? But they have become monsters. They are not meditating, they are masturbating.They tell us they're celibate.They go on telling that to the world, but they should come to a scientific lab and prove it. How can they be celibate? Nobody can be celibate. It is just as if somebody says, “I do not urinate,” you will not believe him. He will say, “It is my religion not to urinate.” Nobody will believe him, but everybody believes in celibacy.There is no celibacy: it has never existed, and all those who have pretended either became homosexuals or became masturbators. Or, if they were not courageous enough even to be homosexuals or to masturbate, then nature has its own way: in their sleep their semen will be released. They will be having beautiful women in their dreams. Mahatma Gandhi tried for thirty years to be celibate after he had given birth to five sons. He must have been forty at that time. Impossible! He was having wet dreams even at the age of seventy.He might have been lucky! Not many seventy-year-olds have that sort of dreams, do they?No, if you are repressed, only then can you have them. If you are enjoying love, you will be spent.Have you ever been celibate?Right now I am celibate, but if my health gets better I am not going to be celibate. I have never been celibate, I do not do anything against nature. Right now I am celibate, not because celibacy has any value, but just because I am sick. I don’t have any energy to make love to a woman and do all the gymnastics, no. I have enough energy to talk to my people, to talk to you. If I get healthy again, I promise you, I will not be celibate.Don't promise me, promise them. All the ladies about the place tell me that you're a great lover.I am!How do they know that?Many of them must have loved me, I must have loved them.Does that mean you've had sex with them?Certainly. How do you love if you don’t have sex with them?How do you choose your sexual partners?There is no question, because I don’t have any contract, any relationship, anything similar to marriage. No, just for the moment, in the moment.Traveling in a train I meet a stranger… I don’t ask even the name of the woman, because we may never meet again. What is the point? But if she is willing… And I am really “the blessed one”: I don’t know why, but women are always willing. I have never come across a woman who was not willing. If I was not willing, that is another matter, but if I was willing, then I have never come across a woman in my life who was not willing.And there was no question of any promise of, “I will love you forever, forever.” There is no problem – it is just a momentous, momentary affair. We share this moment, we enjoy this moment. And perhaps at the next station I will be gone, or she will be gone and we may never see each other again. I have never seen again many women with whom I had a beautiful moment of love.But there are many women here in my commune, and that proves a very fundamental thing: that although I have loved so many women they are not jealous of each other.Have you ever come close to getting married?No, never. I have been against marriage from the very beginning, because it means cutting down your freedom. Getting attached legally to a woman or to a man, no. Freedom to me is the ultimate value, there is nothing higher than freedom.It was difficult, because I was fighting from the very beginning. My parents were in difficulty, my family was in difficulty, but I told them absolutely clearly that I was not going to be married. They would have been perfectly happy if I had been going to be a celibate monk. I said, “No, I am not going to be a celibate monk either.”That was their trouble: if I was going to be a celibate monk they would be happy. In fact, they would have felt proud that their son had become a great monk. I said, “No, both are ditches. I am going to walk just in the middle, on the razor’s edge.” And I have enjoyed the walk tremendously.What about the pressures from the society in which you lived – not just your parents – because particularly in those days Indian society would have been very, very close and would have demanded that you did one of two things?I am intelligent enough for that society.So, what would you say now to all the people in the world who are married? Should they all get divorced?Everybody should get divorced, without exception. People should meet and love each other occasionally, as opportunity comes. There should be no ugly state when a wife has to make love to a man whom she does not love anymore, but she has to fulfill her duty. The husband is fulfilling his duty: while he is making love to the woman he may be thinking of some other woman, she may be thinking of some other man. What kind of neurotic society have you created? If you don’t love each other, at least be human and say frankly that it was beautiful to be together, but now it is finished. Say goodbye.I would like marriage to disappear completely from the world, and with marriage, divorce will disappear. With marriage, prostitution will disappear. With marriage, most of the work of the priest will disappear. With marriage, almost ninety-nine percent of the work of psychoanalysts, therapists, psychiatrists will disappear. It is marriage that is creating all kinds of psychological perversions, repressions, guilt.It is simply human: you see a beautiful woman and you would like to have some time with her. It does not need any God’s permission – even your God committed rape with the Virgin Mary, without her consent.Do you believe that story?I just believe that story because it proves that your God is a rapist; otherwise, I don’t believe in the story. Jesus must be a bastard – it is certain he was not the son of Joseph, and just to cover up the whole thing, that great story has been invented.He got God to do the job!They say God is a trinity: God, the Holy Ghost and the Son. The Holy Ghost did it, but he is part of God. It is just like my hand is part of me and your genitals are part of you – the Holy Ghost is part of God, perhaps he is his genitals. Otherwise, how could he manage to make a virgin girl pregnant?Osho,What about family responsibilities, the married partners' responsibility to their children?Children should be the responsibility of the commune, not of the family. It is the family which creates tremendous problems in the children’s minds. It gives them all their sickness, all their superstitions, all their stupid ideas, theologies, religion, political parties. It enforces on the child. The child has to be freed from the family. If you want a new man, then the family is an ugly institution, its time is over. It should be replaced by the commune, and then it is very easy – the commune takes care of all the children.There will be the father, the mother; they can meet the child, the child can come to them. But basically it is the responsibility of the commune to take care of the children. The children will have many uncles and many aunts, and they will have more opportunity for human contact with different types of people. They will be immensely enriched.Our children are very impoverished; they know only one man, one woman, and they know the constant quarrel between the two. The woman is nagging the husband, the husband is beating the woman. And this is what you are training them for: your boy will repeat you, he will knowingly or unknowingly be your carbon copy. Your daughter will repeat your wife, knowingly or unknowingly. That’s why no son can ever forgive his father, and no daughter can ever forgive her mother. They destroyed their lives. It is absolutely a psychologically proved phenomenon.But if the commune takes care, then they will have experience of so many different kinds of people. It is my experience that every person is so unique that the more contacts, intimacies, love affairs you have, the richer you will be. I have not seen two women who are similar. Making love to many women, I have seen that every woman is a unique personality in herself, her way of making love is totally different. The people who have never known anyone except their wives are really poor. They don’t know how many nuances, how many fragrances, how many different ecstasies are possible through love.The same is true about children. They should be available to the whole commune, and because the commune is responsible, you need not be afraid of what will happen to the children if you separate. You can separate, nothing will happen to the children – the children will be the same.Osho,How do you relate that to a Western society where most people live as an individual family in a home, not a commune? What should happen there?It can be immediately transformed into a commune, there is no problem. Just understanding is needed: a whole big building which has ten thousand people living in it can become a commune. It is a question of understanding, there is no problem in it. There are skyscraper buildings – each building can be a commune.And a street row of houses?Yes, they can also become communes. We are making communes all over the world, purchasing properties, different houses, making communes. Sometimes we have difficulty getting all the houses together in one place. No difficulty then, either: we have one main house, the meeting house, and the commune people live in different places.But they have dropped the idea of the family. It is not a question of arrangements, arrangements can be made very easily. The question is of understanding. Our mind is created by the family, so it is very difficult to think that there should be no family. But the family is the basic unit of the nation. Unless the family disappears, the nation cannot disappear. The family is the basic unit of the church, so I am cutting at the very root.You sure are.If the family disappears, then nations cannot exist anymore. Churches and their congregations will simply disappear from the world. We need individuals, I respect the individual the most. The individual should be able to have as many experiences about everything as he is capable of, so that all his potential becomes actual.Right now the situation is really sad. Even our geniuses like Albert Einstein use only fifteen percent of their potential. What a poor world we are creating. If an Albert Einstein uses only fifteen percent of his potential, then what about the ordinary people? – perhaps three percent, four percent, at the most five percent… And you will call these people talented. Beyond five percent you will call them geniuses. I am not ready for this retarded world.Osho,You talked before about women as sexual partners and as lovers, but you see them as a lot more than that. In fact, looking around here, it would seem to me that it's the women who are running the place.Yes, that is true.What's wrong with the men?Man has been running the whole of society for thousands of years, and he has proved absolutely impotent to run society in the right direction. Give a chance to the woman now.My commune is running far better than any society which is dominated by male chauvinists. It is running perfectly beautifully, there is no problem. All my communes around the world are run by women. Man has proved his incapacity: he has tried hard enough to repress women, to keep them uneducated, to keep them economically dependent, to keep them almost like cattle, so that he can prove he is very superior. But the basic phenomenon is that man feels inferior before a woman because he cannot give birth to a child. The woman can give birth to a child; man’s function in giving birth is only that of an injection.The woman has the capacity to give birth to children; that creates a deep sense of inferiority in man. To cover it up he started repressing woman, cutting her talents, telling her that she is not capable of anything, that she is only capable of doing the job of cooking, taking care of the children, washing the floor. She is not capable of more than that, only man is capable of all the great things.All religions are founded by men, and all religions have condemned women. Jainism, one of the most ancient religions in India, says that from the body of a woman nobody can be liberated, nobody can become enlightened. From the female body, nobody can grow into consciousness. Strange: the same people go on teaching that body and soul are separate, and the soul is neither male nor female, and that growth happens in the soul, and that liberation is of the soul, not of the body. Then why can’t women enter into paradise?No, they have to be put down in every possible way. First, they should practice religious disciplines so that they are born in a man’s body in their next life. All that they can do right now is to pray, to meditate, to fast – to get into a man’s body in the next life. Then there is a possibility, from the female body there is no possibility. In India they were not allowed to read religious scriptures.Jesus had twelve apostles, twelve idiots around him, who could not do anything to save the man. They all knew that the next day he was going to be crucified, they all knew that he was going to be caught that night, and not a single one of them was courageous enough to tell Jesus that going to Jerusalem was suicidal: “There is no need. Why should we go there? It is not the right time, you will be crucified.”Not a single woman was Jesus’ apostle, but when he was crucified all the men had escaped. Only three women were there under the cross: his mother, Mary; his lover perhaps, Mary Magdalene, who was a prostitute; and another woman called Martha. All the apostles had disappeared.Men have been telling women that they are weak, which is medically wrong: women live longer than men, five years longer. Women suffer less from diseases than men, women go mad half as often as men, women commit suicide half as often as men. Still, the woman is weak, and she has to be kept cut at every corner so she cannot grow. And half of society consists of women. They give birth to your children.What you are doing to the woman you are also doing to your children, because they will be taking care of the children; the children will be learning from and imitating the woman. That’s why every language is called the mother tongue. Even Germans don’t have the guts to call their language father tongue.So when you die, will a woman become the leader of the Rajneeshees?I don’t care, I don’t care at all. I am a man who is not concerned with past or future.But you care for the future of Rajneeshees?I care in this moment, it is not caring about their future. In this moment I care, what happens tomorrow I have nothing to do with. But in this moment, whatsoever response arises in me I have to share with my people.Have you met a woman who could do the job that you're doing as well?It is very difficult to say because unless the opportunity is given, one never knows what a woman can do, what a man can do. It is always the opportunity. While I am here it is difficult for any woman to do what I am doing. Once I am gone, perhaps a woman can do it better than a man. Perhaps she may do even better than me – after all, unfortunately I belong to the male race.Would you have liked to have been a woman?No, because I love women so much. I would not be able to love men, that would be the difficulty.Osho,What makes you so special, why are you the one who is the leader? You tell people things, and they follow what you say, but why you? Why not somebody else? Or why not nobody? Could these people not just follow your philosophies without you telling them?Ask them, because I am not their leader. I have not told them that they are my followers. I have not asked them to come and be here with me. It is their business and their problem and their responsibility. I am a very irresponsible person. I don’t take anybody else’s responsibility, it is enough that I take my own responsibility. You will have to ask my people why.Does it surprise you that they follow you the way they do?It surprises me immensely, it is really a miracle. I am nobody’s leader, but there are half a million people who think they are my followers.Do you enjoy the adoration?No, not at all, I hate it. I enjoy friendship. Adoration is putting somebody high above you. I don’t have any ego; I am not higher than anybody else, not holier than anybody else. But it certainly surprises me. They adore – they must be crazy! Now what can I do about it? You tell me.I'd just go along with it.That’s okay.Osho,I'm not going to ask you about your Rolls Royces and I'm not going to ask you about your half-million-dollar watch, but I know that any fashion-conscious person, particularly women, who'd seen you would say, “Where does he get those magnificent clothes from?”My women make them. They love to see me in fabulous clothes.Are you fashion conscious?I love everything that is beautiful. I will not say I am fashion conscious, because my robe is not a fashion.Well I've got a feeling you might be going to start a new fashion.That is possible. I love everything that is beautiful, but I am not fashion conscious, otherwise I would be imitating somebody else who is fashionable. My people design my clothes, they enjoy, and they know that I love only the best of everything. So they do it and try their best. And I am perfectly contented with my people – in fact, I adore them. Nobody has been so fortunate as I am.Jesus certainly was surrounded by fools. Buddha had not the guts to allow women to enter his commune; for almost twenty years he continuously refused to initiate a woman. What was the fear? And when he was asked why, he said, “If I allow woman into the commune, then my religion will last only five hundred years. If I don’t allow women into my commune, my religion will last for five thousand years.”But why this desire that the religion should last for five thousand years? This seems to be only greed – immense greed – to keep your firm running for five thousand years. What is the point? And why are you afraid that if you allow women entry, your religion will be gone within five hundred years? The fear is every man’s fear.Man feels deep down that he is inferior; the woman is superior, she is beautiful. The man also tries to imitate: for what reason does he shave his mustache, his beard? Just think of a woman growing a beard and mustache – do you think she will look very beautiful?She'd be in the circus.Yes, and that is the situation of the men who have cut their beards and mustaches – they are in the circus.Osho,You've raised a lot of consciousness, I know. I can predict that already from what we've talked about here. Are you serious about it all, or is it all just one big joke?Not serious at all. It is all a big joke. Seriousness is not my business at all. I am an absolutely non-serious person, enjoying the small things of life, unconcerned about the next moment. I have lived my whole life this way and I don’t repent, I don’t feel that I have missed anything.Osho,Perhaps a final message to the people in Western Australia about you, about what they're going to hear from you in the future, and perhaps what they're going to see from you?Nothing can be said about the future, but they will see some great circus, certainly.Soon?Soon.Thank you for agreeing to appear on the program.I was glad to talk to you.It's been a pleasure.Come again and again whenever you can, and tell the people there that I am coming.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Yoga PratimaOsho Magazine, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United StatesOsho,On behalf of all, I want to thank you that you are showing us every dimension of your being – so casually, so matter-of-fact.One of the first things I want to ask as a disciple and as a reporter who communicates it to fellow sannyasins, is: in what ways would you like to see us become as ordinary as you are?One never becomes ordinary; you can become extraordinary, the very process of becoming leads you away from being ordinary. So there is no how as far as being ordinary is concerned. You are ordinary, you don’t have to become. You have to drop becoming, you have to start living. These are the two types of people in the world: those who are continuously becoming and in their very effort of becoming this and that, they are losing being what they are. They are losing time, life, energy, and their becoming is never going to end.It is just like the horizon – there, looking so close that you can reach it – just a few more miles to go. But as you reach those few miles, you find the horizon has receded again, the distance remains always the same. The person who is caught in the net of becoming wastes his whole life, dies unfulfilled, in tremendous despair, because he can see that the whole life was there for him to live, but because of his desire to become something, someone, he sacrificed all that was freely available to him.One does not become ordinary, you are ordinary. You are born ordinary, just like everything else in existence: animals, birds, trees. No bird needs to be ordinary, no tree asks, inquires how to be ordinary. But man asks it and this very process of becoming makes you insane.Drop becoming anybody else. Drop the very idea that you have to be according to some discipline, some scripture, some theology. Forget completely that you have to be like Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira, and suddenly you will find that you are who you are. Live it, joyously, without any guilt. Existence wanted you to be what you are. If existence wanted another Jesus he would have created thousands of Jesuses, there is no problem. He would have made Jesuses on an assembly line. But he makes only individuals. Existence never duplicates, never makes anybody similar to somebody else.This is the beauty and the glory of existence. This is a blessing – that nobody like you has ever existed and will ever exist again, you are simply unique. Don’t waste this uniqueness in running after some goal, some shadow.Now, because I am telling you it is so beautiful to be ordinary, it is so joyous to be ordinary, you have made being ordinary also a goal. Your question would have been perfectly right if you had asked how to become a Jesus Christ, how to become a Buddha, how to become a great celebrity.But the very processes of becoming and being ordinary are absolutely diametrically opposite to each other. You are where you are trying to reach, there is nowhere to go. You have not to become anybody, this very moment you are what existence wanted you to be – don’t miss it, enjoy it. All the religions have deceived humanity and created the idea of becoming in the mind of man. Once you get caught in the idea of becoming, then there is only misery, suffering, anxiety, anguish, despair, defeat, death.That’s what has been happening to millions of people for thousands of years. Everybody was trying to become something. You cannot go against nature, you cannot in any way be anything other than what you are. The very effort of becoming something, someone, is absurd.But how have the religions managed to make this whole earth a madhouse? They gave you goals, they gave you great ideals you have to fulfill. It is impossible – by the sheer nature of things, it is impossible. But because it is impossible, far away, it becomes a challenge to your ego. The impossible has a tremendous attraction, but you are forgetting that it is impossible. It may have tremendous attraction because it is impossible, but you are going to be a failure, finally.There are so many people who realize that they were alive only when they die. When they were alive they were so busy with so many things, they completely forgot about life. They remember it only when they know that only a few breaths are left – the heart is sinking, only a few beats more – that is the moment the realization occurs to them, “What a fool I have been. The whole of life has simply passed by my side. I have not drunk from its wine, I have not eaten its fruits, I am not even acquainted with its fragrance. What was it? And now it is too late.”That’s why I say only the ordinary being is capable of rejoicing, because his energy is not involved in any process of becoming. It is all available, it is overflowing. What can you do with overflowing energy? Sing, dance, rejoice.My insistence for ordinariness has tremendous implications that you may not be aware of. By telling you to be just ordinary, I am making you free from all strategies of religions, theologies, political ideologies. I am cutting their very root, without even mentioning it. If you are ready to be ordinary, nobody can exploit you. Nobody can push you in a direction which is not for you. Nobody can create guilt in you. Nobody can say that something is wrong in you. I am making you free from all kinds of parasites.All over the world they have been using the same methodology just to make you feel guilty. What you eat is wrong, how you live is wrong, how you sit is wrong, how you walk is wrong. They have not left anything for you to decide for yourself. Somebody else – a Manu, five thousand years ago has decided for Hindus how they should be, and for five thousand years Hindus have been imprisoned by that man Manu – and it is so stupid.Just be what you are – no becoming, being is my message. Up to now becoming has been the message of everybody. Being is my message. Becoming has created guilt, sadness, despair, because you cannot do it. At each step you fall, and at each step you realize how poor, how inferior, how powerless you are. At each step you are forced to recognize that you are unintelligent, stupid; otherwise, why are you not succeeding?You are not stupid, you are not unintelligent, you are not powerless. You are just trying to do something which simply cannot be done. Have you sometimes seen a dog trying to catch his tail?A dog is sitting, is in a thinking mood, contemplating; he sees the tail, becomes curious, “What is this?” Naturally, if human beings are doing such stupid things, you cannot expect a dog not to do a stupid thing. He tries to catch hold of the tail that is lying there, but as he tries, the tail moves away. He tries harder – that is logical – he jumps with as much force as possible, but he is simply amazed that the tail also jumps in the same proportion, and the distance remains the same. But I think dogs are not so idiotic – after a few efforts he realizes that this is not possible. He drops the idea, forgets about the tail. It is his own tail, there is no problem. But man goes on and on, chasing something, a shadow.No, don’t make ordinariness a goal somewhere away from you, so that a path is needed, and a discipline is needed; you have to follow a leader, you have to listen to a priest, you have to change your habits, you have to fit with the goal. Nobody in the whole of history has ever succeeded in becoming anybody else. And it is good that everybody has failed, because even if one man had succeeded, he would have proved all the religions right. One exception would have been enough: if one can succeed, then why not others?History totally supports me. Without exception, everybody has failed – except those few rare people who have never tried to become anybody, who simply lived ordinarily without any plan, without any tomorrow, without any ideals, without any philosophy, who have simply lived. Living is my religion. Living herenow, and living as you are without any conditions, without any qualification, that’s my message.Osho,Why do Rajneeshees, when they go into the courts, already feel as if they are guilty? Why doesn't our conviction come out? Why aren't we proud of ourselves? Why do we behave like such wimps?For the simple reason you are not yet what I am trying for you to understand. When you go out, you try to prove you are somebody special. You try to prove that you are no ordinary human beings. You are somebody chosen, you have a message, you have a special way of life. You have a certain understanding which everybody else is lacking. Naturally you will feel in difficulty, because they are in the majority and you are alone.Here in the commune you can rejoice in being special, because everybody is rejoicing in being special, there is no problem. And nobody cares what anybody thinks, nobody is trying to impress anybody. In the commune you are simply living – there you become tense, tight, afraid of public opinion; you want to prove in the public opinion that you are a superior being to them, which you cannot prove. Nobody is superior or inferior, there is no question of comparison. And the very tension, tightness, anxiety makes you feel guilty, as if you have betrayed me, as if you have not been the way you were expected to be.I have no expectations of you. Go to the courts, to the marketplace, anywhere, but remain ordinary, with no attitude of holier than thou. And you will be surprised, there is no tension, there is no anxiety, there is no guilt. And your intelligence will function more efficiently because you will be so relaxed.It is a miracle to know the beauty and the power of being relaxed. Suddenly your intelligence has a sharpness that you were not aware of, your capacities come to their very peak. You function not just on the minimum survival level, but on the maximum. Your torch of life burns from both ends together.It is a strange thing: you were trying to be special and you felt guilty; you were trying to prove yourself holier, higher, and you were feeling a failure. Now you are not trying to be higher, and you are. You are not trying to be better than anybody else, but you are, because they are not relaxed and you are relaxed. That small difference makes such a great difference that it is immeasurable.In my whole life I have never felt guilty about anything. I don’t have any idea how you feel guilty. What kind of thing is guilt? Intellectually I understand, but existentially I have never experienced it, for the simple reason that I have never tried to be anything other than I was.I have been in the courts and I enjoyed it. In fact, the judges became tense, the advocates became tense, my own advocate became nervous about what I was saying, what I was doing. The whole court was full of tension. I could not understand what was the matter – I should have been tense, why were they in such anxiety? The case was against me, I was ready to face it, because I didn’t see there was any crime.There was one church which had been closed for many years, because when the British rule ended in India, all the foreigners moved out. Because that church was specially for the British people, and all the British had moved out. The archbishop of England – thousands of miles away – was the owner of that church in Jabalpur.I had a few Christian friends. I said to them, “This beautiful church always remains closed.”They said, “The congregation of that church is no longer here, the nearest authority is in the capital, Nagpur. The bishop of Nagpur is the nearest authority who has the keys. But the real authority is with the archbishop of England.”I said, “You are just fools. Break the lock – it is already falling apart for ten years – clean the church. This is your church, use it.”They became excited – the idea was good. The church was a beautiful building with a very big garden around it, but it had become a jungle, nobody was taking any care. They broke the lock. They asked me to inaugurate the opening. I said, “I am perfectly ready” and so I inaugurated their church.It took a few days for the bishop of Nagpur to understand what was happening there. Then he inquired of the archbishop of England what to do, because, “A few Christians have broken the lock, entered the property, and are worshipping every Sunday there.”Of course the archbishop was angry and he told him, “Take legal action against them.” Legal action was taken against them. That’s why I was also found guilty: I inaugurated it, I inspired those people to enter into the church, so I was the most responsible person.I said to the judge, “A church, a temple, a mosque, a synagogue belongs to those who worship there, it is no ordinary property. For ten years the church has remained without a single worshipper. The archbishop of England is guilty for that, the bishop of Nagpur is guilty for that. Who are they to lock a church and prevent worshippers?“I am not a Christian, but I can see that a beautiful place which was meant for worshipping, for prayer, is lying empty. Jesus Christ is still hanging on the cross and nobody comes. He must be getting bored.”I said, “Yes, I inspired these people to make that church alive again. It is dying, and to make any church alive is not a crime. To keep it locked – locked against whom? In fact, churches and temples should not have doors, so that they are available twenty-four hours for anybody to meditate there. It is a place of silence.”My advocate was getting to the point of a nervous breakdown, when I said that the archbishop of England should be given an arrest warrant – and that these people were going to continue worshipping in the church.The judge said, “Whatever you are saying is absolutely right, but it is not legal. The church is a property owned by the Church of England. Entering into somebody else’s property, taking possession of it, using it, is trespass.”I said, “Then I am ready to be punished, to be jailed. But remember, you are doing something absolutely wrong. You are not making any difference between a place of worship and an ordinary house. A place of worship cannot be owned by anybody, cannot be possessed by anybody. It belongs to those who are ready to worship there.“Tell the archbishops of Nagpur and England that either they should come here and bring their congregation, so the church becomes alive, or… Why are they worried? They were happy for ten years. The church was gathering dust, it was going to become a ruin.“And I am not a Christian at all. I have no concern with that church, just a human concern, a compassion. I knew these people, and I told them, ‘If you are ready to worship, the church is yours.’ And I take the whole responsibility on myself. These people are not in any way responsible, they simply got inspired by me.”There was silence. The advocate sent by the bishop of Nagpur could not figure out what to say. The judge told me that it was legally wrong, but spiritually right, “I cannot give any punishment to you. But please don’t do anything like that again.”I said, “That I cannot agree with. I will continue my whole life doing things like that, because I don’t care about man-made laws. My concern is with the existential, with the spiritual, with the real. Man-made laws go on changing.”But those Christians who had agreed and opened the church became afraid. The bishop of Nagpur put another big lock. I lived in Jabalpur for twenty years, and by the time I left Jabalpur the church was in ruins, the roof had fallen – this is according to the law.Why should I be afraid or guilty? And I am ready to accept any consequences of my actions. I have been moving for thirty years in the country facing hostile masses – sometimes fifty thousand people, all hostile. But I have never felt any guilt, because whatever I was doing, I was doing with my totality. And whatever I was doing, I was doing with full consciousness. Seeing me, listening to me, although they had come with aggressive prejudices, I could see slowly, slowly a calmness was descending on them. And by the end, when I left, many were in tears.In Ahmedabad a man came just after I had finished the meeting, fell at my feet and said, “Forgive me.”I said, “But you have not done anything to me, why should I forgive you?”He said, “I have not done what I had come to do,” and he showed me a big knife that he was carrying. He said, “I had come to kill you because I had been told that you are against religion, and I am a great devotee of Krishna.” He was a fanatic Hindu.I said, “Then why don’t you kill me?”He said, “Listening to you I became aware that what you are saying is religion. You are not against religion, you are against religions. I have followed those religions up to now, but I want to change. I had come to kill you, but you have killed me!”That man is a sannyasin since then and has been a very stable, reliable sannyasin.Just go anywhere simply as you are and present yourself openly. We don’t have any secrets; only guilty people have secrets. Only people who are burdened with the idea of sin have secrets, we don’t have any secrets. We don’t have any theology, so nobody can contradict you.There is a saying that man proposes and God disposes. What I am doing here is: I have disposed of God and I am asking you not to propose anything. So both parts of the proverb, “Man proposes…” Why? Why should you propose? Proposals can be contradicted, better proposals can be produced. There is no need to propose anything. Live whatsoever you feel is right – and it is your life, nobody else’s business to interfere. God I have disposed of completely – and if you don’t propose, even if God is there, how can he dispose it?I am making a very strange and unique effort with you. Buddha was making people special, holier, higher than the layman. The layman was almost a word of condemnation. The bhikku, the sannyasin, was truly a man; the layman was not worth anything. He was creating a class, helping their egos to become stronger and stronger.These are the methods to make your ego stronger: do things which are against nature, do things which other people find very difficult to do. Fast, and then people will respect you; they cannot fast for seven days, and you have fasted for twenty-one days. You have done something superhuman. They cannot drop even one breakfast; they cannot live without eating for just a single day.But whatever you have done is against nature – you have tortured yourself, but it will give you a very sophisticated ego. So do things which are not natural: be celibate, which is not natural. Don’t enjoy anything, because every enjoyment is condemned.Jainas, Buddhists, Hindus have five great principles of life which can make a man a superman. The first of those five is aswad – the word means “tastelessness” – drop all taste. They are asking of you something absolutely unnatural: don’t enjoy your food, don’t enjoy eating anything, or, before eating it, destroy its tastefulness.The Hindu monk begs from houses and then goes to the river: mixes all kinds of food into his begging bowl, gives the begging bowl a dip in the river, so whatsoever is left unmixed, the water does it, and then eats it. Now in that begging bowl is every kind of thing – salty, with sugar, sweets. They have all lost their taste. Now it is religious, people will worship you because you have conquered taste. All that you have done is to destroy a sensitivity that is part of your individuality.Islam is against music. Strange: don’t enjoy music. The same – one is against the tongue, another is against the ear. There are Mohammedans who have never listened to any music – then why not become deaf? Why not give your tongue plastic surgery? Remove those small buds on your tongue which taste things – which is so much easier and so scientific – rather than the whole life suffering. And because these things are unnatural, you are never absolutely successful. Hence guilt arises and hypocrisy, because you have to go on pretending that you have succeeded.I had been very friendly with a few Jaina monks and nuns, they had become very intimate and were almost ready to drop their monkhood. Then I came to know about a few things which no Jaina knows. These monks are not supposed to enjoy taste, but I found that in the temple where they were staying, they were keeping coca-cola, fanta, hidden behind the statue of God, Mahavira. And because I was very intimate and they trusted me, they offered me their coca-cola.And I said, “Great, but how do you manage?”They said, “A few laymen love us so much that whatsoever we say, they manage.” They all had small transistor radios; no Jaina can suspect their monks are carrying transistor radios, listening to all kinds of film music.Whenever you ask people to fulfill unnatural things, you are asking for them to be guilty. So on the one hand they are creating a big ego – the ego becomes bigger, becomes a mountain – and on the other hand, side by side, a deep valley of guilt. The bigger the mountain, the bigger the valley.I want you to be just walking on the earth. There is no need to go to Everest, I don’t want you to be anybody special. Your dress is not to make you special; on the contrary, it is to remind you that you are an ordinary human being. Behave with that ordinariness and you will be surprised that you are received and welcomed. Your ordinariness will destroy the hostility in the other person. Just go into the whole world, it is ours – why should we feel anxiety and tension in any way? By making you realize your ordinariness, I am giving you the whole kingdom of God here on the earth, and only an ordinary person can enjoy the kingdom of God.Try, and when I say try, I don’t mean to make an effort. I mean, give the way that I am saying a chance. Give it a chance and something will trigger.I was in the university, a student of philosophy, and I was never in agreement with my professors because they were all outdated. They had studied in the universities twenty, thirty years before. In that thirty years the whole world of philosophy had changed. They had read Bradley, Bosake, Kant, Feuerbach, but they had not heard about Wittgenstein, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Heidegger.I was ahead of them, so there was continuous argument. And because I was ahead of them, they were always in trouble. They had never conceived that Kant can be criticized, that Bradley can be criticized. After they had left university they had never touched another book of philosophy. So it was an everyday trouble: I would not agree with their arguments, their arguments were so poor, and they were continuously in a nervous breakdown because the whole class was with me, and nobody was ready to agree with them.One of my professors, finding it almost impossible to manage me, one day invited the vice-chancellor, the head of the department, the assistant head of the department and all the other professors of the department, almost eight persons. As I entered the class I could not believe what was the matter, because in my class there were only three students, two girls and me. What were the vice-chancellor, head of the department and other professors doing there?And the professor said, “Now I am going to teach, and you, before all these people, bring your arguments.” He was thinking that I would become nervous. The vice-chancellor was there, the greatest authority in the university. The head of the department was there, who could make or mar my whole future. All the other professors were there. Anybody in my place would have collapsed, his mind would have gone berserk, he would not have been able to argue.But I got so ecstatic that first I thanked the vice-chancellor, the head of the department and the other professors. I said, “I was waiting for this opportunity to show you what kind of professors you have. This man must have been dead thirty years ago. In thirty years’ time philosophy has taken such quantum leaps that he is not aware of. He does not know even the names of the latest philosophical minds, developments. I am grateful that he has gathered you; in fact I was going to invite you all one day, but I am lazy. So I waited for some day, but he has done my job. I am thankful to him also.” And I told him, “You start.”He was teaching Gautam Buddha at that time and he said, continuing, that the country in Gautam Buddha’s time was so moral, so religious, so spiritual, that there was no crime, no theft, no murder. In fact, people never used locks on their houses. Even if they were going for months, their houses remained unlocked, because it was unheard of that anybody would steal – that’s what Buddhist scriptures say. He asked me, “Now what do you have to say?”I said, “They had no locks on their doors for two simple reasons: for the first, there were no locks invented. You will have to give me proof that locks existed, otherwise how do you suppose poor people locked their houses? You will have to give evidence that there were locks in existence. Secondly, I say to you that the people were so poor, they had nothing in their houses. Even if locks existed, they would not have been able to purchase them. And for what? – there was nothing in the house to be stolen.”And he turned to the vice-chancellor and said, “You see, this is how the whole year goes by. Now what am I supposed to do?”I said, “You are not supposed to do anything, just listen to me a little more and withdraw whatever you have said. If it is true that people were rich and there was nobody who was poor, then why does Buddha continuously teach to help the poor, serve the poor? Why does he make it a great virtue? If there were no poor people, whom are you going to serve? He continuously preached for forty-two years.“I can bring all the scriptures tomorrow,” I said, “and put them before you. Every day for forty-two years he was teaching that stealing is a great sin, never steal. If there were no thieves and everybody was a spiritual saint, who was he talking about, who was he addressing? Where could he get people he had to teach every day for forty-two years, ‘Don’t steal, don’t be violent, don’t be jealous, don’t be this, that’? It certainly proves people were stealing, people were thieves, people were lying. That’s why he goes on insisting, ‘Don’t lie, speak the truth.’ What more evidence do you want?”The professor was absolutely dumb. The vice-chancellor stood up and said to the professor, “It will be good for you to learn from that student. And if you don’t have any argument, then accept his argument. It does not matter who is arguing, whether he is a professor or a student; the question is whose argument is closer to the truth.”The vice-chancellor was a retired chief justice of the high court. I thanked him, I said, “I was expecting fairness and I am happy that you have not been unfair. You have not supported the wrong side just because he is a professor, you have supported a student.”In my whole life I have never found there is any problem, any need to be nervous, to be guilty, to be tense. But people are – everybody is, not only you. Perhaps you will feel it more because you can be immediately discriminated by your dress, by your mala. You can be immediately discriminated, and you are standing against a thick wall of prejudice.But remember: truth may be very small, but its power is almost like an atomic explosion. And howsoever big the lie may be, almost as big as God himself – God is the lie – a small truth is capable to expose the greatest lie.I don’t say you need conviction, because that is a wrong word here. A Christian needs conviction, because he does not know. Don’t make conviction a problem at all. Just say whatsoever you know, and just be whatsoever you are. Don’t pretend to be bigger than yourself, don’t pretend to know that which you don’t know.Always be ready to say, “I do not know this.” There is no guilt in it, because in fact nobody in the whole history of humanity has been able to say that he knows everything. There is always a point where he has to accept and say, “I do not know.” So why be afraid? We are ordinary people: if even Socrates has to say, “I do not know,” why can’t Pratima say, “I do not know”? Conviction is not needed but experience. Don’t pretend beyond your experience, and you will be always at ease and relaxed.Can’t you see me? I never think what I am going to say to you, because one thing is certain with me: if I know, I will answer; if I don’t know, I will say I don’t know. What is wrong in not knowing? There are limitations to everything.If I don’t have to say I don’t know, it is because of you; you cannot find the place, the point, the question, where I will have to say, “I don’t know.” It is your problem, not my problem. Seek and search and try to find something that I have to answer, “I don’t know” – and I will say it with the same strength as I say anything that I know. I will not speak out of weakness, I will not hesitate. I will not be wishy-washy, I will not try to divert the subject.But to ask a question for which I have to say, “I don’t know,” you will have to come to the same space where I am. And in that space you cannot ask. You yourself know that in this space all questions are futile and no answer is possible.People are afraid of me. Strange: I am not a Muhammad Ali, and I am not going to do any boxing, so why are they afraid of me? The journalists have been continuously asking me why people are afraid of me. They are afraid for the simple reason that whatsoever they know, they really don’t know. And coming in front of me, they are going to be exposed. They will be standing utterly naked, and that is the fear.I am not afraid of anybody, what can anybody do to me? At the most somebody can assassinate me. To me it seems exciting. Death is bound to happen, and assassination is not a bad way – in fact perfectly suitable to a man like me. I will enjoy it. I will thank the man; I will not die before thanking him. And I will ask you that that man not be punished, because he has not given any pain to me, he has simply given me an opportunity to move beyond the body. So don’t drag him to the court, don’t force him to be sentenced to death. Make history out of it: be the first people in the whole of history whose master has been assassinated but you are not against the assassination, or against the assassin. There is every possibility the assassin will become a sannyasin, otherwise he will not be able to survive.Do you know what happened to Judas? He had sold Jesus for only thirty pieces of silver. When Jesus was crucified, he also was expecting that a miracle would happen and God would save him. And meanwhile, just being a Jew, if he has earned thirty silver pieces, what is wrong in it? Jesus is not dead – on the contrary, on the cross God fulfills his promise and Jesus is recognized as the real messiah for whom the Jews have been waiting for thousands of years.So in fact I don’t think he was betraying Jesus, he was just being an authentic Jew. It is all profit: Jesus will be recognized as the messiah, God will be known by thousands of people – an opportunity which is rare – the ultimate miracle of God descending to save Jesus will be a proof that God is, that Jesus is God’s only begotten son. There is no problem in it. Judas believed it; and if he can make some money by the way, it is simply Jewish and human.But the miracle did not happen, nothing descended from the sky. Judas was hiding in the hills waiting for the miracle. When the miracle did not happen, Judas committed suicide within twenty-four hours. He felt that he had done wrong, just for thirty pieces of silver. If he had really betrayed Jesus, there was no point in his committing suicide. He felt so full of guilt that he had to punish himself, with the same punishment that poor Jesus got because of him: he hanged himself from a tree.Christians never talk about Judas. He is a man of a certain character; I don’t see anything in him that has to be condemned. He believed in Jesus, that’s why he sold him. His trust was so much that he thought there was nothing wrong in getting thirty pieces of silver. Jesus was going to be saved by God. But Jesus was not saved. He must have thrown those thirty pieces of silver in the mountains, and hanged himself out of sheer guilt for what has he done. As far as I can see, his crucifixion by his own hand is far more significant than Jesus’ crucifixion by others. Judas should be counted among the great names of world history, he is as valuable as Jesus.But why did the guilt come in? It came because he was convinced; it was not his experience that Jesus was something divine. He had heard Jesus say that he was God’s son, but it was not his experience. These were words repeated so often that he started believing in them. The conviction of Judas was greater than the conviction of the other apostles. But conviction is superficial. It is not that you don’t have conviction, so you feel afraid – no, it is because you have a certain conviction that you feel afraid.Do you see my point? I am emphasizing continuously: don’t believe in anybody, particularly in me. Between Jesus and you is a great distance, Moses even greater – these people are just names to you. But I am not just a name, I am flesh and bones, and as real as you are. It is possible that you can start believing in me; then that belief will create fear. Facing the hostility of others, your suspicions which you have repressed by the belief may start asserting. Perhaps, if so many people – and the world is large – are against Osho, then who knows whether he is right or not? That hesitation will create fear in you, nervousness in you.I have been surprised giving interviews to the journalists, seeing that they are so nervous. And this must have been their experience also… Because whomsoever they go to interview is usually nervous about what they are going to ask. They may ask questions which may create trouble, they may ask questions that if he answers them, he will be exposed; if he does not answer them, then a great suspicion will arise. People are very much afraid of journalists, very nervous. With me the experience has been totally different. I have told Isabel, “Now find all the journalists from all over the world, and bring each guy and I am going to give him a good heart attack. This will be his real experience of journalism.”If I am open, you cannot expose me. If I am utterly available, if I put all my cards before you on the table, what can you do? In fact, they become nervous because they start feeling the truthfulness of what I am saying. They forget that they are here only as journalists. Their human being is also there in the same search as everybody else, in search of silence, serenity.One journalist was here… His people wanted only a thirty-minute interview and it went on for two hours. His director was getting very disturbed, but the man forgot completely that he was only a journalist and he was to ask only questions in which the ordinary public and the audience would be interested. He became so personally involved, he started asking questions which were relevant to his growth. Of course the director was puzzled about what he was doing: they had prepared all the questions, he was given the list again and again – and he would keep the list, and carry on with me.You need not be nervous, afraid. And remember: it is not lack of confidence, it is your belief, conviction, your confidence that you feel here in the commune, where everybody is supportive of you, nobody is hostile to you. Outside, you are there alone with hostile people. But enjoy it, my whole life I have enjoyed facing the hostile public. It is such a beautiful challenge, and if you have something to say, they are going to hear it. They will have to hear it. If you have something authentic, existential, experiential, their lies will start dropping from their heads. If you are open to them, soon you will find they start becoming open to you, it is infectious.Osho,Why are we afraid of – and sometimes even resent – taking responsibility for ourselves, expecting either you or the commune to take the responsibility?It is because from your very childhood you have been taught not to be responsible, you have been taught to depend. You have been taught to be responsible to your father, to your mother, to your family, to your motherland, to all kinds of nonsense. But you have not been told that you have to be responsible for yourself, that there is nobody who is going to take your responsibility.No, on the contrary, your parents were taking your responsibility; your family was taking your responsibility; the priest was taking your responsibility for your spiritual growth. You were just to follow all these people and do whatsoever they said. When you are grown up and you are no more a child, a great fear arises because you have to take responsibility and you have not been trained to take responsibility for yourself.You go to confess your sin to the priest… What kind of stupidity are you doing? First, to think that you have committed sin; second, feeling guilty that you committed it; third, now you have to go to the priest to confess it, so that he can pray to God to forgive you. A simple thing has become so complex, so unnecessarily long and circuitous.Whatever you have done, you wanted to do – that’s why you have done it. And who is there to decide what is sin and what is not sin? There is no criterion anywhere, no weighing scale where you can go and weigh how much sin you have committed – one kilo, two kilos, three kilos. How long a sin have you committed? One yard, two yards, three yards? And what was the sin, and who is this priest you are going to confess to?And it is his strategy, because if you go on confessing to the priest, you are certainly afraid of him, because he knows all the ins and outs about you. The priest knows every gossip going on in the town; he knows how many husbands are flirting with other people’s wives, he knows who is doing what: they themselves go on confessing it. This is the priest’s strategy to keep control of his congregation – you cannot leave the congregation because the priest can expose you. Also you are afraid that if you leave the congregation the priest may not ask God for you to be forgiven, and you have committed so many sins… Now it is too late, you have to remain in the same herd, in the same crowd, for your whole life.I teach you not to be responsible to anybody; the father, the mother, the country, the religion, the party line – don’t be responsible to anybody, you are not. Just be responsible to yourself, do whatsoever you feel like doing. If it is wrong, the punishment will follow immediately. If it is right, the reward will follow immediately, instantly – there is no other way.This way you will start finding what is wrong, what is right, on your own. You will grow a new sensitivity – Indians call it the third eye. You will start seeing with a new vision, a new eye. Instantly you will know what is wrong, because in the past so many times you have done it and always suffered in consequence. You will know what is right, because whenever you did it, existence showered great blessings on you. Cause and effect are together, they are not separated by years and lives.You are responsible then. If you want and enjoy a certain act, although it brings suffering, then to do it is good, because you enjoy it. The suffering is not big enough to deter you from the enjoyment that your act brings. But it is up to you – wholly and solely up to you to decide. If the suffering is too much and the act brings nothing, no joy, and necessarily a long anguish follows it, then it is up to you: if you are an absolute idiot, and what can anybody do about it?This is what I mean by being responsible to yourself. There is no God on whom you can dump your responsibility. But you are always searching to dump on somebody, even on a poor man like me, who is continuously telling you that I am not responsible for anything, for anybody. Still, somehow, deep down you go on carrying the illusion that I must be joking.I am not joking. “He is our master,” you must be thinking, “how can he say that he is not responsible?” But you don’t understand. Dumping your responsibility on me, you will remain retarded, childish, you will never grow. The only way to grow is to accept that all good, bad, the joyful, the sorrowful, everything that happens to you, you are responsible for. That gives you great freedom.If I am responsible for something, then the key to your actions is in my hands. Then you are a slave to me, then you are a puppet and the strings are in my hand. I say dance, you dance; I say stop, you stop. Of course, the puppet cannot be responsible for anything; the puppeteer, who is behind the screen, is always responsible.God is the great puppeteer and all these popes and saints and mahatmas are great puppets, just mediators between the big puppeteer and you. They are also puppets, but they are great puppets because they follow every single instruction from on high, absolutely. You are a smaller puppet; once in a while you dance on your own, too. Once in a while the puppeteer goes on pulling your strings and you don’t dance.The moment I say there is no puppeteer, no God, no saint, it is all rubbish, I am trying to give you total freedom. I am making you absolutely responsible for everything that happens to you or does not happen. Rejoice in this freedom. Rejoice in this great understanding that you are responsible for everything in your life. This will make you what I call the individual. And to become the individual is to know all that is worth knowing, is to experience all that is worth experiencing. To be an individual is to be liberated, is to be enlightened.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Anand MaitreyaOsho Magazine, IndiaOsho,We have chosen to become disciples, to participate in your vision in this new phenomenon, yet we are afraid to take the responsibility and defend this vision. The few people who do take this responsibility are often criticized by sannyasins for that. Why this criticism?My vision is so new, so revolutionary, that if you are all massacred for it, it will not be a surprise to me. I am fighting against the whole past of humanity. Nobody has ever done that: Christians were fighting with the Jews, Mohammedans were fighting with the Hindus, Jainas were fighting with the Buddhists; but this is happening for the first time – one single man standing against the whole history of man. And you are choosing to be with such a man. You are participating, your devotion, your love, are toward a very dangerous man. But I don’t see that the whole past – it is vast and big – can destroy what I am saying.The past is not in my favor; I don’t want it to be in my favor, I want to destroy it from the very roots. But the future is mine and the future is yours and the future is far greater than the whole past. The forces of the future are far bigger than all the forces of the past, because the past is dead. Life knows no past – it is in the present, and always moving into the future.People will be against you, people will condemn you, particularly those who are trying to materialize my vision. Don’t care a bit about their criticism and their condemnation, they are just on the verge of their graves. They have failed – they have been promising man for thousands of years and all their promises have proved false. Man has remained poor, sick, starving, a slave to so many things, imprisoned, chained. They have driven man almost to madness, they have completely failed.Naturally, they will be offended by your small successes; they have not even been able to achieve small victories. Just your very presence is offensive to them for the simple reason that you are rejoicing, enjoying, loving. They have never loved, they have never enjoyed. They have always been guilty, feeling the burden of so many sins. How can they dance? When you see their situation, you will be able to forgive them for all their condemnation. They have missed their lives, and you are not missing a single moment.They are jealous of you, their condemnation and criticism arise out of their jealousy. When everybody is depressed, you are dancing. You are taking a risk: those depressed people will not allow you to dance, they will try to prevent you, they will start telling others that you are mad.I have heard a story about a faraway mountain land where a community of blind people lived. Nobody was born blind, but there was a certain fly whose bite made the person immediately blind. Every child was born with eyes, but those flies were all around, it was impossible to escape from those flies. All the older people, the adults, the mothers and fathers, could not do anything – they were all blind, the whole community was blind.The fly was affective only to a certain age-group, below five years of age. Five years is a long time for a child, and the fly was all around. Within those five years…any moment. In fact, within six months every child was blind; those flies were not waiting for five years.For the first time, a stranger came into the community from faraway lands, he was an adventurer. Seeing thousands of blind people from the hilltop, he could not believe his own eyes. He felt immensely sorry for them, he forgot about his further exploration in the mountains and he remained with those people. He wanted to help them somehow, he wanted to find what had happened. It is acceptable that in thousands of people there may be one man blind – that he knew – but in thousands of people not a single man with eyes? It was a great challenge for him; he wanted to find out what was the matter, what had happened.Soon he was able to find out that every child was born with eyes, and every child became blind within six months. He discovered the fly, too, which was a common fly. But while he was doing this research into why these poor people had all gone blind, he fell in love with a blind girl. She was immensely beautiful – he had seen beauty before, but this girl’s beauty was a category in itself, incomparable. Although she was blind, she looked like a marble statue made, not by any amateur, but by some Leonardo da Vinci.The girl was still unmarried. A great problem arose in the community, because never before had it happened that anybody from their community had married somebody…particularly a stranger – and more emphatically, a man who is mad because he thinks he has eyes. But they were simple mountain people, they did not want to make these two young people miserable.The community agreed that the man could marry the girl, but first he had to become blind. Then he would be one of them, no more a stranger. First he had to drop that madness that he had eyes – who had ever heard about eyes? If he was not willing to drop that insane idea, then the marriage was not possible, he was not only a stranger, he was insane too. The man so loved the girl that he destroyed his eyes. In his life, for the first time love became blind. For love, he became blind.Why could those people not accept that he had eyes? It was against the egos of the whole community, they were blind and he had eyes. He was somebody special, so either he was mad – imagining, hallucinating about eyes – or perhaps he had eyes. But then he could not be tolerated, allowed to continue to have eyes, because he would remain a stranger, an outsider, and the very idea that he had eyes made everyone feel inferior. The day he destroyed his eyes and said, “I have dropped that idea of being a man with eyes,” there was great rejoicing, dancing, singing.This is the situation: this is my situation, this is your situation. On your own accord you have become part of my caravan. I had started alone; then people went on coming, and the caravan went on becoming bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Now we are a reality the world cannot tolerate. They will condemn you, they will curse you, they will criticize you – but they cannot destroy you for the simple reason that they are mere ghosts of the past.They are not living people: they can make much noise, you just have to remember that they are dead and that the future does not belong to them. They can look backwards into the past: they can sing songs of glory about Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Mahavira, but they don’t have any eyes for the future. They don’t even have eyes for the present. And to have eyes for the past is absolutely meaningless, because the past is no more – it is dead, it is a long, long graveyard.And suddenly you come and start dancing and singing and celebrating. It hurts their egos. It makes them feel inferior. When they have missed joy, how dare you dance and sing? And for what? They know only one thing, that you can be happy, but for happiness you need a certain cause… And I am teaching you that happiness is your nature, you don’t need any cause.It is not that when you win a lottery of one million dollars you give a big party, wine and women and dance – that would be understood. But I am saying you need not win any lottery, you need no cause to be blissful. Blissfulness is your very nature; sadness needs a certain cause, bliss is free of all causality. Once you have understood it, you become a participant in a new way of life, a way so new that it is discontinuous with the past.But you have to understand that all those poor people who have missed are going to be angry with you. In their criticism, in their condemnation, there is nothing but jealousy, anger. They cannot believe that you can be right, because for millions of years they have lived the life of sadness and sorrow – and suddenly a few strangers arrive on the earth as if from another planet, and start doing things which have never been done. They would like to destroy you so they feel comfortable; they would like that you are not. They will feel a certain satisfaction that whatever they are is the only reality, that there is no other reality.But they cannot destroy you for the simple reason that you are living: you are vital energy and they are spent cartridges. They can shoot you with their guns, but their guns are full of spent cartridges. They cannot destroy you; life is so strong and death is so weak, joy is so strong and sadness is just a shadow – you are undefeatable.When they condemn you, enjoy that, too. When they criticize you, sing a song as a response to their criticism, and don’t pay much attention to them. Ignore them, they are anyway going down, drowning. Don’t waste your time arguing with drowning people; you continue your dance, and you go on spreading your dance. Religion, in the authentic, true sense, is here.You may not be aware that you are participating in something which is so important that nothing like it has ever happened before. And because you are capable, intelligent, you can forgive them. Not to let them feel inferior: you can forgive them, knowing that they are on their deathbed and you are just starting to grow and live and flower. There is no comparison.One journalist asked, “Can’t the commune live in coexistence with the neighbors?” In the first place, there are no neighbors, we are alone on the earth. Ghosts are not neighbors, graveyards are not neighborhoods. Those dead people – although they are still breathing – are not alive. Just to breathe is not enough to claim life, much more is needed.Just to breathe is to vegetate – even trees are breathing. Being able to walk is not much – animals are doing it, and even a few trees walk. In Africa, trees walk miles from their place of origin to find new sources of water. Of course it is a very slow journey, but they go on spreading their roots, and slowly go on moving miles to where they can find water, miles to where they can find open sky, the sun.Yes, these people we are surrounded with are breathing, walking, eating, doing all kinds of things – which any robot is capable of doing. Any mechanical device will be able to do all that these people are doing, but no robot can feel joy without any cause. No robot can be meditative and experience silence, ecstasy, blissfulness.What coexistence can there be between living, overflowing people and the dead? – or the nearly dead, which is even worse. If you are dead, at least misery is finished, a long tragedy has come to an end; but nearly dead, almost dead, life is not there but the tragedy continues. They have enough energy for misery; misery does not need much energy, you cannot say that you are so weak you cannot be miserable. Can you say that? – “I am feeling so weak today that I cannot feel miserable.”Misery needs no energy; it is easy, cheap, costs nothing. But to be blissful, to be dancing and singing, to be a joy to yourself and others, certainly you need energy, more energy than is needed only for survival. If a tree gets enough energy just to survive, it will not flower. No fruits will come to it for the simple reason that flowering is an overflowing of energy. The tree has so many colors within it, so much fragrance that it cannot contain it anymore. It has to be shared with existence, with the sun, with the moon, with the wind, with the birds. That’s how flowers come and open up, that’s how it gives you fruits – it has so much life energy that it can give.These people who condemn you because you have become a participant with a man who is against the whole past of man, just forgive them. They do not know that they are being foolish. Rather than wasting their energy in condemnation and criticism, they should come closer to you, know you better, feel you deeper; because if this ecstasy is possible to you, it is possible to them also. Howsoever late, it is still possible.There is a proverb in India: if you get lost in the morning but somehow manage to come back home by the evening, you are not lost. These people you are surrounded by are coming closer and closer to evening, but they are still far away from home. And if they could not find home in the sunlight, it cannot be conceived that they can find home when the sun has set and the darkness of night covers the earth.That darkness is not far away, its name is the Third World War. Every moment we are coming closer to it. That is going to be the night, unending, perhaps forever and forever. It is going to destroy all that is living and all possibility for life to exist on this planet. It has happened on other planets: it is now a recognized scientific fact that there are planets which give indications that some day life had existed there. How it disappeared nobody knows, but soon we will know how it disappears.But there is still time– even if the sun is setting, there is still time. Those people – if they are intelligent – will come and try to mix with you, so that they can understand where they got lost, where they missed the right path.So remember, those who are intelligent are going to become participants in this caravan. Those who are retarded will criticize you, condemn you. Ignore them, they are already stepping into their graves, soon they will disappear. They don’t have any vision for the future, they don’t have any solution for the problems that the past has created.Every day more and more problems are being created by their past, and not a single solution. We don’t have any problems from the past, any hang-ups, and we can see clearly that all their problems can be solved. But they are blind and deaf; they cannot listen, they cannot see. Perhaps they don’t want to see, they don’t want to listen because that will make them feel more inferior. They want to continue to feel that they are superior beings, that the problems are bad, the problems are insoluble, but they are doing their best. If the problems still remain, what can they do?I want to say to you that those problems are their creations. With one hand they go on creating the problem, with the other they go on trying to solve it. Their right hand knows not what their left hand is doing. I have not come across a single problem which cannot be solved right now. But they have their vested interests – and if the problem is solved, then what will happen to their vested interests?So they go on talking about solving the problem – poverty, war, disease, death – but just talking, and they have been talking for thousands of years. Their philosophers have been thinking, creating great treatises, but what is the outcome? What is the outcome of that whole genius of the past? How have Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Bradley, Bosake helped to solve any human problems? Has Mohammed, or Jesus, or Buddha, or Mahavira been able to give any solution so that man can live at peace?No, on the contrary they all created more problems, they added more problems. The older ones were there and they created new ones with their so-called solutions. It is really very surprising and amazing to see into the past and the people who have been adored in the past, respected like gods. And what is their contribution? Nobody asks.What has Krishna given to the world? Nothing at all. Yes, a few problems, certainly: he has given the idea to the Hindus that they are the right people, that everybody else is wrong in the world. Hindus think they are the purest race, everybody else is impure. Hindus go on saying that it is a great blessing, and they are fortunate to be born as Hindus – to be born as Christians or Mohammedans would have been a condemnation from the very beginning. Unless you have committed great sins in the past, how can you become a born Mohammedan, a born Christian? All the virtuous people are born brahmins, Hindus.But the same kind of idea is given by these so-called geniuses to everybody. Jesus says to Christians the same stupid thing: you are the very promise, all God’s hopes are with you. Everybody has gone wrong, now only you can help people to come to the right path. Moses says to the Jews: you are the chosen people of God, you are born to rule over the world.Now, what is the difference between Moses and Adolf Hitler? From where did he get this idea that German Nordics are the purest Aryan race in the world and they have, by their very birth, the right to rule over the world? Adolf Hitler must have got it from Moses. Perhaps that’s why he killed one million Jews.You will be wondering what is the relation between them. It is very simple: what Hitler is claiming is also being claimed by Moses. Those claims are going to clash against each other – either the Jews are to rule the world, or the German Nordics are going to rule the world. Both cannot rule the world, both cannot be the purest and the highest race. Something had to be decided – and he decided: by killing one million Jews he made it clear to the Jews who is higher, more powerful, stronger.Religious leaders, political leaders, they are all sailing in the same boat. I see man’s whole past as utterly impotent. It has not contributed more beauty to the world, more joy to beings, more health, more happiness. It has not been creative, it has been simply destructive. I am totally against it.It has been asked by very scholarly professors, “You are a rational person, how can you say that everything in the past is wrong? Something must be right, too. There must be something that is good in Buddha’s approach, something good in Jesus’ approach. You may not agree with their total message, but to deny the total message – not of one person, not of one country, not of one culture, not of one civilization, but of all the civilizations, all the cultures, all the prophets, all the messiahs, all the religions!”This professor was the Professor of Buddhism in Benares University, his name was Bhikshu Jagdish Kashyap. He said, “You are a rational man. I cannot see how you can say this.” I said to him that just because I am a rational man I can say it, and also I can prove it.Yes, there are things in Buddha which look beautiful, there are words of Jesus which look beautiful. But remember one thing: Jesus is one organic whole, his good words cannot be separated from his bad deeds. Buddha has to be taken as a whole, because whatsoever he says and does is interconnected.You cannot just cut pieces from different people – the good ones, the nice ones – and make a living culture out of it, that is impossible. In the first place, the moment you take a small piece from Mohammed, it is already dead. It was alive in the Mohammedan context, once it loses that context it has no meaning at all.For example, Jesus says: Blessed are those who are the last in this world, because they will be the first in my kingdom of God. A beautiful sentence: to find something wrong with such a beautiful sentence is difficult, even enemies of Jesus cannot do that. But I am not an enemy, neither am I a friend. I am simply looking with open eyes, with no emotional antagonism, favoritism. He says: Blessed are those who are the last. But how many people can be the last? If the whole humanity is standing in a queue, one man will be the last; and if humanity is standing in a circle, then it will be impossible to find who is the last.How do you determine what is the criterion to decide who is the last? – the beggar? Buddha was a beggar – do you have the guts to say that he is the last? He had nothing but his begging bowl, that was his only possession, but you cannot say he is the last. He was so magnificent a person that you can only put him as the first – this world or that does not matter. And Jesus is saying this without considering how long humanity has existed. How many people would have been the last in each generation, and why were they last in the first place? They had no intelligence, they had no strength, they had no guts to move. These will be the first in the kingdom of God?Then in the kingdom of God only idiots will be found, and those who are intelligent, geniuses, they will be thrown into hell because they were never the last. A beautiful sentence, but if you start thinking and dissecting it, you find that you will have to accept Jesus’ whole theology. Only in that context can that sentence have any meaning.Buddha says beautiful things but also says stupid things; now I cannot conceive of a man doing both things together. On the one hand he says that men and women are equal; on the other hand he is not willing to initiate women into sannyas. Now what to make of it? If they are equal, then why are you preventing equal people equal opportunity?Certainly they are not equal, your action proves they are not equal. You initiate the most idiotic man and you are not willing to initiate the most intelligent woman. Then, when you say men and women are equal, it seems to be just a political, diplomatic statement; it has no value, you yourself have canceled it completely.I have looked into the past, I have tried my best to find something. But it is always connected with something which is ugly. Now the Hindu god Rama is a beautiful person, if you are not very alert. If you are very alert, you will find that this man is an enemy of humanity. His wife was stolen by another king. Three years he had to fight to get the wife back. Poets praise him, Hindu saints praise him because he respected womanhood so much that he fought for three years. Otherwise, in those days, who bothered? Every king had many wives, who cares if one is lost? It looks right, the man must be very respectful toward women.But the same man when he is victorious, when he takes out his wife Sita from the imprisonment of the enemy king, the first words that he says destroy him completely. He says, “Listen, woman,” – he is not even saying, my dear, my darling. Three years of separation, and the word he uses is derogatory – “Listen, woman, I have not fought this war for you. I have fought this war for my own prestige, for my kingdom’s prestige, for my forefathers’ prestige. It is not a question of you, so don’t get a big head because Rama fought for you for three years.”These are ugly words. And then he is known to have forced the woman to pass through fire to prove that she is pure, that she had not made love to the enemy king. In the first place, it is such a stupid idea that the fire will judge whether the woman is pure or not.You can try it – do a small experiment: say something absolutely truthfully, say something which cannot be untrue in any way. Say the time in your clock at this moment, and put your hand just on a candle flame to see whether you are true or not. And you will know that the candle flame does not bother whether your clock is there or not, whether you are saying the truth or untruth. It is going to burn you. Then try a lie, anything that cannot be true in any possible way, that two and two make five, and put your hand on the flame. See whether it burns you more, less, or the same: fire has its own laws.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Denise KovacevicKATU TV, Channel 2, Portland, Oregon, United StatesOsho,We appreciate your taking the time out to speak with us this afternoon.Thank you.What is it about you, what is it about your religion, that people find so appealing? We see people here that we think are like ourselves, and see what they have here, and we ask ourselves, what is it about you and this place that is so attractive to people?It is very simple, I am so ordinary a man that nobody can feel any inferiority with me. All the so-called religious leaders of the world were nothing but egoists, making everybody feel inferior, guilty, sinners. I don’t make anybody feel guilty; if he feels guilty already, just coming to me his guilt disappears. I transform sinners into saints instantly, and that’s what appeals to them – that I am one of them, and they’re my fellow travelers, not my followers.I am nobody’s leader; they are not sheep and I am not their shepherd, I am just a human being, as they are. And my emphasis is that every human being has the birthright to become enlightened, this is nothing special.Osho,When we see the people who are part of the commune and who subscribe to your way of life, they seem to worship you, and they treat you with reverence, they treat you with respect that, perhaps, they would not treat other people. So do you really consider yourself an ordinary man? You call yourself the enlightened one.I am: I don’t consider, I don’t think, I am just an ordinary man – and that’s why they adore me. They have adored for centuries people who are just egoists, people who have been deceiving them, calling themselves prophets, messiahs, only begotten son of God, and all kinds of nonsense. They are intelligent enough to see that I am not putting any burden on them, I am trying to remove all burden. I am continuously saying to them there is no need to worship me, because I am just amongst you. There is no need for adoration.But they do give it, and they do not treat you as an equal.That is the problem. The more I say that I am nobody, the more they love me. Now what do you suppose I should do?I hope you're not waiting for an answer, I really don't know. I'm supposed to ask the questions! If you say that you are not their leader, what do you do for them? Do you just set an example? What do you offer them?I don’t offer them anything except myself, I am available to them. I have no secrets, I am completely open. All the prophets and the messiahs had secrets, esoteric philosophies, I have none.But I say to them that being nothing, nobody, brings you all the blessings of the world. And just being close to me, slowly they start feeling also that they are nobodies, nobody is special. And the moment one feels he is nobody, the whole existence starts pouring immense blissfulness, it showers on him like flowers.Once you have known the secret, how you can commune with existence… With your ego you cannot commune with existence; you are separating yourself. With no ego there is communion, and that communion is enlightenment, that is real godliness. I don’t have any God to offer them, but certainly I can show them the way to godliness. And remember, godliness is nothing special; it is our birthright, we just have to claim it.It has been said for centuries, again and again, that you have to earn virtue. It will take many times, many lives for you to reach the kingdom of God. They have made it very far away, it is always beyond death. I say to my people that this is sheer stupidity. They were exploiting people’s gullibility, they were exploiting people’s hope.I am saying to them that there is nothing beyond this moment – don’t wait for any Godot. Live this moment in its totality and squeeze the whole juice out of it, and if the next moment comes, do the same to it. Go on squeezing each moment and you will be surprised that unawares you have entered into paradise. In this very life, here and now, existence knows only one tense: the present. It knows no past, it knows no future.So I simply help them to be here and now, getting more rooted in the present, and then everything becomes possible. And it is not a question of deserving God: we are part of existence already, it is not a question of earning. No virtue is needed, because it is not a bargain, not a business. We have just to be a little quiet, silent, so we can hear the still small voice within. We can also hear the silent music that surrounds the whole existence – and that I call godliness. There is no God, but there is certainly a quality of tremendous beauty, grace, love.Osho,Is there a way that you can help the public understand what it is to be a sannyasin? Most people are familiar with Christianity and Christians; they believe that Christ is the savior, the messiah. Christians try to live their lives according to a certain set of standards. Can you give me something brief like that for how sannyasins live?I don’t have anything like that because I don’t have any catechism, any dogma. I don’t offer any principles, any philosophy, any theology. My sannyasins live individual lives in freedom.So there is no such thing as a bad sannyasin, like there is a bad Christian, or…?No, no, there is no good sannyasin, there is no bad sannyasin; there are only sannyasins. Good and bad are ugly words and I have dissolved them completely. Here is no judgment; everybody has to be responsible for himself, his freedom and whatsoever he wants to do with his life. So it is difficult for me – impossible – to explain to the outside people how a sannyasin is. The only way is to invite him to be here, live with the sannyasins, experience what they are going through. Taste it and their fragrance will be my explanation, the taste of being with the sannyasins is my theology. Those people will have to come to the well, the well does not go to the thirsty.Osho,If there is no good and bad and no judging, how does one know if he is improving? Or is there even a need to improve? Or is that up to the individual – am I happy with what I am doing now, am I happy with the level I am at now?I do not teach that you have to become somebody other than what you are. No improvement is needed, there is no goal to be achieved. Whatever you need is already provided by existence each moment; it is up to you how to use it, or not to use it.I'm not very familiar with the Bible, but what you just said is almost something that I think is in the Bible: that answers are there, you just have to open your eyes and see them. Everything that you need is here right now, you just have to open yourself up to it, the answers are all there.No, it is not in the Bible, you don’t know anything about the Bible. In the Bible it is said: seek and ye shall find, ask and you will receive the answer, knock and the door shall be opened. This is totally against what I am saying. I am saying: seek and you will miss, do not seek because it is here right now – in seeking you will forget the moment which is slipping by. Do not ask because you are the answer. Why become a question? It is simply stupid to become a question when you can become the answer.Osho,What do you think of those of us who do not subscribe to your way of life?I don’t care, I simply allow them their freedom – nor do I subscribe to their philosophy, their religion. It is perfectly right they don’t subscribe. But we are not at all worried about them, they are worried about us. That makes the difference; somehow they are troubled by us, we are not troubled.Does that amuse you?Yes, it amuses me immensely, it is our whole entertainment. Their worry, their concern, their continuous curiosity makes it clear that whatever philosophy, theology, religion they belong to, is not giving them what they want. It is not making them joyful, it is not making them sing, dance, it is not giving them anything substantial, any nourishment. That is the reason they go on looking, perhaps somewhere else…They are curious but also afraid, because they have been conditioned, they have lived according to a certain dogma. A man who has lived for seventy years according to a certain dogma is in a really big mess if he comes across sannyasins. He can see there are people who are happy, dancing, singing for no reason at all. To dance is enough, a reason unto itself. To sing is enough, you need not be rewarded for it in heaven – in the very singing of it you are rewarded.They can see these people are happy, that makes them curious. But they are afraid to come too close, because of their seventy years’ devotion to Christ, to the Bible. They don’t want to recognize the fact that for seventy years they have been idiotic, not Christian. They have been calling their stupidity, Christianity. It needs guts to come close to my sannyasins. Those who have guts, they are coming, from all over the world. Those who have no guts, let them go to hell. It is none of our business to interfere in their journey, in their pilgrimage to hell, let them go.Osho,How many sannyasins are there now throughout the world? We had heard that perhaps your numbers were shrinking.Never shrinking, we are always expanding. But we don’t bother about numbers, we don’t even have an exact account of how many people are there. But they are growing every day; around the world in every center people are taking sannyas, joining communes – there are almost eight hundred thousand sannyasins.And a few have left; they can be counted very easily on ten fingers – a dozen or two dozen people. Even though they have left, they are in tremendous trouble, because once a sannyasin, you cannot again become part of the old world. Now they are in a limbo: they cannot mix with the old world, I have already deprogrammed them. They cannot go to the church and listen to the sermon without thinking, “This is idiotic.” They cannot come back because of their egos, “We left, how should we approach Osho again?” I would like them to know that the doors are open. Nobody is going to ask you why you left, we never ask anybody why you have come.Osho,It appears that most of the people in the top, in the commune and within the organization and the religion are women. Why? How did that come to be?Certainly, because I am a man.And women are important to you?Certainly, I love them – I love you.And we have only met. Do you think that – this is getting interesting! – do you think that women are necessarily better than or more important than, or perhaps smarter than men?They are lovelier, delicious, tasteful. And they have been repressed for centuries, that’s why they appear not to be so intelligent as men. Otherwise, they are exactly equally as intelligent as men, and more earthly than men. Man is always a moon gazer: the woman doesn’t care about the moon, she cares about the earth, her concern is very practical.I am creating a certain way of life which is not schizophrenic, which does not divide materialism from spiritualism, a life in which materialism and spiritualism are together – not as enemies, not as contradictories, but as complementaries. And one has to begin from the earth – even if you have to go to the moon, you have to begin from the earth. The woman is very earthly; I don’t need moon gazers, I need very earthly people. The woman gives roots to you; a man without a woman is without roots.Osho,Is there a special woman in your life, or do you have many?I have so many that it is very difficult to say who is special. In this moment, you are. It is moment to moment.Well, okay, other than this moment, is there a companion that you share your life with?No, I don’t make any contracts, particularly about love, because love is a very delicate phenomenon, it is just like the wind. A cool breeze comes in and passes through the other door; you cannot catch hold of it, you can enjoy it. And if you try to catch hold of it you miss the moment of enjoyment. In a closed fist there is no wind, if you want to enjoy, keep the fist open.I have no contract with anybody. I never promise anything, because I don’t know if tomorrow I will be there or not. And who knows, the next moment somebody else enters into my life, and I am enchanted. I never make any promise.How can something so fleeting give a man roots then?It gives you roots. It does not matter that you love one woman, then you will get roots… What gives you roots is that you love. Lovers can change but your love remains, and that gives you roots. That is permanent, that is not a fleeting thing. I have always loved – addresses have changed, but I have been writing love letters my whole life. That gives roots, and that gives you a very beautiful centering and a feeling of earthliness. From there you have to start to grow, just like a tree. The phenomenon of the tree is exactly similar to what I call my religion.[Osho speaks to the video crew] Change it. There, you see? No contract even with the film: in the middle of a sentence the film changes, what to do?A tree is exactly symbolic of what my religion is: the tree grows roots deep under the earth, the deeper the roots go, the higher the tree stands. It is equal, proportionate; if the tree wants to reach to the stars then the roots will have to reach to the very hell.My commune is a very balanced phenomenon. There are more women than men, for the simple reason that I am preparing the earth. Men are coming, soon you will see equal numbers. But they can come only – the trees can grow upward only – when the ground is ready. The woman is of tremendous importance.Osho,What will the children play?The children are the commune’s, they are not yours or mine. In the first place, my approach is that the world is already overpopulated, so don’t burden it anymore. Science has given you the greatest revolution in human history, the pill, which makes you absolutely capable of making love just a play, a fun, a game. There is no need to be serious about it anymore. In the past, of course, people were serious, because children will come, then who is going to take care of the children?So first my emphasis is, remember: the earth is already too burdened and we have to unburden the earth. So in four years’ time, in my commune not a single child has been born. Although four sannyasins have died, we have not even replaced the four sannyasins with four children.Secondly, there are children, because when sannyasins came, a few sannyasins came with children. When they became sannyasins they were already mothers and fathers. Those children are here, but the commune is responsible. We remove the responsibility from the father and mother, we make them free, unburdened. Their children are there, they can love them, they can live with them, they can go to them, they can call them, but they belong to the commune. If they don’t care about their children, the children are not going to suffer in any way. The children have the whole commune of uncles, aunts, and they go on making friends with different kinds of people.This is a tremendous education and a great preparation for a life, a rich life. It is an established fact that the boy loves his mother and the girl loves her father. But this kind of love remains only in the mind: the boy cannot make love to the mother, that is unimaginable. The boy fantasizes but goes on repressing it, feels guilty. The girl feels guilty: you can see small girls flirting with their fathers – it is natural, he is the only man she knows from the very beginning.This is a very significant thing, because the girl becomes impressed with the idea of men according to the image she carries of her father. And the same with the boy – his whole life he will remain frustrated, he will not find the right woman for the simple reason that it is always his mother that he is looking for, unknowingly, unconsciously.When he falls in love, he cannot say why he has fallen in love with this particular woman, but psychologists know perfectly well. Something in this woman resembles his mother – perhaps the color of the hair, the style of her dress, the way she walks, the sound of her voice, her eyes, her face, her color – anything. But something resembles the mother so much that the boy has fallen in love. But the woman soon will not be able to fulfill all the demands that the boy is going to make, that he was making on the mother. Soon he is going to discover that she only walks like his mother, but she is not the woman he was seeking, searching.In the commune we destroy this neurosis completely, because the child goes on moving with many aunts, many uncles. And remember: father and mother are later additions to language. Uncle and aunt are far more ancient; because there was a time when there was no family, so everybody of the age of the father was an uncle, nobody knew exactly who was the father.I would like my commune’s children not to be focused on one figure, but to have a rich experience of many women, many men, so they have only a general, vague feeling which can fit with any woman, any man.Osho,How were you raised? Were you raised in that way?No, how could I be raised in the same way? I had to fight for it, I had to struggle for it. I was raised in a family, but the family never thought that I belonged to them, because I never listened to them.In fact I had made it clear that if they want me to do something they should keep quiet, if they say they want me to do it, then I’m not going to do it. Then I will do just the opposite, because I don’t want to be ordered in my life, and I don’t receive anybody’s commandments. I told them, “If you want to throw me out of the house you can, this is your house. Remember, I am born through you, but I have my own individuality and I have to discover it on my own. Your orders will not help me.”Soon they became understanding, because how long could they fight? And slowly they started understanding what I was saying. Now, my mother is a sannyasin. My father, who died a few years ago, died a sannyasin, and before his death he told me, “We were trying to mold you, we were trying to make you. Forgive us, if we had succeeded, we would have destroyed something beautiful.”How old were you when they finally understood?When I came back from the university, then they had to understand, because their first thing was to get me married – just the general idea around the world, that if a person is married then his wings are cut, he is chained. Then he forgets all about revolutionary ideas, rebellion, those youthful dreams of a better world, better humanity. Just chain him to responsibility: he has a wife who nags him, he has children who are not allowing him to sleep in the night, and he has a job he never reaches in time because of those children and the wife. He forgets all about revolution, a new man.So that was their way. They thought that the first thing after I came back from the university was to force me to get married.Osho,How old were you when you started rebelling?I must have been four years old when I started rebelling.Four?Four.That's young.It is, yes, certainly young, but I was strong enough. I was even ready to go and beg on the street, but not to be commanded, and not to be forced to do anything.At four?Four.Osho,Was there anyone that you admired when you were growing up?Yes, a few people I admired, but very few people. I admired one of my professors, for the simple reason that he had as much respect toward me as I had for him. When I used to enter his room, he would stand up to receive me. I would say, “This is not right, this is not done.” He said, “I don’t do it for anybody, but somehow, the moment I see you I cannot remain sitting. It feels embarrassing.”I loved the man; he was a gambler, a drunkard, but a very prominent philosopher. Most of his years he was teaching in America, only in his old age had he come back home, and that was the time I entered the university. He had just come back from Havana. We fell in love with each other for the simple reason that he had been in rebellion his whole life. His wife, his sons, his daughters were all in New Delhi – he never lived with those people, only on holidays. He made it clear to them, “Too much time with you drives me insane, so I will be coming only on holidays.”When he found my ideas, because I was continuously arguing in the class, I was not just a silent listener getting ready for the examination… The examination never meant anything to me, learning was my purpose. I said to him that the examination does not matter, what matters is learning, so I have to argue if I see that something is wrong, that something you are saying is illogical. And on so many points he found himself wrong, but he was a man of tremendous courage, he accepted that he was wrong and I was right.Slowly, slowly we became more and more close and intimate, so intimate that one day he took all my luggage from the students’ hostel to his own house. He said, “You don’t live outside, you live with me.”I said, “It will be a little difficult for you. For me it is just beautiful – so silent a place, and a beautiful bungalow with a beautiful garden – but for you it is going to be difficult.” And within three days he understood what I meant.After three days he said, “You were right, because I want to drink, but I cannot drink before you, I feel bad. I want to smoke, but I cannot smoke before you, so in my old age I am hiding in the bathroom and smoking. You have brought my childhood back. When you go to sleep, then I drink – I have to keep my bottles hidden.”I said, “I know everything, because when I see cigarettes in the bathroom, and only we two persons are here, it is a simple deduction who is smoking. I am certainly not smoking. And I know that you are drunk; in the morning I see your hangover. I know where you are hiding your bottles, I have figured it out, because you go to the university every day.”He was the head of the department of philosophy, and I was a rare visitor. I was a student, but I visited the university very rarely, only to some professors whom I liked. If their period was happening I would go, otherwise I would remain in the house. So I explored the whole house and I found out where he had been hiding the bottles.I said, “Don’t do this, now it is becoming embarrassing to me – that just for me you have to smoke hiding, you have to drink like a thief. If you cannot smoke before me, and cannot drink before me, I am leaving.”You will be surprised: he said, “No, you don’t leave. I will stop smoking, I will stop drinking.” He threw away all the cigarettes, the best that he had carried from Havana. He poured all the wine that he had brought from outside into the gutter, and he said, “Nobody has been able to convince me. My doctors were against my smoking because my heart is weak, my lungs are weak. My doctors were against drinking because I have diabetes. But I never cared, I told those people, ‘I may live two years less, that does not matter, but I will live in freedom.’ You never asked me not to smoke. On the contrary, you told me, ‘Smoke in front of me. If you feel too embarrassed, I will start smoking with you. If you feel too guilty drinking, I will share.’”I loved that man. Only a very few people I have found, but I was never impressed by anybody, I have never followed anybody. I have met remarkable men, but the more remarkable a man was, the more alert I was not to be influenced, because I want to remain myself – good, bad, famous, notorious, but I want to be just myself. And I have retained my individuality, not even a dent on it – I don’t like even a dent on my car.I was born just as everybody is born in families, but with a rebellious mind. And as far back as I remember – that is four years old – I started asserting myself, slowly, and then it became absolute assertion when they asked me to get married. I asked my father, “Are you satisfied with your marriage? I have seen you being nagged by my mother every day. You cannot even eat your meals peacefully. I have seen you eating your meals, your eyes down, and my mother continuously hammering you, because that is the only time she gets when you are at home, otherwise you are in the shop. Do you want me also to be harassed by another woman? You think it over.”I asked my mother, “Are you happy that you got married? Are you happy that you have eleven children? Your whole life is wasted – what have you got out of it? – not even a single moment of peace. So please, before asking me to marry, think for fifteen days, and then – if you both say – I will get married. But remember, I am giving you a great responsibility, of my whole life.” And that was really a great challenge for them.My father broke down within three days. He said, “I take my words back. I will never again ask you to marry. I have suffered much, and I know everybody is suffering.” My mother took fifteen days – naturally, women are stronger, can resist anything longer than men – but after fifteen days she told me, “Forget about marriage. Our life is enough proof, and we don’t want you to get into the same trap. You be yourself.”Osho,Well we know you're not married; we know you get to eat your meals in peace. How do you spend the rest of your day? Do you meditate a lot? Do you get involved in any kind of physical activity? What do you do in a typical day?I do many things. One, I have always loved my bathroom, the bathtub, the shower. So one and a half hours in the morning, one and a half hours in the evening – three hours every day – I devote to my bathroom, that is my temple.What exactly do you do in the bathroom for three hours a day? Or should we not discuss that on videotape?I just enjoy sitting under the shower, lying down in my tub. I change from hot, extreme hot, to extreme cold, freezing water. That is immensely healthful to the body. One and a half hours is not long. It goes so fast because I enjoy it so much. So three hours go into the bathroom.For two hours, or two and a half hours in the morning, I talk to my disciples. Then in the night, for two hours; just the way I am talking to you, I talk to some journalist, some author. So for four or five hours I am talking.Then, I enjoy my food, twice. I don’t even like to talk, because whatever I am doing, I want to do it totally. When I am eating, then I just want to eat and relish every bite to the fullest. So one hour or one and a half hours, because I take two meals, lunch and supper… And then before I go to sleep in the night I take – my whole life I have taken – some special sweets which are made only in Bengal, India. So in all, one and a half hours goes to my food.For two hours in the day I sleep. I have napped as long as I can remember, and I love to sleep because to me sleep is just meditation, as pure and as simple and as relaxing. And whatever time remains in the night, I go to bed at about ten or eleven, it depends on the interview. I wake up at six in the morning. I love sleeping on a king size bed – I love big things!Osho,What do you do for fun? What do you do for recreation?I go for a one-hour drive in one of the ninety Rolls Royces. So, for one hour after my sleep in the afternoon – I wake up at two – I go for a drive. My people have made a special road for me. Perhaps I am the only man in the whole world who has a special road without any traffic, it is used only for one hour in twenty-four hours. I love driving, I have always loved it.Then for whatsoever time is left, I sit in my chair. I use only one type of chair – this is the type – I have so many chairs of the same type, so wherever I am, I am in the same type of chair. I have designed it myself, and I have not found any other chair more comfortable than this.Then I simply relax with closed eyes. You can call it meditation, I cannot call it meditation because to me meditation is now my very nature. Not that I am doing anything, I am just sitting with closed eyes, no ideas floating in my mind. Just utter silence.My life is simple in a way, no complexity; in a way a very strict routine, too. Every day at the same time in the morning I wake up, every day at the same time in the morning I talk to my people – and that’s how I go around the clock.Do you ever get bored or tired of routine?Never, for thirty-two years I have not experienced boredom. And I don’t see any hope that in the future I will have to experience boredom, because I am never comparing. The same bath, the same bubbles, the same pine fragrance… But it is the same only if you compare with your yesterdays. I never compare anything with my yesterdays.I can eat the same food for years. The sannyasins who cook my food get bored cooking the same thing, they want to change. But if I like something, I simply like it, and I like it every day. The same thing for years creates no boredom in me because there is no comparison. It is always fresh, and I am always excited.You can ask Vivek, she is here. She brings my food, she takes care of my clothes, my bed, my whole routine, that it goes exactly right. She asks again and again, “We can change to some other sweet.” I say, “Wait, if I feel bored sometime, I will tell you.” But I never feel bored. If sometimes I change anything in my food, it is for her sake, because she is getting so bored. And I am eating – she is simply bringing the plate. She is getting bored carrying the plate, so it is human: change it.Osho,How is your health? You seem to be looking very well.My health is very good and getting better. Oregon, its dry climate, its hostile people, have all been tremendously helpful. I am feeling very good.Osho,Well, that's all the questions I have – unless there is anything else that you would like to add. Is there anything that you would like to say?I would like to say that Oregon is so beautiful, that the people who live in Oregon should not behave in ugly ways – it is an insult to this beautiful land. If you have such a beautiful land, it needs and deserves beautiful people, too. So tell the people that I would like them all to come and visit this place, and see that there is a different way of living, too – without hostility, without antagonism, without hatred, without crime. In four years’ time, no crime has happened in this commune, no woman has been raped, nobody has been murdered, nobody has committed suicide.People are so happy and relaxed and rejoicing, who wants to die? And who wants to waste time quarreling, fighting, killing? Who wants to steal? Their very blissfulness prevents them from everything the world is full of.My people work hard, but they call it worship. It is worship; working on the farm, digging the earth – if you are sensitive enough you will feel it as worship. And if you feel it as worship you will not get tired. They work ten hours, twelve hours, whatever is the need – it is their responsibility – and still nobody is complaining, nobody is saying that this is too much.These are not average, common people; there are Ph.D.s, D.Litt.s, almost everybody is highly educated. Doctors are there, professors are there, engineers are there, architects are there, legal experts are there. Perhaps we have the biggest legal firm in the world – four hundred sannyasins are legal experts. Everybody is doing, but nobody is being coerced to do anything.So tell the Oregonians, I love this land and I am not going to leave this place.Knowing what you know about human nature, can't you understand how some Oregonians might feel threatened by your presence here?They are all, not some – almost all are threatened.If the tables were turned, would you perhaps not feel threatened – if Oregon were yours and a small unknown group came, would you not maybe feel threatened?No, we don’t feel threatened even when we are a small group. So it is unimaginable that we own the whole Oregon and a small group is there, and we will feel threatened. We will enjoy that group, we will absorb that group. We will not leave it alone, we will not be hostile to it, they will be our guests. And it is beautiful to have different kinds of people, strangers – it gives richness. It is simply ugly the same type of people, the same churches, the same Bible… It makes life dull.I would like any small group, there is no question of being threatened. One feels threatened because one feels one is not happy where he is, what he is, and these people are happy; their dance is threatening. Otherwise, such a small commune, what is the fear?But just a few days ago, a secret document has been discovered and it has been on television. The governor and all the big officials, the secretary of state, the attorney general, the head of the police and all the government agencies had a secret meeting. And the governor lied, because they did not allow any journalists in.This is ugly: in a democracy why should they try to hide things from people? They did not allow any journalists, and the governor said, “I will have a press conference after the meeting” – and he lied in the meeting. Everything he said was a lie.Now that secret document has been found. He had the idea that it had been destroyed – perhaps he had ordered it to be burned, but somehow it was not burned and somebody discovered it. The document says that in that secret meeting they decided that the army should be put on alert, against us; that the military should be ready. On any notice, within three hours they have to reach Rajneeshpuram.So it is not a few Oregonians who are threatened. I am simply amused at the foolishness of this man, Governor Atiyeh. We are not a nation, we don’t have an army. You can simply throw a few bombs on the commune and finish it. Just one airplane bringing half a dozen bombs – small, old fashioned bombs – and that will do. You don’t need an atom bomb. It is not Hiroshima – Hiroshima was big – it is not Nagasaki. There is no need to waste so much money, you can bring just any old-fashioned, out-of-date bombs and just finish us.But remember, while your bombs will be falling on us, we will be dancing and singing. We will celebrate it, we celebrate everything – we are celebrants.Okay?Osho,How old are you?I am ancient.Could you be a bit more specific?Very ancient. You can look at me, in my eyes you will see the whole past of humanity. I am as old as existence itself – because I have always been here. I am part, just as you are part, of this existence. And I have been in so many bodies that now I cannot get identified with any body. When you have to change so many trains, you are bound to feel that no train is yours; at the coming junction again you have to change the train.In this body, I have been fifty-four years. But in fifty-four years I have lived a life which is not possible to live even in two hundred years. I have lived intensely, totally. Whatever I have been doing at whatever time, I was doing it with my whole heart, as if the next moment is death.Osho,What happens after death? You will come back in another body?No, no more, this time is the last time. I have been coming into bodies again and again, but this time it is the last time. After enlightenment, you cannot come back to the body, that is the only disadvantage.Osho,When did you become enlightened? How old were you, was it this life for you?Yes, when I was twenty-one years old.What about others? What about the sannyasins: when they die, when they leave this life, will they come back as humans?A few will not come, a few are bound to come – it all depends on them. If they die unenlightened, they will have to come back. This is an existential condition, that existence sends you back again and again and again unless you have passed the examination. Enlightenment is the examination, then there is no question of coming back to the university – you have learned everything, experienced everything. Your being dissolves into the whole, becomes one with it; it is tremendous freedom. Being caged in a body is really carrying your jail around you wherever you go. But as far as I am concerned, this is the last time, so I am trying to make the most of it.So is the ultimate experience to become enlightened, so that when you do leave this life you no longer have to carry around the prison of your body?Right.Thank you for your time, it's been a pleasure.Good, come back again.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Shanti PrabhuOsho Times, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United StatesOsho,It has been said that violence is as American as apple pie. Why is the United States – a country that prides itself as a land of freedom – such a violent place? Is there a relation between violence in America and its so-called freedom?Violence in America has deep roots: it is the only continent in the world which is being ruled by foreigners. The native Red Indians, to whom this continent belongs, are almost finished; and the people who think they are Americans, none of them are American. They have all come from other countries, invaded the poor country, invaded the poor innocent natives. The roots of violence are there.The people who had come into power over this continent through violence have remained in power through violence. Unless the continent is given back to its people, this violence is going to remain.It is a strange phenomenon that the foreigners who are ruling the country are trying to prevent us from living here. We are not trying to rule the country, we are not invaders. They are trying to call us foreigners just because they came here three or four generations ago. Time makes no difference, they are all foreigners.We are not rulers; we have not invaded the country, we have not killed its people, we have not destroyed its people’s integrity and spirit. We have purchased the land and we have purchased it for the right price. Do you know how much the invaders paid the Red Indians for the whole of New York City? Thirty dollars – the whole of New York was purchased for thirty dollars. This is not purchasing, this is cheating innocent people.The people who came in the early days of America were really criminals: they were thrown out of their countries, expelled. Those criminals became presidents, those criminals became chief justices of the Supreme Court. They were expelled from their own countries for crimes which were so big that the countries could not tolerate them – either kill them or throw them out.Then people from Africa were forced, bribed – persuaded and given great promises and hope that they were going to a rich world where they would receive all the facilities. What they found here was that they were sold in the marketplace just like cattle. Slavery had disappeared from the whole world, and it appeared just three centuries ago in America. And the slaves – although no longer called slaves – are still not first-class citizens.This continent is based on violence. It has repressed the Red Indians in such ugly ways… It is difficult to imagine what man can do to man. Red Indians are living almost in concentration camps; of course, they are not called concentration camps, they are called reservations – especially reserved for Red Indians.Why should Red Indians not be allowed to mix in society? It is their land, they have lived here for thousands of years. Now they are confined to forests and mountains, on reservations, and they are being given pensions. On the surface it looks humanitarian, that if we are ruling over their continent we are paying them, for generations we have been paying them. But to pay them salaries for no work is not humanitarian.What will they do with that money? They will get drunk, they will take drugs, they will gamble, they will fight, kill each other. What else do they have to do? Money comes without any effort. They will go on creating more and more children because with each child comes more money. To give people money without work is to reduce them into drunkards, gamblers, murderers: you have taken their dignity.On the surface everything looks so whitewashed, clean; it can be claimed that you are giving them money because you are using their land. But the real purpose is to keep them drunk, fighting, gambling, rowdy, and to keep them in such a state that they never again think of being free, that they never think of getting rid of all the invaders of this continent.The whole society is interwoven with violence: the black people are downtrodden, there are thousands of people on the streets with no home – what do you expect them to do? They will do every kind of crime, they have nothing to lose. And America goes on pretending to the whole world that wherever there is any trouble, they are going to help. You can’t help your own people; twenty-five percent of Americans who are able to work are unemployed, and America goes to help Ethiopia!In America, Ethiopia is spread everywhere – just thinly, but it is there – and violence will come out. These people who have lost everything, respect, humanity, integrity, they have been treated like animals – you cannot expect that the country can live without violence.Basically, America is one of the most destructive powers in the world. The whole government is working with only one object: to win the Third World War. But they are simply fools, because nobody can win the Third World War, neither the Soviet Union nor America. The difference may be at the most ten minutes: whoever attacks first, it will take only ten minutes for the other party to attack back. Nuclear weapons are ready on both sides, so it is not a question of somebody getting defeated and somebody else becoming victorious. It is simply suicidal – both will be destroyed, and with them all life on earth will be destroyed.If your great leaders, political, religious and others, are bent upon having a Third World War, if all your scientific and military efforts are aimed at just one point – how to destroy the Soviet Union and how to destroy communism in the world – who are you to take responsibility for the whole world? Who are you to decide that the Soviet Union should not be communist? It is none of your business.Your government is utterly violent. The whole structure of society is violent; there are the super-rich and there are the super-poor in this country, the distance between the rich and the poor is too big. Naturally, the poor man becomes violent – he is angry. Your priests and bishops go on teaching the poor to be contented, but how long do you think you can keep poor people contented?Now old strategies won’t work. You have used this strategy for thousands of years in the whole world, but it is not going to work in America: it is a new country, it has only three hundred years’ civilization, which is nothing compared to countries like China or India with histories of thousands of years. This country is new and the poor have seen clearly that they have been exploited. In India they have never seen it clearly – they have been exploited for thousands of years. They don’t remember any time when there was not poverty, they have accepted poverty as a law of nature, the will of God.But you cannot deceive the American poor. He has seen with his own eyes that those who were cunning and clever, have exploited and become rich. He has seen people who were criminals becoming rich; and he has seen simple, innocent people who were not criminals becoming poor. You cannot deceive the American poor, you cannot tell him that he is suffering from his past lives’ actions. He knows perfectly well that he is suffering from other Americans and their actions.In such a small period of history – three hundred years – things are very crystal clear. They had all come to America, they were all equal: nobody was rich, nobody was poor. Then, suddenly, a few people started becoming richer and richer and richer, became the richest in the world, and a few people started falling down. They have seen with their own eyes how one becomes rich. It is not by right means; it is by exploiting, it is by cunning, by every kind of means – good or bad does not matter.The American poor have a very different attitude from the poor in any other country, because all those countries are very ancient. They don’t remember their beginnings; they don’t know what happened in the beginning – that a few people became poor and a few people became rich. They think it has always been so. But the American poor have a unique situation, they know what has happened – they cannot forgive it, they cannot forget it. That brings violence.Violence is the religion of America, and America is despised and condemned all over the world – even those countries where American help reaches are not sympathetic toward America. I know it: in India you will not find a single person who is sympathetic toward America. And America has been helping: whenever there is a famine or floods or no rain for years, and people are dying, America is always ready to help. But American help does not create sympathy for America. On the contrary, it offends, because they know what you are doing to your own poor.Why are you helping others when you yourself are not doing anything for your own downtrodden? It is not compassion that you go on helping Ethiopia, India, wherever there is poverty and sickness; it is an effort to make ground for your armies, for your nuclear weapons. All those countries understand perfectly that this is simply business, not help.America is the most condemned country in the whole world: America has no friends anywhere, for the simple reason that it is the most destructive power today. When your whole government and the energy of the people and the intelligence of your scientists are moving in only one direction – destruction – how can you avoid violence?There is only one way, which is really difficult: give the country back to its native people. If they want you to remain here, you can remain here, but you will have to remain on reservations. If you don’t want to live here, that is far better – just go back to your own countries.Somebody is from England, somebody is from Spain, somebody is from Portugal, somebody is from France, somebody is from Italy, somebody is from Greece: the whole of Europe has to take the responsibility to take these people back. Give the country to its own people. If they allow you to live here, you live, but you live under their rule, and violence will disappear. I don’t think Red Indians can even imagine about nuclear war.When you are in power, and you are the greatest power in the world, you are not going to be human, to be considerate. So it is not a simple phenomenon; it is very complicated, and the violence has many aspects. In America, more rapes happen than anywhere else. Strange – in a country which is educated, rich, why should there be so many rapes? It is because your priests go on talking stupidities to the people. They go on talking about monogamy, they go on saying that if you are not married then any sexual relationship is sin.I wonder how a marriage license transforms a sin into a virtue? Just a license, a paper, signed by a judge who may be committing adultery himself. In fact, sometimes I wonder from where this word adultery comes? It looks so simple – any adult is capable of it; the moment you are capable of adultery you are an adult. What other meaning can it have? From where can it come?The women still are not free; protests go on happening in the name of liberation but the woman is not free, not equal. The woman is angry, and her anger is turning into a perversion. The American woman is educated enough, you cannot keep her repressed. She is not like the women of the East, of Arabia – uneducated, not knowing anything about the world.The American woman is educated. If you want her to be a dependent partner in a marriage, she would rather move into lesbianism than become a slave of man. In America there are more lesbians than in any other country, and naturally, when women become lesbians, men start becoming homosexuals.These are all different shapes of violence; your priests are responsible, your politicians are responsible. Do you know what happened in Vietnam? You forced your young people without understanding the fact that these young people are not soldiers as they exist in other countries. They were educated, highly qualified, and you forced them to kill innocent, poor Vietnamese for no reason.Who are you to interfere in the whole world? You want to put your nose in everywhere? It is Vietnam’s decision whether it wants to be communist or not. And what happened there? Thirty percent of the American soldiers did not kill anybody. They could see that this American violence was absolutely ugly, uncalled for. They could see that the poor Vietnamese have difficulty to arrange even two meals every day and you are bombing them, destroying their houses, burning their houses.You are burning, destroying, bombing… Many American soldiers went insane for the simple reason that they could not believe that this was what their country stands for. Many of the American soldiers had to be treated psychologically when they came back home; they were so much disturbed they had to be rehabilitated psychologically. They were not like other countries’ soldiers – uneducated, unaware of what is going on – who when they come home, come with great pride. The American soldiers came back home with guilt and, you may know or may not know, many of the soldiers who were in Vietnam have never moved back into American society. They are hiding in jungles and mountains, in Alaska, living a very primitive life.Many of them have been approached by their families and friends to come back home. They said, “We are finished with home, country, nation, flag, American Constitution, democracy – all nonsense. Just leave us alone. We would like to live here in complete isolation: at least we will not feel guilty. We will not be forced to do something violent, unnecessarily. Back home, they’re going to put us back into the army, prepare us again for the Third World War. We are not going.”There are hundreds of young American men who were professors, doctors, engineers, living in the forest like primitive people, in caves. They don’t want to come back to America for the simple reason that this whole society is basically wrong. It is based in violence. Twenty percent of American presidents have been murdered – this is a record, in no other country has this happened. Once in a while a person may be murdered, but not twenty percent of the presidents. And if the president is so much unprotected – remember, the American president is the most protected man in the world – if the most protected man in the world can be killed by his own people, who else can be at ease? Even the president is not at ease: every moment, violence.This is not something superficial. If we want to change the violent structure of America, there are three things to be done. One, the country should be ruled by its native people, it belongs to them. Anybody who wants to remain here should remain here, but he cannot remain here as a ruler. Secondly, America should stop bothering about other countries’ poor people: it should help its own poor people. Thirdly, it should stop piling up nuclear weapons. They are pointless, and so costly, and now so meaningless, because you already have enough to destroy the whole world, what more do you want?America should declare, “We drop the whole idea of war, we destroy all our nuclear weapons. We drown all those weapons in the Pacific, in the Atlantic, we’re finished with it.” America should declare, “We will not have any defense department any more – it is just pointless.”If America can do that, its people can be immensely rich, happy, and people who are happy do not do violence. It is out of misery, suffering, anger, that violence comes. When you are comfortable, happy, at home, and all that you need is available to you, you don’t want to be violent – because your being violent will destroy your cozy home, your beautiful surroundings, your love life. Your children, your wife, your parents will be lost. It is the people who have nothing to lose who become violent – and one cannot say to them, “Don’t be violent.”I, personally, cannot say to them, “Don’t be violent.” On what grounds can I say it? They have been cheated of all that a man needs, and if they are revengeful, it seems logical. America should take care of itself, then unemployment is impossible, everybody can be comfortably rich. You just have to stop piling up nuclear weapons, and you can make this country actually, literally, a new world – by declaring that you are not going to defend.Defense is meaningless. Even with all your nuclear weapons you can be destroyed, so what is the point of having all those nuclear weapons? It is a very strange fact that in the past weapons were significant; now they are no longer, but idiotic politicians go on following policies of the politics of the past. They don’t understand that the whole thing has changed.Only a nation which is not burdened by the past can become the first nation in the world to declare, “We are no longer a separate entity, we are open and available to the whole world. We declare that we are not enemies to anybody. We declare friendship to be our basic policy, and we are ready to lose everything but we are not going to be violent.”If these three things can be done, it wouldn’t harm America in any way. It would give America prestige, pride. America would gain sympathy from all over the world. America would become the beginning of the New World. Other nations would follow – they are following America now, they are starting to make nuclear plants, atomic plants; if America stops it, they will stop it too.The whole world now has become free: the British Empire has disappeared. Only America has not been capable of freeing the people who are the real owners of this country. Give it back to them. You have reduced them to such a situation that they cannot even struggle for freedom: they are doped, drugged, they are almost asleep. They cannot fight for freedom, they don’t know what freedom is. And they don’t want it either, because this is going so well: no work, and money is available; no work, and alcohol is available; no work, and all drugs are available. Even those drugs which are prohibited to other people are available to the Red Indians, to destroy them, to destroy their spirit.I say these three things: the land has to go back to the real owners – those who are capable of living here under the Red Indians as rulers can remain, otherwise they should go back to their own country. America has to stop all interference with other countries and put its whole energy into changing the conditions of the poor, of the blacks, of women. And third, it has to drop the very idea of war, to become the first country in the history of the world to drop war, defense departments, armies, to become a precedent for others to follow.I am perfectly convinced that if America can do that, soon other countries would have to follow, would certainly follow, because they are also suffering. Under the pressure of war effort, their whole economies are going down and down. But out of fear they cannot stop creating more weapons. These simple things just need a little understanding, and America can open a new dimension for the whole of humanity.Osho,You have said there is no God, only godliness; and there is no religion, only religiousness. Is there such a thing as a master, or is it masterliness?There is no such thing as a master, but there is certainly something you can call masterliness. Not everybody can manage – even all the people who have become enlightened have not been masters.To be a master, different qualities are needed than just enlightenment. You can become enlightened and nobody will ever know about it. To give the message – what you have got you have got – you need to be articulate, immensely articulate, because you are going to do something which is almost impossible: you are going to transform the experience of silence, wordlessness, into words.You have to be a charismatic personality, so that people are automatically attracted toward you. No need for advertisement: mouth to mouth, people start hearing about you, that something immense has happened to a man… Not only that, the man is capable in some strange way to relate it to you. Through words, through silence, just by his presence, just by looking into your eyes, just holding your hand, something transpires. Something starts happening to you which you have never thought about, never dreamed about.Yes, there is a certain quality which makes a man a master. But I say that there is no need of a master because people in their ignorance, in their unconscious state, start becoming dependent on the master. He becomes a father figure, and that is where everything goes wrong: he himself unknowingly destroys what he is doing.I am here with you, and I say that I am not your master and you are not my follower – and you know perfectly well, I know perfectly well, that I am your master and you are my follower. But I go on insisting that you are not my follower and I am not your master – you are my fellow travelers – just so that you don’t become dependent on me, just so that you don’t start thinking it is my responsibility; you need not be worried: the master is there, he will take care, he is the savior. He will save you, you need not do anything.No, I want you to be responsible. I want you to take all your responsibility on yourself. I can impart whatsoever has happened to me, and it is no obligation to you. I am not obliging you; I am simply enjoying sharing.To have enlightenment is tremendous bliss, but it is nothing compared to when one starts sharing it, when one starts seeing the same flame in thousands of eyes, the same luster and glory around thousands of faces. No enlightenment can be compared to it. It transcends all bliss that you have known in enlightenment. That was an individual affair, small; a window had opened and you had looked through the window. The sky, the stars… But the frame of the window was there, your experience was framed. You have never been out of the house, naturally you will deduce that this is the sky – the frame of your window.Yes, you are seeing real stars and the real sky, but you are confined, limited – your window is giving a frame to your experience. If you want to share with others, you will have to come out, you will have to seek people with whom you can share. You will have to go and knock on many doors to find people who are almost ready to receive it. And when you go out of the house searching for seekers and disciples, then you know the whole sky, the infinity of it, the unlimited number of stars. Now you know that sky you had seen was framed.There is no frame, there is no boundary to existence. Sharing your enlightenment, you come to know there is no boundary to enlightenment either; it is not yours or mine, it is existential. This I call transcendence of enlightenment. This is the moment when the enlightened person becomes ordinary: he has transcended even that special-ness of becoming, of being enlightened. Now he is at ease with himself and his ordinariness.But this ordinariness has an immense impact of its own, it has the charisma I am talking about; it makes the man a magnetic force. He becomes the very center of the whole existence, and all those who are in search – even groping in darkness – start moving toward him. But don’t give it a frame. When you call it a master, you have given it a frame. Let it remain a quality – masterliness.There is no God, there is godliness. There is no religion, there is religiousness. There is no master, there is only mastery, masterliness. And as the master becomes a quality, immediately the disciple becomes a quality. Then there is no disciple, only discipleship.Discipleship is a totally different thing: disciplehood, or to come to the exact right word, discipline. The word discipline means learning, the process of learning. There is no disciple, no learner, but there is a process of learning. There is no master who teaches you, but there is a master-being who shares that which he has found, and his treasure is infinite, inexhaustible.Osho,In the past, monarchs, statesmen and politicians always looked toward the wise enlightened men for their advice in affairs of state. Would it be a boon to mankind if Ronald Reagan sought your advice? What would you say to him?In the first place, the politicians of today are not so wise as some emperors in the past have been. The emperor was born an emperor, so sometimes there were idiots who became emperors, mad, crazy people who became emperors. Once in a while, there was a person who was wise enough and yet became an emperor. Augustus in Rome and Ashoka in India were such emperors. They went to seek advice. They knew there are people who knew much more; they knew there are people whose word is truth.But today’s presidents and prime ministers are going to be just third-rate cunning politicians. It is impossible for a wise man to become the president of a country, for the simple reason that he is wise. He cannot lie, he cannot give you promises which he knows can never be fulfilled.He will tell you things which will hurt you. Just think of me: in the first place I cannot run for the presidency of a country, because I don’t like running. I can drive in my Rolls Royce, so my campaign for the presidency will not be running for president, but driving for president.My whole life I have been practicing a certain art: how to influence people and create enemies. This is not a way to become a president or a prime minister. No wise man can even think of it, because he cannot fulfill the basic conditions of a politician.And you are asking me if a president – for example, Ronald Reagan – came for my advice, would I give it to him? Of course: if I can give advice to you all, why can’t I give advice to Ronald Reagan? But he will have to come not as a president but as a disciple, because unless you come to learn I cannot teach you.If he comes as a president, he cannot get an appointment from Sheela; but if he comes just as a human being he is welcome. Any politician from any country is welcome, but he should come just as a human being; otherwise it is useless, wasting my time and wasting his time.So from my side, I am clear. But your question is only “if” – you should not forget, no president is going to come, no president has the guts to come. I am not just saying something without any support from my experience: it is my whole life’s experience.I knew Jawaharlal personally: he was a man of great aesthetic, poetic qualities – the first prime minister of India – but still he had not the guts to accept my advice. He said, “You are right, but you don’t know this dirty politics. If I start doing things the way you are suggesting, I will simply lose my premiership. I will not be able to do what you are saying – I will just lose my power, my prestige. I will look crazy. And I say to you that what you are saying is right.”His successor, Lalbahadur Shastri, was immensely interested in me. He died with one of my books on his chest: he was reading it and must have fallen asleep, had a heart attack and died. He was in Tashkent, Russia, for a summit meeting – the Russian president, Pakistan’s president, and himself. These three were there to settle matters about Kashmir, because a part of Kashmir was occupied by Pakistan.Pakistan’s army had been standing ready for almost forty years, the Indian army was ready, confronting Pakistan’s army for forty years – and the U.N.’s army was just standing in between at the cease-fire line. Now, how long is it going to be there, this cease-fire line? Forty years is too long a time. They had gone to settle it, but Shastri died.He lived to be the prime minister for just one year. He was very simple in a way, and it was by chance that he was chosen prime minister. No one could have thought that he could win the race, but in the political game it sometimes happens. He was the most unexpected candidate.The commanding, ruling party of the country was very much afraid of Morarji Desai, because he was the most stubborn type of person. Once he became the prime minister, he would not care a bit about the committee who had chosen him. The committee was afraid to choose him, for the simple reason that they knew that man. Once he had power in his hands, he wouldn’t care even about those who had given him power.So on the one side was Morarji Desai, on the other side was Indira Gandhi. They were afraid to choose Indira Gandhi because in the whole political atmosphere there was the idea that it seems India is not a democracy but a monarchy. Jawaharlal was the first prime minister; now his daughter will be the second prime minister. They wanted to avoid Indira, because turning it into a family affair would bring condemnation to all of them and would make the opposite parties more powerful.Certainly it has turned into a family affair. After Indira, her son has become the prime minister. For forty years one family has been ruling, except for that one year when Lalbahadur was chosen. He was chosen because he was a very simple and weak person. The committee knew perfectly well that even if he were the prime minister, they would remain the masters, the kingmakers. He would be only a puppet. Whatever they wanted, he would do.Morarji Desai could not be chosen. He wanted to be chosen; he was forcing the committee, “I am the most experienced, the most senior person, why are you not choosing me?” Against him was standing Indira Gandhi. She had her reasons: she had lived with her father, she had seen the whole freedom struggle, its problems. She had seen the beginnings of the independence of India, its complexities, its problems. She knew every in and out of all the politicians of the country. Nobody else had such knowledge.“Morarji Desai might be senior, but that he knows nothing about all the chief ministers of the states, all the governors, he knows nothing. I have all the files of my father and his whole experience, and I was living with him. I knew everybody – who is dependable, who is not; who is reliable, who is not; who is certain to betray the country.”Both had their claims, but the committee persuaded Lalbahadur, who was a very small-sized man, and was very afraid: “Forgive me, I cannot manage, I am a simple man.” He had never been in the public eye, he was not a national figure. Just because Jawaharlal loved him for his sincerity, truthfulness, reliability, he was in the supreme commanding committee of the ruling party – Jawaharlal had put him there.The committee – the whole committee unanimously – chose Lalbahadur. It sometimes happens… He was very available to me, but even he was not courageous enough to come to see me. He managed a lunch, in a political way, in the home of one of his cabinet ministers. This man, Karan Singh, was interested in me: he was the king of Kashmir, and because Kashmir became dissolved into India, he was immediately taken into the cabinet. Naturally he had to be given something; he was the first to join India and give his whole country to the union.He was very much interested in me, so Lalbahadur said, “This would be good. You call him and me for lunch, so we meet just casually and discuss. My going to him will be dangerous to my career.” And he confessed it to me that this is how diplomacy works. Nobody knows – just a casual, accidental meeting. And before lunch, after lunch, for almost three hours he was listening to me about every problem that he was facing.But I told him it would be good if he came to my place and lived a few days with me; everything could be cleared. He said, “That is impossible. If people come to know that I have gone to you for advice, I am finished. You have so many enemies in the country, in my party, in my cabinet, that I cannot take that risk. And I am simply a weak man – I have been chosen for my weakness.” But he was sincere.Indira, the third prime minister of India, was very much interested in me, but not courageous enough to come to Pune. She was continuously telling Laxmi, “I want to see Osho, I want to come. And next time when I come to Mumbai or anywhere nearby, I am going to come to the ashram.” And she came twice to Pune itself, but she could never gather courage to come to the ashram.Political fear… Just to be associated with a man like me needs courage, because all those who are my enemies will become your enemies. And all those who are your friends may stop being your friends just because you are associated with me. The last time she came to Pune, she told Laxmi, “This time, whatsoever happens I am going to manage to come.” But when Laxmi went to see her, she said, “There are so many engagements, I cannot find time.”And this was a lie, because she went to Kohlapur – four hours drive – to meet the shankaracharya, the head of the Hindus like the pope is the head of the Catholics. She found time to go to the shankaracharya – four hours going, four hours coming, and just two minutes to touch the feet of the shankaracharya. But that was politically helpful.Thousands of Hindus had gathered for the shankaracharya. He was an old man from the south, very much respected by the Hindus because he was absolutely fulfilling all their demands of how a religious person should be. He was an ascetic, a masochist – those were the qualities that Hindus were asking for: intelligence has never been asked. Scholarship, yes: he could recite Hindu scriptures without reading, he knew them by rote. He was very much respected and he was very old, eighty or eighty-five.Now, Indira lied that she had no time but the reality is that she had no courage – even to meet the person who was the only one who supported her when she was defeated and lost her premiership. The whole country was against her, it was a tremendous defeat, and when she stood in a by-election, I was the only man to bless her. No shankaracharya blessed her, not even Vinoba Bhave, who was her political guru, blessed her. Now they were afraid: to bless her means to lose many friends.She went to the shankaracharya again to get his blessings; he did not speak a word, she was told that he had taken silence for the day. This was simple diplomacy: if he has taken silence, good, when she touches his feet he can bless her with the hand – that is not breaking your silence. But no, he remained sitting just like a statue – because it was a problem for him too. If he blessed Indira, then all the Hindus who were against Indira would be against him. It is a simple rule: the enemy of your enemy is your friend.So I would like to say to you that your question is only “if” – Ronald Reagan cannot come, cannot have the courage. But from my side I have no ifs, no buts. If he wants to come, he is welcome; but he has to remember that here he is not the president. He has come here to seek advice, to learn something. He has to be here like a disciple. If that much humbleness is there, then certainly my advice can reach to his heart, otherwise, it is meaningless.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Anand RoseOsho Times, Cologne, GermanyOsho,No country, not even America, is as upset as the Germans at your presence in the world today, and at your influence on intelligent and creative people. They are trying hard to see you as another Hitler. What does that tell about the German mind, forty years after Hitler's death?The ghost of Adolf Hitler, his long shadow, is still present. And Adolf Hitler is not something that you can confine to one person, it is something deep down in the German mind itself. Adolf Hitler would not have existed if the German mind had not been supportive of him. And not only ordinary people who can be easily influenced, impressed, but exceptional people: geniuses like Heidegger, who is certainly the most important philosopher of the twentieth century – he was a follower of Adolf Hitler.What these people were seeing in Adolf Hitler was something that was in themselves, in Adolf Hitler it was magnified. In themselves they could not see it, but Adolf Hitler became the mirror, they could see it. And he became the representative of the collective unconscious mind of Germany; hence the influence that he had.Although forty years have passed, the German mind is still the same. And when they see my influence on people they become afraid, for the simple reason that if I can influence so many young intelligent German people, I can paint the whole of Germany red. And Germany has suffered through Adolf Hitler’s influence so much, the wound is still there and it hurts.They don’t know much about me, all they know is that thousands of young Germans are ready to die for me. To their knowledge, this phenomenon had happened only with Adolf Hitler. In the same way, thousands and thousands of people were ready to die for him, to do anything for him, so they see a certain similarity. But there is no similarity at all: I teach people to live for me, not to die for me. I teach people to dance for me, not to die for me.All your so-called great leaders of the world have told their people that they should be ready to die for them, it was thought to be something of great pride. And certainly millions have died for idiots – they died, they killed; all kinds of neurosis was released by these so-called leaders. I am not a leader, I am not a politician; I insist to my people to live long, to live happily, to rejoice. Even if I die, celebrate it; nobody has ever said to his people, “When I die you rejoice and celebrate, sing and dance.”In thousands of years not a single man has been there to say this. They were just saying, “Be ready. If you love me, be ready to die for me, because we are going to conquer lands, conquer the whole world. If you are not ready to die for me, you are a coward, and then how are you going to conquer the world?” I have a different way of conquering the world. I don’t need nuclear weapons, atom bombs, I have a different approach totally. And they have all failed.None of them could conquer the whole world, neither Alexander the Great, nor Napoleon Bonaparte, Ivan the Terrible, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mussolini, nor Mao Tse-tung. They have all – without exception – failed, because this is not the way to conquer. Hate is not the way to conquer; it will destroy the other, and in consequence it will destroy you too. Your victory is going to be just a very passing phase. I say to my people, yes we are going to take over the world; by our rejoicing, by our love, by our peace, serenity, by our meditation.We are not politicians, we are not going to rule them. In fact, we are going to teach everybody not to be ruled by anyone and not to rule anyone. Only then are you really an authentic human being. My influence on German people is exactly the opposite of Adolf Hitler’s. But influence is there, those who don’t know me can find a certain similarity. Those who know will find that the influence is there, in fact it is far greater than Adolf Hitler’s. And it is not me who is saying it. One of the most important Western journalists, the author of many significant books, Aubrey Mennen, wrote a book almost ten years ago about the new mystics. He put my picture on the cover.The book was published by Thames and Hudson in London. Inside, what he said even I could not believe. He says, “I have seen Adolf Hitler, interviewed Adolf Hitler, I have listened to Adolf Hitler in a meeting sitting in the front row, and I have seen his tremendous influence on people, but it is nothing compared to Osho.” His influence, he says, was only that of oratory, there was no substance in it. Those people were enchanted because their egos were fulfilled.He was saying to those people that you are the highest race amongst human beings: you are the purest Nordic Aryans, it is your birthright to rule all over the world. Naturally, all those who had ambitions, ego trips, were influenced. Here is a man who can manage to fulfill their hidden desire. They themselves, of course, cannot manage, it is too big. Aubrey Mennen says that people were influenced, but that influence was something sick, it was fulfilling their egos. The people who are influenced by me are totally different.I am making every effort to destroy your ego, and to destroy the German ego is the hardest thing! In fact, the young, intelligent, German generation is influenced by me against Adolf Hitler and against any possibility of Adolf Hitler ever happening again in Germany. I am the greatest enemy of Adolf Hitler anywhere. Any country which is influenced by me, particularly the young generation – I don’t care about the graveyards, I only trust the young blood, fresh blood – if they are in love with me, that means Adolf Hitler is impossible, destruction is impossible.And it is true about other countries too. If all over the world the intelligent young people become attuned with me, fall in love with me, not only Adolf Hitler but even the Third World War is impossible. To create a Third World War you will need all kinds of geniuses, talented people, young. And if they have in some way fallen in love with me, they are not going to serve any destructive cause at any price; they are going to simply refuse. My influence is diametrically opposite to Adolf Hitler.The older generation may be afraid; they have seen Adolf Hitler, they have seen his great influence, they have seen people becoming almost mad after him. And he himself was a retarded mind: he himself was not intelligent at all, just a third-rate person. He was refused admission to schools, colleges, he was refused admission to the university where he wanted to learn architecture. Then, seeing rejection everywhere – nobody could think him capable of anything great – he joined the army. That was the last resort of all the idiots, of all the fools, of all the stupid minds. The army is the last resort: you don’t need intelligence, in fact, intelligence is a barrier in becoming a good soldier. Just as a retarded person cannot become a sannyasin, an intelligent person cannot become a soldier.What does it mean to become a soldier? It means you have accepted death as your profession. You don’t have any sensitivity for what you are doing: for a little salary and employment you have accepted to murder innocent people, children, women, old people who have done no harm to you, to whom you are not even introduced. This needs something of a very low kind of person, almost the animal. Physically he looks like a human being, mentally he is not.And these people have fought all the wars. Of course, when you want to kill people you have to be ready to be killed any moment. They have not only sold their intelligence and their freedom into the hands of some dictator, for just a little employment they have become murderers. And simultaneously they have accepted for that little salary to be suicidal also, because in war it is not necessarily that you will only kill and you will not be killed.So those leaders were emphasizing, “Be ready to kill or be killed. The stake is great: the nation’s pride, the race and its ego, the religion and its messiah.” All these people have been teaching you just death, either somebody else’s or your own.I am simply amazed when people start comparing me with people who are absolutely opposite to me. In anything, my influence is to live more, to allow others to live more, to love more, to allow others to love more. Let this whole earth become a celebrating planet. There is no reason to kill and be killed – and just for some fool like Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Joseph Stalin. If they want, they can commit suicide, they can hang themselves from any tree, but why spread this poison? They spread this poison because it fulfills their ego. The name of the nation, race, religion is just a facade, just a curtain, a mask. Behind it is some monster who looks like a human being.My message is for love, life, laughter. But not only in Germany, everywhere there is fear, because it has always happened that whenever there was a man of charismatic influence who can attract people so much that they become identified with him, there has always been difficulty. That’s why, because of their past experience, they are afraid. All over the world there is great fear. And the strange thing is, their fear is absolutely baseless.I am a totally new kind of man, the beginning of a new humanity. But I can understand them. They have only their past, and their past is long, and their experience is wrong. And whenever there has been a man of influence, he has created trouble. Adolf Hitler created the Second World War. Now they are afraid: if their younger generation is being influenced by me and is ready to do anything that I say, naturally fear arises. Again the same situation may happen.But just tell them, with me it cannot happen, without me it can happen. They are so afraid in Germany that perhaps sometime I may be coming to visit my communes, they have already put a bogus law case against me. Just in case I want to enter the country I can be immediately arrested. I have never been in Germany and I have never done anything in Germany, but they can file a case against me.That case will help them in many ways: first, they can refuse my entry. Secondly, they can allow me to enter but refuse to let me out of the country. Thirdly, as long as the case is not finished, they can force me to remain there. And they can put other cases. If I win one case, they can put another: there is no problem in it. Somebody simply goes to the court and says, “What Osho has said hurts my religious feeling” – that is enough.It is a very strange world in which we are living. If your religious feeling is hurt, then it is your problem: get treated, or drop that religion which cannot help you to be strong enough not to be hurt by a small criticism from anybody. And if your heart, your religious feelings, are disturbed, that simply shows they are superficial. You need a new religion which goes deep to your roots and nobody can hurt you.Can any of my people be hurt? None of my people have gone to the courts, filing cases that their religious feelings are hurt. I have been condemned all over the world, in all the newspapers, in all the media, they have called me all kinds of names. You could have easily gone to court, in every country you could have fought that your religious feeling is hurt. But, none of my people has even thought about it: they simply laughed and ignored it. Filing a lawsuit means giving attention to idiots. And whatsoever they are saying, they are saying without any argument, they have no argument.In India once there was a case against me of a similar type, that I had hurt the religious feelings of Hindus. That is enough in any country, it is very strange. And why was the case accepted by the court? It went for almost one year and I had to come back to Ahmedabad again and again for that case. They were simply wasting my time, and the case was utterly stupid.Speaking in Ahmedabad amongst fifty thousand people, I had said that Mahatma Gandhi used to listen to the story of Rama every day. Vinoba Bhave, one of his disciples, but a very scholarly person, used to read the Ramayana, the story of Rama. It is read in every house in India, the drama of Rama is played in every town, city, village, every year. Rama is in every Hindu’s heart center.I said in the meeting that Vinoba was reading the story of Rama and there comes a passage where Rama’s wife, Sita, is stolen. Just to leave some clues as to what direction she has been taken, she went on throwing her ornaments along the way. Indian women have many ornaments, and she was a queen so she had enough ornaments. And it was bound, she felt – it was certainly logical – that Rama would find these ornaments and they would give him a clue to the direction. And if he found more, that made it more certain: if he found more he could reach to where she was being taken.He found precious diamonds, emeralds, rubies and he asked his brother Laxmana, “Do you recognize, are these ornaments my wife’s? I cannot recognize them myself because whenever I am with Sita, she is so beautiful that I get lost into her. I don’t pay attention to her ornaments, so I cannot be certain that this ornament belongs to her. But in this thick forest, who is going to throw rubies and diamonds and ornaments made of all kinds of precious stones? Laxmana, perhaps you can find.”Laxmana said, “Please forgive me, because I have never seen Sita, except her feet, because I used to touch her feet every morning.” Your elder brother’s wife in India is thought to be equal to your mother. “And I have never seen her face, I have never seen above her feet. Yes, if we come across the ornaments she used on her feet, I will recognize them immediately.”Gandhi was a little puzzled. He said to Vinoba, “I don’t understand. First, I cannot understand Rama, that he lived for so many years and he could not recognize the ornaments of his own wife. But perhaps he was still in his honeymoon, Sita may have been very enchanting. But why Laxmana never saw Sita?”Vinoba produced an argument which is not in the story, the argument is Vinoba’s: he produced an argument that Laxmana never saw Sita’s face because he wanted to remain celibate. He wanted to remain unimpressed by Sita’s beauty because he was under a strict discipline. And Gandhi accepted the idea that it was because of a strict discipline; that Sita is so beautiful, perhaps looking at her he may get interested passionately in her. Gandhi accepted the idea. Not only that, it was because of this argument he gave Vinoba the title of acharya. Acharya means “the master mind.” He said, “The explanation that you have given makes you a master. I could not have conceived that this would be the explanation.”I told this whole thing to the people, fifty thousand people, and they were all Hindus, followers of Rama, followers of Gandhi, followers of Vinoba and I told them that his explanation is ugly. It simply shows that he was afraid to see the face. This fear is already part of desire and passion: he is perfectly aware that if he sees her, he would like to have her. All this must have been going on in his mind. He must be dreaming of Sita, because it is not that he had never seen her – before the marriage, Laxmana and Rama had both gone to see her.In those days in India, the king’s daughters used to have a certain ceremony; it was called swayamvara. The princess chooses her husband by a certain device. Sita was the daughter of a very big emperor, hundreds of kings had come to marry her. The device was that Sita’s father had one very long bow – which was known as “Shiva’s bow” – and the condition was that anybody who can, just by hand break the bow into pieces, would be the person to marry Sita. The bow was so heavy that many kings tried to take it up from the platform but they themselves fell, they could not move the bow. There was no question of breaking it just by hand. Sita was sitting there ready with the garland; whoever breaks the bow…Laxmana was getting too eager. They had gone with their teacher, Vashishtha. The father of Rama had sent Vashishtha to take care of the boys and see that they were not defeated, that no cunningness was being used. Laxmana was getting so excited that he was asking again and again, “Vashishtha, just give me permission and I will break it.”Vashishtha said, “You just keep quiet. Rama has the first right, he is your elder brother. If he fails, then you have a chance.” Of course Rama broke the bow. Laxmana had seen Sita, seen the beauty of the woman. She must have been a rare woman: now he had to treat her as if she were his mother – you can think of his mind.I explained to those people that Vinoba’s explanation simply shows Vinoba’s mind, it has nothing to do with Laxmana. Vinoba was a celibate, and he knew perfectly what celibacy means: your dreams are full of girls, your whole day is continuously a fantasy of sexuality. The repressed sex tries in every possible way to break your unnatural idea of celibacy.Vinoba was afraid of meeting women, seeing women. He used to live isolated; he never lived in Gandhi’s ashram itself, because there were women there. He lived a few miles away: he used to come every day at the prayer time, reading the story of Rama or some other scripture, and would go back. But he lived in isolation: Gandhi’s ashram was dangerous, there were women – beautiful women – and he was a celibate monk.The explanation that he gave was his own mind, and the explanation is a condemnation of Laxmana, it makes him a repressed sexual person. It is a condemnation, it is not appreciation. Neither Vinoba understands the psychology, nor Gandhi understands the psychology, because he confers the degree of acharya for this stupid explanation.A case was filed against me, that somebody’s religious feelings were hurt. I said to the court, “This is strange. I have not said a single word against Laxmana. I was criticizing Vinoba’s explanation.” Vinoba was alive then, I told the court, “Call Vinoba, and I am ready to argue with him that his explanation is wrong – not only wrong, but condemnatory. And from where does this man get the idea that his Hindu feelings are hurt? Vinoba is not yet a Hindu incarnation of God, and I am trying to save Laxmana, that this is not the right way. In any Sigmund Freud’s hands this explanation will mean Laxmana is sexually so repressed, so much afraid of his own repression that he cannot look at the face of the woman.”The court finally agreed with me. But the court was also Hindu, so they were not daring enough to also call Vinoba into the court. I said, “This is unfair. I criticized him, this man says I have hurt his feelings. Now the court gives the judgment that I am not speaking against Hinduism: I have spoken against the explanation. Now it is the duty of the court to call Vinoba. Vinoba has hurt the Hindu mind and the Hindu mind’s religious feeling.” But Vinoba was a great Hindu leader, so naturally he was never called. The case was really against him, not against me.But a strange thing happened. Whenever the case was in the court, thousands of people would be there, inside the court, outside on the verandas, on the lawn, thousands of people – at least ten thousand people would come to listen to what I was saying, and they were all Hindus. And when I won the case, the man who had filed the case against me told the magistrate that he needs police protection.I said, “For what? I need police protection because I have hurt the feelings of the Hindu religion, religious people, and these ten thousand people are Hindus. And I have to go out of this room. These ten thousand people can kill me. And this fellow is asking police support and police protection, for what? Are these Hindus against him?”They were: they could see the point clearly, they could see that this man is simply a Hindu chauvinist. They could see that I had been unnecessarily harassed for the whole year. And they were really angry, they were shouting and screaming and asking that the man should be delivered to them, so they could teach him what it means to be religiously hurt!The magistrate himself was afraid that the situation was dangerous. He told the man to go inside, behind, which was the magistrate’s private room. “Just remain there until everybody is gone. No police protection will help, because these ten thousand people… From where can I bring the whole army to prevent these ten thousand people? The court has a few policemen, but they are not enough to protect you: just sit.”And he went inside the room and waited. I left, so naturally other people left, by and by. Perhaps he must have left just when the court was being closed, or he must have left with the magistrate in his own car.Exactly that type of case they have put in Germany and soon they will be putting it in every country. I told the Australian media, “Get ready, I am coming” – now the whole of Australia is agog, afraid. Newspapers have started coming, saying that people are very much disturbed, afraid that I may remain there, may not leave Australia.But the man himself who was here was an intelligent man; I really loved the man, he was not just a journalist. He is answering the phone calls continuously coming to his studio. He informed us, “I have never answered myself, my secretary answers: but this time I am answering myself because I can say to them that I have been there, I have seen the man, I have seen the commune that is there, and they are beautiful people. You need not be afraid, and don’t get unnecessarily excited by rumors, there is no danger.”But it is now all over Australia, a great wave of fear. I have not gone there and there is not much possibility. But my people are there, and my people are growing in every country. And in every country my people will have to face the same problems. They cannot believe, the politicians and others, that I am not going to use my influence politically. It is something inconceivable to those retarded people, that there can be a man who has great influence and is not going to use it in any way.My influence is that of love. I love my people, and I would not like to put my people in any kind of destructive situation. But what can you do with people who are so afraid that they cannot even come to visit the commune to see, and experience themselves, that there is nothing to fear? My people are peaceful and wherever they will go they will bring the peace, the silence, the rejoicing. They will bring songs to every country and ecstasy to every land. They don’t understand our war is totally different – we are spreading a certain kind of atmosphere around the world which can prevent wars, which can prevent Adolf Hitlers, which can prevent nuclear weapons being used.Osho,In your vision of the world being one commune, is it still so that the Italians should be the cooks, the French the lovers and the Germans the organizers?Most probably, because who can cook better than the Italians? And in my commune everybody is to do the best he can. Yes, the Germans will be the organizers; they have proved, and I have a greater number of Germans than any other country. They are the best organizers, the most reliable people; you can trust them, they can never betray. They certainly have a very strong spirit.But nobody is going to force them; if they want to change places they can change, and that is how it is happening in my communes all over the world. People don’t remain stuck to one job, they want to learn many more things. The doctor wants to learn plumbing, the plumber wants to be a mechanic, the mechanic wants to be a cook. The commune is also a university. It is so many things together: it is a religion, it is a university, it is the birth place for the new man.So my feeling is that Italians will try to learn how to organize, although in the beginning their organization will be greasy, lousy, spaghetti all over. Nobody is going to condemn them, that’s natural. The Germans cooking – you can understand, Koran Grove will be full. If we can survive German cooking, that means a miracle has happened. But we will try, we are open to all possibilities. And it is already happening that way – in fact the moment you enter a commune nobody recognizes you as Italian, as German, as Indian, as American. All those things simply disappear: you are just my people, the red people. A new identity comes up and throws out all old identifications.I don’t know who is a German, who is an Italian, who is Greek, who is Spanish. I don’t know myself, except for a few people who had come to me in the very beginning, so I know them more personally. That’s why when I want to say something about Germans I will use Haridas, because except Haridas I don’t know any German. If I have to talk about the English, I have to talk about Teertha because I don’t know anybody else. If I have to talk about Italians, then Asheesh is the only Italian. But there are many and now there is no possibility for me to be acquainted the way I am with Teertha or Haridas or Asheesh: that way is not possible any more.I will love you but I will not know your name. I will do everything for you but I will not know your name, your race, your country. And the thing has become so enormous and big, and it is expanding with such speed, you cannot expect me to. In the beginning, when there were only a few people who could be counted on the fingers, naturally I knew their name, their country, their background and they had the chance of being more intimate. In the beginning it was possible. But don’t feel that those who have come late are deprived of anything, because my work has really begun now.After I started speaking again, those three years that I remained silent were just to give a gap. All that I had done before that was only a preparation. Then a three-year gap for all those who want to escape, can escape before my real work starts. So those who have come just now, they should not feel deprived, my work has begun just now. Now I am talking directly to you: there is no Krishna between me and you and no Jesus between me and you. I am cutting their heads right and left and creating a direct passage.I am not allowing even people whom I love – Bodhidharma, Chuang Tzu – I am not going to let anyone stand between me and you, I am going to chop their heads. Of course, lovingly. I can ask them, “Forgive me, but I have to chop your head because now nobody stands between me and my people.” However beautiful is Heraclitus, and however much I have loved Pythagoras and Zarathustra, does not matter, that is my personal affair. As far as you are concerned, I am not going to let anybody else stand between me and you.So nobody needs to feel that he has missed something – no! My work has begun just now and you have all come in the right moment. Those who have remained in the preparatory period, in the silent period, of course are more fortunate. But, if you have courage enough you can take a long jump and be in the front line with the old sannyasins. It only needs courage: they had enough time to go slowly, step by step, the new sannyasins will have to jump four steps at a time. Soon you will be all in the same line.And that’s my effort, that’s why I am giving you so many shocks. Shocks are particularly good to keep people jumping. I don’t let them stand in one place; another electric shock and they jump four, five steps immediately. A day or two I may let them rest there, but not more than that.Osho,Why is the media so nervous around you?Because they have never come across a man like I am. The media knows politicians, popes, other kinds of leaders; they are all afraid of the media and nervous. The politician is nervous: he has reasons to be nervous. And the journalist is assertive and aggressive, and the politician is simply dodging and trying to save his skull.A few days ago I saw an interview with Rajiv Gandhi, who has now become the prime minister of India – he was here in America. The interviewer goes on continuously hammering and Rajiv Gandhi looks almost frozen, as if any moment his breathing is going to stop. And I can see the reason, because the interviewer tried in different ways to get Rajiv Gandhi to say something against Russia. That Rajiv Gandhi cannot do. Before coming to America, first he had gone to Russia. In fact, he must have been prepared there in Russia, what to say and what not to say, because India is almost in the hands of Russia. It is not a communist country but on the very verge, any day it is going to become a communist country.The interviewer was also trying to force Rajiv to say something against America. That he cannot do. He has come to America to create more friendship, he has come to get more uranium for nuclear weapons in India: he cannot say anything against America. He cannot praise America either, because Russia will get upset; he cannot praise Russia because America will get upset.So naturally, the politician is nervous before the media. I have no problem; I can say exactly what I want to say. All the media becomes nervous because they know they will not even be able to report the things I say, because if they take all these things to the editor, they may perhaps be thrown out of the job.They are nervous because what I am saying is also hurting their prejudices. They are human beings: first they are human beings, then they may be journalists. First Christians, then they may be journalists: and when I am hitting on Jesus they want to scream but they cannot do that. Naturally, it becomes a nervous feeling, they forget to ask what they wanted to ask. They have never met a man like me who has nothing to lose, so can say anything, who does not belong to your society, who does not care about respectability.Now, the pope is continuously concerned that his respectability as the greatest religious leader in the world should not be affected by any statement. All his statements are prepared by other bishops, looked at by a committee, everything is edited. He is simply a spokesman, he is not speaking himself. The whole church, the Catholic hierarchy, is decisive. He has just to speak what they teach him, what they tell him to say.Another fundamental reason they get nervous is that I am an absolutely free man. I don’t care about contradicting myself, so they cannot put me into a corner by saying, “You said this fifteen years ago, now you are saying that.” They cannot put me into any corner. I say forget it, to hell with those fifteen years. Whatever I am saying now is true now: tomorrow I do not promise I will say the same thing, because I don’t bother about consistency, about respectability, about what people will think.I have no reason to be nervous, I simply enjoy their nervousness. It is strange, something new. The table with the water is placed by the side of the person who is being interviewed. Because when he feels nervous he can start drinking just to do something: get busy, forget nervousness, and meanwhile he also has time to think what to say next. Here, it is just the opposite: the water and everything is placed by the side of the media. And I see them plucking grapes, taking water, tossing and turning in their chair, sometimes looking at the photographer, sometimes at the director.They will never forget the interview, because that kind of interview is never going to happen to them unless they come here again, to have another nervous breakdown. But my work is first to give you a nervous breakdown, because only from there is there a possibility of a spiritual breakthrough. Breakdown to breakthrough, that’s the whole story.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Bob FlemingDavis Enterprises, Davis, California, United StatesOsho,I suppose I am from probably the smallest newspaper ever to interview you. We have very intelligent readers, though.Most of what people in my town have heard of you and Rajneeshpuram has been on television and in the newspapers. None of them has been here that I know of, and I know the two days that I've been here have been so different than I expected. When I called my editor to say I had an interview, she wanted to know where I was going to be because she was afraid you guys wouldn't let me come back!Davis is a very ordinary middle class kind of town, and it seems like people need a structure or framework to understand you. You say you are not a philosophy or religion. Can you state in ordinary American middle class terms what you stand for?It is very difficult for me – almost impossible – because I never adjust to speak with you or anybody. I speak, you have to adjust with me to listen. It does not matter whether your readers are middle class, higher class, or lower class, I will say the same thing. If they are middle, they will have to raise their heads up a little to understand, for the simple reason that whatever I am saying, I have brought to its simplest form. To make it more simple is just not possible.I am not a philosopher, because the philosopher thinks about the truth. His approach is rational, reason is his instrument, and here just the opposite is the case. I am an irrational man. And the people who have gathered around me – around the world – the appeal to them is my irrationality, because reason has failed so utterly. For three thousand years in the West, ten thousand years in the East, philosophers have been struggling to find the truth, and not a single philosopher has been able to find it.The way of philosophy does not go with truth at all, it is just rational gymnastics. So one philosopher can argue against another philosopher, and they go on arguing for centuries, but they have not come to agreement on a single point. Philosophy is the worst wastage of human intelligence that is possible. When I say I am not a philosopher, I simply mean that my approach toward reality is not through the head, it is through the heart.I also say that I do not preach a religion, because religion is something like love – you cannot teach it. There is no way to teach love, and if you teach love and somebody becomes trained under your teachings, he may go to Hollywood and become an actor, but he will never become a lover. Your very teaching, your very discipline will be the barrier. So I say I don’t teach religion: religion is something that passes heart to heart, not head to head. The moment religion passes head to head, it becomes theology, it is no more religion.I compare it with love because that is the only human experience that comes a little close to the experience of truth. The only difference is that in love you need somebody else: at least two is a basic necessity. Whom are you going to love? Who is going to respond to you? So love is a dialogue, religion is a monologue. You don’t have anybody there – God, some messiah, some prophet – there is no one with whom you can have a dialogue. You, in utter silence, feel it. It is simply a state of mind at rest – and the heart throbbing in a deep harmony with existence.So I cannot call it a religion the way Christianity is, the way other religions are. They can manage to give you a catechism which the middle class people will understand. For example, middle class people can even understand the atheist who says God does not exist. They may not agree with him, but they can understand what he is saying. They can understand the priest who says God exists. They understand, the statements are simple. My position is a little more delicate.I say there is no God, but there is godliness. So I destroy God as a person, he becomes more like a fragrance than a flower. I am not a theist, because I don’t believe in God as a person creating the world. I am not an atheist, because I am taking God higher than he has ever been. From a quantity I am transforming him into a quality. But I am not a theist and I am not an atheist. And for people to understand godliness is certainly a little difficult. It is as difficult as if you tell me that you come from a town where everybody is blind, and ask me to say something about light so those people can understand.What can I say about light to people who are blind, who have never experienced light? There have been preachers around for centuries telling blind people what light looks like, what light is. And there are three hundred religions and three hundred different definitions of light. They cannot all be true, but they can all be false. In the first place to try to make an endeavor of explaining light to the blind is stupid: what the blind man needs is not a priest but a physician, not a teacher but a surgeon who can give him eyes. It is not a question of giving him the definition of light, the question is to give him eyes. If he can see, he will never ask what light is – he will know. But the priests have been preventing people because they go on supplying definitions of light to the blind.And of course nobody wants to be ignorant, that’s why people believe. It is not coming from their hearts, because it is not their experience. Anything that is your experience is bound to have its roots in your heart. But people cling to beliefs about things which they don’t know. They cling for a simple reason: they cannot accept that they are ignorant. And the first step to understand is to accept the fact that “I do not know.”Those middle class people about whom you are asking, they are all knowers. You may think they are middle class, but they all know God exists. What kind of God? – Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan. They know the holy book, they know the holy Koran, the holy Gita, and everything is known to them – that’s what they think. They know nothing, because knowing should be your experience, and they confuse knowledgeability with knowing. And my effort is to prepare the ground for knowing – not for faith, belief. So only the very intelligent people can come to me.But remember one thing: the most intelligent people have come from the middle class. The poor man is so hungry and starving, he has no energy for thinking and inquiring about truth. He is searching for bread and butter. His basic physiological needs are not fulfilled, so no genius has ever come from the poor, it is impossible.From the rich it is also impossible, for a totally different reason. The rich man has everything that he needs, he misses all the challenges of life. He is too protected, and if you protect a child too much you will cripple him. What does he need intelligence for?When I was a student in the university, I met a student who had been in the same master’s degree class for ten years continuously! I could not believe it. I asked him and he said, “Who cares about passing? I enjoy being among the students. I have money, I have time, I have a car, I can get the most beautiful girl any time. I don’t come here to learn geography and history and psychology. I am not concerned, I am not interested. What can they give me? If I pass and I have a degree, that cannot make me richer. I am already too rich.”Geniuses have never come from the super-rich people, they are born in the middle class. The middle class has been the source of all great scientists, mystics, philosophers; so don’t take middle class in a derogatory way. And the reason the middle class brings intelligence to its climax? The reason is simple: the middle class is continuously struggling to reach higher. There is a possibility for the middle class to enter into the richer class. It is just there, a little more effort and he will cross the boundary of being a middle class person. There are only a few rungs on the ladder, it is not impossible for a middle class man to conceive himself becoming super-rich. This is one side; he goes on sharpening his intelligence.On the other side, he is always afraid of falling down among the poor. So he is fighting a double fight. First, not to fall into the poor class, not to become a proletarian; and he is fighting, competing, because he can see the goal is not far away, just a few steps more and he has arrived. This gives him a double chance of sharpening his intelligence, that’s why all the geniuses have come from the middle class.So don’t be worried about the middle class in your city, they are fortunate to be in the middle class. To be poor is ugly; to be super-rich makes your life closer to vegetation. The rich man is almost a cabbage, perhaps a cauliflower. The difference is not much: the cauliflower is only a cabbage with a college degree.I am absolutely certain they will understand what I have to say, but I will not adjust, because I don’t compromise on anything. I speak the way I feel to speak; whether anyone understands or not, it is their business. I will not come down and compromise and say things which are appealing to them, which they can understand. What can they understand? Only that which they already know, for which they have been conditioned. They can understand absurd, idiotic things.Just now, I saw a newspaper cutting that the prophet Mohammed teaches Mohammedans that the woman has only one chance of reaching paradise, no other qualification is needed from her. Only one chance – one simple chance – and that is to make her husband entirely satisfied as far as sex is concerned. Great! This is the qualification to enter into paradise, just to satisfy the husband sexually. Mohammed says that the woman cannot say no any time the husband wants to make love to her, because her no is a sin. And, you may believe or you may not believe, he says that even if the husband and wife are riding a camel and the husband wants to make love on the camel’s back, the wife should not say no.And these people have been teachers, masters, prophets, God’s messengers. Great messages God is sending: make love on the back of a camel. Just to sit on the back of a camel is so difficult! Lovemaking itself is such gymnastics, and to do those gymnastics on the camel’s back… It will be really a scene! And these are the messages that are being sent, and these are the messengers.But Mohammedans have never questioned it. Mohammed himself married nine women. Nobody told him that the quantity of men and women on the earth is equal, almost equal, that to marry nine women means you are depriving eight men of having wives. And these eight men are not just going to be sitting and waiting: they will do something, they will become homosexuals. You may not know that in Mohammedan countries homosexuality is thought to be the biggest crime, and for homosexuality the only punishment is the death sentence.Now, I cannot see the logic. On the one hand, Mohammed allows every Mohammedan at least four wives. Of course he is a prophet, so he has nine, but his followers – because they are his followers – are entitled to have only four wives. This is so unscientific, unbiological, that the remaining men are bound to become homosexuals, perverts. But nobody, not a single Mohammedan in the fourteen centuries since Mohammed, has even bothered.Christians can understand perfectly well any absurdity that is Christian: they can accept that Jesus was born out of a virgin mother. They know perfectly well it is not the way of nature. The whole story that the Holy Ghost makes her pregnant is a cover-up. Who is this fellow, the Holy Ghost, and why did he stop making other virgins pregnant? He has done a great job giving Jesus to the world, he should be continuously making virgins pregnant: the more Jesuses, the better. But he did it only once – never before, never after – just a single act and the Holy Ghost has disappeared. Nobody bothers to ask; if he is a Christian he will accept the virgin birth, he will accept the resurrection of Jesus after death.People understand easily what they have been conditioned for. And my work is unconditioning people, deprogramming people. There are other deprogrammers, but they are not really deprogrammers, they are reprogrammers. If a Christian starts becoming a Hindu, they will deprogram the person and reprogram him back into Christianity. I simply deprogram and then leave you alone: I have no program to give you. I want you to be totally alone, fresh, without any borrowed knowledge. Because only then is there a possibility of experiencing the beauty of this existence, the ecstasy of being alive, the meaning, the truth.If anybody really wants to understand, he should come here. For a seeker, an inquirer, Rajneeshpuram is not far away: people are coming here from all over the world. If a person is here for a certain period of time, experiencing the people who are here, the way they relate, the climate of love, the serenity of the place, the silent communication between me and my people – if they can come and dance, sing, and be part of us – then perhaps they will get something, a taste that you cannot describe. Nobody has been able to describe what sweetness is. The only way is to drink a coca-cola.I am a drunkard, I am drunk twenty-four hours. The source of my drugs is inside me, so no government can catch me. There is no way to find out from where I am getting my champagne. And my people slowly, slowly start getting drunk. So it is a question of taste: if you can simply provoke those people that there is something worth tasting, that they should not miss it, then it will be possible for them to understand whatever I am saying. I use simple language, I have no jargon, I am not an expert about anything; to understand me is very easy.The problem arises that you cannot understand me just through words. And it is not a new problem, it has always been so. The person who experiences something in his innermost core finds it difficult to translate it into language, because language is created for mundane affairs. What can lovers say to each other? At the most, “I love you.” And if, unfortunately, the woman has a philosophical mind and asks, “What is love, what is it that you are proposing? Explain it: first I have to understand what love is, only then can I understand whether to take it or not.”Fortunately women are not philosophers, they don’t ask what love is. In fact, they know more of love than men. It is men who have created all kinds of violence on the earth, and are preparing to destroy the whole life on earth. It is absolutely men’s responsibility, women have not been participants in it. But if a woman has a philosophical mind, then no lover can explain. Then the only way is, rather than saying, “I love you,” he starts making gestures of love, holding her hand, dancing with her, looking into her eyes, singing with her, listening to music, or just sitting silently together looking at the night, the stars. Perhaps in just being together something will transpire.That is love: it is a transfer of some invisible energy. And religion is exactly the same thing. One who has known his own being is capable of sharing his being with you, and in that sharing, something will be triggered in you. And the moment you know the truth, it will not be the truth of the master, it will be your own. He has never given you truth, he has never talked about it. He has not said a single word about it, because nothing can be said about truth.All words are futile as far as truth is concerned. No word has the potentiality to express values like truth, joy, blissfulness, ecstasy; there is no way. But one thing you can do, you can give them a challenge: there is something worth experiencing, at least don’t condemn it before you have experienced it. And I know that anybody who comes here open and ready to learn, puts his conditioning aside and forgets that he is a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan.It is a very simple and natural phenomenon. It starts happening to you – it is a happening – and that’s the purpose of creating communes around the world. So that anywhere there is a group of a thousand or two thousand people vibrating with their meditative energy, dancing to abandon, singing madly, ecstatic for nothing, a man is going to get drunk just being in an open contact with the commune. There have been teachers, great masters, but what they were doing was theology, not religion. Religion needs a human lab, and that’s what the commune is; because religion is the highest human engineering.It is said, and perhaps it is true… In India, music is a very ancient tradition, and Indian music has qualities of its own, its beauty, its silence. It is not sexual the way jazz is sexual or the Beatles are sexual, it is something totally different. Listening to the classical music you will feel something coming from a different world. In the history of Indian music it is said – and perhaps it is true – that if in a silent room a master sitar player plays the sitar and you keep a few other sitars in the room, soon those other sitars start vibrating, they start getting in tune with the master player. And I see every possibility that it is not just a story, because the vibrations can hit those sitars; just a master player, a maestro is needed.In Indian music there are ragas: a raga is a certain type of music for a certain period of time. For example, for the morning one raga, for the evening another, for the middle of the night another. Around the clock those ragas are played, but each has its own time. And it is really strange, that if you play the raga that is meant to be played in the early morning in the evening, it does not create the same climax within you. The same man is playing, but something is missing.It is just like at sunrise when the birds start singing and the flowers open up. At sunset the birds stop singing, the flowers start closing. Existence is going into rest, so there is a different music for this moment which will be in tune with the whole existence. There is a different tune for the morning; because the sun is rising, your music should be harmonious with the rising energy, the wakening energy of existence. I am not a musician but I have meditated around the clock, and I was surprised that a certain method functions at a certain period, perhaps in the morning. Another method opens the doors in the evening, and you cannot use the same method for the morning.In a commune where five thousand meditators are living, working, being, you will get drunk – it is bound to happen. So the people were right when they told you, “Don’t go there, we are afraid you may not come back again.” It has happened to many, and I can see the possibility that it can happen to you. Because who would like to leave this beautiful commune for that ugly world that exists outside, with all the politicians, with all the rapes and murders, and everybody trying to cut everybody else’s throat? Who wants to live there? Here there is no competition, no struggle, no crime. People don’t have time: either they are meditating or they are working or they are loving, there is no time to do anything stupid.I have no philosophy, I have no religion. Yet I inspire people for a different kind of life, which is religiousness, divineness, godliness. But my emphasis is that all nouns are wrong, only verbs are right. When you say, “Look at this tree,” when you say, “This is a tree,” you are not stating exactly that the tree is not a noun, and cannot be a noun, because it is growing. It is treeing. In existence there are no nouns at all; the river is rivering, the tree is treeing. Each moment you are somebody else, each moment you are growing.The growth never stops, and if you are consciously helping the growth then you will not only grow old, you will also grow up into wisdom – which brings peace to the heart and which brings the light that reveals to you the immortality of your being. And at the same time it reveals the immortality of everything in existence. Things go on changing their form, but nobody dies.Death is illusory, it has never happened; only consciousness is transmigrating into other bodies. And I don’t want people to believe me, I don’t teach transmigration of the soul. I simply help them to come to that space where they will be able to know it on their own. If a person can see his past lives – which is very simple – if he can see his thousands of past lives stretching to eternity, the logical conclusion is that he is going to continue in the future also to eternity; eternity to eternity.With that experience all fear disappears because all fear is somehow rooted in death, which is coming closer every day. We try to deceive ourselves and others in every possible way. We make our graveyards outside the city so that we are not reminded of death again and again. Whenever you pass by the graveyard, the thought is bound to come that sooner or later you will also be lying down in some grave. Perhaps the next grave that is being dug is for you; nobody knows – it is certainly for someone, and that someone can be you.We have tried to deceive ourselves with the belief that the soul will not die. But that is a belief, and belief is just useless, it won’t help you to any transformation. You are believing it because it is helpful. You can keep your eyes closed to death, although you know that this is only a belief that life is eternal.So I don’t teach any belief, but I teach methods of how to enter into different spaces which are available inside you. So those who are interested, bring them. Perhaps what they have not found in their whole life they may find here in this small oasis in the desert of Oregon. And don’t think at all that those middle class people will not understand me.I appreciate the thoroughness of your answer. I don't remember my question, but I'm sure you answered it.That’s good.Osho,Since Americans, and especially Oregonians, pride themselves as having the land of the free – we hear that all the time at grade schools, national anthems and so on – why do you think so many people are so opposed to what you're trying to do?I’m not surprised by it. If I was not opposed then certainly I would have been surprised. It is just a natural phenomenon. If you have been miserable your whole life, if you have lived in a society where everybody is miserable – they all have their styles of being miserable, different colors, different shades, but basically everybody is miserable – you don’t see people just laughing for no reason, or just dancing because the moon is full tonight, your society condemns such people as crazy.So when they encounter a commune like this, their first reaction is that if such blissfulness has not happened to them, these people and their existence proves to them that they have missed the train. It will be good that these people are removed, destroyed, because they become a question mark: it hurts that there are people who are happy. “So why am I not happy? If others have been able to manage it, then what is wrong with me that I cannot manage it?”A great inferiority complex arises. And whenever you are under the impact of feeling inferior, there are only two ways to think: either think that these people are mad, perhaps hypnotized, or that something is wrong with them. But this explanation cannot stand long, because these people are doing everything so intelligently, they cannot be mad. They are so conscious and alert, they cannot be just moving like robots, hypnotized, they are not sleepwalkers.So condemn them: that they are immoral, that they are against God, that they are not religious. Just condemn them so you can feel a certain guarantee that you have not missed life. Whatever life has, you have – television, a car, a good job, a wife, children – this is what life gives, so you have got it. But these people have got something else, and that hurts. Condemn them, find bogus, false charges against them. I invite these people to just come close and see, but they are afraid to come close, because deep down they know they will be infected by these people, and they will be left in a limbo.All their investments are there in the old world. Here, they will be coming into a strange space where they have no idea even what is happening, where these people are going. And there is the conflict in the mind of leaving the old world, where you had all your acquaintances and friends and family. Also they were all miserable, so there was a certain affinity, a family feeling, a certain equality; there you cannot risk. Those who come here only come if they have the guts to risk.You mentioned that they can tolerate the Olympics, they can tolerate boxing, they can tolerate every other thing, and asked, “Why are they against you?” The reason is clear: boxing does not make them feel inferior. In fact, boxing helps them to release their violence. California University has been studying why violence immediately increases fourteen percent after a boxing match. They have studied only violence, they should also study other things after boxing: how many more rapes happen? How many more murders happen? How many more suicides happen? And you will find they all increase.Society is so violent, so full of violence that just a football match, and people are ready to kill each other. A boxing match is simply ugly, barbarous. People enjoying two persons hitting each other like animals, breaking their noses, hurting their eyes, bringing blood… And people are clapping and shouting and enjoying. They get in some way identified with one of the fighters. Everybody in the stadium is identified with one wrestler, boxer; his victory is their victory, when he hits the enemy they are hitting the enemy. It is unconscious, but it is a release.Those who have so much violence that just the identification won’t help, they raise the percentage of actual violence after the match is over. For four days the percentage remains higher and then slowly it goes down. The same is true about football matches, about the Olympics: they fit perfectly in their violent society. Even war fits perfectly, nuclear weapons fit perfectly.I am nonviolent and I stand for love, not for war. And I don’t see that there is any need: things like boxing should be absolutely prohibited, they are ugly and barbarous. People can go there, thousands go, and millions of people are sitting glued to their chairs before the TV. It is strange that violence is so much appreciated, enjoyed – these people must be all carrying some violence in them, otherwise I don’t see it. I cannot enjoy boxing, it is disgusting.The phenomenon of the commune is just the opposite, and that’s why it is so troublesome to them. If we were also boxers here, eating meat, doing all kinds of crime, they would have been perfectly happy to accept us. We are strangers to them, it hurts their egos. We are creating civilization; up to now it has been only a word.The Romans thought they had come to the peak of their civilization, and at the peak what were they enjoying? Throwing Christians to hungry lions. I think they must have been very compassionate people; they could not see lions hungry, and they provided the best food they could find. Why were they against Christians? The same reason: in the beginning Christianity was a stranger.Now nobody is against Christians, because they have compromised with society: they are only nominally Christians. Sunday morning religion is their whole religion, and their church is nothing but a club where they go to gossip. And nobody listens to the priest, there is nothing to listen to: that man has been repeating the same sermon again and again, but he can repeat the same sermon because nobody is listening.I have heard that a Christian minister was very disturbed by one old man who was the richest man of his congregation. Of course, he used to sit just in front of the priest, but he was old and he had heard these sermons so many times that they were like sleeping pills for him. The moment the priest would start he would fall asleep. That was not a problem; the problem was he snored.But he was the richest man, the richest donor. In everything, he was helpful to the church. In fact, he was the only man who was keeping the minister paid, otherwise the congregation would disappear. So the minister could not say anything to the man, but complaints started coming to him from other people.They were saying, “We are not against his sleeping, he can go to sleep for good. What troubles us, is that he disturbs our sleep by snoring. And just a beautiful Sunday morning and one feels so good to have a little nap, but this old man…”The old man used to come with his great-grandson. The boy enjoyed sitting there by the side of the old man. The priest took him away from the old man and told him, “I will give you one dollar every Sunday if you keep hitting the old man with your elbow so that he does not fall asleep. That is your work.”The boy said, “Done! There is no problem. I will not let him sleep a single moment, but I don’t believe in priests and I don’t trust them. Pay me in advance.”The priest gave him one dollar, and the next Sunday morning the boy continued pushing the old man with his elbow. The old man was very angry, and looked at the boy again and again, but he could not say anything – the priest was there, the whole congregation was there. But he did not allow him to sleep.Outside, the old man was enraged. He said, “You stupid boy! What happened to you? Why did you go on hitting me with your elbow and waking me up? I’m old, in the nights I don’t have any sleep. This is the only place where at least for one hour, one and a half hours, I can have a good time.“Doctors have failed: in fact doctors have suggested, ‘Why don’t you start going to Sunday sermon? When we fail to give sleep to any patient we send him to the church, and it always succeeds, without exception.’ So, you rascal,” he said to the boy, “you disturbed my whole joy; now I will have to wait one week again. But what went wrong, why you were doing this? You were always sitting silently.”The boy said, “It is something concerning business.”The old man said, “What business? What business have you started doing?”He showed him the dollar. “The priest is paying me one dollar to keep you awake.”The old man said, “Then you should have told me before. I will give you two dollars every week. Don’t disturb me.”The boy said, “So far, so good. The business is going good. Two dollars, in advance.”He got the advance, and the next Sunday morning he was sitting silently. The priest made many hints, but the child would not look at him at all. He would look here, there, everywhere. The priest said, “What has happened to this boy? Last Sunday was so peaceful.”After the service, the priest caught hold of the boy and said, “You are cheating me. I am giving you one dollar per sermon. Why have you stopped hitting the old man?”The boy said, “He is giving me two dollars for not hitting him. Now if you want, the price has gone up. If you give me three dollars I will keep him awake.”The priest said, “I cannot compete with your old man. He is so rich he can give you any amount of money. I am a poor priest. Three dollars per sermon, I will go bankrupt.”These people who go to the churches are no disturbance to society; it is their society. Jesus was a disturbance, hence they crucified him. After Jesus, his apostles started compromising with society, and – what a coincidence – he was crucified by the order of the emperor of Rome, and later on Rome became the capital of world Christianity.Existence works in strange ways. These people who are against me, hostile toward me and to my people, one day you will find them in red clothes. I just have to manage to be assassinated; then everything will be good, then I will gain their sympathy. Right now I am such a disturbance.They have never conceived such a religious man, one who has ninety Rolls Royces, hundreds of diamond watches, and a 126-square-mile ranch, three times bigger than New York. Naturally they should be offended, I am responsible for their being offended. And I am trying to introduce a totally new religious phenomenon which goes against their morality, their etiquette.Everything that they have, my commune goes against. Because I have seen one thing clearly: every society is an organic whole. If there is rape, murder, theft, and all kinds of crimes and perversions, then whatever good is there is so interconnected with the bad that we stand even against those things that appear good. Because we can see the interconnection between the good and the bad; they are two sides of the same coin, and we have renounced both. We are amoral people.We are not immoral, we are not moral: we are amoral people. This is their problem. They can deal with moral people, they can deal with immoral people, but they don’t know how to deal with us. It is so new to them that they are puzzled and confused. But this is really the shock of the beginning of a new man. These are the birth pangs. The society is going, but we are going to continue to grow. Not in spite of them, but because of them. If they are hostile and they hate us, we are already connected – we have a certain relationship already. Sometimes friendship is not so deep as enmity.Just the other day I received a letter from a sannyasin: “I love you. My wife likes you but does not love you. I love my wife. I want to move to a commune, and now I am in great difficulty. My wife likes you but she is not ready to move to the commune, she does not love you that much. I love you so much that I want to move, but then what will happen to my wife and children? I am in a dilemma.”When I heard the letter I said, “This man is going to be in great difficulty.” If the wife hated me, things would have been simple, but she likes me. Like never changes into love; hate has the capacity to change into love. In fact, it is love standing on its head.I am really happy that people are hostile. How long can they remain hostile? They are unnecessarily wasting their time and energy, and having nightmares, and we don’t care a bit. We are not bothered, we are enjoying the time that is available to us. Tomorrow is uncertain, so we are not going to sacrifice today for any tomorrow. We are existential people: just this moment is so much, who cares whether the next moment we survive or not?But they will have to change their attitude. You cannot carry hostility long: it starts disturbing your stomach, raises your pulse beat, and gives you heart attacks. We have not done any harm to anybody, they are doing it on their own, they are creating it for their own death. If they understand just a little psychology, before becoming hostile please come and become acquainted. I am not a missionary and I don’t convert anybody.If a person wants to be converted, wants to become a sannyasin, that is his responsibility. We are not making any effort to change any man, because I think that is trespassing, and I respect the individual as one of the highest values in the world.Osho,I've only got about thirty or forty more questions. Maybe we go to a true-false format.Next time. Next time – and till all your questions are finished, go on coming. And when all questions are finished, then what are you going to do? Be careful.Thank you, thank you very much.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Lynn HudsonIndia Abroad, New York, United StatesOsho,India Abroad is an English-language weekly newspaper about Indians and about India, mainly for Indian Americans in this country, or Asian Indians in this country, but circulated somewhat in India as well.I have covered the activities of this community since its inception. Since you've been in this country for four years now, I'd like to ask for your reactions to America, Americans and American institutions.America is not what it pretends to be, it is just a second Soviet Union. But they are truthful; America is hypocritical. The democracy is just in the name, it does not function.Would you live in the Soviet Union?I am living in the Soviet Union. Oregon is a state in the Soviet Union.Well, if you feel that way about it, why are you happy here? Or are you happy here?I am happy anywhere.Even in a place as oppressive as the United States?Yes, even in Oregon.How about the individual Americans? How do you feel about the ones that you've met, that you've come into contact with? Or the ones that you've read about?I know only the Americans who are with me, but they are no longer Americans. I don’t come in contact with the Americans, because I never go anywhere.But many Americans come here to see you, do they not? The parents of your sannyasins, and others?I don’t meet them. Thousands of Americans are my sannyasins, but the man who becomes a sannyasin drops all hangovers: American, Christian, Hindu, Indian, Mohammedan, communist – he throws all that crap away. That is the essential thing for a sannyasin to do, to be just a human being without any labels. Man is not a commodity that you can label, to label human beings is ugly. So there are people who were once Americans who have become sannyasins – I can tell you about them, they are in contact with me – they are some of the best and most beautiful people in the world.Osho,I wonder if I might ask you about your childhood in India? What was it like? How did other children relate to you? How did you relate to them? How did they feel about you? How did you feel about yourself as a child?I was a little strange as a child. I never played with any children because deep down I never felt that I was their age. In my childhood I was discussing with adults, old people, but my relationship with my own age group was nil.You felt yourself a teacher even then, isn't that right?Yes, I have always felt that I have something to give, and as I grew up that became more and more clear. I had always related with people who were at least twenty, thirty years older than me, because only with them could I argue and discuss things in which other children were not interested.Did this make you an outcast with children your own age? Did that matter to you?I was. I was an outcast, and I am still an outcast. Perhaps that’s my fate, my destiny – to be the outsider – but I have enjoyed it my whole life. I don’t remember a single moment when I have felt badly about whatever I am. I have rejoiced in my being and I have kept my freedom completely intact. Nobody has been an influence on me: neither a teacher, nor a professor, nor a saint, a religious leader, a political leader. In fact, as I grew up and my arguments became sharper, teachers and professors were afraid of me. And I was not just an outsider; I was expelled from many colleges for the simple reason that the professors felt embarrassed. They were not able to answer my questions, and they were not courageous enough to accept my answers.Do you think there's a psychological dynamic there – in your feeling an outcast – that led you in the direction of forming a commune of which you are the center?I have not made the commune. I started on the way alone, people started coming to me, and it became a vast caravan which is now spread all over the world. And people are still coming. I have not made it, it has happened. It was not a planned thing, not something considered.I don’t have any discipline, any rules, any regulations. Somebody coming and becoming a fellow traveler is welcome. If he leaves at some crossroads, we say goodbye to him with the same joy, ecstasy, as we had when he joined us. And we tell him, “Whenever you want, the doors will always be open for you.”But I have not made the commune. Certainly, when five thousand people are living here, so many arrangements have to be made; but all that credit goes to the sannyasins, I have nothing to do with it.Osho,The adulation that is obviously felt for you here in this community, does that give you a sense of humility or a sense of omnipotence?Just ecstasy.I beg your pardon?Just ecstasy it gives to me. It does not give me a bigger ego; it does not give me the opposite, the humble ego – they are both egos. Sometimes the humble man is more egoistic than the straightforward egoist. As far as I am concerned, it is not adoration. They rejoice, they love me. I am not higher than them; they are my friends, my lovers, on an equal basis as far as I am concerned. Now it is up to them whether to listen to me or not to listen.One of the things I'm asking, I guess, is what does it do to your head to feel all this love? – as a human being to be the center of so much whatever you call it, love, adoration, adulation?I rejoice. It is beautiful to have so many hearts beating in the same tune as my heart is beating.Do you think you would be as happy if you were one of the sannyasins and there was another leader?I cannot be more happy, I cannot be less happy, because happiness is something that is within me, it is not dependent on anybody. If all the sannyasins are gone I will be happy with the trees, I will be happy with the stars. And I can dance with the trees and the stars; it does not matter, I can dance in my bathroom. I am a happy person.Osho,In regard to the remarks you made earlier about the United States, I would gather that you do comment on politics. I would like to ask you what your feelings are about Rajiv Gandhi and the present government of India.Rajiv Gandhi is just an amateur politician, knowing nothing about politics, and is going to be destructive. He is going to impose the same emergency that his mother did. All that he knows is his mother and he simply will be repeating what she has done.So you foresee another emergency?Another emergency, another assassination. And this time it is going to be worse than before.Your statements about Mrs. Gandhi seem to suggest that you were on good terms with the Indian government when you left India.I was with Indira Gandhi, not with the Indian government.How did that work? What were the dynamics of that?Because she was interested in my ideas, she was reading my books, and whenever I was passing through New Delhi she always tried to meet me and discuss with me. She always agreed with what I said to her but she said, “I know what you are saying is right, but I cannot do it.” Because this whole political game is so dirty that if you want to be at the top you have to follow the whole cunning, hypocritical style.Were there problems between you and other ministers or departments of the Indian government?Yes, I have been enemies with Morarji Desai for many lives.Was that a key factor in your leaving India?No, I remained in India until he was no longer the prime minister. I had made it a point that while he was the prime minister I was not going outside India, for the simple reason that I was hammering him every day, hitting him every day. I am not a politician, I am not a competitor to anybody, but I can’t see stupid things happening.What was your quarrel with Desai?Everything, because I was against his political master, Mahatma Gandhi. I am against the whole philosophy of Gandhi-ism because it drags people backwards. It is not a forwards movement; it does not take account of the future. It adores, and teaches people to adore, the dead past. He was not ready to accept anything that was invented after the spinning wheel. For him the spinning wheel was the last human invention, for him time had stopped there.This is stupid: on the spinning wheel you cannot keep your country clothed. If a person spins for eight hours every day, then he will be able to have enough clothes just for himself. Now this is an idiotic ideology – if a person spins for eight hours, then when is he going to earn his food? How is he going to take care of his children, his wife, his old parents? How is he going to have a roof? Gandhi was against simple things: telegraph, telephone, railway. Just think…Osho,But haven't you yourself said that it's the technology we've developed that's gotten us into the possibility of a holocaust?I have said it, but I have said it from a totally different direction. I say it is technology that has disturbed the whole harmony of nature, now it is the duty of technology to put it back – nobody else can do it. I am not against technology; I am simply against the technology which has been growing blindly, unconsciously, unaware of its effects. I would like a better technology – superior to the technology we have – which takes care of nature and human beings. Our whole technology has developed as an effort to destroy.But no one's ever found a way to put a cap on science, have they? It has a life of its own.It has not a life of its own, it is politically dominated. No scientist can manage a nuclear plant: the nuclear plant is owned by the American government or the Soviet Union or some other idiots, and the scientist has to work under the direction of the politicians. This technology has not developed independently. Scientists are simply the servants of the politicians; and the moment they start just a little to do something on their own, their careers are finished.In the ancient days it was difficult and different. It was difficult to create all that technology is now creating because it needed a certain background which was not available. Second, it was simple: a scientist could work independently in his own small lab. Galileo was independent, Copernicus was independent, but not Albert Einstein.But even given that, do you see a way to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle, when even graduate students have the technology to make a nuclear bomb?There is no need to put it back. Any energy which can be destructive can also be creative, it is only a question of application. Nuclear weapons are meant to destroy; the whole science is motivated toward a Third World War. The same energy that is being put into making these weapons and these new discoveries can be put into creative ways. There is no need for an Ethiopia to starve and die.Does this put you on the side of nuclear power plants?Not to destroy, but the energy can be used in a creative way – and the sooner we realize it, the better. All governments should be forced by the people that atomic, nuclear, or any kind of energy that is in the service of war, has to be released into the service of humanity to destroy hunger, poverty, unemployment. We can make this earth for the first time a paradise. It will be really so foolish to have so much energy in our hands and destroy the earth, destroy all life.Osho,How do you think we can go about changing the present attitude in the world to create this sort of future that you see?The people just have to be made more alert and aware, they have to be made conscious of what their politicians are doing. And once the politicians see that the masses are no longer for war, they will immediately jump ahead of the masses. That’s a necessity for being a political leader, you have to be ahead of the crowd; it is not that the crowd follows you, it is just the opposite. The politician has to keep alert to where the crowd is going, and the successful politician is one who always keeps himself ahead of the masses. The unsuccessful politician is one who goes on without looking back to see if the followers have taken some other route.It is very simple: just the people, the media, all kinds of newspapers and magazines, the universities – where intelligence exists – should start a campaign for consciousness-raising. It is not a question of one person, it is a question of the whole of life being destroyed.And how would you go about creating that consciousness throughout mankind?I am trying in my own way. I have more than half a million sannyasins around the world who are trying in every possible way to raise human consciousness. Perhaps nobody else is doing what I am doing and on such a vast scale.My methods of meditation are in reality sabotaging the political structure that exists in any place today. If people meditate they become more rebellious, they become more understanding, their eyes see more clearly. Their consciousness is on a far higher level. They can become teachers to those who are lagging a little behind. They can help them.Within ten years it is possible that we can make humanity alert and aware of their own politicians. American politicians are making Americans aware of the danger of Russia; Russian politicians are making Russian citizens alert to the danger that is America. Americans have to be made aware of the danger of their own politicians, Russians have to try to become aware – I have my sannyasins there, of course, they are all underground.How many in Russia?I cannot give you the number, I cannot give you the names. The Russian government is already persecuting the people they have found with my books. A few Russians have escaped and they are here.Osho,Are there other leaders today that you feel are working in the same direction you are, or do you feel that you are doing this alone?There is nobody. Political leaders cannot do it, it would be suicidal on their part, they would lose all power. The so-called religious leaders have been in deep conspiracy with the politicians for centuries. They are afraid that if people become more alert, more conscious, then who is going to bother about their God? And who is going to believe that there is a God?There have been two religions in India devoted to meditation: Jainism and Buddhism. Both deny the existence of God, for the simple reason that when your consciousness becomes clear you can see that this God and the creation of the world is all fiction. The religious leaders are afraid of a person like me. They are afraid of my sannyasins. They are afraid because among my sannyasins there are Hindus, there are Mohammedans, Sikhs, Christians and Jews. And of course the moment they become my sannyasins they have to leave their Jewishness, their Christianity, outside the campus, they cannot bring it in. Naturally the religious leaders will be afraid.I am the only person who is condemned by all religious leaders, all political parties. Strange – a single person is being condemned by all those who are against each other. Even communists are against me, socialists are against me.A few days ago, I received a letter from the president of the American Nazi party: “You are hurting our religious feelings by speaking against Adolf Hitler.” He told me in the letter that Adolf Hitler was not a politician, he was the reincarnation of the ancient Old Testament prophet Elijah. Now, do you think these are the people who are going to raise people’s consciousness? They are exploiting people in the name of religion.Osho,As I recall your press conference last week, you mentioned eugenics as a way in which we could avoid creating other monsters such as Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan. Is that correct?Yes, it is right.But when you intrude into people's lives to tell them when and how they can have children, isn't that somewhat fascistic, somewhat Hitlerian in itself?No. If you can operate on their cancer, is that Hitlerian? When the doctor says, “Take this medicine for your tuberculosis,” he entering in your life – is that fascist? You are entering in everybody’s life in every way, but because eugenics is something new, people freak out.In fact, a couple making love has no idea what kind of a child they are going to produce. This is blind biology; it is better to be in the hands of scientists than to be in the hands of blind biology. We can conceive that there can be exploitation, but that is true about any invention, any discovery, any new thing. But I am totally in favor of it, because I see it can really change man. Man has not changed in thousands of years: since the first monkeys jumped on the earth and started walking on two legs, man is the same. Yes, he wears better clothes, flies in airplanes, but just scratch a little bit and you will find the monkey there.If you'll pardon a couple of personal questions, have you never wanted to have a child yourself?No, for the simple reason that I don’t want to burden this earth, it is already burdened too much. There is no religious reason to it. My sannyasins are not giving birth to children; in the four years we have been here not a single baby has been born. And nowhere is so much love being made as is made here.Osho,There's been a story recently that you plan to return to India and to move this commune back to India. Is there any truth in that?I go on creating many kinds of rumors; they are part of my work. But I am not going anywhere, I am going to remain here.Why are you determined to remain here, inasmuch as you seem very critical and unfavorably disposed toward the United States government and the United States in general?Because I want to spread that idea. I need to be here.Osho,Is there any reason that there are not many Indian sannyasins here in Oregon?Only a few are here, not many. There were not many even when I was in India, for the simple reason that what I am saying goes against their conditioned minds, and they have the oldest conditioned minds in the world. They are so conditioned over thousands of years that they have become incapable even of listening to anything new. They believe that everything that is true is in their scriptures, that there is no need for anything new. The old is gold; the older it is, the golder it is.Osho,Were you ever a practicing Hindu?Never, never – I have never been practicing any religion. I have been trying to remain an individual on my own, right or wrong, heaven or hell. I have never considered about anything. I want to remain completely myself; it gives a certain strength, freedom, dignity; and that’s my teaching to my people. It is not a religion, it is just a gathering of people who feel some similarity, some synchronicity. But each is respected as an individual.This commune is not an organization, it is an organism just like the body. They are all working in their own responsibility. There is nobody higher, nobody lower; there is no hierarchy. The professor and the plumber are equally respected and loved. In fact, nobody even bothers whether you are a plumber or a professor. Nobody even asks anybody, “What are you doing?” Because everybody is doing what is needed. So all are equal; they are fulfilling the needs of the commune in different ways, in the way that they can fulfill.Osho,How would you describe the thing that brings you all together?I had not come here to stay, I had come here because my health was bad. My back was so bad that we tried everything, experts from England were called but they could not fix it. I was suffering from asthma so much that sleep became difficult. I am allergic to all kinds of perfume, smoke, dust; any small thing immediately triggers my coughing and then it goes on for hours.Otherwise, why should I choose Oregon? It is a desert, dry. Humidity is dangerous for me. Whenever I went to Mumbai the attacks of asthma would immediately increase, and whenever I went to the desert part of India, Rajasthan, it would settle down. That gave me the clue that it is not a question of medicines; I had to find some desert place, and big enough. For simple reasons: if I was living in the city and at somebody’s house they were having a fire or celebrating a Hindu festival with firecrackers, that was enough to trouble me. You cannot stop them just for my allergy, so I needed a big place. And this place is big enough: it is 126 square miles.My sannyasins know what my troubles are, so they don’t do anything that can trouble me. And the climate is dry. I had never come here with the intention to stay, I came only so that I could get healthier, and I have been getting healthier. I am far better than I was there, but my troubles are such that they can be triggered any moment. You just come here and you have been smoking, that is enough. You are not smoking here, just talking, and if I get the smell of tobacco, you have done it.So it has become a problem. My commune is there, they are waiting for me; but I know that if I go back the same problem will arise again. I was 180 pounds when I came, now I am 132 pounds. Just the dry climate helped me to reduce weight without any difficulty.So I am going to be here. And I am not a person to just sit and watch whatsoever goes on, because I don’t think America belongs only to Americans and India belongs only to Indians. This whole earth belongs to us. I am feeling perfectly good here, health wise, so I am not going to leave.Secondly, I am feeling immensely interested by the hostility of Oregonians. For thirty years in India I had been hammering people. By and by they became accustomed to me, to my criticism. These people are new and they are really getting disturbed, and I am getting great joy out of it!Osho,You apparently are the head of a very rich worldwide organization. What is your position on any obligation you may have to contribute to world charity, to the famine countries, to poverty in India, to the many other places that need help?First, I am not the head of a worldwide organization. I am not even a sannyasin. Nothing is in my hands; it is my sannyasins’ business, I am simply a guest.What is your personal feeling about it then?My personal feeling is that there should be no more preparation for future war. And all the nations who are putting seventy-five percent of their energy and income into making new weapons should move all that energy to help those who need it. I don’t have anything to give to Ethiopia, because I don’t possess anything.Do you not believe that if you wished to help Ethiopia, your sannyasins would comply with your wishes and render help?No – I would not wish it either. This should be the work of the politicians and the religious leaders. They should take the responsibility; I have nothing to do with it. In fact, if people had listened to me India would not have been poor. For thirty years I was saying to them, “Go for birth control. Abortion should be made legal,” and I was condemned for that. They were throwing stones and shoes and knives at me for teaching them immorality.So I don’t feel responsible if they are starving, it is their doing. Anybody who is dying and starving should remember that the whole crime is due to people like the pope, Mother Teresa, and other religious leaders who are against birth control, against abortion. They are increasing the population of the world, and they are getting Nobel Prizes. Mother Teresa should be hanged!Well, even if you believe world hunger is a result of misguided policies on the part of world leaders, what about human compassion for the people who are starving?If you really want to know the truth, I say just send medical groups to help the Ethiopians die peacefully, if you cannot provide food and clothes. And for how long are you going to provide? Ethiopia has been starving and dying for four years continuously, and those dying Ethiopians are still creating children.The people who have increased the population of the world by their teachings should take responsibility and feed those people. Or, if they are incapable, my suggestion is that rather than dying starving, suffering, it is better to give them an injection so they can go peacefully into eternal sleep. And I know the soul never dies, so I am not worried about anything. They will be incarnated somewhere else, and next time they will find something better than Ethiopia.Osho,You believe in reincarnation, then?I know, I don’t believe.Would that be part of your Indian heritage, since it is a strong belief among Indians?No, it is not that they believe and I have tried to find it. It is not my belief. I never accept any belief; it only covers your ignorance, it never makes you wise. I have meditated, I have come to a point where I can see my own past lives, and that’s proof enough. It is my knowing, my experiencing; it is nothing to do with Indian heritage, beliefs, or anything. I speak on my own authority.Osho,You've often expressed a view of a coming world apocalypse if man doesn't change his outlook. Is that view of an apocalypse something that's rationalized from an analysis of history and current events, or is it a vision?It is an analysis of man’s whole past. The way man has been functioning continuously unconsciously, fighting, violence. One day it will come to its ultimate logical conclusion. And it is coming one day: after the Second World War you cannot have the First World War, you can only have a Third World War. It is not a vision, I am not a visionary. I can calculate it from the way nuclear weapons are growing: in 1945 the first atom bomb was used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, within just forty years our power of destruction is seven hundred times more – and it is growing every day.You would call yourself a rationalist about this, then?Absolutely.And your analysis also suggests a world epidemic of some disease – possibly AIDS, I believe you said.Yes, it is also part of all that man has done to nature, to man, to animals, to everything. He has created the situation.For example, in my childhood in India – and it is not long, just fifty years ago – the seasons used to come exactly the same day each year. India had three clear-cut seasons: every year winter starts at the same time, disappears at the same time. Since 1945 it has not been so, now the seasons are not predictable. Some great disturbance has shaken the routine of millions of years. The water is polluted, the air is polluted; it is really a miracle that we are still surviving. So it is simply a rational analysis that if we don’t change human consciousness by the end of this century, the chapter of life on this earth closes forever.I believe that you've also predicted a terrible flood. What reasons do you see for that?That, too: all around the world even poor and small nations are experimenting with atomic energy, even India. People are starving, dying, and India is exporting its wheat. For what? Your people are dying; they have been producing the wheat, they will not get even one meal a day, and you are exporting wheat. Naturally, the government will have to impose an emergency, because how long can people tolerate that they are dying and their food is being exported? But India is exporting because money is needed for more nuclear plants, atomic bombs. All that India has is farming: eighty percent of Indians are farmers, they can only sell their raw product. And they will be purchasing death.So if great explosions go on happening, it is scientifically estimated how many explosions will start melting the eternal snow of the Himalayas. And even just the Himalayas melting is enough to drown India completely, and cities like Mumbai will have no future. And this is only about the Himalayan ice; if the ice of the North Pole and the South Pole starts getting heated and they start melting, then you can understand…It is a man-made calamity. And there is still time to stop, because it has not happened yet. I am not a prophet in the sense that I am a visionary, I don’t support all that rubbish.You do have some faith in the prophecies of Nostradamus, though. Is that correct?I don’t have any faith in him. The fact is that the man was crazy, and what he has written can be interpreted in any way you want. I found this rational analysis and managed to look into Nostradamus and find similarities, which was very easy. There are many books of that kind in the world.In India there is an ancient scripture thought to be written by Vyasa himself, five thousand years ago. Everything about you is written in it: you just have to go to the priest, you have to give your name, your birth time, your birth chart, and he will figure it out and find the right page where Vyasa has described you. And it is possible because in the Sanskrit language each word has at least one dozen meanings. So looking at you, watching you, talking with you, the scholar will figure it out, and he will start reading from the scripture. And much will be correct.Copies of the scripture exist all over India. So you have it done in Delhi but if you are not satisfied, “Who knows if it is right or wrong?” you can go to Madras or Calcutta and they will find the same page again, because in the process of finding the page the clue is given by you. You can just change your name: go to Delhi, tell one name, one date of birth; in Madras tell another name, another time of birth and you will know what is going on. He will not be able to find the same page, he will find some other page. But ordinarily, the type of people who go will not do this; they are immensely impressed.Nostradamus can be interpreted in any way you want. The sentences are not clear, the grammar is not correct, the words are such that you can fit them into any context you want.But haven't you used him as the source of the prediction that this dread disease would sweep the earth?No, I use all kinds of devices. If people are foolish, I can use even their foolishness to raise their consciousness. I don’t feel any problem in it; if I was predicting on my own they would not listen to it, so I drag in Nostradamus. And that’s what I have been doing my whole life. If I speak to Christians… I have been speaking to Christians in India; they have the biggest theological college in Jabalpur where I was for twenty years and I was speaking on Jesus. I was simply speaking on myself: just here and there I would have to put Jesus’ name, and they were immensely happy; not only happy, they said, “We have never heard any Christian, any theologian, finding the true meaning of Jesus.” I said, “Yes…” How can they find the true meaning of Jesus?Osho,You do not believe in the existence of a God, is that correct?I don’t believe in anything, belief is simply not part of my vocabulary. Belief simply means you don’t know, yet you believe. A blind man believing in light, what can that belief do? He does not need a prophet, a messiah; he needs medicine, a surgeon, perhaps an operation on his eyes, so that he can see.Do you believe in light? Nobody asks such questions – you know light is there. The question of belief is asked only when the thing is non-existential. You cannot see it, you cannot touch it, you cannot feel it. God is a belief, heaven is a belief, hell is a belief. The reason you believe in these things is within your psychology; the priest is only exploiting. You have greed for immortality, you have greed for paradise and all the pleasures there. You have fear of death, you have fear of falling into the darkness of hell and all the tortures there. Naturally you start believing, because you don’t want to go to hell, you want to go to heaven.It is because of this psychology that an idiot like Reverend Jim Jones managed the suicide of his whole commune. He persuaded them to die with him, because if they died with him they would all enter into heaven. This is the logical conclusion of Jesus telling his disciples, “I will take you into heaven,” Jim Jones went a little farther. He was really a great Christian, after Jesus only he is the prophet!So you believe that if God existed, God would reveal himself in some tangible way?There is no God, and there is no question of his revelation. I don’t see any possibility of God’s existence. I can understand the existence of consciousness, because it is within me and I can experience it. And in my silent moments of awareness I have never come across any God, any hell, any heaven.Osho,Is Rajneeshism a religion?No, it is a religionless religion. It is simply religiousness.Osho,Do you consider yourself a prophet?No, I am not so stupid. I don’t consider myself in any way special, extraordinary, a messenger of God, a prophet, a messiah. No, I am just an ordinary human being like you and everybody else.Osho,What are your ultimate aims here in Oregon?I never think of tomorrow… And you are asking about the ultimate aim!I greatly appreciate your letting me come here to visit you.I loved it. Whenever you feel like coming, come.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Laura ParkerSeattle Post Intelligencer, Seattle, Washington, United StatesOsho,Hello. There are a great number of readers in the Seattle area who are not as familiar with the commune or with you as the readers in Oregon, so I would like to know something about your background, in addition to some of the things that you want to say about Rajneeshism.Why did you decide to speak, and why did you decide to speak to reporters?I have never asked any “why” in my life; I simply do anything that I feel like doing. I am not a man of thinking, I function through my feeling. If I feel to stop speaking, I can stop in the middle of a sentence – I will not even complete the sentence. And if I want to speak, even from my grave I will continue.Osho,Is there anything that you have to say through the media that you couldn't say through your discourses or books? Do the reporters carry a message to the audience in America for you?Certainly: whatever I can say to my people I say to them, but that is not going to reach to the people outside the commune. I would like them to be acquainted with what is happening here, and not to depend on rumors. I would like to invite them to be our guests, see our people, and see that there is a different way of life, too.Is there any way someone who has not come here could understand this way of life?It is almost impossible, because there are things which can only be experienced and cannot be explained. In fact if you try to explain them, you explain them awayOsho,Will there ever be peace between the people in Oregon who are so opposed to the Rajneeshees, and the commune here? Do you see that ever happening in the future?I don’t think of the future at all. Right now we are enjoying their opposition, their hostility, because this is the beginning of friendship. If they had ignored us then I would have had to do something.Could you elaborate a little? If they had ignored you, it would have been worse than the hostility?No, I would have created something so that they could not ignore. I can accept their hate, their hostility, their opposition, but I cannot accept their ignoring us, because it is easier to transform the hate into love, hostility into friendship. But there is no way to communicate with someone who is ignoring you. The people of Oregon have proved really receptive.Osho,If we could go back to India, and when you were younger: I have heard that you lived with Sheela's family for a while, and I have read that you lived with your grandparents as a young boy. I'm not certain which is accurate. Could you tell me about your childhood?Yes. My early childhood, up to six or seven, I was with my maternal grandfather and grandmother. I loved the place. It was a very small village surrounded by lush greenery, and the house of my grandfather was just on the bank of a beautiful lake. After that, for three years I lived with Sheela’s father. He loved me not like a small boy, but like a contemporary friend.It was a strange relationship: he loved me, he respected me too, which is very rare. I loved him – that was nothing new – I respected him, but I respected him more because he could respect a child just like a friend. And for three years it was a tremendous experience, because I could never communicate or relate with my own age group. I had never played any game in my life, it all looked stupid.Even as a very small child?Never. As far back as I can remember, I loved only one game – to argue.To argue?To argue about everything. So very few grownup people could stand me; understanding was out of the question. In Sheela’s father I found a man who was ready to understand me, and I never felt that he was tired or bored or not ready to answer. He never tried to shut me up.He never told me a single time, “You will understand these things only when you are grown up.” If he did not know something, he accepted it: “I don’t know it, I am searching as you are searching.” If in argument he could not convince me, and my argument was weightier than his, he was able to accept it without feeling insulted, humiliated. He is a man of tremendous understanding, caring, and our relationship has remained the same. Now he is my sannyasin.This was approximately when you were ten you lived with him?It must have been nearabout between six to nine.Did he send you to school? Was he responsible for educating you?No, because I was never interested in going to school, it was the worst place. I was finally forced to go, but I resisted as much as I could, because there were only children who were not interested in things I was interested in and I was not interested in things they were all interested in. So I was an outsider.What were you interested in?My interest has remained the same: to know what is the ultimate truth, what is the meaning of life, why I am here and not anyone else. And I was determined that unless I find the answer I am not going to rest, and I am not going to let anybody around me rest, either.So he was teaching me at home, because he loved me; if I did not want to go to school then he would teach me at home. After living with him for three years, finally I had to go back to my father’s house, because he – Sheela’s father – left for England for his further studies.Osho,Your father was a merchant, is that correct?He was a cloth merchant, and that’s how he came in contact with Sheela’s father. Sheela’s father lived in Mumbai, my father used to come to Mumbai for his business, and they immediately became almost like twins.Osho,When you went to school, you were older?I was older than any child.How did the other children in school treat you?Then they were afraid of me.They were afraid of you?They were afraid, and since then everybody is afraid. The students were afraid, the teachers were afraid.Because of the things you were saying, or because of your arguing?My argument was their greatest problem. They never expected any argument from children.Then you went to the university, is that correct?Later on I was in the university, but…Why did you continue in school and go the university if you didn't…?I wanted to fight with everyone, from the primary school to the university. And I wanted to know if all these knowledgeable people had something in them, or was it all borrowed. And I found that all they had was borrowed: not a single teacher or professor had any experience of his own.Osho,When you were studying at the university, was there anyone who you read, or anyone you followed? I don't mean a teacher, but perhaps someone whose writing that you particularly read?No, I have read so much that perhaps nobody in the whole world could compete. My own personal library slowly, slowly became so big that the day I left India it had one hundred and fifty thousand rare books. I have read vastly; in fact it is difficult to mention the name of any book that I have not read.I think I read somewhere that you stopped reading at some point.For the past five years I have not read anything, not even a newspaper, no magazine, no book. I simply stopped reading, because I understood that all those books are just rubbish. You can be lost in the jungle of words, but you are not going to get any truth out of those books.That was the time when I started feeling to go into silence for a group of years, just to give a gap, so that the life that I had lived before silence becomes completely separated from me. It is now completely separated from me. Now whatsoever I say, I say on my own authority. I say only that which I know. I don’t believe in anything, I don’t quote anybody unless he coincides with me.Osho,When did you meet Sheela?Sheela’s father was not even married when I started living with him, he got married after three months. Sheela came long afterwards. But Sheela’s father has been trying to bring all his children to me, he wanted them not to miss me. His two sons are sannyasins, all his daughters are sannyasins.Sheela was studying in America, and sometime, ten years before… She was not interested in any search for truth, she was not aware that there is something to seek in life. When she came to me she was almost a tabula rasa, a clean sheet, nothing written on her – that helped her immensely. Once she came to me she never left, and because she was open, clean, without any prejudice, she could understand me immediately. Her understanding has not been any mental effort on her side, she simply absorbed me, she ate every word that I uttered to her.Osho,You taught at the university, is that correct?Yes.You taught philosophy, and you were a young man in your twenties?Yes.Describe the years that you were a teacher, and what you were trying to teach to your students.It was a very difficult situation: I was teaching my students everything that the university prescribed, and I was also teaching them how much in this prescribed teaching is bogus and bullshit. So it was a difficult job – I was teaching Aristotle and at the same time I was teaching them that Aristotle is not right. So my period was divided in two sections: first I would teach them what Aristotle means, and then I would say that he is wrong, that as far as I am concerned Aristotle has been a great calamity for humanity.So I was complained against because this was a strange way of teaching and the students were getting confused. They used to ask me, “What are we going to answer in the examination?”I said that they had to choose: if you feel Aristotle is right, it is up to you; if you feel I am right, it is up to you. If you feel we both are wrong and you are right, it is up to you – choose. And I also recommended to the vice-chancellor not to bother about these complaints, because I am giving them a challenge, and it is the challenge to the mind that sharpens it.And what did the vice-chancellor say to you?He said to me that those students had not come to know the truth, they had come only to earn a degree. I told the vice-chancellor, “Then accept my resignation, because I have not come here to make students clerks, teachers, station masters, postmasters. I am not interested in their degrees and examinations. My whole interest is to sharpen a student’s intelligence, make him an individual, unprejudiced, open, available to reality.” And I resigned.And they accepted your resignation?They tried not to accept it, they tried to persuade me. But this is not my way: once I have done anything I never go back. I told them, “I can feel your concern for me, I can feel your respect and love for me, but once I have resigned, it is finished. Now I will be a wandering teacher.”Then for almost twenty years I was just a wandering teacher around the country – and I found that it was foolish wasting time in the university teaching twenty students. When I can teach fifty thousand people in one single meeting, what is the point of wasting time in the university? So I have not been at a loss; from the university I moved to the universe.Osho,I want to make sure my readers understand all of this: you became enlightened when you were in your early twenties, then became a teacher, and traveled after that. Could you describe for me when you became enlightened, and how that occurred?Enlightenment simply means an experience of your consciousness – unclouded by thoughts, emotions, sentiments. When the consciousness is totally empty, there is something like an explosion, an atomic explosion. Your whole insight becomes full of a light which has no source and no cause. And once it has happened, it remains. It never leaves you for a single moment; even when you are asleep, that light is inside. And after that moment you can see things in a totally different way. After that experience, there is no question in you.So up to twenty-one I was continuously questioning people, and after that day I have been continually answering people – I don’t have any questions.Osho,What was the day like when you became enlightened? I would like to explain it to people who are not familiar with becoming enlightened.It will be difficult for them to understand. Because when that experience happens, there are no words, no thoughts; and when you want to express it, obviously words are needed, thoughts are needed.Where you a student at the time?I was a student.Did you share this with anyone?No, for seven years I kept completely silent about it, because I was waiting for somebody to recognize it – perhaps I had gone mad, perhaps it was just insanity. I wanted somebody to recognize it, and there were a few people who started recognizing that something had happened which is rare and unique.The first man to recognize was an old man who was silent for almost his whole life. Once in a while he would utter a word – meaningless, you could not make anything out of it – but he was respected immensely. His name was Magga Baba. People used to come to him from faraway places, and he never spoke. To have a contact with that man, people used to massage his feet and just sit around him. He might be sleeping and people would be sitting around him, because there was something radiating from that man, something that they could feel like a fragrance.The first day I went to see him, he immediately hugged me and whispered in my ear, “My boy, so you have got it… And it is good that you have not told anybody. Wait for the right moment to tell, because it immediately creates opposition, antagonism, and you are too young. You may not be able to fight. So just wait a little.”Could Sheela's father tell?No.Did you see him after you became enlightened, but before you had told people?Yes, the moment I met him afterwards, he immediately became a sannyasin.You said that the other man told you to wait until the right moment. When was that moment, when did you tell?When he told me, I must have been twenty-eight. And once that old man had recognized it, I slowly started speaking about it. And soon I was in the world, fighting, arguing against anything that prevents people from becoming enlightened.So I have been fighting all the religions, all the politicians, all the educationists; and the more I have fought them, the more I have attracted intelligent people around the world toward me. My people are not like Jesus’ apostles. My people are professors, engineers, doctors, writers, poets, musicians, painters, dancers. I have the most talented group in the whole world.Osho,Describe for me when you were traveling around India lecturing: where did you go, what was the reception that you received?It was different in different places, in different groups. For example, I was lecturing in different universities in India, and India has almost one hundred universities; the students were the ones who got the point most. I was teaching in religious conferences; the people who gathered to listen got the point, but the organizers, the religious leaders, became my enemies.So any conference, any gathering of religious people, I have visited only once – I was not invited there again. In just one visit I had disturbed their people so much, stirred so many doubts and questions in their minds. Because this is one of my basic standpoints: the way to truth is not belief, but doubt; not faith, but inquiry.Because of this I say religion and science start from the same point, although their directions are different. Science moves toward the objective world, but its basic foundation is doubt. Doubt everything unless you come across something which is indubitable. And religion moves inwards, but the basic point remains the same: doubt, and go on doubting unless you come across something that even when you try to doubt it, it is there in front of you – all your doubts disappear.So to me science and religion both meet at a certain point, the beginning. And if it is understood, it will not be difficult to help them to meet at the end too. And it will be a great day of rejoicing when science and religion become fellow travelers.Osho,When did you start the place in Pune, did that come much later?Much later, in ‘73.So you traveled around India for quite a few years?Yes, I went continuously.Why did you stop traveling?Traveling, I was trying to find people who are ready to go with me to any end. The moment I became aware that I had enough people in India, that I need not bother to go on traveling, I could then settle in one place and let people come to me. As I became settled, Indians came and soon people from around the world slowly, slowly started coming.In Pune, there were ten thousand sannyasins living with me. It was a strange place, almost like an island; ten thousand people of different nations, races, colors, languages. And Indians themselves became a minority group, the moment they saw that what I am teaching and saying is not propagating Hinduism. I am not propagating anybody’s religion; I have got my own experience. The Hindu mind is the oldest mind, and the most rotten of course; it is so full of conditionings. When the people from the West came to me they were less conditioned, particularly the young people – to have a communion with them was far easier.So I don’t see any difference between Pune and Rajneeshpuram. In Pune I was amongst non-Indians; in Rajneeshpuram I am amongst non-Indians.Osho,Was it large enough, or did you want to expand at that point?I wanted to expand it. It was large, but not large enough, for the people were going on coming. There were two thousand sannyasins living in the place itself, and the remaining eight thousand were living in hotels, guesthouses, in other people’s houses. The whole of Pune was over-flooded with sannyasins and I wanted all of them to live together, because they had been continuously cheated by people.Indians proclaim themselves very religious, that is just nonsense; they are the most materialist people on the earth. Rents went ten times higher as soon as they saw many foreigners coming, prices of everything went high. In the market if an Indian was purchasing a thing there was a different price and if a sannyasin – a foreigner – was purchasing the same thing it was ten times more. When I had started the place, a huge bungalow with two acres of garden around it was available at twenty thousand dollars. Soon it became impossible, even one hundred thousand dollars was not enough; people were asking absurd prices.For additional land?For land, for houses, for food, for everything. We were searching for land in India somewhere else, but the Maharashtra government would not allow me to leave Maharashtra. They had found a strategy to prevent me: one, that any property that we purchased was never allowed to be transferred into our names – even now.Say that again…?Any property, any land, any house that we purchased, the Maharashtra government did not transfer it to our name.Why not?Simply so that we could not sell it. And we had invested so much money there that unless we could sell, it was difficult for us to move. So this was their first strategy. Now – even now – those properties are not in the name of the commune, because still the commune exists there.The second strategy was, they were forcing the central government that we should not be allowed land anywhere else. The reason was that they were earning so much out of the visitors, Pune became the biggest tourist place in the whole of India. The people who have gone to Pune now say it looks a deserted place: hotels are empty, houses are empty, prices have fallen.You will be surprised to know that the people who were against me had arranged a Hindu ritual – a fire ritual – which one hundred brahmins have to perform for seven days continuously, twenty-four hours of continuous prayer to God that I should be brought back. And these were the same people who had even made an attempt on my life!When did they perform this ritual, recently, or…?Just two years ago.How did you get the financing to start the place in Pune?I had so many rich friends all over the country. I don’t have a single cent, and now I have people all over the world who have money and people who have guts to risk that money with a dangerous man like me.When the government wouldn't allow you to get additional land, is that when you made the decision to leave India?No, they were not allowing for seven years, so that was not the problem. I had no intention to leave India: if they would not allow us land outside, we would have gone on purchasing more and more properties in Pune without changing it into our name. The law in India provides that if somebody has occupied a house for nine months you cannot throw him out. So it does not matter – who cares in whose name the property is, we are the users. So we went on purchasing properties.Still our people are growing there. Since I have not been there, the opposition has died down. In fact much sympathy has arisen, so our people have purchased four hundred acres of land near Pune, and they are developing a new commune there.Did you want to leave Pune?No, for me it makes no difference. Wherever I am, I never go out: Rajneeshpuram may be in the Soviet Union or in America or in India – it does not matter to me, I don’t know who is living outside.Osho,How is Rajneeshpuram physically different from Pune?In many ways. First, it is 126 square miles of land; the Pune place was only six acres of land. It differs because all the sannyasins can live together here; in Pune it was difficult, they were living in separate places. Now they have their own home, and all are living together, working together, producing, creating. The Rajneeshpuram commune is no longer dependent on anybody, we are self-sufficient.Right now five thousand sannyasins are here, but it changes. People go on coming, living here for three or four months, as long as they can afford. Each thing is made by sannyasins: the food, the clothes, everything is created by sannyasins with great love.In Pune it was sad: they were cheated, exploited, they were continuously falling sick because India is dirty, the water is polluted. Here we have pure water, we have pure air, we don’t have neighbors. It is easy to love your enemies, but it is not easy to love your neighbors. We are alone here, in our own world, totally independent. In Pune, everything had to be done so that the old conditioned mind was not disturbed too much. Here, there is no problem.Even if people want to go to the lake and have a naked sunbath, nobody is bothered by it. If people want to dance and sing, nobody is bothered. In Pune it was a difficult problem: if people wanted to dance, then there were so many complaints from the neighbors, and soon the police were there, saying that they are disturbing the neighbors.Now, at last, we are not disturbing any neighbors. And those who are disturbed, they are far away; let them boil up within themselves, let them enjoy, if they enjoy hostility. But they don’t even have the guts to come here and see. They may be just thirty miles away, but they don’t have the guts to come and see. Deep down they are afraid that perhaps we are right and they are wrong – that is the threat. Anybody who has come here has gone away with a different attitude, with a new attitude about the commune.You and other people have described Pune as having many lush gardens, and when this ranch was first purchased it was almost worthless desert land.Yes.What was your impression when you first came and saw the land here?I did not like it, because I have always liked greenery and this was a desert, so I was not impressed. I told my people that they have to change this place into an oasis, and in these four years we have done much. Just four years more and it will not be a desert anymore, we will make it lush green.You will turn the whole ranch into an oasis?No, there is no need: just Rajneeshpuram, the city. All over, I would like it as it is, as a remembrance. All over, I will keep it as it is, as a remembrance of how it used to be and what we have done to it. Mountains have also their beauty, naked. The juniper that is the only tree around here has its own beauty and strength. We will make many lakes – we have already made one, one was already there – we will make many lakes, and we have created a small river just with rain water. We are growing our food, we are working in the fields, we have our own vegetable gardens, our own flower gardens, our own greenhouses. So whatsoever we want to do we can do.And now I can see that it was good to have a desert. It has given us a challenge, and challenge brings creativity to function. And it is far more enjoyable that all the trees and all the lakes and all the greenery have been made by us. It is our creation, it is not second-hand.It has been said to me that you left Pune in the dead of night, is this true?Certainly true!The implication being that you sneaked away, as opposed to announcing it.That is wrong.Can you explain for me how you left Pune?I left in my Rolls Royce, and not in the dead of the night. I left Pune in the day, in the midday sun, with two Rolls Royces, three Mercedes Benz. With five cars, I left in the middle of the day. I left Mumbai at midnight because the plane leaves at midnight – what could I do?Osho,Do you envision Rajneeshpuram becoming a city that will be able to handle more permanent sannyasin residents than there are now?Certainly.In a self-sustaining way, I mean; a larger vegetable farm and…?Yes.How do you envision Rajneeshpuram growing as a city – by hundreds, or thousands, or…?Nothing can be said about that. But it is growing, and I don’t see any reason except a Third World War to prevent Rajneeshpuram from growing.Osho,Can you describe for me what your day is like?It is all-over ecstasy.I'm sorry?It is all-over ecstasy. I enjoy everything: I enjoy my breakfast, I enjoy my lunch, I enjoy my supper, and I enjoy my sweets before I go to sleep. Just please don’t tell my physicians.What do you do during the day?I am completely engaged. In the morning, I speak to my sannyasins for two and a half hours. In the night, I meet media people as long as they want. And after the media has left, Sheela has her work – she is my secretary – for one hour, two hours, as much as she needs. A few things I have absolutely private: three hours in my bathroom, one and a half hours in the morning, and one and a half hours in the evening, that’s my luxury. Sometime you should come and see my bathroom.I'll accept your invitation any time!Good, because it is almost a temple to me. And my people have created such a beautiful bathroom because they knew I love big things! I have a swimming pool only for myself, Olympic size. You should see my garage – almost one hundred Rolls Royces, and my people have improved upon them.How?They have painted them better, they have changed many faults that were there. Even the president of Rolls Royce in America was here to see, and he remarked that there is no other garage where a Rolls Royce is treated in this way. Just because I use them, my people take care of them. They have painted my Rolls Royces in psychedelic colors.Osho,If I could back up for a minute: as the United States was founded on religious freedom, when you arrived here did you have any expectations? Or were you surprised at the kind of reception that you received from Oregonians, citizens of a country that was founded on religious freedom?I was not only surprised, I was utterly disappointed because I have always respected America. I had always thought that democracy really exists here. I have been always against the Soviet Union and its dictatorial government, but when I came here I found it is another Soviet Union. Perhaps the dictatorship is more sophisticated, the democracy only a mask, because our people have been treated so badly, and they are continuously harassed for no reason at all. Their ways of harassment are really ugly, fascist.Democracy exists only in the Constitution. Perhaps for Christians there is democracy and freedom of religion, but not for us. And I want the whole world to know that there is nothing much to choose between the Soviet Union and America – only that the Soviet Union is straightforward, frankly accepting that it is a dictatorship of the proletariat. America is a hypocrite.Can you envision yourself ever returning to India?No, for the simple reason that that’s not my lifestyle. I never return to anything; what is past is past. I have changed places many times – in India too – but once I have left a place I have never visited it again. So, seeing my pattern of the past, a logical conclusion is that I’m not going anywhere. Particularly because of this hostility, this hypocritical democracy, I have to fight here. We are fighting in so many courts, and we will go on fighting up to the Supreme Court. Either they have to be fair with us and democratic, or we are going to expose them all over the world as another dictatorship – not of the proletariat, but of the super-rich.Osho,You described yourself in an interview, as the rich man's guru.I am.Can you explain for me what that means? How that would be different from a poor man's guru? Are you talking about a state of mind, or a state of the pocketbook?I am talking in all the dimensions. A man can be rich in many ways, and economics is not excluded. He can be rich in music, he can be rich in poetry, he can be rich in wealth. All need a certain kind of intelligence to create. And when I say I am a rich man’s guru, I mean I am the master of all those who are creators in any dimension of life. Of course, the poor man cannot create – he cannot even manage his physical survival, you cannot expect him to understand van Gogh or the theory of relativity or Bertrand Russell. And if he cannot understand Bertrand Russell, he cannot understand me.I have doubts whether Bertrand Russell would be able to understand me or not; most probably not, because he never meditated in his whole, long life. He lived almost a century, and he went on denying the existence of God without even bothering to look into himself. Not a single moment in a century-long life did he sit down and look into himself to ask if he is only a body, or if there is something more to it. And if the body is just the outer shell of something which is not material, that means this whole existence is full of life. Even the soul has to be in a tree, if the tree is alive.To me, life is God. There is no other God than life. And to experience life, there is no other way than meditation. So, naturally, it is difficult for the poor people. You cannot hope that Ethiopians will come to meditate here, nor am I going there to teach them meditation; their need is different. I fulfill the needs of those who are hungry for something higher than bread and butter.And you ask me what it means to be a poor man’s guru, it means Mother Teresa, Pope the Polack: these are the people who are the gurus of the poor, because those poor people can be converted to Christianity very easily. Just give them a little support economically, financially; give them schools, hospitals, free food, free milk for their children. That is enough, but that is not religion. That is simply purchasing people, making them Christians on financial grounds. They are simply playing a politics of numbers. They want that poor people should go on existing, because that is from where they can get Christians.In India, I have not seen a single rich man who has converted to Christianity. I have seen beggars, poor people, hungry people, dying people, sick people being converted to Christianity; but I have not seen a painter, a musician, a poet, a wealthy man, turning to Christianity. In fact, exactly the opposite is happening. All the great painters of the West, all the musicians, all the dancers, all those who can think intelligently, have dropped out of Christianity. With them I can have a communion very easily.The pope cannot have a communion with Jean-Paul Sartre, it is impossible. The pope will look retarded before Jean-Paul Sartre. He will not be able even to understand what Jean-Paul Sartre is talking about: anguish, meaninglessness.These are the poor man’s gurus. Up to now, the world was only divided into the poor and the rich. I have made a new division: the poor man’s guru and the rich man’s guru.Osho,A few years ago, you were quoted as saying there was no single path, there was no exclusive religion, you embraced all forms of religion. A few years later you said something different, and when you were asked about that, you said that you were full of contradictions.I am a man of contradictions, and I am proud of it. Only an idiot is always consistent; the intelligent person goes on growing, finding new ground, new spaces. And when I go on finding new groovy spaces, naturally I have to talk about them. And if they contradict my past, so what? Past is dead anyway.Osho,I have been here before and seen the drive-bys, and I think I have a sense of what sannyasins are experiencing during the drive-by. What do you experience inside your car when you drive past your people?I love them. Just to see them is a great nourishment to me, to see them dance, to see them laugh. I start feeling perhaps I am certainly “the blessed one” – so much love I don’t think anybody has ever received. Jesus had only twelve fools around him.Do you have doubts that you are “the blessed one”?Not doubts, I am a perfectly blessed one – I was just joking a little bit.Osho,You don't go out driving anymore around here, is that correct?Not every day now. When I was not speaking, when I was in silence, I wanted to see my sannyasins every day. That’s why the drive-by was invented. Now I am seeing them in the morning for two and a half hours every day, so there is no need. But we have four celebrations around the year; in each celebration – it will be a seven-day celebration – they will have drive-by also.You don't drive around the hills outside Rajneeshpuram any more?In the beginning I used to, but the county road that connects us is exactly the road that goes to hell. So I don’t go, I dropped the idea.Have you seen the sign at the last turnoff to Rajneeshpuram recently? I saw it on the way in today: “Abandon ye all hope who enter herein.”No, because I don’t go there, but I have heard about it. It is right, because what is the need of hope here? We are eating the cake, and they are simply hoping for it.Osho,I have one final question, it's a little frivolous: in order to go on driving you had to get an Oregon driver's license. Can you describe for me what that was like, to take the examination with the Oregon tester? What he was like when he was giving you the test?There was really no need: the person who examined me could understand it clearly, that if I can drive from here to Madras, and I have an Indian license for driving, and I have an international license for driving, so he simply thought it was absolutely foolish. I could examine him! He just went around with me to show that an examination was being done – a nice fellow.And on that note, thank you very much.Good, I was happy.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Roberta GreenSanta Ana Register, Orange County, California, United StatesOsho,The Santa Ana Register is in Orange County, which is appropriate, I think. I've done many articles about Rajneeshees but I never thought I'd get the chance to come here.They said it was safe to tell you that I'm a little nervous! One of the things that I've heard you say on videotape, is that you tell jokes to wake the world up. When did the world go to sleep, and is it waking up?It has been always asleep; only a few individuals in the whole history of man have been awakened – their names can be counted on the ten fingers – not more than that. And it was natural: man has evolved out of the animals, animals are in a deep sleep, they don’t know that they are. That is the meaning of sleep: one is, but one is not aware that one is. No animal is aware of himself.I agree with Charles Darwin, on different grounds. His grounds are ordinary, mundane, and can be criticized – have been criticized. In fact, he is no longer an accepted scientist about the evolution of humanity, the majority of scientists have deserted him. But I support him on totally different grounds. My grounds are, looking at man’s sleep it is the only possibility that he has grown up from the animals – monkeys, chimpanzees – whatsoever, whosoever was there in the beginning. Man’s sleep proves it. And only rarely, once in a while, a Gautam Buddha, a Bodhidharma, a Socrates. Once in a while there has been a man who has the guts to come out of sleep.It needs tremendous courage to come out of sleep because we have so much invested in sleep. It is just like a man who is dreaming that he is living in a golden palace, with a great kingdom, with all the luxuries, and you try to wake him up. He is just a beggar on the street.Only beggars dream of being emperors; emperors never dream of being emperors, that will be simply illogical. The beggar has so much investment in his sleep and his dream that he will resist being awakened in every possible way. He will get irritated, he will oppose you: “Who are you to interfere in my life? Can’t you even tolerate a man who is having a sweet dream?” And even if you force him to be awakened, he is going to fall asleep again, because waking he is only a beggar, asleep he becomes an emperor.The investment in psychological sleep is tremendous. That’s why all those people – Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, Chuang Tzu, Plotinus, Heraclitus – have failed. They did their best; they struggled against the sleep of man, but still man is asleep, and whatever he is doing proves that he is asleep.The two world wars prove that he is asleep. The coming Third World War can be prevented only if we can awaken enough people so that they become infectious and go on awakening other people in a chain. And it has to be done so fast, because there is not much time. Otherwise, the sleepy people are going to destroy this earth, this life. The politicians are asleep.No awakened person can become a politician for the simple reason that he cannot lie, he cannot give you promises that he knows can never be fulfilled. No awakened person will be a politician, because he has no desire for his ego to be fulfilled. There is no ego any more. Ego exists as a substitute self in sleep; the moment you are awakened, ego has no function, it is useless. You are there, now you don’t need it.The man who knows himself has no inferiority complex. Unless you are suffering from some inferiority complex, you will not be involved in any kind of leadership – political, religious, social. You don’t have the base. The inferiority complex is the cause of everybody becoming ambitious. If they don’t become somebody in the world, in their own eyes they have failed. They want to prove themselves, “We are here! We have been here!” They want their names to be recorded in history, although they know that even the greatest names in history, by and by, go on slipping from prominence, become footnotes, move into the appendix and out the door. Naturally, how many people can we go on carrying? But they want to make their name. That, too, proves something animal.All the animals of the world have an instinct; scientists call it the territorial imperative. The dog pissing on the tree is simply making his signature, he is saying, “This tree belongs to me.” He won’t allow another dog to come near. Other dogs will smell his urine and will know that this tree is not free, not available, that somebody possesses it. There are animals, particularly lions, who will go on urinating on a vast territory just so that everybody is aware that if they come there they will be getting into danger.Man also works in the same way. All these nations are nothing but people pissing and making a boundary: this is America, this is the Soviet Union, this is India. You can smell it is a different country, so don’t enter without a visa, without a passport. Otherwise, there is no need for any nations on the earth. What is the need? Can’t we all live as one humanity? It would be tremendously beautiful and tremendously beneficial, because if the whole world is one, you cannot create wars. Unless you find some planets and start creating wars with them, there is no possibility of war.The only way to let war disappear is to make the world one, with a functional world government, with no political parties in the world, each individual choosing on his own, nobody propagating, nobody trying to get more votes. If we can create a functional world government which only takes care of things like the railways, the post office, the telegraph, the telephone – things which are essential and should be taken care of by the whole commune around the earth – seventy-five percent of all the nations’ income will be freed. It is now being poured out for weapons: atom bombs, nuclear weapons and other weapons.People are dying: in Ethiopia they are dying, thousands a day; in India they are starving, and soon other countries will follow. This third world of poor countries is there because of your politicians. A man who is awake cannot be a politician. He cannot be a religious leader either, because these are all ego claims: “I am the prophet of God; I am the messiah; I am somebody special sent from God; you are just ordinary human creatures, I am divine.” This is simply sickness of the mind, these people are suffering from inferiority complex and covering it with fictions.Osho,Who are you?I am just myself – no prophet, no messiah, no Christ. Just an ordinary human being, just like you.Well, not quite!That’s true… Not quite! You are still asleep but that is not much of a difference. One day I was also asleep; one day you will be able to awaken. You can wake up this moment, nobody is preventing it. So the difference is just meaningless; a person who is capable of being asleep is capable of being awake.Osho,Is there such a thing as God?No.Osho,What is within us? You talk about turning inward, what does that really mean?First, let us finish God; otherwise, he will interfere again and again. God is just a projection of the ego. As ego is false and a substitute for a true self, God is the ego of the whole world, a substitute self, because our egos cannot exist without support. They need universal support, and God gives immense support.When I say go inwards, you are not going to find God at all. You are going to find a pure, silent consciousness, and you are going to realize immediately that the same consciousness pervades all. I call it godliness, not God, because it is a quality. Don’t give it a personality, don’t confine it into a person. Let it remain free, flowing. It is more like a fragrance than like a flower. A flower can be painted, a flower can be photographed; a fragrance can only be experienced, you cannot photograph it, you cannot paint it. It is a quality far superior to the personal God. It is an impersonal consciousness, universal consciousness.Doesn't that seem sort of boring?Boring?Yeah, because it's all the same.Yes, to an asleep person it is boring. The person who is asleep needs colorful dreams, changes every night, marriage, divorce, job change. The asleep person becomes bored very easily for the simple reason that his joy is derived from something, it is not coming from his own inner source.I have never been bored since I came to know myself. I have been trying in every possible way. Eating the same food for years, I don’t get bored. Sleeping at the same time, waking at the same time, doing the same thing round the clock for years, I don’t get bored because there is no comparison with the past, there is no comparison with the future.Boredom needs comparison. You have to remember that this rose is nothing new: you have seen it yesterday, you have seen it the day before yesterday. You are bored, and slowly your boredom creates a barrier between you and the rose. You cannot smell it any more, you cannot see it any more. Although you see it, you cannot see its newness, its freshness. The rose that you had seen yesterday is not the same rose. It has the same quality, the same fragrance, but it has its own individuality.When you feel a cosmic consciousness, you are not lost like a dewdrop in the ocean. For the first time your individuality is revealed to you. For the first time you know the luminous being that you always have been, immortal – that you will always be, that now there is no death. There is a tremendous insight into the beauty and the grace of things, and it goes on becoming bigger and bigger, fresher and fresher. It is not that it remains the same, the universal energy is a constant growth.That’s why I wanted to finish with God in the first place, because God cannot grow. Where will he grow? He is perfect. Now perfection cannot grow: he knows all, what more is there for him to know? He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent… And you don’t get bored with God?My godliness is imperfect; it is an opening, always bigger and bigger. It is expanding, and there are no limits to its expansion. And each moment is a discovery for the awakened man. In small things: sipping the tea in the morning, the smell of the tea, the taste of the tea is so new; it is as new as the sun rising outside the window.It depends on how conscious you are to make the world new every moment. It is already new every moment; nothing is static, everything is changing, is in a flux. The tree that you had left at home, by the time you go back a few leaves may have died, the wind may have taken them. A few new leaves may have come up, a few flowers may have fallen to the ground, a few new buds may have opened. It is only to a sleeping man that the tree is the same. To the awakened man, it is new every moment.Heraclitus said: “You cannot step in the same river twice.” And I say to you that you cannot step even once in the same river, because while your feet touch the surface of the river, it is flowing. Your feet go into the river, and it is flowing. By the time your feet have touched the bottom, it is not the same river you touched on the surface. Heraclitus is wrong.Many people have said Heraclitus is wrong, that the world is permanent. I say it from a totally different direction and I know Heraclitus will have to agree with me, because I am not contradicting his basic standpoint, I am refining it. When he says you cannot step twice, he is trying to say that everything is changing; the wife is not the same, the husband is not the same. If people are awake, I don’t think there will be so much despair, gloom, grumpiness, so many complaints about everything.The husband is bored because it is the same wife, the same geography he has to explore every day. The wife is also bored; the moment the husband starts making an approach, immediately she has a heart attack, a headache, anything will do, but somehow, “At least one holiday – just go to sleep silently, don’t disturb me.” And this is the same woman who had been dreaming about this man one day, writing beautiful poems and letters to him – and this is the same man.What has happened? What went wrong? Why are they thinking to divorce each other? They have become bored, and they think that the other is responsible for the boredom. My point is that your sleep is responsible for all boredom. No divorce is going to help: the other person will bore you just the same.Osho,What does it take to wake up?It needs people who can shock you. Your sleep is deep; it is no ordinary sleep, it is spiritual sleep. You need people who can shock you and break all your shock absorbers. Every person has grown buffers around his sleep. Even if a shock is given, the buffers absorb it, it never reaches to the person.The real function of a religious man is to teach how to break the buffers, how to come out of the shell of darkness in which you have been living for many lives. No prayer is going to help, only a master; and by a master I mean a craftsman who has broken his own buffers, who has somehow sneaked out of the shell of sleep. That is the function of a master. But all the so-called religious leaders go on putting more buffers on you.Osho,I just spent two weeks covering Billy Graham, who is a Southern Baptist evangelist.I know him.What do you think of him and people like him?Just worthless, and dangerous to people’s spirituality, because these people like Billy Graham – who are helping people, comforting people, consoling people – are making their buffers thicker and thicker. These are not the people who shock you. You need a Gurdjieff, you need a Krishnamurti, not Billy Graham. Billy Graham is simply a good salesman amongst sleepers. And, of course, sleepers will be very much impressed; this man is giving them what they want.When you come to a person like Gurdjieff he is not going to give you what you want, he is going to give you what really is your need, because the wanting comes from your sleep and your need comes from your real being. So, a man like Gurdjieff will not have gatherings like Billy Graham. He will shock you so much that you will never come near him again. Billy Graham is good entertainment, with nothing spiritual in it.Osho,Rajneeshees love you. Are you giving them what they want?No, never! I am giving them what they need.Then why are they still here?Because they have started loving the shocks that I give them.Does that mean that they are awake?Getting… Taking time, turning this side and that side, pulling up the blanket, but I am after them! No blanket can help, no tossing and turning can help. I will do everything to force them to jump out of bed. And I have all kinds of devices so they cannot sleep.Like what?Like my methods of meditation. You have to breathe so heavily for ten minutes that not only will you start awakening, but somebody else sitting near by will start wondering what is happening! In the Dynamic Meditation they have to scream for ten minutes. Whatsoever they feel like: shouting, roaring, screaming. These are methods to break their buffers.I have lived in many cities and finally I decided that I cannot live in a city. It is impossible, because every day the neighbors were complaining to the police that they cannot sleep in the morning: “This man gathers people who scream and jump and dance and sing and do all kinds of crazy things. And we are tired and we want to sleep. Even on Sunday morning, these people won’t leave you alone: just at five o’clock they start.”I have 112 methods of hitting you. If one misses, another will do.Do you only hit people who want to be hit?Certainly, I never hit anybody who does not want to be hit. That’s why I never go anywhere. You have to come to me, because otherwise that is against the freedom of the individual. If he wants to sleep, it is his decision, and he is completely free to sleep. If he wants to hang around Billy Graham, who am I to create any disturbance and tell him that he is hanging around an idiot?Osho,Why are some people afraid of you?Just because of the way I hit and shake and wake you. They don’t want to wake up, they want to go on sleeping. They really want only consolations, not revolutions in their lives. They want to be consoled, “Don’t be worried, Jesus Christ will take care of you. Just have faith in Jesus Christ, and that’s enough. Don’t be worried; have faith and you will be saved, he is the savior.”This is a consolation. You start feeling you have to do nothing, only at the most go to the congregation on Sunday morning and have faith in Jesus Christ, which costs nothing. Yes, one day it used to cost, at that time it was significant.Wouldn't Jesus be pretty upset with the scene that you are describing?I mean, he said things like, “Take up your cross,” and “Lose your life to find it,” which isn't like what you're talking about.Jesus is two thousand years old. Don’t compare a bullock cart with a Rolls Royce: they both do the same work, but please don’t compare.Osho,Speaking of Rolls Royces, two questions: one is, why Rolls Royces and not Ferraris?And the other is: what does waking up have to do with the material world?I read all these stories that people asked you if you're the guru to the rich, and there are all these Rolls Royces… And there's all this money, all this stuff… This is a beautiful place, and it obviously didn't come from nowhere. What does waking up have to do with the material world?That, too, is giving a shock to the whole world. I can manage even with the oldest model of Ford – the same model in which God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden of Eden – but that will not shock anybody, not even the Oregonians. Even they have better four-wheelers. All my efforts are to shock people; my ninety Rolls Royces have shocked millions of people around the earth. Can you see the joke? And I am going to make them 365, one for every day. That will give heart attacks to many people, but I wonder what it has to do with them; it has nothing to do with them, but they are certainly shocked.Why do you care?I care out of my compassion. It comes with the cosmic consciousness itself. It is a quality of cosmic consciousness, you cannot separate it.Osho,A couple of years ago you talked about the world coming to an end: earthquakes, floods and wars. Do you still see that happening?I will go on saying, “Yes, it is going to happen,” because if it is emphasized continuously that it is going to happen, it can be prevented from happening. If the whole world becomes alert that it is coming close, something has to be done to prevent it. Politicians go on saying, “Don’t be worried, nothing is going to happen.” It is the same as they were saying before the Second World War, before the First World War, “Don’t be worried, we will take care; and God is with us.” The Third World War can happen only if people are not alerted beforehand.If people are alerted in every country, in America and Soviet Russia, then these same people will prevent, and hang their politicians rather than have a Third World War. This will be far better, when I see the president of America hanging from the tree, and by his side the Soviet prime minister and the Queen of England. Just hang all these people on one tree, make it a great memorial, and be finished with the Third World War.I have been saying those things because they are possible; but if you say to people that they are only possible, then they think there is nothing to be worried about, it is only a possibility, far away. People don’t see that far ahead; they don’t have that farsightedness. They are too occupied in their day-to-day affairs. They have to be hammered continuously to realize that the war is coming closer, that the holocaust is coming closer and something has to be done to prevent it.My prediction is not the prediction of an astrologer. I don’t mean that it is bound to happen, that it is destined to happen, no; I am not an astrologer. My prediction comes from a man who wants that it should not happen, and the only way is to emphasize that it is going to happen. It is almost certain unless you wake up.What do you think the odds are?Not much – I am here, my people are around the world; we are going to make a great fuss. And we are not going to pray to God – that I can leave to Billy Graham. God has never helped.For five thousand years the wars have been continuing, and in every war God has been asked to help. And sometimes it is very hilarious: the Germans were asking the Christian God to help them, the English were asking the same Christian God to help them, the French were asking the same Christian God to help them, the Americans were asking the same Christian God to help them, Mussolini was asking the same Christian God to help him.I have heard a story that after the war ended, one German general was staying with an English friend. At the tea table the talk drifted toward the Second World War. The German said, “I have always wondered what went wrong. We were strong, we had a rare leader, we had unity, we had a strong nation. What went wrong?”The Englishman said, “Perhaps you forgot to pray to God.”The German said, “No, we were praying to God every day. All our armies were praying to God every day.”The Englishman laughed and said, “Then I know what is wrong. You must be praying in German, and God understands only English! Next time, don’t do that – pray in English, and then see.”We are not going to pray; there is nobody to whom prayers can be addressed. But we can create a great fuss among the masses around the world. And we are going to, if the moment comes. Right now I am gathering my people and they are coming in thousands every day. Around the world I have communes just like this. Even in the Soviet Union I have my sannyasins. Of course they have to be underground there, they have to meet in basements.The Soviet government is already persecuting my sannyasins, although they are not wearing red clothes, not wearing the mala, so there is no reason for them to find out. But even if somebody has one of my books, that’s enough; or somebody has my picture in his house, that’s enough. One person is caught, and they persecute the person, they harass the person to the point that he has to give addresses of others, other contacts. But, strangely enough, the more they persecute, the more new young people are becoming sannyasins in the Soviet Union itself.We will create as much disturbance as possible to prevent the Third World War, because it is not only a question of some nation being victorious and some other nation being defeated. If it was only that, I would not have cared. It is a question that nobody will be victorious, nobody will be defeated, and all life will disappear from this beautiful planet.Osho,Is that why you have decided to talk to the press, and also to start talking again ( because it's somehow the moment?Certainly, that is one of the most important reasons I have started to talk to the press. I want the word to be spread through all possible media. And I don’t belong to the past and past methods; I am a contemporary man, perhaps belonging to the twenty-first century. I will use every way of approaching people in as many directions as possible, because we don’t have much time. The decisive moment will come by the end of this century.In the coming fifteen years, nuclear weapons will have piled up so much that the politicians will be under a great pressure: “What to do now?” Except a nuclear war, they will not be able to see any other possibility. Already so many nuclear, atomic and other weapons exist on the earth that they can destroy this earth seven times. They can kill each person seven times. And the poor people in the world are not Jesus Christ that they will be resurrected. Once dead, they will remain dead.Even Jesus Christ was never resurrected: it is a fiction. Once a man dies, he dies. Jesus Christ did not die on the cross, that is true, because he was brought down from the cross within six hours, and to die on the Jewish cross in those days a person needed to hang at least forty-eight hours. Because the blood would ooze slowly out of his hands and legs, it took twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Jesus was brought down after six hours, and then he disappeared from the cave. This was a simple conspiracy between a rich disciple of Jesus and Pontius Pilate.Jesus escaped from Israel, and died in India – in Kashmir; I have been to his grave, his grave is there. It is a strange coincidence that Moses also died in Kashmir, not in Israel. When they found Israel, Moses was already out of date. It took forty years for him to find a third-rate place like Israel; in forty years almost all his contemporaries were gone. It was a tedious journey, hungry, thirsty – only one-third of the original people remained.Meanwhile, children were being born, and by the time he reached Israel he could not feel any connection with his own people. The first generation gap was felt by Moses. A new generation had come which had no idea of Egypt, of their slavery. That all looked like mythology. He found a way out because one of the tribes of the Jews was lost somewhere on the journey. It was just an excuse, “Now that we have found the holy land, you settle and I will go in search of the lost tribe,” and that tribe had reached Kashmir.Kashmir is completely Jewish, although there are no Jews. They have all been forced to become Mohammedans, but you can see from their noses that they are nobody else than Jews. Moses died in Kashmir, he must have been ancient by the time he reached Kashmir. His grave is there, Jesus’ grave is there. Jesus lived long in India: when he was crucified he was only thirty-three, and he died at the very ripe age of 112. That is inscribed in Hebrew on his grave, but in India nobody knows Hebrew.These are the only two graves in which the head of the dead person is not pointed toward Mecca: the other graves are Mohammedan – when Mohammedans make a grave the head has to be pointed in the direction of Mecca. If the feet are put toward Mecca it is a great sin, so all the graves are directed toward Mecca; only these two graves are not.And both the graves have Hebrew inscriptions. Of course, Jesus’ grave is not inscribed Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is a Greek translation of the Hebrew, Joshua, the messiah. Messiah means Christ in Greek, and Joshua got changed to Jesus in Greek. On the grave it is absolutely clear, but Christians are not interested.I talked with prominent Christians, I talked one time with Stanley Jones, a world famous Christian theologian, but they were not ready even to go there. I said, “On my expense, you come with me and I will show you the grave of Jesus.” And it is strange that Christians are taking no interest in it, because if it is proved that this is the real grave of Jesus Christ then there will be trouble, their whole Bible will be upset.Osho,This morning you said that someone who has a slave, is a slave to that slave. And I wonder, watching the two men with guns and reading about the threats on your life and the threats on this community, what people who would want to do that kind of harm are enslaved to? And I wonder if you're afraid?I am not afraid; otherwise I would be carrying the gun. But the people who love me are concerned, and I don’t prevent anybody. I don’t even prevent any assassin: if he comes I will say, “Hi! Do your job the best you can.” I will not prevent him, so why should I prevent my people if they want guards? Let them have them. Those guns in a nuclear age are only toys; they mean nothing. Why should I prevent them? They are not carrying nuclear missiles on each side, just toy guns.I respect their love. Whatsoever those people can do, they are ready to do. It is out of respect for their love that I don’t object to those guns, and I know that those guns mean nothing. In this world a bomb can just be thrown on this small commune, and you can create an American Hiroshima. What will those guns do? And it will be good that America also has one Hiroshima, otherwise you are missing something. Japan has two, Hiroshima and Nagasaki; you should at least have one. And my commune is here, available.I don’t object to their guns. They have not done any harm to anybody in four years, and they are not going to do any harm to anybody. Perhaps this is the only place in the whole world where there is no crime, no fighting, no theft, no rape, no murder, no suicide. We have the police sitting uselessly. I have my guards, but they must be getting bored with their guns. I don’t think they will have any chance to use them, but my people are concerned. I respect their love for me, and if they want to do some small thing, let them.Osho,Could we talk about sex? What place does it have in relationships between human beings?I don’t have any relationship with human beings.That's not what I asked, although…And that is not what I have answered. I know what you have asked. First, get over your nervousness.I thought it was gone.No, it happens to every journalist, so don’t be worried. I love people, but the way they are, they need immense changes. Because I propose those changes they become hostile, because they think I am taking away very precious things from them. I am taking away only their chains, but they have been in those chains for centuries. They have already accepted them as ornaments, so my compassion and my love and my concern only create hostility in them.In the French Revolution it happened that there was a castle in France, Bastille, where they used to imprison people who were sentenced to remain in prison till they die. Their hands and legs were chained with heavy chains, and they were put in dark cells with no light, even in the day it was night.When the French Revolution happened, the revolutionaries thought that those people should be freed. They went to free them, but those people fought against the revolutionaries, saying, “We don’t want to go out of the prison. We are comfortable here, and now to get into the world again, to think of earning our bread again… We have been here for forty years and may be living just a few years more. At this stage we are not in a position to come out. In fact, even the sun makes us afraid. We have lived these forty years in darkness. Have mercy on us. Just leave us where we are.”But revolutionaries are always fanatic people. They forced them, they threw them out of the castle and took away their chains. You will not believe it, but half of those prisoners returned to their cells in the night and asked the revolutionaries who were holding the castle, “Please, chain us again. We miss our chains; that weight has become part of us, we cannot sleep. If we do not feel the chains we cannot sleep.”That is the situation of humanity, so many spiritual chains: God, heaven, hell, Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, communist. All kinds of chains are there – political, social, psychological, spiritual – and I am speaking against them all. I want to cut them.Naturally, they feel offended. They cannot understand me, but I can understand them. I’m not hostile toward them; they are hostile. I don’t feel badly that they are hostile toward me. The hostility went so far that efforts were made on my life in India. But still I can understand their problem, so I will not go to them; I will wait here and spread the message.I particularly depend on the young generation, the intelligent people around the world, and they are getting interested in it. I don’t have anybody retarded, average; you can meet my people and you can meet Billy Graham’s people and you can see the difference. Most of these people have been professors, doctors, engineers; they have degrees, Ph.D., D.Litt. Almost everybody is at least a university graduate. These are intelligent people, not gullible. Billy Graham cannot impress a single sannyasin; and, of course, I cannot impress anybody from Billy Graham’s audience. Anything I say will create hostility, enmity.That is the art I have been practicing my whole life, how to influence people and create enemies. So I have stopped influencing… I am just here, and if anybody feels thirsty the well is available. If you don’t feel thirsty it is your business, but I’m not preventing you from drinking from my well. I’m available, but I will not even call you to come and drink from my well.The well is there, open, available, so those who are intelligent are going to be caught in my net sooner or later. And I want only the intelligent people, because they are the people who will be able to prevent what is going to happen to humanity.The ordinary masses and the crowds, the cripples and the blind and the sick who go to Billy Graham for some spiritual miracle, to be healed, they are not my people. If somebody is sick, we have a hospital. I don’t think there has ever been any miracle in the world, or that there can ever be. Everything happens according to existential laws. If sometime you see something like a miracle, you have to do some research and find how it happened. Mostly it is psychological.There is psychological blindness: now it is a known fact that if a person does not want to see, somewhere deep down in his psychology he has come to the conclusion that he does not want to see. Perhaps he loved a woman who deceived him, and she was the one for whom he wanted his eyes always to be there. Now he does not want to see anybody, and a miracle happens: he goes blind. Nothing is wrong with his physiology; the eye specialist cannot find anything wrong with his eyes, the eye hospital cannot help him. Billy Graham can help him.But he was not blind, and that is why he has started seeing again. He was simply psychologically blind. He really needed a great crowd of believers around him, shouting, “Hallelujah, the glory of God, the miracles of Jesus.” This whole atmosphere around him makes him courageous enough to see again. The credit should simply go to the crowd, but it goes to Billy Graham. Nothing happens in nature which is against the universal laws.Do those laws change?No, the universal laws never change. Everything changes according to the universal laws, but the universal law itself never changes.Where did it come from?It is always here, it does not come from anywhere – why should it come from anywhere? The question is absurd. If I say it comes from New York, you will ask me from where it came to New York. The question is absurd, because whatsoever answer is given, the question will remain the same: from where did it come? From where did God come? Nobody asks such a simple question: from where God came? From New York? New Jersey? I have come from New Jersey, but from where did God come?Universal law is to me exactly what God is to the believer, to the faithful. But calling it universal law makes a tremendous difference. You cannot worship a law, you cannot pray to a law; the law has no ears, no eyes. The law goes on functioning the way it has always functioned, it won’t change for any prayer.All prayers are simply asking that you should be treated as an exception. Somebody is praying to God, “I am blind, please give me eyes.” In the first place he is distrusting God, because God made him blind. Who else can make him blind? He wants to change God’s mind. “Please give my eyes back.” And he is ready to bribe God, “I will believe in you, I will worship you. I will go every Sunday to the church. I will donate to the church, to the congregation.” These are all bribes: “Give me my eyes back.”These simple people – most of them simpletons – who gather around Billy Graham and people like him, can be easily exploited. All the religious leaders of the world have been doing that for centuries in the name of God. All the religions, not only Christianity.My religion is more a science than a religion. If somebody is sick, he should go to the hospital; we have a beautiful hospital here. If somebody needs education, he should go to the university; we have our own university here. If somebody is feeling anxiety, anguish, tension, nervousness, he should go to the meditation classes. If somebody is having some problems about relationships, wife and husband and children and friends, we have therapy groups for him. For every need we have a scientific process.But miracles are not possible here, because I don’t want to exploit gullible people. And what is the point? The world is on the threshold of committing global suicide and somebody makes a small miracle, gives some solace to one human being, when the whole of humanity is on the brink: it is stupid. These people should think on a larger scale.I am absolutely concerned, because I see what is going to happen if humanity remains the way it is. But the problem is that if people are not going to listen to me, then it is their business. As far as I am concerned, my work is finished. If this earth simply dies out, it makes no difference to me. I am making an effort with my people, that whether the Third World War happens or not, get enlightened. Be awake. Because perhaps this earth may not be able to survive after this century – only fifteen years are left.It is a great device, too. When you are challenged with global death and the gap is only fifteen years, you have to think about yourself. For the first time, you cannot go on living the same old way, doing the same old stupid things. Something essential that can bring a transformation to your being before the world comes to an end becomes significant. So if my people are awakened, I don’t care: if those people don’t understand, let them have the Third World War also, let them be satisfied to their hearts’ content.Osho,Do you think things like bioengineering would produce people that would be more likely to want to be awake?I believe in bioengineering. I want science to create a better man in every way, but the problem is that all the governments are forcing the scientists to create more and more destructive weapons. They are forcing them into the service of death.I would like all the scientists to be in the service of life. Then bioengineering certainly can create far superior men, healthier, more talented. In fact, we can fill the whole earth with geniuses; there is no reason why not, we have all the basic things in our hands. We can make man live at least three hundred years very easily: without getting old, without having cancer, without having AIDS. This is all that your old past has given as a heritage.We can have people we need – we need more Albert Einsteins, we need more Picassos, we need more van Goghs – and bioengineering can make it available. All kinds of artists, scientists, geniuses, mystics, philosophers, scientists… We can fill the whole earth with such intelligence and glory that people like Billy Graham will have to commit suicide, nobody will go and shout around them.Osho,Are you concerned about the world population?Certainly, I am very much concerned about the world population, because if we can somehow postpone the nuclear war, the world population is going to kill humanity. It is growing with such speed that unless science is diverted toward human needs, it is very difficult not to have many Ethiopias. And it is a sad thing that all around you there are people dying and you cannot do anything, you feel almost helpless.Everything can be done, but all science is geared toward death. Who cares about Ethiopia or India? Who bothers? Their whole concern is how to be more powerful than the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union’s scientists’ whole problem is how to be more powerful than America. And small, stupid nations also are lined up either behind America or behind Russia. There are a few fools like India, too, who think that by remaining unaligned they will be in a better position and can have the friendship of both sides. They are wrong, they don’t understand the ABC of politics: unaligned, they are the enemy of both parties, not friends. Nobody can trust them, and nobody can help them.The world is almost cut in two parts, and the population is growing more in the poor countries, because the poor man has no other entertainment than sex. The rich man has many other things, he can afford many other entertainments: he can listen to music, he can enjoy Mozart, he can see a great dancer, he can go to the theater, he can have the best wine available. He has all the beautiful books to read, all the beautiful statues to collect.But the poor man has nothing other than sex as his entertainment. So he goes on producing, and the religious leaders help him to go on producing, because they want larger numbers.Osho,Do you advocate enforced birth control or sterilization?Certainly – absolute birth control for twenty years – because it is not a question of small importance. If for twenty years there is absolute birth control, it will give two things to humanity: one, the population will start disappearing. I want the world to come to one-fourth of its population, only then can it be a beautiful garden of life.And, if people become accustomed to birth control for twenty years, sex will not remain a serious problem. After the pill, sex has no significance at all – it is just fun. It has nothing profane about it, and nothing sacred about it. It is just a biological game, and if two persons feel like playing tennis, let them play.Osho,What about diseases like AIDS?They are also contributions from your religions, because your religions first forced celibacy on people: monks and nuns. Celibacy is absolutely against the laws of biology, against your body. Nobody has ever been celibate unless he was impotent, and nobody can ever be celibate. He can pretend he is celibate, but from the back door he will find all kinds of perversions. Homosexuality was born in the monastery, that is why I say it is a religious contribution.Monks living in separation from women, nuns living in separation from men – what do you expect? Those monks are going to start homosexuality. It is now a well-recognized fact that animals in the wild never become homosexuals, but in zoos they do. It is very revealing; in the zoos, if there are no females the animals become homosexuals. And your monasteries are nothing but zoos; they converted men into homosexuals, women into lesbians.AIDS is the ultimate outcome of homosexuality, and the pope should take responsibility for it. Mother Teresa should take responsibility for it, the shankaracharya should take responsibility for it, Ayatollah Khomeini should take the responsibility for it – these are the people.My approach is: stop this nonsense of celibacy. Let your monks also have fun with their biology; it is a gift of nature, beautiful. Let your nuns also enjoy their bodies. Why are you making them dead before they are dead?If I am listened to, I will make nunneries and monasteries mixed, and I will take away all barriers which prevent people from taking sex just as fun. It is not a sin, it is not something to be repressed. That is as stupid as somebody repressing urination; I wonder why there has not been some religion preaching celibacy as far as pissing is concerned? And believe me, there will be people who will follow that ideology also. Of course they will have to piss somewhere, hiding, but before the world they will be celibate.AIDS is certainly one of the major problems, just as major as a Third World War. Unless homosexuality and lesbianism disappear completely, we cannot prevent it from spreading. So heterosexuality should be preached from every pulpit; it should be rewarded, praised, and the people who do not follow heterosexuality should be put under treatment, they are psychologically sick.If we want AIDS to disappear, then homosexuality and lesbianism have to disappear, otherwise there is no way. Medical science has not been able to figure out any medical cure for it. It is a sure killer: once you have it, you can live at the most two more years. That is at the most, more probably you will live not more than six months; and it is good if you die sooner, because the longer you live, the more you will spread it.Now the rich people who have AIDS are hiding it, only the poor people become exposed. The rich people have their private physicians; they can manage that the physician keeps his mouth shut. They don’t want their families to know that they have AIDS, they don’t want anybody to think that they have AIDS.I know senators in America who have AIDS, I know senators who are homosexuals. But the trouble is that these people are in power; the doctor cannot say anything, and they go on and on spreading it. There have been great artists, painters, poets who were homosexuals. We should look to stop every homosexual from having any further contact with any man or woman.If we cannot stop them… We have found two persons having AIDS in our commune: we immediately put them into isolation far away in the mountains, with everything comfortable provided for them. All that we can manage, we give to them; but they should not mix with the other people of the commune, because AIDS can be caught not only by sexual intercourse, it can be caught even by kissing.Kissing should be completely prohibited all over the world. Of course people will feel a little awkward, they will need some substitute. My substitute is that lovers should start changing from kissing to rubbing their noses together. And enjoy it, what else can be done? There are aboriginal tribes where this already happens; they rub their noses, they don’t kiss. They are far more scientific. Kissing is not hygienic at all; rubbing noses is perfectly hygienic.If you don't have a cold.That is not much of a problem. A cold is such a small problem that even if you catch it, nothing is wrong in it. It lasts for seven days if you don’t take any medicine; if you take medicine it lasts one week, so what is the problem in it?

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Christopher ReedThe Guardian, London, EnglandOsho,Good evening. The Guardian in England is a liberal, serious ( as opposed to tabloid ( daily newspaper. I also work for a similar paper in Australia, The Melbourne Age, and a similar paper in Canada called the Global Mail.I was here three years ago, and I'm absolutely amazed with the difference I find today. Astonishing, absolutely astonishing! So much so that I could hardly recognize any landmarks because everything was so different. Does it give you a lot of joy to see the place flowering, or don't you interest yourself in that?I am absolutely interested; this place has to become one of the most beautiful places on the earth.Do you think it will? You have your troubles…?No troubles.With the neighbors…?We enjoy it.Osho,I read in your paper that in your press conference you gave only a one-word answer when asked if you and the neighbors would ever coexist peacefully. You said, “Never.” That's a long time.That’s true. In the first place, we don’t have any neighbors here. In these 126 square miles, we are alone, an island in itself. In the second place, I don’t believe in any compromise. If they are right, we will mix with them, we will drop our own philosophy of life. And if we are right, then they have to drop their prejudices. But I don’t believe in coexistence, I believe in existence; either we, or they. Coexistence is a political word, and coexistence is simply a cold war. Just to avoid – postpone – real war, politicians go on talking about coexistence. If I love you, we don’t coexist, we exist together. Only enemies coexist. I don’t have any enemies: if they are hostile, that is their problem – we are not hostile toward anybody.I see you use the word coexistence. It has become political, indeed, but you are saying that you coexist in the sense that you have to live with these people, so you tolerate it; and you're saying that you would rather enjoy living with these people. Do I interpret you correctly?Tolerance is an ugly word. To tolerate means you have already humiliated the other person, you are already higher, holier, more understanding. The people who talk about tolerance are the most intolerant people. I never tolerate; either I accept, or I simply forget all about the person. Why should I tolerate? He has the right to be himself, I have the right to be myself: there is no need for any tolerance. And they are hostile, we are not hostile. So we enjoy their hostility; that is the only entertainment in this desert.But it's no longer a desert, as we have seen.We will change it into an oasis – are changing.But don't you think that a lot of people would misunderstand what you've said about tolerance, who haven't the benefit of sitting here and thinking it over, and discussing it and exploring the idea? They see it in print, and they have been taught all their lives in democracies, that tolerance is a good thing, that one should tolerate because otherwise the alternative is hostility, possibly leading to violence.No, that is not the only alternative, they are wrong. Just listen to the sound of the word tolerance: there is hostility in it. Already you have accepted that there is no possibility of friendship, there is no possibility of being together lovingly. Tolerance simply means somehow to live and let them live. It is not a beautiful word, it is certainly ugly. There is no need for tolerance if there is no hostility, it is simply to cover up hostility. We don’t tolerate anybody, because we are not hostile in the first place. For example, Jesus says, “Love your enemies,” but that means first you have to create enemies; otherwise, how are you going to love your enemies?There are people, though, in the world, that we'll probably never meet who start out life pursuing completely different goals with a totally different attitude, a different set of values from ourselves. Who's to say which is the better set of values? When you say, “Live and let live,” that also means tolerance, and therefore, in order for these two ideas to live and let live with each other, you have to adopt this ugly word tolerance and tolerate each other?No, I accept their right to be themselves. I am not tolerating; I will criticize them if I feel it is wrong. It is out of compassion and love that I will criticize them, because I am concerned about them. Tolerance simply means: go to hell, we aren’t bothered. There are different sets of values, different ideologies, and I love the freedom for myself, and for them. They may be against me, that does not make any difference. I will fight for their freedom too, just the way I will fight for my freedom. But I will not tolerate, I will criticize them. Either someday they have to accept me, or someday I have to accept them. Tolerance means that we have decided that now there is no possibility of any bridge. So what to do? Just let them be, and you be. I am not…So that's your use of the word never, then, because you mean infinity?Infinity – to the very end of infinity, I will not tolerate anybody.Osho,I see… When you mentioned different ideologies you said, ”Don't get institutionalized.” You say you fight that. And, “Don't become an organization, remain an organism.” In other words, you don't approve of institutionalized religion. Then I look at the sign on my hotel wall, and it says “Rajneeshism.” Perhaps it's semantics, but ism would suggest a structure ( an ideology ( which would suggest an organization. So if you have Rajneeshism, you're bound to become organized.That is simply the poverty of language, there is no other word to replace ism. It is just out of necessity that my people have used that word; otherwise, there is no ism here, no organization here. We are living in an organic unity. But it is always a problem with language: language is old, language is coming from thousands of years, and you have to use that language. An ism needs a certain dogma; we have none. An ism needs a certain discipline; we have none. An ism needs a fanatic approach; we do not have any fanaticism. So it is just a necessary evil that we have to use the word ism. If you can suggest another word, we can change it.Osho,Well, Rajneeshism has been described as a cult. Do you disagree with that?Absolutely.You do?Yes.Why would you disagree?Because we are not a cult. Christianity is a cult, Mohammedanism is a cult, Hinduism is a cult. You have to understand my idea about cults. When the master is alive, it is religion; when the master is dead, then it is only a corpse. And that corpse becomes the cult. With Jesus, Christianity was a religion. Jesus gone, now it is just a dead weight over humanity. For two thousand years we have been carrying a corpse. I am still alive, that’s why I say this is religion, not a cult. And I tell my people: the moment I am gone, please disperse. Don’t keep any church behind me. We don’t want any popes, and we don’t want any Vatican, and we don’t want any dead thing to be carried by the coming generations.I don't see that happening, to be quite honest. I don't see your adherents here ( your disciples, followers, fellows in your community ( I can't see them just dispersing like that, the day after.That’s up to them; I cannot force them, I can simply say. I never force anything.So your final wishes will be disobeyed, then?Yes, if they want to disobey me, they are absolutely free. That’s the difference: I am not a prophet, or a messiah, or a messenger of God. My word is not the authority. They have to think over it and decide on their own and take the responsibility. But nobody can throw the responsibility on me.Osho,Well, you're on record! When you talk about no organization and discipline, I must say, looking around, I see people I thought were chauffeurs, everyone wearing these sort of plum-colored peaked caps. They appeared to be uniforms, in fact, and a lot of people do appear… I don't mean just the choice of colors, but actually wearing identical clothes This would strike me instantly as organization of an extreme kind.It is not. I have given these red clothes to my people so that I can recognize them and the whole world can recognize them. This is their identity card, all over the body, so there is no need to pull it out of the pocket and tell to people who you are. But it is not an organization, and I don’t think that there is any spirituality in the color red. You can see me: I hate the color red! [indicating his feet] These socks were given to me!I hate them! I have put my people in red because that is the only color I will not use.I take the point. But I meant not the choice of a certain color: these people were wearing identical clothes, the same shirts. They matched, like an army.If they love to have identical clothes, it is perfectly okay.Do you think they do? Have you asked them?I have never asked, that is their business. And if you look closely, they are using different shades of red; that is up to them what they do. And they are using different kinds of clothes, not similar. Yes, there are a few uniformed people that belong to the police department of Oregon. They want them to be in a certain uniform, so we have to put them in a uniform. But they belong to the police force of Oregon; you must have seen their caps and everything.But they're in red!Here they have to be red.Then the police don't mind if they wear red?Here they have to be red. Even if the governor wants to be the governor of Rajneeshpuram, he will have to be in red. This is just to shock people around the world. And it has proved of great significance. For example, thousands of people have come to me in all these thirty years. Those who became sannyasins, remain somehow related with me. Even if they come after thirty years, I recognize them, I remember them; and they also feel a certain connection with me. Others had also come, had loved me, but never became sannyasins. They are lost in the big world. I cannot recognize them, and I don’t think there is any communion existing between me and them.This has been immensely helpful. I know where my people are and I know whether they are increasing or decreasing. I know what they are doing, and I know that I can suggest to them. I never order. I can advise; to take it or not to take it is their business. I am happy both ways. And, secondly, my red people around the world have shocked everybody. That is of great importance: the moment you shock somebody, he starts thinking about you, he starts inquiring about you. He becomes curious what is the matter, he starts reading my books.So many people have come here and become sannyasins, and told me that the first experience was of a shock. But that shock led them to inquire, to read, and finally they ended up here. So this has been of tremendous significance, useful. And it has also made my people strong, because moving in red clothes in society you immediately become the focus, the center: you need some guts to face all kinds of hostility, it creates something like steel in you. My people have been expelled from universities as professors, from schools as teachers, from businesses, simply because they were wearing red clothes.That's a harsh penalty for wearing red clothes.But a person who is ready to renounce his job, a good salary in the university, just to be himself, becomes stronger. I don’t want my people to be ignored. Hostility is perfectly okay. Hate I accept, opposition I welcome. Even if they start shooting my people, there is no problem. But I would never like my people to be ignored.Osho,I don't think you'll have to worry about that very much.Talking about not wearing red, it would be true of course, that by not wearing red everybody looks at you, because you're the only person not wearing red? You did say that you're the great showman, and that would be part of the showmanship, would it?Certainly.It's very good! And your robes, they are also part of the showmanship?Everything is part of my showmanship.Do you design them yourself, or do you have people…?My people design everything for me.Oh, it's not your creation, then? I thought you chose them yourself.No, no need, because I have so many intelligent people from every profession. We have the best legal experts, we have the best professors, scientists, carpenters, seamstresses, tailors; we have every kind of people. Our commune is absolutely self-sufficient. So I have my seamstresses who design, and they are doing so well that I need not interfere. I love whatsoever they are doing. I have my own jewelers – just look at my watch!I saw, yes. I've even read about it.My own people made my watch.Oh, really?And these are real stones, remember.The diamonds?They are not diamonds, they are real stones!Glass, cut glass?But idiots think it is a fake watch: it is real stones, authentic stones. They are fools, they think it is diamonds. Then they start thinking it is a fake watch. It is not a fake watch, it is as authentic, existential, as any diamond can be.Does it tell the time as well, then?The best! My people don’t do anything less than the best!And you wear silk. Is that your preference? When I was here last, you were wearing a more woven, sort of natural-looking fabric.My people were doing that.Have you gone up in the world, to silk?My people were weaving those clothes. I liked them, but then my physicians were not ready for me to use even synthetic wool, because I am allergic.Oh, sure.So I had to drop those beautiful dresses, and I had to move to other clothes. So this is my physicians’ change.Rotten old silk!Yes, whenever we change, we go higher.Osho,I also read that you don't own your cars, that you are a guest here, in fact; and that… So really, you don't own anything.I don’t have anything.It strikes me that it's costing your followers a fortune to keep you in poverty.That is true, but they enjoy it and they love it. If I refuse it, they will have heart attacks!Osho,All the discussion that has taken place in the media about you and this place and agonized appraisals of the spirituality and the religion and its content, and how religious it is or is not… And you say that you're a showman. It struck me that perhaps people ought to take you at your word.Every religious master has been a showman, and I have defeated them all.But why do all the religious masters have to be showmen?It helps their work, it attracts people to them, and those who come close know that the showmanship is just on the outside. Inside, there is immense work to be done.Would you like to elaborate on that? Would you explain to me the immense work… You don't mean in a practical way?That means meditation. That they have to become more conscious, more alert, and finally they have to come to a point where their unconsciousness becomes completely conscious. Sigmund Freud divides consciousness into three layers: consciousness, subconsciousness, unconsciousness. Meditation moves in the same way, from conscious to subconscious: the conscious overwhelms the subconscious and finally it overwhelms the unconscious. If Sigmund Freud was to look into one of my sannyasins, he would be surprised.Even he, eh?Yes, because there is no division, there is only single consciousness. There is no shadow, no darkness around. So that is the inner work and showmanship certainly helps. The other religious leaders never said they were showmen, they had no guts to say the truth. Don’t you think Jesus was a showman?Oh, yeah, miracles.Yes, miracles and walking on water, and bringing the dead back to life, and proclaiming himself the only begotten son of God. I don’t do any such stupid thing. But all religious leaders of the world have been showmen in different ways. The founder of Jainism, Mahavira, remained naked. Now, that is great showmanship, without clothes… You cannot think that he is a showman, but what is the point of being naked?He never used any razors, blades. Every year he would pull out his hair, and thousands of people would gather there, tears in their eyes because their leader is pulling out his hair. Every year it was a great congregation of his followers. And what was he doing? Because he said that he would not use any mechanism – even a razor is technology. But he made great showmanship out of pulling out his own hairs. And this needs only a little practice, nothing much; once you have learned it, you can do it. I am the first religious man who is telling you exactly what is the case. I am exposing myself totally; I am not keeping any secret, no private life. All your religious leaders were somehow cheating, exploiting, deceiving.I would absolutely agree. I personally am an atheist, so this is music to my ears. But you're saying you are the first one who is not?Certainly.I believe you, but would you like to explain the validity of the claim?For example, no religious leader will accept that he is not celibate. All religions require celibacy, and celibacy is impossible – it is scientifically impossible.Well, that's not quite true, is it, because the original Mormons were polygamous, weren't they? They made a virtue out of many wives and much sex, I presume. So not all religions… Many, but not quite all.There have been a few religions who made that, too, a virtue, and that was for the same purpose. For example, Mohammed had nine wives. Now that too is showmanship. He allows Mohammedans to have only four. Only the prophet can have nine, he keeps himself special. So what other religions were doing with celibacy, he was doing with the number of women. The basic thing is the same: that he is special, higher, holier than thou.Osho,But you're special too, aren't you?No.You're the only man or woman here who enters a building on a path strewn with rose leaves, I thought that was fairly special.That is their joy. I am not special, I have not asked them. If they don’t put flowers, I will never inquire what happened to the flowers. If they don’t dance, I will not inquire what happened to the dancers. I can dance alone – I just need the camera!Showmanship, yes!But I don't see how you can say you're not special in these circumstances.No, I am not.You are the only person who doesn't wear red.Because I am not a sannyasin. I am nobody’s follower.No, but in this context, that's another special thing, isn't it?No, it is not. You are here also.Two of us! Yes, well I am special for some of those same reasons: because I am not a sannyasin, I'm not dressed in red, I'm working.No, you are not special. Every day journalists are here, you are not special. You are a guest only for one day or two days; I am a guest for a longer time, that is the only difference. I can leave this place any moment. I don’t even live in Rajneeshpuram, in the city, I live outside.In Wasco County?In Wasco County.With all those nice neighbors!Sure, but you may not actually seek being special, but nevertheless that's the case, isn't it?No.I don't see how you can deny that, since an eyewitness would look at the crowd and say, “He's special, He's wearing blue.”Anybody would get that idea that I am special, but I myself am saying I am not. I am just a guest here, and if they enjoy my being here, I can remain here. I don’t have any belongings, I haven’t had anything for almost thirty years – no bank balance, not a single cent; I don’t have even pockets in my dress. Even if I have to leave this place, somebody will have to arrange a ticket for me, because I don’t have anything. I think – I hope – the American government will do it.Osho,I am reminded of another class of people ( very select ( who don't carry money, like yourself, and that's royalty. The queen never carries money, and that is a mark of being special, because other people have to do it for her, which elevates her in importance, doesn't it? So it makes her special.They have to do it for her, and she knows she is special, and she has never said that she is not.They don't have to, do they? I've never gone into it but they wish to do so, presumably.She is special, she belongs to the royal family, she has the special blood – that is only stupidity and everything that she orders she gets. If it is not given to her there will be problems immediately. For me, there is no question of ordering anybody. I am not of royal blood, because I don’t think that any blood is royal; and she must be special, otherwise who would choose such an ugly woman as a queen?Oh, absolutely! I know, shocking, shocking, national disgrace, her son as well ( awful.Yes, he is retarded.Well he is an upper class Englishman, so he must be.And that retarded son soon will become your kingI know, I know. It's a shocking thought. There's hope yet; there could be a communist revolution, but probably not likely.In England, you think, a communist revolution…?No, I'm afraid not. Karl Marx thought there would be, he thought Germany and Britain would be the places where there would be communist revolution.Karl Marx proved wrong on all the countsOsho,Right… Another ism. You've said some really critical things about communism. Do you mean communism as the system in the Soviet Union at the moment, or do you mean the communism envisaged by Karl Marx and Engels?I mean both: Karl Marx, Engels, they were simply bookworms. Karl Marx spent his whole life in the British Museum; he knew nothing about the real humanity, he knew nothing about the mechanics of how evolution goes on. He was only concerned with the British Museum. Before the museum opened, he was standing there, and many times he was carried out of the museum unconscious, because he worked so hard on the books that he was found unconscious and had to be taken in an ambulance.Maybe he meditated too much, lapsed into the unconscious.He never meditated for a single moment. If he had meditated for a single moment, communism would have a different quality and flavor to it. He was simply the mind, and meditation is a state of no mind. You don’t go for meditation to the British Museum. He was a scholar, a great scholar, but whatsoever he said did not prove right.He was thinking that communism would happen in the richest countries, which was a logical conclusion of his philosophy, that where the division between the poor and the rich is bigger, the revolution will happen. And the revolution has happened in Soviet Russia, which he had never dreamed; revolution has happened in China. If he wakes up in his grave, he will not be able to believe what has happened. Soviet Russia was a poor country, China even poorer; his whole idea of class struggle went wrong.In America, there is no possibility for communism, for the simple reason that most of the Americans are middle class. The super-rich are few, on one hand, and the super-poor are few, on the other hand; and the middle class is never for revolution. The middle class has too much to risk. Revolution is possible only when you have nothing to lose. The middle class has much to lose, and the middle class also has the hope that sooner or later they are going to enter into the higher, the super-rich. They cannot lose that hope by creating a revolution.I am completely against Karl Marx, for the simple reason that no two human beings are equal: equality is psychologically wrong, physiologically wrong. Every individual is unique and incomparable. I am not saying that somebody is higher and somebody is lower, I am simply saying it is absurd to compare a marigold with a rose flower. It is not that the rose flower is higher and the marigold is poor; they are different. People are so different and unique.I believe in the individuality of human beings, and I don’t want them to be counted in a class. That makes numbers of them and destroys their individuality: you are the proletariat, then the class is important, you are not. That’s what has happened in Russia. All individuality has been erased, and if anybody tries to be individual, like the man Sakharov, then he is immediately punished. You cannot be individuals – the nation, the society, the Communist Party – you can be a member, but you cannot assert your individuality. Now, Sakharov is one of the best physicists of the contemporary world, and he is suffering in Siberia. And he had not done anything.Except disagree.He had just signed a few petitions for other scientists who were suffering, and that was enough to finish the man completely.Osho,With your belief in the individual, the United States would be the place for you, wouldn't it? Because it's almost the national philosophy ( it's been called the cult of the individual… But there are critics who say that it leads to lack of compassion, civic sense, social community in this country.Compared with starving people in Ethiopia there are few poor, but the government lists thirty million people who are officially poor: who don't have a roof over their heads, the basic needs, three square meals a day. The reason for this has been given as the emphasis on individuality to the point that the community is neglected, hence private wealth and public squalor. Do you accept that, and is it a consequence you are able to live with?Just wait, you have asked so many things. First, America is a hypocritical country, so whatsoever they say is one thing and the reality is totally different. In the four years being here, I have started believing that Oregon belongs to the Soviet Union, not to America. They are fascists, they are fanatics. They talk about freedom of expression, freedom of the individual, but we are denied everything.You mean you, here?Yes, they have been trying to destroy us in every possible way. It is not a democracy; it is only a pretension. Secondly, when the American government recognizes that thirty million people here are poor, you should remember that that is according to the American standard. Those thirty million people in India would not be poor, they would be middle class.Yes, sure. It's relative.It is very relative: to be poor in America is far better than to be richer in India.Well, if I may say, I wouldn't agree: I agree with you that the poor person in America might be rich compared with the peasant in Bangladesh, but the peasant in Bangladesh is not necessarily being exposed every day to incredible riches. Here, it's the constant taunting, the contrast of the two, that makes for a lot of violence and dissatisfaction, does it not?It is good. It is healthy, because it keeps them going on, bringing their intelligence, their potential. America allows them to struggle for themselves, and the contrast is there so they know people can make it; people have made their mark, and if they are failing they are responsible themselves. In the Soviet Union they will not feel like that, because there is nobody to be compared with. The Soviet Union is a poor country, still. It is not that the poor have disappeared and the poverty has disappeared from Russia. On the contrary, the rich have disappeared, and poverty has been distributed equally, so all are equally poor.Man has a psychological necessity to have somebody ahead of him; otherwise, he is a lazy animal. If there is nothing to achieve, nobody to compete with, he relaxes into whatsoever situation he is in. Russia will never become rich for the simple reason that the Russians are all poor. They don’t have anybody there whom they would also like to be. In a free society where individuality is respected, it is the individual’s responsibility if he is poor. All opportunities are there for him not to be poor.Osho,What you just said sounds to me very much like the words of a conservative Republican American politician. There's nothing wrong in this, but I'm surprised that, with your emphasis of compassion, humanity, love of individual, you could sound so much like people who are accused of having none of those things.In fact, it is my compassion and love for them that I am saying it. I would like people to prove themselves. That is part of my compassion; I would like them to struggle and prove their mettle. I would not like them to become numbers, that is out of my love. And I am not a politician, Republican or Democratic, I am not a politician at all. But the poor have to be given a chance to rise.Opportunities should be made available to the poor, but communism gives no opportunity. It forces equality, which is wrong. In that equality, the people who are genius creators of wealth disappear. Henry Ford cannot be born in Soviet Russia. Even Karl Marx cannot be born in Soviet Russia – impossible! They won’t allow such a man. It is my compassion; it is not my politics, it is my love. And people have the potential, you just have to give them the challenge.And if the American government is failing with thirty million people, it is not the philosophy of individuality; it is the American government’s stupidity. They should make more opportunities available – and they can, but their whole energy is going into nuclear weapons. In America there is no need for anybody to be poor, but the American government is interested in nuclear weapons. They have another race going on with Soviet Russia which keeps Russia poor, which keeps America’s thirty million poor, and small poor countries also joining in the race out of fear.This nuclear race is making the whole world a big Ethiopia. I would like the American government to completely stop piling up nuclear weapons. Those thirty million poor will disappear tomorrow. And it is so absurd to go on piling up more and more nuclear weapons, because you have already more than you need. You can destroy humanity seven hundred times, so what more you want?Osho,And you believe, in the quotation from your book, you believe this is inevitable: the way things are going, there will be a holocaust, nuclear style. You gave a date for that between now and… Did you say 1990?Just by the end of the century, because the way things are going and they go on continuing, at the most they can take fifteen years to reach to the climax and then have an explosion.I can thoroughly accept your reasoning about the nuclear threat and the inevitability of a holocaust, but did you not also say that there would be cataclysmic events in California, of the kind associated with nature: catastrophes, floods, earthquakes? How do you know this?That too is not a vision; I am not a visionary. That too is part of my reasoning. For example, in my childhood in India the seasons were absolutely fixed: on a certain day every year for thousands of years the summer has begun, on a certain day the rains have come; it was absolutely fixed, there was no question of change. But after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that changed. Now in India the weather is no longer certain, something great has happened in the atmosphere.And these explosions go on. They go on trying in the oceans, at the poles, and if these explosions go on, there is a possibility that the eternal snow of the Himalayas may start melting. Even if the Himalayas alone melt, all the oceans will be raised fifty feet. And that is only the Himalayas. If the North Pole and South Pole also join together, and other small mountains follow, which is natural, then cities like Mumbai, Calcutta, Karachi, New York, San Francisco, poor Portland. All will be gone.In fact, the weather in California has been different, I know through my own experience. In the last three or four years the usual pattern has gone awry. Is that why you selected California as the scene of the worst disasters?For many reasons: one, California is in the most perverted psychological state in the whole world – more homosexuality, more lesbianism, more AIDS. Perhaps the ocean will not need to destroy them, they will destroy themselves.Osho,It seems I'm getting all my information out of my hotel room; but I saw in my bathroom a notice that said that AIDS will kill two-thirds of the world.Perhaps more.I think that's an exaggeration, isn't it? I've never heard anybody say anything approaching that number.It is not the maximum number, it is the minimum.Two-thirds?Yes, for the simple reason people are not thinking of it, because they are not aware of what AIDS is. They have only heard the name; they don’t see the implications of it and how it can spread like wildfire.Well, how?For example: first, wherever there is homosexuality, lesbianism, it is going to spread immediately. One contact with a homosexual is enough for you to get it. Not only that, even kissing a person who has AIDS is enough for the transfer.Doctors disagree with you. They say absolutely the opposite.No.They do!No, there are doctors who agree. There is no problem in it: your mouth, my mouth, they all carry thousands of cells, living cells, and saliva is one of the things that carries AIDS to your mouth. Kissing should be absolutely prohibited.Have you mentioned that to…?I have mentioned it to my people: I have told them to start rubbing noses with each other. And there are a few experts who say that there is even a possibility that AIDS can spread just by breathing. It is not yet established and agreed by all, but the possibility is there; and if AIDS can spread through breathing, then it is impossible to avoid it. No precautions can be taken, unless everybody wears a doctor’s mask. Only Jaina monks do in India; they will be saved. They cover both their face and their nose, for different reasons – they were not aware of AIDS, but they will be saved.Osho,You take a very pessimistic view.Going back to the idea of cults: there is a psychologist who studied cults in the USA called Dr. Margaret Singer ( she's eminent and has impeccable academic credentials. She says cults have things in common, and some of the things she mentions could apply here.One of the things is the creation of what she calls “group paranoia,” that it's in the interests of the people who are leading the cult to create the sense of group paranoia, because by doing so they achieve greater loyalty, greater commitment from the faithful. When I see the guns and the search, and I sign five documents as a visitor, and when I hear you on the subject of AIDS and nuclear war… It adds up.But let me first… Just wait a minute. Let me first finish that impeccable lady. I love ladies, but not impeccable ladies.But she has devoted many years of her life to the study of religious cults.She is an idiot if she has spent so much time studying cults. Has she studied Christianity as a cult?Oh, yes!No!Oh, yes, she discusses that.No, not Christianity, not Hinduism, not Buddhism, not Mohammedanism. In the cults they will study the Hare Krishna movement, Scientology, the Moonies. And remember the criteria they have: for example, if she says that the group has to be in a kind of paranoia, then she should come here and see. Nobody has any paranoia.Well, I don't object to it, and I agreed before I came, but my luggage has been searched, and a dog has sniffed over my hired car. That doesn't even happen to me when I go to the White House.That is because we have been persecuted by the Oregon government and the American government; the responsibility is theirs. We don’t like, we hate to search anybody! But what are they trying to do? To send drugs with somebody. They have not been able to find anything against us in four years; now they want to plant something. And once we became aware from very reliable sources that now they are trying to plant something, that they want to bring drugs or other things and plant them here, then we had to start that search.That is not paranoia, that is simply precaution against idiotic politicians. We have done no harm to anybody, we don’t mean to do any harm to anybody. In fact, I hate anybody searching; it is a humiliation, distrust. I don’t want to distrust anybody, but what to do? They have tried even to bribe my sannyasins. And whatever I am saying to you may reach to them within just a few hours; they have planted their people amongst the sannyasins.I'll bet there are a couple of FBI people sitting here, right now ( that could be possible, I agree.So that’s why we had to be cautious; it is such a small commune, they can find anything and destroy it. We will make every effort not to let them do what they want to do. The dog is not searching you; the dog is searching the Attorney General of Oregon, so please don’t feel offended. Those guns are not for you; those guns are for those Oregonians who have been saying that they would like to shoot me, that they would like to destroy, burn the whole commune.We will do everything; we are not suicidal people, nor do we hanker for any martyrdom. This is not another Jonestown. They forced the Jonestown people to commit suicide; we are not people to commit suicide. We love life, and we will do everything that is possible to prevent their doing any harm to us. Even if we have to invite Soviet Russia for our protection, we are going to do that!But all the Attorney General of Oregon has done to you, it seems to me, is harass you with lawsuits. He hasn't sent any people with guns, he hasn't shot at you ( the man who blew up the hotel may have been a random madman.No, he is not mad; because he jumped bail and for one and a half years he has been hiding. Now he has been caught again – he is not mad.Well, mad people can run away as well as sane people.No, mad people will not be so intelligent, the way he has been. But I’m not concerned with that, I am concerned with the attorney general and the governor. They had a secret meeting, they did not allow any journalists – they talk about freedom – and the meeting was about us. They did not even allow one of our representatives so that he could present the case from our side. And the governor told the press, “I will give you the information after our meeting.”And whatsoever he said was an absolute lie, because the confidential secret file has been found: they thought that it had been burned, but it has been found, and it has been shown on television. In the secret file they say that the army should be kept on alert, that the army should be aware that if they are ordered, in three hours they have to reach Rajneeshpuram. And you ask me about these few toy guns that my people have! This man, Governor Atiyeh, told the press conference, “We are trying to cool down the atmosphere. We are trying to get the commune people and the people of Oregon to cool down, not to get too heated.”This is what he gave to the press conference. And inside the conference, they decide for the army to be ready so they can reach here in three hours’ time. We have now filed a case against the state for conspiracy. Now we have the document – and what have we done, that they think they need the army and the military to reach here? So these few toy guns are just… My people love me and they want to protect me. But you should understand that it is silly – what can you do with these toy guns? In a nuclear age, these toy guns should be given to children to play with.But I don't see that there's need for such weaponry because the threat hasn't been of that magnitude.No? You think putting the army on alert and telling them to be ready any moment…?Well, I don't know that. I haven't read that.You don’t know that. Your ignorance does not mean that you have to make an opinion: then try to know it before you make an opinion.I might ask for proof ( the document itself, if it was on a document ( then I would accept it.Yes, you can see it.[aside] Perhaps you have the full document? Okay.But that sounds to me like what they call a contingency plan, isn't it?Whatsoever they call it… But that means certainly they want to harm us.Why do they want to do this?That, you have to ask them.They deny it. They say that they feel you may have contravened some legal matters, in the opinions of some lawyers.We are in the courts, and we have won almost fifty percent of the cases. The remaining fifty percent we are going to win; because it is so true, they cannot…But you don't think that will be the end of the matter, it seems?They will appeal if they fail here. Or if we fail, we will appeal. It is not going to end easily.But supposing they exhaust all the legal possibilities to the Supreme Court in Washington, and you win every single case, do you then think that will be the end of it?No.Why not?We will then invite them to drop bombs on us and finish us.Oh, come on! I know the police did in Philadelphia, so I suppose, it's been done…That’s what I will do: invite them, and finish it, I don’t have any trouble. But we are not going to leave this place alive. If they want us to leave this place, they will have to destroy it; and with it they will have to destroy their mask of democracy, respect for individuality, the Constitution and freedom of expression. All that will go down the drain with Rajneeshpuram. And it will be a good experiment to do something like Hiroshima; we will enjoy it, we will celebrate it.Osho,I think Dr. Margaret Singer would be very interested in that comment you just made. I accept what you are saying about the suicide, but you do have one thing in common with Reverend Jim Jones. He also said, “We'll ask the Soviets for help, if we need it.” And he was referring to the American government. Does that bother you in any way that you share that same…?No, he was a Christian, a Christian priest, and he had a congregation of the most retarded black people. There is nothing in common between me and himExcept that appeal to the Soviet Union.With that appeal I am saying that we are not going to die as easily as they think: we will fight. Although we are such a small community, we will fight in every possible way. If legal ways are finished, then too we will fight; because basically we know we are being true, and they are being fascist. And we are not afraid – remember, they are afraid.Tell that impeccable lady that we are not living in paranoia. The whole of Oregon is living in paranoia, they are afraid. Journalists have been telling me that people are afraid that we are going to take over Oregon. I said, “Oregon! So small a thing… We will not bother. We would like to take over the whole world.” And our way of taking the whole world is totally different; it is not war. I will just go on spreading my red people around the world, we will take it spiritually.Well, I'm sorry that you take such a gloomy view of the intentions of the Oregon state government, but I find it difficult to believe that anybody plans the death of you or your followers because that strikes me as hyperbole.You don’t know what has happened to me in the past, that’s why. Attempts on my life have been made in India: I have been given poison, a knife has been thrown at me before ten thousand sannyasins. It is a miracle that ten thousand sannyasins were eyewitnesses; and because the police got the information that something is coming, they had reached there before the person who was to throw the knife. So there were twenty police-officer eyewitnesses: still we lost the case. Ten thousand eyewitnesses, twenty police officers as eyewitnesses: still we lost the case, because that man was a Hindu chauvinist and the Maharashtra government is a Hindu chauvinist government.But isn't there a world of difference between someone attempting to murder a political or religious leader ( after all, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated ( and the planned bombing of an entire community such as you have here?I am saying it; because I don’t go anywhere, it is very difficult to assassinate me. It was easy in India because I was traveling. It is no longer easy to assassinate me. Because that has become impossible for them, that gives the possibility for them to destroy the whole community with me. But we are not afraid of it – that you have to remember.Oh, I have no doubts about your resolve; it's your reason that bothers me.Why do you think they hate you so much that they want to murder five thousand people here?Because I am against all the religions, and, here particularly, against Christianity. I am against all the politicians, because I think the world has suffered for thousands of years because of the politicians. They are the greatest criminals around. I don’t agree with any kind of morality in which they believe; I think it is immoral.I don’t believe in marriage, I think marriage is an ugly institution which has put the whole humanity in a madhouse. The problem is that I stand for totally different values and they are afraid because they have no argument. We have been inviting the Governor, “Come here. Let us have an open argument.” He would not come: for four years, he would not come.That strikes me as unreasonable.We are ready to have an open discussion: with anybody they can find to stand for their values, I am ready to discuss our values. That seems to be the human way to decide a thing. But none of them is ready to come here. They are in a paranoia; they think anybody who comes here is hypnotized. So, be aware!Shall we change the subject? Or do you wish to go?No.Osho,I was going to ask you one thing more: I admired your comment on the subject of women and your ardent support of feminism or equality. I see a lot of your people organizing here are women. Is that another of the things they have against you?That too, certainly, because I am against all that man has done to woman. And in my own way I am trying to do a little compensation.Osho,To someone observing the various views that you have, it is quite a mixture, because some of your views appear conservative, some appear quite radical, others appear reformist-liberal. How are you able to encompass so many things which some people would say disagree with each other? How can you be all those things all at once?I am not a mediocre thinker. My consciousness is vast enough to contain all, all contradictions, but within me they become complementary to each other. So you can find anything you want in my writings. If you love me, you can find everything that makes your love deeper; if you hate me, you can find everything that makes your hate deeper. I give opportunity to all kinds of people to choose whatever they want to choose; I am vast.Okay?Thank you, I've enjoyed our discussion.Come again.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Prem ArupOsho Times, Amsterdam, NetherlandsOsho,You once said, “Holland will be one of my most orange countries.” Why is that so?You can already see it happening. It needs guts to be my red people, and Holland is one of the countries which has existed all through history with tremendous struggle, because the earth level is low and the sea level is higher. Holland has been continuously fighting against the ocean, and it has given a certain strength to the people. Only those who have strength to stand with me can belong to the red commune around the world. Holland is certainly going to be my country. My people are continuously growing in Holland.You will be surprised to know the fact that when the theosophical movement decided to declare J. Krishnamurti as the world teacher, Holland was the country chosen for the declaration. Six thousand topmost leaders of the Theosophical Society had gathered there in Holland.Out of all the countries, why Holland? There is something very essential that the Dutch people have grown within them; somebody just needs to trigger it. J. Krishnamurti chickened out, could not take that great responsibility. I can take any responsibility without any problem, because basically I am an irresponsible man – it does not matter.But the Dutch people have grown something in them down the centuries which can have a synchronicity with me; the same with the German people. Germany cannot remain without becoming red, because they have been through two wars which would have destroyed anybody forever; but if you go to Germany now, you cannot believe that this country has survived two world wars – not only survived, but is now the richest country in Europe. They have some guts.I cannot say the same about the French, they are simply lousy. There is no possibility for France; it is doomed, it has no spiritual corner in its being. Yes, a few French people will be coming, those who still have the soul alive in them. But about the whole country this cannot be said. Every country grows in different ways on different lines and gathers a different kind of energy. One of the reasons Gurdjieff failed and could not help humanity was that he chose France to be his headquarters. Germany would have been of much significance, Holland would have been better, but not France.France has become satisfied with women and wine. It has no aspirations for something beyond the horizon. It is very limited in its vision and very closed too, because it is a very egoist country. France thinks itself to be the most superior country in the world. Their language is the most superior, their philosophy is the most superior, their paintings are the most superior. These are just ornaments for the ego, and the more a country is surrounded by egoistic projections, the less is the possibility of its transformation.On the other hand, Germany has given birth to the biggest geniuses in philosophy, in theology has produced the greatest mystics. But it has no bragging about it. As I have felt people from almost all over the world, I can say certainly that it is hard to bring a German to transformation, hard because he will resist and fight; but if you go on persisting, the day he drops his resistance he is forever yours. Then there is no way back, then he will never waver. You cannot say that about the American. You can predict that he is going to waver.American history is only three hundred years old, and America is not an ancient race. It is not a race at all; it is a hodgepodge. The French are there, the English are there, the Spanish are there, the Portuguese are there, the Italians are there… It is a marketplace. People don’t have roots, and to have strength you need roots.The deeper the roots go, yes, it is harder to change you, but once you are changed, it is almost impossible for you to fall back. Once a German is deprogrammed, nobody can reprogram him again. The American can be reprogrammed within two days and you can deprogram him again within two days. He has no roots.In India, we have a certain creeper without roots. It simply lives as a parasite on other trees, from one tree to another tree. It spreads far – sometimes miles in the forest – but it has no roots, it simply lives on those other trees.Americans are simply like that creeper: they don’t have any roots; they don’t have anything to stand upon, their past is so small. That’s why they cannot project about the future either, because this is the logical way: the longer the past, the longer you can project the future.The Third World War is just knocking on the door. This century is going to end, and with the end of this century either we will have the new man on the earth or no life at all. But Americans are fast asleep.Many Americans have come to me. In almost twenty years, many have come, many have gone, very few have stayed. And those who have stayed are really not Americans. The American Jew has stayed with me, because he has no country; he has only his past, but a long past and of tremendous importance. He knows how to deal with people like Moses, Ezekiel, Jesus, Baal Shem. And what does America know – Henry Ford, Rockefeller? They cannot have a deep intimacy with me.Yes, a few Americans have remained with me. Mukta is sitting there, but she is not really American, she is Greek. The American generation is just changing continuously – everything is a fashion. They can come to me also as part of a fashionable movement, but they are not going to remain here, because soon they get attracted to something else. They don’t know how to grow roots.And different countries have different ways. It is not a coincidence that forty percent of my people are Jews. And I have been hitting hard on the Jews – so much so that rabbis have started writing letters to me saying, “You seem to be anti-Jewish.” They don’t know that Jews are the majority of my people, and I can hit on them because I love them and they understand my love. In my hit they receive my love.Not a single Jew has left me. Once he has come, he has come forever, he has found his Israel in me. He need not go to Jerusalem, he need not bother about Moses and Jesus; there is no need. They have found a more contemporary Moses here.Each country can be given a certain characteristic. For example, Indians: they pretend to be spiritualists, and it is the most materialistic country in the whole world, the most greedy. They could not be with me for the simple reason that I was exposing them – and unless I expose you totally, you cannot be reborn.Indians started escaping from me the moment I started exposing them. They took the hint, and it was right: they are greedy, they are materialist; they don’t have any longing for spirituality, only pretensions. Yes, once, twenty-five centuries ago, perhaps they were spiritual, and that idea of the past has followed them like a shadow. But they completely forget that for twenty-five centuries you cannot go on pretending that the shadow that is following you is alive. Indian spirituality is dead, and I don’t see much hope for its revival.But a few Indians have been with me all along, in all the seasons, in all the changes. So when I say something about a country, it does not apply to individuals. Now Avesh is sitting there – a great Frenchman – and he is going to sit there forever. I have destroyed his French-ship completely. Arup herself is Dutch. Can she conceive of ever leaving me? Not even in dreams, it is impossible. I can say that with certainty, because love is never uncertain.England is so sad and depressed – obviously: they were on the top, they had the biggest empire any country ever had. It was said that the sun never sets in the British Empire, somewhere or other it is always rising. As far as the whole Empire was concerned, the sun was always rising somewhere; it never set in the British Empire. Neither Alexander, nor Napoleon, nor Hitler, nor Stalin has known such a vast empire. Nobody has been able to know such immense power, and suddenly all that has disappeared like writing on water. It is natural that they will be so depressed, sad. They would not like to come out of their depression. They cannot accept laughing, dancing, singing. They have lost so much, and you are thinking to dance? They have lost everything, and you are proposing, “Let us sing a beautiful song!”The English will find it more difficult than anybody else to be with me. But that does not apply to individuals, let me remind you again. Teertha is there: the moment he entered my room, many years ago, not for a single moment has he left, not even to visit England again. He has dropped his wife, he has dropped his parents, he has dropped everything. He was a well-known encounter-group leader, he had the best growth institute in Europe, but once he looked into my eyes, all that was finished. I knew it, he knew it – that he was born that day and a new life began which had nothing to do with the past.Individuals will be coming from everywhere, but a few countries have more potential. For example, it is very difficult to get into the Mohammedan countries – almost impossible, because they are still so uncivilized. Civilization has not happened anywhere, but there are countries which are a little less uncivilized and there are countries which are more uncivilized. Civilization is still waiting to happen. It is waiting to happen for you: you are to become the heralds of civilization.But Mohammedan countries are not even contemporaries. They have not moved a single inch from the times of Mohammed. Fourteen centuries have passed and they are still thinking the Koran is the holy book. One percent you can manage to give some spiritual meaning, with great effort, otherwise it is not of any importance. And Mohammedans have remained faithful to the Koran. They are not ready even to listen to anybody.A few Mohammedans are my sannyasins, but those poor people ask me, “Osho, we want to be sannyasins, we want to be contemporaries, we want to have the revolution that you are giving us, but we cannot go in red clothes back home. They will simply kill… They don’t argue.”Mohammedans don’t know argument. They don’t know any philosophy. Their only argument is the sword: either kill them, or be killed by them; whosoever is killed was wrong. That is strange. It is very easy to kill Socrates, any idiot like Muhammad Ali can kill Socrates without any difficulty. Socrates is not a wrestler, he is not a boxer; just a good punch on his nose and he will be finished with all his philosophy. Physical strength or strength that comes through weapons cannot be a substitute for argument. Argument needs intelligence, and that intelligence is missing there.In India, I had come in contact with hundreds of Mohammedans. You may not know that India is still the biggest Mohammedan country in the world as far as numbers are concerned, even after the division with Pakistan. When Pakistan and Bangladesh were one with India, of course, half the population of Mohammedans was in India. But even after Pakistan was separated, Bangladesh got separated, still India had a larger Mohammedan population than any other country. Countries which are completely Mohammedan, even they are far behind.Those Mohammedans in India are a little better than Mohammedans in any other country because for centuries they have been living with all kinds of philosophers, all kinds of religions, all kinds of attitudes, approaches. Obviously their fanaticism has become less, but even that fanaticism is enough to kill you. You cannot say anything against one holy book – and that is Koran; one God – and that is that of Islam; and one prophet – and that is Mohammed. In these three statements, the whole Mohammedanism is complete. You cannot speak against any of these three…But the sannyasins who are Mohammedans have asked me, “Give us permission; we will keep the mala hidden in our houses, we will keep the robes hidden in our houses. We cannot even let our family know about it because that will be just the end. And if you want,” they have told me, “that we should be killed, we are ready.”Now, I am not a fanatic about the color of the dress or the mala. I said, “Don’t be worried about it. I need your heart, and if that has become red… I need to be within you. If I have reached there, then don’t be worried. And I don’t want anybody to be killed in my name, I want people to live longer, healthier, happier in my name.”Mohammed says to Mohammedans, “If you die in my name, your paradise is certain.” I say to you, “If you live in my name and love in my name and dance in my name, you are already in paradise.” I don’t guarantee anything about the future, how can I tell anybody to die in my name?The earth is so small but it is divided in so many different groups who have grown differently, had different histories – and their past is significant, that has to be taken into account. So, whenever I have said anything about Holland, or Germany, or England, I was simply indicating the possibility.I have so many Italians, but not reliable; very greasy and slippery! They try hard, nice people, but what can they do about their greasiness? Something in them is always slippery. Many Italians have come to me, very few have stayed. Those who have stayed have changed a lot, but still something of greasiness is there. Now they are not going to slip back, but the possibility remains. They are not absolutely out of it.But if we can get the right people, the people who are not that ripe may start following them. That’s how the human mind functions; it is imitative. If we have enough red people around the earth, then more and more Italians will slip into being red people. Slipperiness has no direction, you just have to give them the right place from where to slip.And if we can create a rejoicing around the world, how long can England remain depressed? Nobody wants to be depressed. How long can they go on singing “God Save the King”? And what about them? God only saves the queen or the king, what about the people? God has not been in favor of the people. Those people are waiting for something to happen in the world that can drag them out of their gloominess, their depressiveness, and can make them free, free of the glory that they had of the empire which they are missing.We can give them a new glory which nobody can take away from them. That glory that they had was really ugly: exploiting people, poor people all around the world – and your whole joy was dependent on these starving people, and you went on exploiting them. If you are sad and depressed today, it is the consequence of your own actions. You have made millions of people sad, depressed, you have killed millions of people around the world to save the empire. Now who is going to suffer the consequences?England is now a dark hole. That does not mean that people want to live in that dark hole, but we have to make an effort to reach into their darkness with our torches, we have to throw ropes into that dark hole. Somebody is bound to catch hold of the rope and we can pull him out. And it is a question only of a few people starting to move, and others may follow.So in every country we have to work in a different way, seeing the country’s characteristic. Now we have communes all around the world; every commune has to understand what kind of people you are surrounded with, and what can be done so that they can be pulled within you. It is simple arithmetic.Osho,When you were talking about Werner Erhard, the businessman who discovered that personal growth sells better than encyclopedias, you said that the business of growth is just an American name for God.The San Francisco Examiner Chronicle, reporting this, noted that you did not comment on the personal growth marketing of your own Osho International Meditation University here. What is the difference and what part does the university play in the life of the commune?The difference is great. He was a door-to-door salesman of encyclopedias. Our university is not going door-to-door to sell anything to anybody. Our university is a well, those who are thirsty can come and drink out of it. It is available, but we are not persuading anybody. On the contrary, I am making every effort to offend them, to make them angry, become our enemies. Do you think this is business tactics?In business, the customer is always right. Here the situation is totally different, the customer is always wrong. From whatsoever source he comes, he is always wrong – and he comes on his own, in spite of all that I go on doing continuously to prevent him from coming. Nobody in the whole world has offended so many people as I alone have done, single handedly.But even after all this turmoil that I create, and offensiveness and antagonism in their minds, a few daring people come. These people can be relied upon. Just their coming is significant. Certainly, my university is not part of the marketplace.Werner Erhard was part of the market world. He was taking his EST from one hotel to another hotel around the country, then outside the country. And he was neither a philosophical man, nor religious; he had registered EST as a corporation, a business corporation. He was paying income tax on all his income.Our university is not a business, we don’t have to pay any taxes for the university. The degrees that our university gives are of no use in the marketplace, because we don’t want our degrees to be recognized by any government or by any university or any other institution. We refuse to be recognized by them, because just the fact that we let them recognize us means they are somebody higher than us, somebody more authoritative. We don’t accept any government’s recognition, because no government is worthy of it.Our university is absolutely a free phenomenon. Those who want to come, come knowing that whatever we have to offer is of no use in the marketplace. In fact it may make their market-world more difficult for them, because a person who comes here for three months or four months to do a course in the university… We are not giving him growth the way Werner Erhard was giving; he started from where you are.Our work is first to destroy whosoever you are – whosoever, without any condition. We destroy you first, dismantle you first, and unless we have deprogrammed you completely there is no growth possible. And we don’t teach you any growth, to be deprogrammed you start growing on your own accord. Werner Erhard was teaching you techniques of growth, but if you are a monster and you are being taught techniques of growth, you will become a bigger monster.Werner Erhard never offended anybody. That’s simply the way of the businessman – never offended anybody, everybody was happy with him. The government was happy, the churches were happy, the politicians were happy. Not only in this country, but in other countries too. He used to go to India to pay respect to the so-called Hindu mahatmas. Muktananda was his guru. He even went to pay his respects to Morarji Desai, when he was the prime minister of India. And by mistake he even came to me, thinking I also belong to the same category of mahatmas that he had known all his life. He must have been shocked.When he was sitting in front of me, I could see how difficult it was for him just to sit there. And when I told him that he could ask anything, he simply said, “No, I don’t have any questions.” Laxmi had given him my latest books, just as a present. He went into the hotel – which was not far away, just a few minutes walk – and gave those books to a sannyasin, without even looking at them. Some great fear must have arisen in him. Reading those books might disturb his mind. And certainly I was not the person that he had expected. I would have destroyed his whole EST first.I have to begin from scratch. First I have to demolish the old building completely, I don’t believe in renovation. Howsoever beautifully you renovate a building, it still remains the old rotten thing; just painted here and there, a little bit supported, but it is just the old rotten building that you have given a facelift. No, it is better to live in an A-frame, but new, fresh, young.Werner Erhard is a businessman, there are no two opinions about it. And nobody can compare me with Werner Erhard. Our whole approach is totally different. Our approach is first to deprogram the person completely, and then leave him alone to himself. Don’t give him another program. Leave him alone, empty, just a pure nothingness. And out of that nothingness grows everything that existence wanted to grow in that man.We bring the person close to existence, from where he has been taken away. Once we see that you are communing with existence, our work is finished. We don’t give you growth, we simply take away all nonsense that is surrounding you and which perhaps you think is growth. Growth comes of its own accord, you just have to be utterly open and vulnerable.I am not a businessman. I could have been and then I would have defeated all the businessmen in the whole world. But I have chosen to offend everybody, ready for their hostility from every nook and corner of the world.A businessman tries to be respectable, and I have been trying my whole life to be notorious. Unless you understand me, you will not be able to see why I unnecessarily create hostility in people. I am not a businessman. I have nothing to sell to them. If they are courageous enough to come nearer to me, I am going to burn their whole personality. I’m going to take their whole skin off their bodies and then leave them alone so they can grow fresh from the very beginning.That growth will not in any way be a credit to me. That growth will be a credit to the person who dared to come, who dared to pass through the fire, who dared to risk his whole life. The whole credit goes to him.Osho,Going back to Holland: your commune in Holland was living in a prison and has now moved into a monastery – is this progress? And what do you think of them having a disco in a church next?That’s great. I want discos in all the churches and cathedrals and all the mosques and all the temples around the world. They are the best places for a disco. So this is a great advance, that they have turned a church into a disco! That’s what I want.And if they have moved to the monastery, for the first time the monastery will have real people, not hypocrites, in it. For the first time, the monastery will hear laughter and singing and dancing and people loving each other. The monastery may have seen monks who were simply monsters and nothing else. Now the monastery will see what the word monk really means and what is the meaning of being a monastery.The word monk means one who is capable of being himself, individual, alone, independent. That is the meaning of the monk – alone. It has nothing to do with Christianity. You will recognize the word in other words – monogamy, monopoly – it is the same word. Monk, monastery… Monastery means people living there totally independent, completely free from any strings. And yet they have one thing in common, that they all want to be alone and individuals. This is the common factor that keeps them together.So it is good that our commune in Holland has moved into a monastery. We will make it a real monastery because my people are real monks, and the monastery will be really celebrating. My people, even if you give them a graveyard, are going to make a carnival there. The graves will become tables for drinking wine. They will soon turn the graveyard into such a beautiful place that you would never imagine that thousands of dead bodies are under the ground.The actual fact is, wherever you are sitting, at least ten persons’ dead bodies are on that spot underneath you. Because so many millions of people have lived down through millions of years, it has been calculated that not a single inch on the earth is not a graveyard. And for all these people who have lived on the earth and died, this is the minimum – that on every spot at least eight persons are buried deep down.So there is no problem: when we can make any place a place of joy, we can change a graveyard into a joy. Just inquire of those people, because it happens often that by the side of the churches there are graveyards, by the side of the monastery there are graveyards. If there are graveyards, transform them into dancing places, playing grounds; fill them with laughter and joy. Perhaps those who are buried there will for the first time have a time which they never had in their life. It is just great.Do you think some of those ghosts might still be kicking around underneath?There are no ghosts. There was only one ghost, the Holy Ghost, and he too finished only by making a poor girl pregnant. Then what happened to the Holy Ghost? He must have committed suicide thinking of the consequences that followed; his making the woman pregnant was illegal, criminal, irreligious, a sin.Secondly, out of that sin, what else can you expect but Jesus Christ? People had to crucify him. Seeing his son being crucified, do you think the Holy Ghost would have survived? Since then, nothing has been heard about him, no news, the Vatican is silent.There are no ghosts, there are only dead skeletons underneath. The soul goes on moving to new forms. It depends on how you have lived, your whole life essence determines your new form. What you have desired your whole life and have not been able to fulfill, that desire at the last moment of your life stands as the only thing that determines your life. There is nobody directing anything, it is simply the law.For example, a man goes on writing to me… Obviously he’s from California, it is so difficult to find anything right in California. The man goes on writing to me that he loves to dress himself in women’s dresses. When he was in California, there was no problem. There are many who are doing that and they are doing it perfectly. It is very difficult to detect that this is a man – with tits and all! But here he finds it difficult, because everybody knows he is a man. So he goes on asking me what he should do, “Should I go through plastic surgery and become a woman?”Now, this man if he dies will become a woman. That is his whole mind, full of only one desire, to become a woman. And it is my experience that this is not an exceptional case, this is the rule. Men get tired in seventy years’ life of being a man, and every man thinks women are more juicy, enjoying life more, and he has been simply sucked of all his energy.And the woman goes on thinking her whole life that as a woman, whatsoever she is going to do, she is not going to be really equal to man. Liberation or no liberation, man is going to dominate her. The woman carries the desire to be a man, and my experiments with many people about their past lives even surprised me in the beginning, because the man was a woman in the past life, the woman was a man in the past life.For many lives you have been human beings, man or woman. But if we go deeper, you have been animals. If you go still deeper, you have been plants – but that is millions of lives back. The whole physiological, biological evolution stopped at man. This whole growth up to now was horizontal. At this point, man has come to a crossroad. He can go on horizontally, changing man into woman, woman into man, but there is no growth. Now he has to take a vertical route, not horizontal. And that vertical route is my whole effort.Meditation is a way of giving you a vertical route, then there is no need to be reborn. Bodies move horizontally, souls have wings. Once you are fully alert, aware, conscious, enlightened, then this is your last body, because only bodies can move on the horizontal line. Now you are a soul. You will have to move vertically.But what a joy! Not to have a cage of bones, muscles, blood vessels, nerve system, a skull. Sometimes it is good experience to go to a medical college and see a skeleton: this is you, really naked. Not only the clothes are removed… He has gone too far, he has removed everything. Just bones – just the fundamental structure is there, and everything else has been removed.Once in a while, standing before a mirror, just close your eyes and think that you are a skeleton. Then open your eyes and look into the mirror. Try to figure out what kind of skeleton you have. That’s why I say you should first see a few skeletons. I suggest that in the university you should have a few skeletons hanging around all over the place, so nobody can bypass them – and that will prove also that this is not a marketplace, and everybody has to understand that this is your reality.When the soul is free from all bondage, it moves into the cosmos. It becomes one with the sky, with the sunrise, with the flowers, with the birds, with all that exists. It spreads all over. It has no more any limitations, it is as big and vast as the whole universe itself. That’s what I call liberation. That is the end, because nothing is more blissful, more ecstatic, than to achieve it.Osho,Earlier you were talking about national characteristics and you were just talking about the last desire at the moment of death: so if someone gets reborn into some nationality, does that whole national history become part of the body, of the mind, or how does it connect?Mostly it never happens, or very rarely. A Dutch is born again in Holland; a Hindu goes on again and again being a Hindu, because his whole conditioning can be adjusted in a Hindu environment. Perhaps, rarely… I have yet to come across a person who was something else in his past life; now he is an Italian, and in the past life he was a German. People go on being born in the same race, in the same atmosphere. The only change that happens is from man to woman.Perhaps my people will find it difficult: “Where to be born?” – because now they don’t belong to any race and they don’t belong to any country. But don’t be afraid; we have so many sannyasins throughout the world, you can get born as a sannyasin somewhere – and there are a few sannyasin women, sannyasin men, who want children. But I have not come across a case where somebody is born from Tibet into India, or from India into China. It is unnatural. The soul flows in the same rut to which it has become accustomed.There are many cases in India of small children remembering their past lives. It happens only in India, for the simple reason that that is the only country that believes in rebirth. Christians believe in only one birth, Jews believe in only one birth, Mohammedans believe in only one birth. It is only the religions born in India who say that there are thousands of births. It is a long process – seventy years is not enough for a sleeping person to be awakened, he needs more time. They believe it; I know it.It is certainly true; it is not a hypothesis. But I don’t want you to believe it, because for you it will not be a truth – I would like you to explore. Go back into your past lives – it is really a tremendous trip, just terrific – and as you go backwards, you are simply amazed what kind of person you are and how many forms you have taken before. And this is a great help to understand that no form has been a contentment to you; from every form you have died in discontent and despair. So now don’t miss the chance of moving vertically.It is good for animals to move horizontally. Ordinarily, they move horizontally, because they have to move on four legs. Man is the only animal who is standing on two legs – vertical. And it is symbolic, really significant: the only animal on the earth standing, against gravitation. Walking on four is easier because it is not against gravitation, the force of gravitation is equally distributed all over the body. You are vertical, just as gravitation is vertical. That’s why in sleep you find so much relaxation, because in sleep you become horizontal. You get tired standing up, sitting long; then you need to lie down.How does that lying down bring you relaxation, rejuvenation? Just being in tune with gravitation. Standing, you are really doing a miracle. You are against gravitation, which pulls everything down, and your heart has to pump blood into your head, upwards. It is a miracle that you are performing every second. Your heart is really a rebel, a revolution against gravitation. It is forcing blood upwards.It is now a well-established fact why animals have not been able to grow brains – for the simple reason that they are horizontal. In their heads, blood flows so much that the necessary small cells which constitute your brain – seven million cells in your small skull – are so small that in that flood of blood they cannot survive. They cannot be born, either.Just because man stood on two legs and the head became against gravitation, a very small blood flow reaches to the head and the head can grow a very delicate system of nerves, a delicate combination of cells. But for that a very small and silent flow of blood is needed.That’s why I’m against anybody doing the headstand posture of yoga. More than three seconds is dangerous; your brain cells cannot stand too much blood coming to them for more than three seconds. And you can see the result, not a single Hindu yogi has contributed anything to the world. Those yogis are standing on their heads, they destroy their brain, and the brain is the necessary instrument to create anything. The Hindu yogis have been the most uncreative people in the world, they have just been parasites of our society.So, anybody who is interested in standing on the head, it is really a good exercise, but only for three seconds. Then be back on your feet. It is good because it refreshes your mind, just a sudden shower of blood and the whole mind is refreshed. All the dead cells will go back when you jump again to your feet, the blood returning back to the body will itself take all dead cells that were hanging around in your head. The exercise is good, but exact timing; nobody should do it more than three seconds.So, people are continuously born into the same culture, except a few exceptional people – travelers, nomads, who don’t have any home, who don’t have any attachment, who may be born into some new environment. And that’s from where the troubled child is born.You know the words problem child. It is not the child’s decision to make any trouble, but he is a misfit, he does not belong to your heritage, your conditions, your past. He has some other past, some other conditions, and there is going to be a clash between the parents and the child. Most probably the parents are going to prevail, they will destroy the child’s heritage and force him to belong to them, to their race, to their religion.But these children who are born into a different race, into a different country for some reason, are really very valuable. Any problem child is a very valuable phenomenon. If we allow him freedom to grow, he will bring new richness to your race, to your country. He will introduce something that your race has never known.These children prove to be the geniuses, and vice versa: you can look into the lives of your geniuses and you will always find in their childhood their parents had as much trouble with them as human beings can tolerate. All geniuses are a trouble in their childhood, and any child who is not a trouble in his childhood is going to do all kinds of businesses – Werner Erhard and all kinds of shops and marketplaces – but he cannot be a genius. It is difficult; he is burdened with his own past, and his parents have burdened him with their past. He is in a kind of split.Perhaps this will give you some insight about schizophrenia. Why do some people suffer from schizophrenia? Because from two different directions two conditions meet in them, but they cannot mix and become one, they remain two. Sometimes one is up and the person starts speaking in a different way, behaving in a different way; another time the other is up and the person behaves so diametrically opposite to his normal behavior that all you can do is take him to the psychiatrist. You start thinking he is sick.He is not sick, he is simply suffering because two long traditions have met in him. All that he needs is to be a witness of both the conditionings and separate himself, disidentify himself from both the conditionings, and all the schizophrenia will disappear. In fact, the moment he disidentifies himself from both the conditionings, he will have a richness that you cannot have, because he can use from both the conditionings, both the heritages, things which he wants. He is now the master.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Willem SheerPers Unie, The Hague, NetherlandsOsho,I have been reading your books for some years and have seen some of your videos. I was here last winter at the winter festival. A week ago at the office I had a telephone call asking if I would like an interview with you, so here I am. I have approximately one hundred thousand questions and have selected about twenty of them.Good, let’s start.I've been trained in a climate of critical journalism and am taught never to believe anyone at his word. Are you capable of communicating your message to suspicious journalists – or is trust needed to understand what you really mean?No, no faith, no belief, no trust is needed. And what you have been taught as a journalist, to be critical, skeptical, is exactly my message. Be critical, be skeptical. Go on saying “no” until you can find the “yes” which you cannot deny.My people are not people who have gathered here because of a certain faith or belief. They are inquirers, seekers with open minds, and they are being taught only one thing: never accept anything unless you can experience it. Critical journalism is just third rate, because it is only the mind, the reason. But the mind and reason can be very easily defeated, just a little sharper intelligence is needed and your criticism will be gone.But the criticism I am teaching to my people is something far deeper and far wider. I am teaching them not to argue about truth, because there is no way through argument to reach the truth. Whenever two arguments fight, all that is proved is who was more capable of arguing. Truth is never proved that way, truth has to be experienced. So deny every belief and deny it absolutely. Not even a lingering shadow of belief should be within you.So your sannyasins also should be skeptical about what you say?They are.And when you say, “Do this and that and this will be the result,” then they enter it with a skeptical, critical mind?Certainly. Whatever I say to them is hypothetical, just the way science works. A scientist enters into an experiment with a hypothesis. Hypothesis means not belief, but just that one has to begin somewhere. So for the moment he accepts a certain concept and enters into it with absolute alertness so that he is not deceived by his own hypothesis. He has to be aware that it is only a hypothesis and not a truth.But you also said, “Trust me, follow me.”That is said to those people who have arrived. I have been speaking to millions of people, and when I speak to a person I cannot take account of the whole world. My statement is direct and immediate and personal. When I have said to somebody, “Trust and follow me,” that means the person has arrived. Now there is no need of any skepticism, no negativity. Now there is no need for him to unnecessarily harass himself, he has done enough. But not before that.So trust is a later state?Yes.Osho,I belong to the diminishing minority of Dutch people who regard the holy Roman Catholic Church as a wonderful institute in which a lot of wisdom can be found. At the same time I enjoy your books and videos. Is this a paradox, and if so, what can be done about it?It is a paradox and you know exactly what has to be done about it. If you could have left me, you would have left. You cannot leave me, so the paradox is dissolved: Catholicism is finished.In the Catholic Church I meet persons I sincerely experience as sincere. I have often read that, for example, you mock Mother Teresa a lot. I once met her myself and I found her a beautiful woman. When I asked her, “Should Christians convert people of other religions to Christianity?” she answered, “No, let everybody go his own way. You go your way to God, I go my way.” And I found her a sincere woman, as far as I can experience.First, there are sincere people in every religion, but groping in the dark. So if you meet sincere seekers in the Catholic Church, it is your duty to bring them out of the Catholic Church, because there they are not going to find what they are seeking. A seeker cannot seek if he is surrounded by dogma, by a certain attitude about reality – and that too, two thousand years old, out of date, out of existence.Those Catholic churches are just graveyards. Those people may be seekers and sincere. Tell them, “You are searching in a graveyard. Come where life is. Come where dance is. Come where the fresh wind is blowing. In this stale, closed Catholic Church, you are going to get suffocated and die, you are not going to find it.”Because they are sincere, that’s why you have to be sincere with them too. They need respect – but not only respect, they also need a shock so that they can wake up and come out of the boundaries of Catholicism, or Protestantism or Hinduism or Mohammedanism. It doesn’t matter which; my work here is to bring everybody out of his prison, what the name of the prison is does not matter.The person who wants to know the truth has to be completely deprogrammed. He should not have any belief, he should not have any religion, he should not have any nation, he should not have any race, he should be just a simple human being. From there, with that innocence, like a child, he has to start.Osho,When you are a complete outsider it seems that Rajneeshism is also a prison. I went into it a little bit and I see that this is not the case. But how can you make clear to other people that this is in fact an anti-church?Just wait, let me first finish your question completely, I cannot leave Mother Teresa alone. So whenever Mother Teresa comes in, please don’t change the subject.You say she is a beautiful woman. I have no disagreement about that. But what she said to you is not beautiful – that you follow your path, I follow my path. This is not compassion. If I see you following a wrong path I will try every effort to obstruct you from going there, and I will try to convince you that what you are doing is wrong. That is compassion.And all the paths are not right. There are three hundred religions in the world. All three hundred religions are not right. This is nice to say, “You follow your path, I follow my path and everybody follows his path,” but that means Mother Teresa does not know at all what is right. This can be said only by an ignorant person. If I know what is right, I also know what is wrong, and I will make every effort to prevent you if you move on the wrong path. To me that will be compassion. You got influenced by the old woman, but things are not as they appear.She goes on converting orphans into the Catholic Church. The orphan may be a Mohammedan, may be a Hindu, may be a Jaina, may be a Buddhist. She does not think those orphans should follow their path. Just because she has been feeding them, she has purchased them for the Catholic Church. She wants more and more orphans, she wants more and more poverty, because without poverty and without orphans the number of Catholics cannot increase.It is power politics, the politics of numbers. And when you look deep down into the whole thing, you will not say that she is a beautiful woman. She is a politician and her answer was diplomatic. It consoled you – “You go on your path, I go on my path” – it gave you a certain strength, but that strength is going to be given to your ego. I cannot say, “You go on your path.” You don’t know what your path is, where you are going. I know there is only one path, there are not many paths.So the man of compassion will try in every way to persuade you, to convince you rationally; he will make the effort. And if there is a possibility of an open heart, he will make a heart to heart contact too. When somebody is drowning and you are standing on the bank of the river, you don’t say, “You go on your path and I am going on my path.” Do you think that is beautiful? You have to jump and save that man who is drowning.And now Catholics need to be saved. Jesus started saving people, although he could not save himself; and for two thousand years these people are trying to save people. They have not been able to save anybody. On the contrary, they have been fighting crusades, burning people alive. These are the saviors of man? And if Mother Teresa has any intelligence left – I suspect not, but if she has any intelligence left – the first thing would be to get out of the Catholic Church.And become a sannyasin?Certainly. Because I can say on my own authority that I can save her. She cannot say on her own authority anything. She can quote the dead Bible, she can quote Jesus Christ. I am not quoting anybody. I am saying it myself.And your path is objective?Absolutely objective.And anybody who follows your path finds this truth?Certainly.Osho,May I pass to another question?Is Mother Teresa finished? Pass on.Reading your discourses one meets with contradictions constantly – there are not many statements of yours which are not countered by other statements. Am I right that you constantly undermine your own teachings? What is the unchanging nucleus in your vision?You are right. I am a man of contradictions, and my understanding is that only idiots are consistent. The higher your intelligence, the more contradictions will be in your life, because you are constantly growing, expanding. Every day new facts arise in your consciousness, and then the question arises whether to go with the reality that has been revealed today, or just to remain consistent with your past, dead statements.I am not such a coward as your philosophers and theologians. I don’t bother about anything that I have said, ever. My whole concern is this moment. If it contradicts my whole life, it is perfectly okay. There is no harm, it is good. And I am not saying that I will remain tomorrow with the same statement. Tomorrow will bring its own light, tomorrow will bring its own experience, and only tomorrow will decide what statement I am going to make.But is there an unchangeable nucleus, then, in your vision?Yes, my consciousness, my awareness. But that you cannot find in the books, that you can find only in yourself.I am absolutely alert. Whatsoever I am saying, I am not saying according to some dogma, according to my own philosophy up to this moment. No, I am simply responding to this moment – to you. And I don’t care about anything else for the moment. I am a man who lives moment to moment. And whatsoever happens in the moment, I am available to it.Am I wrong when I try to describe the nucleus in your vision as celebrating life?No, that is just a by-product. The nucleus is consciousness, absolute consciousness. Out of it, many things will be there: celebration of life, love, laughter. Out of it, so many branches and so many flowers. But the nucleus remains consciousness. And that I have never contradicted in my whole life. I cannot, because whatsoever I have said, I have said with full consciousness. But that was in that moment.For example, I may fall in love with a woman, and in that moment I may say to the woman that I will love her forever. And I am not cheating, I am not deceiving; that’s my response in that moment, and I am absolutely clear about it. But that does not mean that tomorrow I will not change. I am not saying that I will never change; I am simply stating my response to the moment. The next moment nobody knows what will happen, and the next moment I will not find myself chained by my own past.So my approach is to go on dying to the past moment continuously so that you can be alive in the new moment that is coming. Death to the past, life to the present. And the future is going to come to you as present, never as past.That means, I think, try to live without tradition.Certainly.Osho,This idea that you described – of living out of the fullness of your consciousness, and in this moment, here and now – is this idea not also a product of tradition?No, because nobody has said it before. No tradition exists around this idea. Buddha was very consistent: in forty-two years’ teaching you cannot find a single contradiction. In Mohammed you cannot find any contradiction, in Jesus you cannot find any contradiction either. These people lived according to a certain dogma. They were prisoners.I am a free bird with no cage around me. And I want to break all the cages of everybody, so the whole sky is yours. Sometimes it is sunrise, sometimes it is sunset. Sometimes it is day and sometimes it is night. Things go on changing in existence, and a man of consciousness remains in harmony with existence, with the continuous flux of existence. My statements in the past are as dead as how I am in the past is dead.But we are all still reading the books you spoke in the past! Is that senseless then?It is significant, but don’t trust those books against my present. Perhaps reading them you may be able to understand what I am saying now. All those contradictions and all those books will help you to understand my present state and my present statement about existence. That is their only use. If you can understand it without them, burn them. There is no need of all those books.I have never read any of my books, and I am not ever going to look at them, because past is past, gone is gone, and I don’t live in a graveyard. Only dead people can be consistent, because they cannot contradict anymore. I am alive, and I am going to be alive to the very last breath of my life. My last breath will also be a statement, perhaps contradicting all that I have done and said before, so wait.So, it would be possible that at the end you would say, the very notion of enlightenment – forget it!I can. I can say anything, I am so free. Don’t you see the beauty of freedom? You can say anything, you can live anything. There is no bondage on me. At the last moment I can say, “All this business of enlightenment is simply bullshit. Forget all about it.” And perhaps a few people may get enlightened only when I say that.Nobody can make a dogma out of me. Nobody can be a pope after me, because he will be in so much trouble. Nobody can be a successor to me because he will not be able to manage all the contradictions, thousands of contradictions.So the only nucleus in your vision is Osho Himself.Certainly. I am the center of my circus and when I am gone, who bothers what happens to the circus?Osho,You said just a moment ago, “I want to shock people awake.” I have the feeling that very often you shock with such a heaviness that you provoke a lot of aggression against yourself, against your sannyasins.Is this price worthwhile?It is absolutely necessary, no question of its worthwhileness. I want their hostility, I want their aggressiveness, because their hostility and their aggressiveness is going to work in two ways. If my sannyasins are simply ignored, nobody takes any offense, that simply means I have nothing to offer to the world, no contribution, nothing new. It can be ignored. The only thing that I hate is to be ignored. Be aggressive, that I accept, because at least a certain relationship has started happening between me and the person who is aggressive.Hostility is emotional and the beauty of the whole game is that the hostile person is burning himself. I am not hostile; I have simply triggered something in him and he is burning himself.Nobody can remain hostile for long, it is a sickness. He has to find some way out of it: either he has to forget all about me, which is impossible because I have hurt him so deeply, neither can he forgive me nor forget me. The only possible way is to come close to me and try to understand what I am doing. “Is it really right for me to be hostile to these people? Is it right for me to be so full of hate for these people?” And anybody who comes closer is going to change. This has been happening every day.In Ahmedabad a man came and fell at my feet. I said, “What is the matter?” He was crying.He pulled out a big knife and he said, “I had come to kill you because what I have heard about you – that you are destroying the whole tradition of Hinduism – made me so angry, but when I heard you something suddenly changed in me. I could see that you are not interested in destroying any tradition. You are simply interested in helping people to find the truth, and if something has to be demolished on the way, removed from the way so the person can reach to the truth, you are doing that.”And he wanted to be initiated into sannyas. Hate can very easily turn into love, just as love can turn into hate. They are two sides of the same coin.So it is with full awareness that I am continuously creating enemies around the world. I don’t want anybody to go on sleeping without being disturbed. Perhaps a few of them may wake up. Most of them will take a turn, pull up their blanket and go to sleep again, but that is not my responsibility. If out of a hundred even one person wakes up and sees what has happened, that my hit over his head was not against him but was against his sleep, he will be grateful to me. Those who are hostile to me can be grateful to me if they wake up. If they don’t wake up, they are already asleep, let them sleep.And what harm can anybody do to me? At the most they can kill me: that is nothing, because I have known everything that can be known and I have experienced everything that can be experienced. Now I am almost living a posthumous life. As far as I am concerned, I have come to the point beyond which there is nothing. And I am so blissful that if somebody wants to assassinate me I don’t see any harm in it.People are afraid of death because they have not lived yet and death is coming closer. I have lived, I have tasted the nectar of life. Now there is no problem for me, so I can create as much hostility as possible in the hope that perhaps a few out of thousands may wake up. And they are waking up.Osho,Would you describe what is ordinarily understood as “mental health” in society as sleep?The society that exists today is retarded, its mental age is below thirteen. It is worse than asleep. What do you expect of a seventy-year-old man, carrying the small intelligence of a thirteen-year-old boy? The distance between his intelligence and his life is so big. This is sleep.The awakened person moves together almost as an organic unity. With his physical age, his mental age goes on growing; with his mental age, his spiritual awareness goes on growing. If a person really goes on growing, simultaneously on all levels of life, then only, you have a perfect master someday. Otherwise, the so-called masters are masters just for those retarded people; the so-called saints, saints only for the retarded. And nobody wants – your politicians, your priests – nobody wants man to be intelligent, because it is against their vested interests.An intelligent man cannot be Catholic, an intelligent man cannot believe in the boundaries of nations, an intelligent man cannot conceive that white and black colors make any difference. An intelligent man will have a totally different vision of life.These vested interests cannot allow this earth to become awake. Before it wakes up, they are ready with all their nuclear weapons to destroy it. It is such a calamity. To me, the destruction of life is not the real problem. The real problem is that man is now at a point where thousands of people can become enlightened, and the politicians are preparing to destroy this whole living beautiful earth.…you mean within the community of sannyasins, these thousands of people who can be enlightened?There are many who are not even sannyasins, they can be awakened. Man has gained a certain maturity. Sannyasins certainly, but there are many who are potential sannyasins, like you; I can see you in the orange robe any day. It all depends on your courage. But I can see a man of intelligence in front of me, who can understand, and he would like to have his consciousness blossom to its fullest.Yes, Osho, but it would be for me a blind gamble.Every search is a blind gamble. Those who are afraid of blind gambles remain stuck and starve, they never grow. One has to take the risk. One has to stake everything, and as far as I have known, anybody who has taken the risk has never been a loser.I don’t play the game of being a loser in any way. And if I tell my people to stake everything, I can say it with certainty, categorically, because I know that if they can stake and risk, they will be reborn.There is an old story. A man was traveling and got lost in the night in the mountains. He was really very much afraid, alone. The place was unknown, the road was lost, there was no light. As far as he could see, there was no village, no lamp. But still he tried to find his way. And then he slipped from a rock. Holding the roots of a tree, he was hanging.The night was becoming colder and colder and he knew that soon he would not be able to keep a grip on the roots; the hands were becoming frozen. His death was near. He looked, and by the side, there was abysmal darkness. He knew there would be a big valley below the mountain and there was no chance of surviving.Finally, his hands started slipping, there was no way to prevent it. But he was in for a great surprise. When the hands slipped and he thought, “This is my last moment,” and he prayed to his god in whom he believed, the roots slipped out of his hand and he was standing on the ground. There was nothing – and the whole night he had suffered. It was starting to be sunrise and he could see – this was strange, he was standing on the road!Risk is there, but I know the path. I know that if you are ready to lose your grip, you will be immediately on the clear ground, on the way; you are not going to lose anything. This is the whole function of the master. The function of the master is not to give you beliefs, is not to give you philosophy. His function is to give you confidence in yourself, to make a gambler from a businessman.Osho,When I am around your sannyasins I get along very well with them, but I often feel that they follow you blindly. For example, you said the other day that it's a good idea to produce test-tube babies. Now I'm sure, within a few days all your sannyasins will know this idea of yours and they will agree with you. Now if in two weeks, you say something opposite, all your sannyasins will agree with you.That means they are also growing with me; that does not make a problem.But where then is the doubt and the responsibility for yourself? I could not, even if I would love you deeply, I could not follow your opinions every day. Every day you change your opinions, don't you?That means you are not growing with me, you are lagging far behind. My sannyasins are my fellow travelers. Sometimes I walk fast, they have to walk fast. Sometimes I dance, they have to dance. Sometimes I just relax and they have to relax. They are just my fellow travelers. There is no philosophy, no belief, no faith. They are love, pure love toward me, just the way I am pure love toward them. It is a love affair.But you cannot decide to have a love affair.Nobody decides. I am simply love. I never fall in love; I am in it, I am it. Others go on falling in love with me. But they don’t lose anything; the moment they fall in love with me they have discovered their life’s juiciest moment. They could not have even dreamed about it.Your question is very relevant: in the beginning, a sannyasin is baffled, confused that I said one thing yesterday and I am saying another thing today, “Now what I am supposed to do?” In the beginning it happens to every sannyasin. Soon he starts understanding that what I say is not the point, somewhere between my statements there is a gap. Between my words there is a gap, between my lines there is a gap. That is my real statement.Soon they start learning it, then they don’t care what I said yesterday and what I said today. They don’t compare. The gap is the same, the words have changed. The lines are different but between the lines… The moment they start seeing me between the lines, between the statements, all their trouble disappears. And it is not belief.There is objectivity between those lines?Yes.Osho,May I ask quite another question?All over the world, and in the Netherlands also, we are very concerned with your Rolls Royces and I decided I have to ask a question about this.Ask anything you want.So I would like to explain that I, myself, am the happy owner of a Japanese car, a Toyota Corolla. I would rather have two of them, so I would have one in reserve but I couldn't imagine what to do with three Toyotas. You have, if I am right, seventy-five Rolls Royces at your disposal. They're not…You’re not right, one has just arrived. I have no problem – there are ninety Rolls Royces, and I have no problem – and you are having problems, even with three? Poor guy! And that too, Toyota! A third rate car, just a toy, and just with three you are…I am soon going to have 365, and still there will be no problem. I don’t see any problem. I never go to the garage, I don’t even know what car they are going to give me today. My people are there and they are intelligent enough, they can take care of anything. If they can take care of ninety Rolls Royces, they will be able to take care of 365. This is their problem, not mine. And I don’t think they are troubled either, they look so happy. A new car arrives and they are rejoicing.There is no problem in having two or three cars. The problem is somewhere else which, out of respect, you are not asking me.Where is the problem?Yes, it is not the number. Your question is not Rolls Royces but Ethiopia, India, poor countries, poor people around the world. I am making it clear to you, because I can see it is there within you. A Rolls Royce is just to bring the question out, but you love me so you cannot ask directly. You are going around about – there is no need.May I phrase this question?That’s what I was doing. You can phrase… I was phrasing your question.My question – which I had written down – is why, in your vision, it is impossible to work on your own personal growth and at the same time help your neighbor? Why it is impossible to be a sannyasin and at the same time help Ethiopia?Nobody is preventing anybody. I am not saying to my sannyasins, “Don’t help your neighbor,” I am telling them, “Help them!” And the only way to help them is to hit them. They are asleep, they have to be awakened first. Any other help will be coming later on. Set their houses on fire so they have to wake up and escape, then we will catch hold of them.I’m not preventing my people from helping, but again the same problem: because you love me, you cannot say it directly. I have to phrase it for you.Please do.You want that the poor should be given bread, butter, clothes, shelter, that there are sick people who need hospitals, that there are beggars in the world: something has to be done for them, and this should be my sannyasins’ responsibility.I don’t consider it my sannyasins’ responsibility. If there are poor people in the world, the priests and the politicians, and the scientists and the educationalists all are guilty of it. They have created a world which has to be poor and they exploit the poverty in many ways. For example, this beautiful woman, Mother Teresa… I don’t think her face looks beautiful, but tastes differ. Your taste is a little strange. Would you like to get married to her? Then you will know how beautiful she is.These people who have been serving the poor, catering to the poor, are helping the poor to remain poor. Otherwise, the poor either would have died of poverty or would have gone through a great revolution and changed the whole society. Only two things are possible if no help is given to them. I want no help to be given to these people, they should take their own responsibility. If they are poor and they don’t want, go through a revolution, change the whole structure of the society, destroy the whole status quo, throw these governments away. And if you cannot do that, then at least you can die. Don’t unnecessarily be a nuisance around.For example, in Ethiopia where thousands of people are dying every day, the priests and the bishops and the popes and politicians are all just sympathy for Ethiopia. And they are trying to send food, medicine, but their whole effort is very hypocritical. On the one hand they want to save the poor in Ethiopia, on the other hand they are piling up nuclear weapons. For whom?They are not life-loving people, they are showing sympathy to Ethiopia just as part of diplomacy. It has nothing to do with service to humanity, because the small support that they are sending is not going to help, it has not helped. It is almost like dropping a teaspoon full of sugar in the ocean to make it sweet. Great responsibility you are fulfilling: you destroyed one cup of tea!I am not in favor of sending any help to Ethiopia. Only one thing is possible: if these big dodos around the world, presidents and prime ministers and kings and queens, if they are really concerned with Ethiopia, then there are two alternatives for them. Stop piling up wars and divert the whole money and energy toward Ethiopia, and Ethiopia will be saved today.Or, if you cannot do that, then at least do one thing: send your medical people to inject these people with something that takes them into eternal sleep. It is better to die than to starve for ninety days and then die; it is compassionate. And there is no harm if there is no Ethiopia – what harm?Osho,So, if I understand you, you are saying that the misery in Ethiopia is very real.Mm hmm.…and this reminds me of one of your talks in which you said, “Your misery is bogus.” At the time this made rather an impression on me, and I began to suspect that my personal misery is bogus indeed. But then I wondered, is the misery of this Ethiopian mother seeing her child dying of starvation, misery also?It is a totally different context. When I said your misery is your responsibility, I meant your anxieties, your anguishes, your expectations, your frustrations, your aspirations, your ambitions which are not going to be fulfilled. I meant your mental anguish. That statement was in a totally different context.But in Ethiopia, it is not that the mother is imagining that her child is dying, he is really dying. The child is not imagining that the mother is dying; the mother is really dying and soon she will be dead.Fortunately in Ethiopia there are not Christian Scientists. There has been a movement in America of Christian Science. Christian Science has as one of its fundamentals that whatever you think sooner or later becomes a reality, thoughts are the beginning of a certain reality.I have heard the story that a young boy met an old Christian Scientist lady. The lady asked the boy, “I have not seen your father for many days. Is he not coming to the meetings of our group?”The boy said, “He’s sick, he’s in his bed.”The old woman said, “Nonsense, this is just mind. You just tell your father that he is only thinking he is sick: ‘Just think you are healthy. Think positively that you are healthy. Get out of your bed, be positive. Don’t fall into negativity, this is our whole philosophy: positive thinking.’”After three or four days, the boy meets the old woman again in the market and the old woman says, “What happened? Did you manage to convey the message to your father?”He said, “Now my father thinks he’s dead. And not only my father; everybody thinks he is no more in the house, he is in his grave!”The misery in Ethiopia is real, objectively real, and these sympathies are not going to help. They are simply keeping people starving, dying. And it is better to die instantly rather than to wait and suffer all kinds of torture that this hungry man is bound to suffer.This is a thing to be understood, that a normally healthy man can live without food for ninety days, then he will die. Now, making these people suffer for ninety days does not seem to be compassionate. To me it is more compassionate that they are given injections so they go into eternal sleep. And anyway, the soul does not die, so what is the problem? All these religions believe that the soul does not die, so what is the problem?Communists believe that when you die, everything dies. Then, too, there is no problem. I don’t see a problem from any side. And if Ethiopia is not there, who bothers? What has Ethiopia contributed to the world?Do I understand you correctly; that you say nobody should do anything about Ethiopia?I am saying either do: that means stop piling nuclear weapons, that is my first alternative. If you are really sympathetic toward dying people, then why are you creating weapons for death? That is simple hypocrisy – stop! If you are really concerned with dying people, then whatsoever is happening in Ethiopia is nothing to what has happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.In those few moments, the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have suffered as much as one can suffer in the Christian hell. You have now seven hundred times more nuclear weapons than there were available at the time of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and they go on piling up.On the one hand, seventy-five percent of the income of every country goes to war; and on the other hand, these politicians really have beautiful masks. And they must be having many because they have to change again and again. When Ethiopia is there and people are dying, you are so sympathetic and you want to save Ethiopia. These two things don’t go together, they are inconsistent.So my first alternative is that the nations should stop creating more war, and the poverty not only from Ethiopia but from the whole world will disappear today. The poverty is there because our whole energy is involved with war, with the preparation for war.If you cannot do it, then at least don’t be a hypocrite. Be direct and say, “Let Ethiopia die, we don’t care. We are going to make more nuclear weapons and we are going to have a Third World War, and what does it matter?” The whole world is going to end in the Third World War. Ethiopia will be saved from nuclear weapons, they will die before that. That’s perfectly good, let them die, but don’t be a hypocrite.Osho,If President Reagan decided to ask you to be his advisor, what would you advise him in regard to these nuclear arms?Just tell your scientists to find some creative use for all these weapons, because you cannot throw them into the Pacific as sooner or later they will explode just by accident. You cannot throw them into the Atlantic, you cannot bury them under the earth. Anytime, anything can trigger them and they can explode your own country or somebody else’s. But energy is neutral, energy is never decisive whether it can destroy or it can create. It depends on the direction that the human mind gives it.If the human mind can create nuclear weapons to destroy, it can change nuclear power into construction. It can create more electricity, it can give better rains, it can give better earth. It can do miracles. So much energy is piled up in these two nations, and smaller piles in smaller nations, that if they all simply think once, “What are we doing? Our scientists should be together.”My advice is that the scientists should not be under any national regime. There should be a world academy of scientists who can decide how to convert nuclear weapons and energy into positive things. It is possible.But practically, should the United States disarm?I am not saying disarm. Changing nuclear weapons into creativity does not mean disarm, because you have many more arms than just nuclear weapons. You could fight the First World War without nuclear weapons, you could fight the Second World War – you had already won before you threw the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Germany had already surrendered and Japan was on the verge of surrendering.Atomic and nuclear weapons should be completely converted to serve humanity. And go back before the First World War: those bombs and those airplanes are good. Whenever you feel an itch to fight, fight! Up to the First World War, I allow – then fight, it is perfectly good once in a while, a good exercise. But I am not ready to accept the Third World War. Every effort should be made to prevent it, and this is a beautiful chance.Ethiopia, India, and other countries of the third world are on the verge; any moment there will be more Ethiopias. It is good we start transforming that energy into something positive and creative that can help these people who are dying.If you cannot do it, remember my condition – if you cannot do it, then don’t unnecessarily try to pretend that you are Christians and Catholics and Protestants, and you are sending money and you are sending blankets, and you are sending clothes and food. It is not going to help, it has never helped before. This has been happening again and again through history.Then rather be very clear and send medical teams so all the Ethiopians in one night go into eternal sleep. At least they will not be hungry tomorrow morning, and you will be at ease – Ethiopia will not be a troublesome problem for you. So I am giving two alternatives. And remember, my first priority is to stop nuclear weapons piling up more and more, and divert the whole money that you are wasting on nuclear weapons.My second alternative is second: if that is not possible, then just simply accept the fact that we cannot save Ethiopia, but we can at least help them to die peacefully. We cannot help them to live peacefully, at least we can help them to die peacefully. And that will be really great compassion on the part of politicians. Rather than leaving those people starving, dying, being tortured by hunger… For four years there have been no rains, water has become almost impossible to get. Not only is food not available, water is not available.And it is only in one country right now, but soon India will be joining it, because half of the Indian continent is starving. You will be surprised to know that the Indian prime minister is selling wheat to other countries: fifty percent of his own nation is starving and the wheat is being sold because he wants a nuclear plant in India. Can you see the stupidity of this whole thing?Osho,May I change to a subject with a bit more fun?You can change.In the press conference you described your commune as a circus and yourself as a great showman, the greatest in the world. Were you mocking yourself and your commune? Why did you say it?Again, you are bringing the past here. Forget all about that nonsense. Me, a showman? And my people a circus? I contradict it completely.How would you describe it now?Yes, there is no circus here. This is the only place where a circus is not happening.And you are a serious teacher?I am a very non-serious teacher! And I have already forgotten about the news conference you are talking about – I just respond to you, why drag the dead unnecessarily out of their graves? Let them sleep silently. You are alive, I am alive, we can have an existential encounter.I see the potentiality in you, that’s why I am saying that; I would not have said it to another person. I have been interviewed every night, every evening and now it is going to be continuously happening, but I would not have said that to another journalist. I don’t see you just as a journalist, I see you more as a seeker. I see you more as a human being. And I see your heart throbbing with me, in tune with me, that’s why I am saying it. Otherwise, I can go on answering about the past, anything that comes to my mind, there is no problem in it.I love jokes, and to joke on other people’s account is not very good, not nice. So once in a while, I joke upon myself, upon my people. And it was simply a joke, and those idiotic newspaper journalists thought it is something serious. Do you think a showman will sit here in the desert? Is this the place for a showman? – then I would have chosen Hollywood. On the contrary, I have pulled all my Hollywood people here.In this desert, 126 square miles, I am sitting the whole day in my room. I only come out twice: in the morning to talk with the sannyasins, in the evening to talk with any interviewer. What kind of a showman do you think I am? This is not the way of being a showman.The showman has to be always running, like Mother Teresa. She is in New York, she is in Chicago, she is in Washington, she is receiving a Nobel Prize in Norway, she is in India, Calcutta. I can’t think when she gets the time to serve the poor people. All the time she is moving around the world, becoming a bigger and bigger celebrity. The more senile she becomes, the bigger a celebrity she becomes. And when does she serve the poor people? She is inaugurating colleges, schools, hospitals…I don’t have any time for showmanship. I will tell you my routine and you will see – from where can I get the time? Six o’clock in the morning, I wake up. That too, my caretaker Vivek has to wake me up, otherwise I will not wake up. Who cares to wake up again? I have been waking for half a century again and again, it is enough.But she wakes me up, gives me a cup of tea. Just to be respectful to her, I drink the tea. My tea is not much, it is just water and tea leaves. No sugar, no milk. If that kind of tea is served in heaven, all the saints will start moving toward hell. Then, I have always loved water, from my very childhood. One and a half hours in the morning I am in my bathroom, enjoying the bathtub, the shower; and the same in the evening, one and a half hours again. After my bath, immediately I have to get into the car and move to the Mandir where my people are waiting.Back to my place, it is lunchtime. I take my lunch at eleven, and go to sleep again, which I have done most of my life. I had to miss my classes when I was a student, and my teachers allowed it because if they did not allow it, then I used to sleep in the class. I said, “There is no way… I have to sleep these two hours.” When I was a professor, I was sleeping two hours, and I had told the vice-chancellor that during these two hours no classes should be given to me, otherwise I would be sleeping there.At two o’clock I wake up, and for one hour I go for a ride. That is the only time I come in contact with the Rolls Royces. I love driving, and I have certainly one of the most beautiful roads, because it is made by my sannyasins only for me. There is no traffic, so I need not bother whether I am driving on the right or on the left. The whole road belongs to me. One hour there, and back home.For one and a half hours I simply sit silently in my chair doing nothing and let the grass grow by itself. Then my bath. After the bath, I take my supper, and after the supper I am here. I will be back there nearabout nine, nine-thirty. Then my personal secretary comes with letters from all over the world; news cuttings about me from all over the world, anything that the personal secretary feels I need to know – because I don’t read. Since five years I have stopped reading anything: books, newspapers, magazines, anything. The clippings that my personal secretary brings she has to read; I simply listen.Nearabout eleven, I go to bed again. Now, where will I find the time to be a showman? Yes, you can look at my dress and think it looks like the dress of a showman. It is not, it is the love of my people, I am dressing for them. They make beautiful dresses, they enjoy making them for me, I cannot refuse them. And to whom am I going to show? I never go out of this place.You see my watch? I have hundreds. My people are really intelligent people, no master in the whole history can claim such an intelligent group. Now, this is made by my sannyasins, it has already defeated Piaget – and it is made of real stones, not diamonds.Real stones, not diamonds, so don’t carry the idea that it is fake. Real stones are as real as real diamonds, there is no question of its being fake. I just heard on television one stupid journalist saying that I have been using fake watches. I cannot understand – such authentic stones, and you call it a fake watch? Its time is absolutely perfect; in a year only one second will be the difference, and that is the best any watch can do. It is as beautiful as any diamonds. The same watch from Piaget is a half-million dollars, just because of an idiotic idea that diamonds have some value.This watch costs nothing, but I will not sell it even for ten million dollars because it is invaluable. It is made with such great love that it is not a saleable thing. Love cannot be sold. But to whom am I going to show the watch? My people know my dresses, my people know my watches, my people know me. I don’t mix with anybody else, I don’t go anywhere else. As far as I am concerned, the Third World War has happened, and only Rajneeshpuram is saved. There is nowhere else to go.I was simply joking. And my people are working hard, twelve hours, fourteen hours a day, transforming a desert into an oasis – do you think these people constitute a circus? You will not find anywhere in the world such hardworking people. And they are not being paid, because we don’t believe in any way inside the commune that money should be used; there is no need. We fulfill our needs, our food, our clothes, everything, so nobody needs any money. Whatsoever he needs, he can get.These people are working so hard, and for what? To entertain somebody? These people are creative people. They love me and now they want to materialize my vision into reality, and they are ready to do anything for it. In festival times they are working fourteen, sixteen hours a day with no complaint. Nobody is telling them or forcing them.You're not suggesting it to them?No, not at all, I never talk to them about these things. I never talk about the commune, about any mundane things. They are intelligent enough that they can manage themselves. And they are doing so well that it cannot be improved.It was their idea, it was not your idea, this commune?It is my vision, and their love for my vision, but the idea to materialize it is theirs. I am a dreamer: I can give you beautiful dreams, and I give for free, I don’t charge for them. But then if you get caught up in the dream and you start trying to materialize it, that is your responsibility. I simply watch from the outside.It is not a circus. The Vatican may be a circus, and with Pope the Polack it is bound to be a circus, nothing more can be expected of this thick head. I was just joking, laughing, and our people were there in the press conference and they enjoyed. You should listen to the video of the press conference, then you will see how much our people enjoyed – and how silly the journalists looked, they could not manage to ask any significant question.But you need not bother about those people. You have a certain acquaintance with me, so I know these answers will be enough for you. If you want to add something, you can add, I give you the authority. I love you and I trust you. I know you cannot do anything that will be against me.

https://oshoworld.com/osho-audio-discourse-english-l/

The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/the-last-testament-vol-1-18/

Mike WolfeKBND Radio, Bend, Oregon, United StatesOsho,I've been in the radio and television business in Washington D.C., Denver, Colorado so I've traveled a bit and got tired of the big cities and came to central Oregon. One of the things that will always make me remember you, is that I have a six-year-old son born on December 11th, so I will always remember Osho's birthday.That’s great!The hospitality that we have received here… For those who are listening, there is of course, controversy – maybe misrepresented controversy – that Rajneeshpuram is an armed camp, I have not seen that – that the people are cold and disinterested in those of us who live outside, I have not seen that. And I have not felt in many rooms in my life as much love as there is in this room right now, and I don't think people realize that.I want to talk first about the City of Rajneeshpuram which I had the opportunity to view and visit in a quick way today. Could this developmental process – that maybe the outside world is not as familiar with as I now believe they should be – in your mind, develop into a prototype of what cities possibly could and should be?Yes, that’s exactly my idea. This loving commune should become a prototype, because in the vast world even though you are in the crowd, you are alone. Here, even if you are alone, you know and you feel the warmth of people all around you.Love is something which is nobody’s monopoly. A loving person is simply a love-radiating energy. And when there are thousands of people radiating love, there is a certain energy field. I called it the buddhafield. Anybody who comes will receive the love, the friendship, the hospitality. But people are afraid to come.Why?For the simple reason that we are strangers. This is animal instinct: animals are afraid of strangers, every animal has its own territorial prerogative. If you keep out of the territory he will not get disturbed or upset, but if you enter into his territory then immediately he is hostile. That instinct is still alive in man.We are outsiders, in many ways our ways of thinking are different, our values are different, our priorities are different. We are for a better man and for a better humanity, and their fear and hostility is natural.Osho,Are the hostilities created or perpetrated by the lack of understanding and the absence – as it would appear to the outside world – of a willingness for the Rajneeshees to go out, rather than accept in; so people can learn more about them?No, this is my basic standpoint: not to go out, because that is interfering in somebody’s world. I am not a missionary – and I hate the word. I don’t want anybody to be converted, and I don’t want anybody to be convinced that we are right. In fact the people who try to convince others that they are right are basically, deep down in themselves, not convinced that they are right. Convincing others, they are making an effort to convince themselves.When they see they have a crowd convinced, then they feel at ease. Then they know, “I cannot be wrong. If so many people are converted by me, then I cannot be wrong.”This outgoing is impossible for me or my people. We are here, we do no harm to anybody, and we don’t want to interfere in anybody’s thinking, way of life, his style, his religion, his politics. We do not want to interfere, we accept him as he is. But if he wants to be acquainted with our world, he is welcome.But to have some positive exposure? There are people who hate this particular group, there are people who have absolutely no knowledge of what goes on here; would it not be a good idea – not as a missionary, not reaching out to convert, but to inform?I will wait, because if they are hating me and my people, they are on the way toward Rajneeshpuram. Hate is a relationship, and sometimes far stronger than love. And once they come here, then we will see.But it seems that some of this hate is bred by the fear of something unknown. This is a mysterious world inside this valley.Yes, that is true. That mysteriousness in this valley will attract only those people who are ready to go on an adventure, who want to explore, who want to know the unknown and those are the only people who have any worth.What kind of worth?They are adventurers; they are on a pilgrimage to know the unknown, they are the real people. Others are living just like animals, without exploration.So you're talking about that select group of risk-takers?Yes, with me, only that select group…Osho,What is the future – and I know you don't like to talk about the future or address yourself to it – but what is the future of Rajneeshpuram? I wanted to talk about the development of the city, the technological-agricultural development that I've seen today, the communal way of life. What do you view as the development of this valley for the people in this travel with you?I’m not concerned with it; my concern is with people and their growth. The city is their concern, not my concern. And I have so many intelligent people here: architects, engineers, doctors, professors from all the professions – daring, adventurous people have come to me, now it is up to them. A mundane affair, I don’t care about it. I trust them: they will be able to manage. And they are managing. And they will be able to develop it technologically, but it is not my concern at all.What is your concern?My concern is their spiritual growth. Their intelligence should come to its highest peak. They should be deprogrammed from all that is past, rotten and dead, meaningless and harmful. My work is not to create the city but to create the man, and then the man will take care of the city and the houses. That is a totally different matter, I don’t bother about it.But my basic concern is the individual. The individual is to me the highest value in life. And all the religions of the world have repressed the individual, they have all made him feel guilty, they have all made him somehow think himself unworthy, a sinner. All the religions, in different ways, have forced everybody into a corner where he is no more human. They have humiliated humanity.It was their vested interest: they needed a world of slaves, not a world of rebels. And you can make a person shrink if you make him guilty. You can make him afraid of hell, you can make him greedy for heaven, and this way you can make him completely forget this moment, this life. All the religions have been trying; either they are focusing you on the past, or they are focusing you on the future, beyond death. No religion bothers that you should be alive, laughing, living, loving, flowering here and now – and that’s my purpose.Do you think that they do this because they are big business and that is the way to control people?It is a great conspiracy between the politicians and the priests; it has been for thousands of years. The conspiracy is that the politician rules people as far as worldly things are concerned, and the priest rules people as far as their psychology, their mind, their soul, are concerned. And they have enslaved man in every possible way – the politician from the outside and the priest from the inside – they have destroyed all potential of human beings.My work is to bring that potential back, make the person aware that he is not guilty. If Adam and Eve disobeyed God that is their business. You cannot be guilty for Adam and Eve disobeying God. This is so stupid!In the first place, disobedience is not always bad. And as far as Adam and Eve’s disobedience is concerned, it was certainly beneficial to humanity. In fact God was the enemy, because he was prohibiting Adam and Eve from eating from the tree of knowledge and the tree of eternal life. Now, who is the enemy?Wisdom, knowledge, science – all that we value in life – paintings, poetry, sculpture, nothing would have happened if Adam and Eve had not disobeyed. They would have still been naked animals in the garden of Eden, chewing grass!My God, I hope that… I can't picture all of us in this room chewing grass!You cannot picture it because of Adam and Eve. You should feel grateful to Adam and Eve!I do now!Yes!You know, psychologists tell us all of our problems are directed back to our mother, but now you're taking it so far back I can't even comprehend it!They take all the problems to the mother and they forget the real father. That is male chauvinistic psychology. The whole psychology is created by man, just as all the religions are created by man. The woman is condemned by the religions, and she is condemned now by the psychologists. In fact the psychologist is slowly taking the place of the priest, because the priest is becoming out of date. Younger generations are no longer interested in the priest; they have seen five thousand years of human history, what these priests have done.The younger generation is more interested in psychotherapy, in psychoanalysis, in other different methods of psychic exploration. The priest is no longer in the powerful position that he has always been.So you will be surprised that all the priests in the world are now studying psychology, to become psychotherapists. It is going to become a necessary qualification for every bishop, every priest, to have some degree of psychology, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis – because they are aware that their power is slipping by and the psychologists are replacing them. He is becoming the new priest. But the trouble is, the new priest is also serving the old vested interest; he is not revolutionary.Osho,Is not the proclivity toward psychology and psychiatry appointments, where people are trying to, as they state it, “find out about themselves” somewhat parallel to what you're offering here?No, because your psychologists, even the founders – Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Adler, Assagioli – even they knew nothing about themselves, so what can they provide you to know yourself?Jung had been to India. He went to see the Taj Mahal, he went to Calcutta, to Mumbai, and everywhere he was told, “You being a great psychologist, the place you should go first is to a man in South India, Maharishi Raman.” That man was conceived by the whole country as one who knows himself. “You should go there and see whether it is true or not. And if he knows himself, perhaps you can learn something from him; if he does not know, you can help him to know.”But he would not go there, and in his diary he wrote, “I was afraid to go there, to face the eyes of a man who knows himself, because I don’t know myself.” He returned without going to Maharishi Raman. And when he was back he must have been feeling guilty, that this is not right. Going to see the ruins of palaces was worthless for a psychologist; he was not a historian. Going to see big cities, what was the point for him? He must have started feeling guilty, that everywhere he went, every friend he knew, all the professors in all the universities, in all the psychological departments, were pointing toward one man, and he did not go there.Out of that guilt he started writing against Indian mysticism. He started saying that Westerners should remain aloof to the Eastern tradition of mysticism, because it is dangerous for the Western man. Western man’s development is different, Eastern man’s development is different, their psychologies are different. This he said for the first time after coming back from India.Psychologies are not different. There may be minute details which are different, but basic psychology is not different, cannot be different. He projected his own fear all over history.So I don’t think these psychologists are helping anybody in any way. They can’t help themselves; do you know, the suicide rate of psychologists is double that of average human beings?I think it's even worse.Yes, it may have grown higher, because for five years I have not been reading a single word of any book, of any newspaper. For five years I have simply stopped… So perhaps it may have gone higher. But five years ago, it was double. And the same was the situation with madness: it was double any other profession, and the same was the proportion of all kinds of perverted acts.These people – suicidal, insane, committing perverted acts, finding excuses to do them through psychology – do you think they can help anybody to know himself?Osho,If your thinking and your belief is as you state it, and I assume certainly that it is, and the world is in the chaos that it's in… I mean, this is about as screwed up as it can get…Yes.…maybe a little worse down the line, but I mean, it's pretty close to maximum.It is.Why then doesn't Osho step forwards, not as a savior of the world, not as a god, but as a man who has recognized what the problem is, has an idea of the solution, and make that available to those who do not know? Granted, it's available if they come here, but it is a massive journey to come here – and the road is terrible, by the way, which doesn't help, either!It is a massive journey. That’s why you are here: you take the message.But I'm not a missionary either.No, you are not a missionary.And I don't want to be a missionary.No, I don’t want anybody to be a missionary.But you've become a man of the world.No.You have become a man who is very visible; the world press knows about Osho, you must be one of the great show business teachers of all time.That’s true!And I believe that's what you want to be.On a serious note, if your message is as you stated, would it not be to the benefit of all mankind if Osho would take his show on the road?No, not on the road; I can manage from here. And I am managing it well!Osho,Well, I'm sure you are.I was intimidated when I read in the Kids' Corner of the Osho Times – which was the only one page I understood –a youngster talking about how he was very excited about the press conference here, and the opportunity for the world press to hear what you had to say, but all he heard was the same old questions.I have been racking my brain trying to think of some other questions, but I'm a pretty simple guy. What I see is that you have some things to say that a lot of people at this point don't buy – which you may not care about. Why don't you care about it?Why should I care?But why shouldn't you care? …and we can play Monopoly with this all the way through.No.Osho,You state that your interest is in the individual. Is that only the individual who is here, or within the Osho group?No, the individual is everywhere, whether he is here or not, because only the individual exists. Societies are just names, collectivities are all names. The reality is only of the individual. And I am trying my best, sitting in my room. That’s why you can see in all the papers, on the radio, on the television, a man who does not go out of this small valley. And I will go on hammering all over the world from here. What is the point of traveling?You do not go out of the valley, but is it not correct that you spent three nights in Bend at the Riverhouse Motel a couple of weeks ago?No.Then someone is paying you the highest compliment because they are impersonating you.Hmm!Because it was told to me that you spent a Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night, with a nurse and a bodyguard. And you were seen in the jacuzzi and in the lounge and you were having a great time. So I wanted to know why they kept sniffing my hair today before I sat down to talk to you, because I know they didn't sniff everybody's hair at the Riverhouse in Bend, Oregon!Those kinds of misdirected ideas – if in fact you were not there – sometimes break down a little credibility for Osho, and I wonder if it's possible for what you are saying to be projected to those people who just don't understand.First, the nonserious part.Don't try to get a bigger laugh than I did.I was not in the hotel, but I can be.Well, you probably could buy the hotel if you wanted to.In fact I have, and I have everything that any hotel in America can have. You have just to see my bathroom, perhaps it is the best in the whole world.Your bathroom.My bathroom.Is that an invitation?Yes.I've never been invited to the bathroom before. I've been told I belonged in the bathroom before, but never invited to one.I am a rare and a unique person in every way: I invite you into my bathroom!That is unique. But where do we go from there?There is nowhere to go. Enjoy the jacuzzi there, enjoy the shower there, enjoy the hot shower, enjoy the ice-cold shower…I need to know this for my own edification: have you ever invited a member of the press to your bathroom before?No.Thank you. I think that's important.Because I never liked any man the way I like you.I wonder if this could be love?This is!Osho,Invited to the bathroom… Well, I'm sure the listeners of this program are thinking you and I are going to start a nightclub act.What is the potential – since you were talking about this a moment ago – of uniting the Western philosophy, which is somewhat materialistic, and the Eastern philosophy, which is traditionally not materialistic but is more an inner recognition of oneself? Now you have done a magnificent job in many respects: that diamond wristwatch of course is certainly not an Eastern philosophy and yet the rest of your presentation is somewhat Eastern. Is it possible for those two cultures to unite?That’s what I have been doing! And that’s why both sides of the culture are angry at me. The Easterners are angry with me because they think I am materialist.And are they right?No.You're not materialistic?No, not in their sense. And the Western people, particularly the materialist, the communist, are angry with me because I am bringing spiritualism. My approach is that man is both together. This existence is not split into matter and spirit; this existence is one organic unity, just as your soul and your body are an organic unity. Your soul cannot exist without your body, and your body cannot be alive without the soul.I am destroying the whole idea of the separation, of a split between matter and mind, body and soul, materialism and spiritualism. I call myself Zorba the Buddha. My restaurants, my discos are all named after me: Zorba the Buddha.Now Buddhists are angry; the ambassador of Ceylon in America wrote me a letter saying, “In my country people will be angry about it. Please don’t use Buddha’s name with Zorba.”I replied to him, “We don’t mean your Buddha; your Buddha’s name was Gautam Siddhartha. Buddha is not anybody’s name, it is a quality. It means ‘the awakened one.’ It can be used for anybody who is awakened, so don’t get upset about it.”My effort is that Zorba and Buddha have to be bridged. Zorba represents the materialist’s life in all its luxury, hence this diamond wristwatch, hence all my Rolls Royces. I live the most luxurious life that any man has ever lived, with no worry. People have much more money… I don’t have a single cent, but they cannot live such a luxurious life as I am living, with no worry, no bank account, no income tax – and having everything that anybody can have!What is your secret, Osho? I really think you're in the wrong business. I mean because of what you've just documented, you must be one of the world's great con men, it would seem.I am!And it takes a great man to admit that.Certainly!And it takes an equally greater man to sit and accept it and revel in it, Osho.Right!Osho,I want to ask you a question about the former dead city of Antelope, it has of course created a great deal of controversy. This is my first trip to this particular area, it was my first trip through Antelope, and I guess the question I would have to ask is: why would anybody want Antelope? I mean what is the purpose and what are the plans? I don't see it becoming a resort area. I don't see it becoming an industrial area. There are people who live there for their own particular reasons, who of course don't think you're such a great man as I'm sure you're aware. What was the point?In fact, again you bring me to something in which I have no interest. Just not to be impolite to you, I am answering it.When we came here four years ago it was just a desert; only one house and 126 square miles of land. And that one house was there for a guard to take care of the land. What could he do? 126 square miles of land, and the owners had been trying to sell it for almost half a century, but who will purchase this desert – for what?When we came here I wanted a big place. That big a property was not available anywhere else. When we came here we needed our people to stay in Antelope, because there were no houses here. Before we made houses and roads and restaurants and eating places, they had to remain in Antelope. The population of Antelope was less than my sannyasins. And the Antelope population started behaving with great hostility. They wouldn’t allow any permit, they wouldn’t allow them to purchase any land, they wouldn’t allow change of zone – small things. My people told them, “We don’t want your city or your government. We are simply here for the time being, and we will be moving to our own city. But we have to create the city, and before we create it, we have to be here – this is the nearest place.”And because they wouldn’t listen, and they tried in every possible way to hinder, naturally my people thought that the best way was to take over the government: what is the need of asking permission from these people? – we have the government and we give the permission. So they took over, there was no problem in it.If you had come four years ago and seen Antelope, you would not believe it.I didn't believe it today. I couldn't figure out what all the flack was about.Four years ago it was absolutely a cemetery.What is it now?Now it is a dancing place; we have made a dead city alive. Now hundreds of sannyasins are living there, and since we took over the government we have done many things there: we have made better roads, we are trying to make new houses, a big housing colony, we are going to make a big hospital there, we have taken the school and raised the standard of the school. We are doing everything there, and now it is part of us. Now nobody can take it over from us.But they are trying.They are trying and we are enjoying. They are trying to collect eighty-four thousand signatures so that in the next election they can ask the governor to dissolve Antelope into Wasco County.They certainly know they cannot win, because only eight or ten old Antelopians are there and one hundred sannyasins are there. They cannot win democratically, and this is absolutely unconstitutional. If it is done, then we are going to fight up to the Supreme Court.Was it constitutional to take it over in the first place?Taking over is not the problem. They are the majority; the majority should rule, it is not a question of taking over.Is it an important enough question though, now that your city is established?Not yet. They are not allowing it to be established yet, our city is under litigation. And we have been telling them that if you allow us whatever we need, if you help – and we are creating a beautiful place for you in a desert – we can leave Antelope. That was our basic proposal to them.And that stands now?No, no more.Now you're not going to leave?Now we are not going to leave.And you're not going to invite any of those people into your bathroom?No.You will fight this as high as it must go?We will fight it. And I know constitutionally it is absolutely wrong to dissolve, so let them, and then we go to the Supreme Court. And there have been so many cases; we have never been losers.Last year we brought thousands of street people to share our homes with us, and the Oregon government got simply mad about it. They started thinking that we were going to take over the county or we were going to take over Oregon.Their feeling was that you were controlling the election, I think – is that not correct?No, not at all.No, I mean their feeling was that.Their feeling was that.And that was rejected by the election commission last week.Yes, that has been rejected.But, in defense of your actions, is not the Oregon resident election law – that you can walk in and ten minutes later you can vote – so antiquated that if you wanted to control the election which probably you did…No.…that you could bring these people in and that they could have voted legally in that election. Is that not correct?We were not concerned with taking over the county. What will we do with the county? It is unnecessary, taking the burden of the county which is bankrupt. Why should we bother? – we have to develop our own place!What did you bring the people in for?We had surplus money. After every festival we have nearabout two to three million dollars and we want to share it. This time we will be bringing some other group. Each year we are going to bring different groups of people: perhaps we may invite the blacks!My God, I don't know if Oregon's ready for that!Get ready! But every year we are going to invite somebody or other.Well, the complaint though, in the Bend area and in other areas, was that you brought them in and then you turned them loose.No.And that they then became wards of the various venues that they landed in, found themselves intentionally breaking laws so that they would have…No, that is absolutely wrong, because we had first brought people with a contract – that whenever they wanted to go, we would give them the ticket, return ticket.You provided them all a ticket?We provided all those people with whom we had the contract. After two weeks we dropped the idea of the contract, because the idea was, how would these poor people dare to come here on a one-way ticket? So we gave them round-trip tickets, they could go back; but once they settled here they started sending messages to their friends. Then we told those people, “If you want to come, your people are here, you can contact them, you can know what the situation is: if you want to come, we will give you only a one-way ticket,” and that was the contract. So those people who had the contract for a one-way ticket, got a one-way ticket, and that was their responsibility. We have nothing to do with it.And we were giving them three months to be here, every facility, but the Christians – particularly Christian churches and associations around – became very troubled about that. The fear was that perhaps we will turn them into sannyasins. Christians started coming here, Christian priests started having demonstrations in Madras, in Portland – and they persuaded them to go back.Here they were receiving everything free, here they were living the best they have ever lived before, and many of them are still here. After three months it was a free choice for them: if they wanted to go back, their ticket was there; if they didn’t want to go back, they could remain here. They have remained here. And we have been receiving hundreds of letters from the people who have left, saying that it was wrong on their side to listen to the Christians and leave the place. They would love to come back again.It was not our responsibility, letting those people loose in Oregon. It was the State of Oregon and the Christian churches of Oregon who created the whole paranoia. The State created the paranoia about the election, and the churches created the paranoia about religion. But the people who are here, nobody has tried to make them sannyasins; if they wanted to become, that was their business.And sannyas is such a nonserious phenomenon. It is not a fanatic type of group; it is very loose and free. If you want to become a sannyasin we don’t make any conditions, we don’t ask for any qualifications. You simply become a sannyasin. If you want to drop it – goodbye, you drop it. When you drop nobody stops you, when you want to become a sannyasin nobody stops you.So those people who are still here are never going to leave. And we had no intentions about the election. That’s what the commission has found, that we had no intention at all to bring those people for the election.Osho,Is there any way for this segment of the general society to coexist with the government and the people of Oregon under the current structure of things? Can you guys get along with the folks outside?I don’t think so.I don't care whether you want to or not, but no man or no group is an island, and at some point there is going to have to be some cooperation in something. I know you were asked at the press conference if there would be any possibility for coexistence with the people of what used to be Antelope, and your answer was no. But my question is: is there the possibility that the Rajneeshees can become coexisting – not subservient – but coexist with the people of Oregon?No, to me the word coexistence is political, and it does not carry any good connotations with it. Coexistence means that we are enemies, but what to do, we have to get along.Choose another word then, where the State of Oregon is concerned, that the Rajneeshees could in fact accept.I don’t compromise on anything.Well, I don't think that I'm asking you to compromise.No, I will make every effort to bring to the Oregonians what we are. We are exposing ourselves to all the media and everybody is welcome, but we are going to remain ourselves and there is no need for any coexistence. They exist there in their way, we exist here in our own way. Parallel existence, that is my word.Parallel might be even a better word.Yes.Coexistence, I think, does denote a hostility that is accepted.That’s it, that’s why I said, “Never.” When the question was asked about coexistence, I said, “Never.” But the woman did not even wait for me to explain what I wanted to say. She did not ask about the implications. She simply left – that was enough, coexistence finished! That woman immediately left the mike, and that was really symbolic.Osho,Well, I didn't want to come to the press conference, because I knew that you and I would get along very well, and I'd probably dominate the whole proceedings.At the risk of being redundant, talk to me for a minute about God – and the fact that your answer was, I believe, paraphrasing, “He is man's greatest lie.”Right.Or she is man's greatest lie, whichever the case may be.Right.That's it?Yes.Osho,Let's talk again about your bathroom!What about the question that came up at some point… I had read so much about Rajneeshees and Osho; your public relations department sent me the world's largest press kit. In sixteen years I could not read everything that was in there, but I tried!…The question that has come up is the Jim Jones problem – the parallel that has been drawn that this is a religious fanatic who is controlling a cult of people who will do anything that he decides that they should do. I believe your answer was simply that the Christianity factor is not in existence here – that life after death is better than life during life.Is that the complete answer – and is it not probably safe to assume that in some respects the tragedy that happened at Jonestown was a result of people following an individual blindly, as opposed to a Christianity question?Wait!It is not only that he was a Christian priest. There is great implication in it. The whole of Christianity is death-oriented; the cross is its symbol. And if Jesus was not crucified, there would have been no Christianity at all. The Jews simply missed the point. The man was nuts! They should have ignored him, he was doing no harm to anybody. To crucify that nut created Christianity. I call Christianity, crossianity. It is not Christianity.How about the people who say Osho is nuts, and if they were to crucify you would the same thing happen?It will happen again if they crucify me. Again there will be another Christianity. So better tell them…Leave you alone!Leave me alone!Okay.It is in their favor if they leave me alone. If they assassinate me, it will be in my favor.Reverend Jim Jones had no similarity at any point with me. All his disciples were mostly black, illiterate. All my disciples are white.I saw three blacks today.Yes, three you can see in five thousand people. That does not make even one percent. These white people have come from all over the world, they are all well educated, most of them are graduates, a large number of them have Master’s Degrees, many are Ph.D.s, a few are D.Litts. His group and my group are poles apart.Those people were blindly following him, because that is what Jesus teaches. He was simply repeating Jesus’ drama: Jesus is responsible.For Jonestown?Yes. And the pope should be hanged!Who should be…?For Jonestown, the pope.Well, he wasn't in office then. The pope at the time should have been hanged…?Any.Just pick one out.Any will do, because he represents Jesus Christ.But then why not hang all the priests and the bishops and the cardinals and the archbishops…?That will be great!But that’s what Jesus was doing with people, his followers: “Believe in me, have faith in me, follow me.” And that’s what Reverend Jones was doing, “Whatever I say you have to follow.”Here I am saying to my people, “Don’t believe in my statements. Think over them, argue over them. You love me, that is another thing. That should not become your belief.”But one of the great ploys in the human mind is for someone to say, “Don't do that,” which makes them want to do it even more.So what do you want? I should say, “Do it”?No, no. Does that not put an awesome responsibility on you to have this kind of devotion?No, because I have been consistently denying to them: telling them, almost every day for thirty years, that I am not your leader, that I am not a prophet, that I am not a messiah, that I am not the only begotten son of God; I am just an ordinary man as you are, with a slight difference – you are asleep, I am awake. But that is not much of a difference. I can just shake you a little and you will be awake.I have been telling them that I don’t have any dogma to give them, any belief system to give them. Christians have told me that I should publish a catechism in which my whole doctrine is presented in short, but that is impossible. I have 360 books and I have contradicted myself thousands of times, because to me consistency is something that belongs to the stupid, unintelligent, retarded. A consciousness which goes on growing is bound to contradict at each step the step that preceded it.They cannot make any belief out of my books, out of my teachings. They can love me – and love is not adoration. Adoration is for somebody who is higher than you. Now I am doing my hardest to tell them that I am not higher, but I don’t take any responsibility if they don’t listen. If somebody adores me, that is his responsibility, not mine. If somebody thinks he is my follower, that is his idea, not mine. I am not responsible for anybody. I am only responsible for myself, and I want my people to be responsible for themselves.Osho,Is anyone here responsible for anyone else?No, nobody is responsible for anybody else.Osho,Is anyone in the world responsible for anyone else?In fact there should not be. Only politicians and priests have been exploiting people and saying, “We are responsible for you. We take the responsibility.” That is a strategy to make them enslaved. The priest says, “Don’t be bothered. You just follow the Christian dogma, have faith in Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.”They are taking their responsibility. Jesus was taking the responsibility for saving the whole mankind, and he has not been seen for two thousand years. What a great savior!I am nobody’s savior. I have saved myself, that’s enough.Quite luxuriously too.Quite luxuriously, because I don’t believe in any ascetic ideas. My idea about asceticism is that it is a psychological sickness, it is masochism. It is torturing yourself, and in a sick mind you can enjoy torturing yourself.There are two kinds of torturers: the sadist who tortures somebody else and enjoys, and the masochist who tortures himself and enjoys. Both kinds of people fit together very beautifully. The best couple in the world will be a sadist husband, a masochist wife, or vice-versa. Both will be of great…A marriage made in heaven, right?Yes, a marriage made in heaven, because one will enjoy torturing the other and the other will enjoy being tortured, so that is the perfect, the best marriage I can conceive.I am not a masochist, hence I enjoy everything that life can give to me. And I am not a sadist, so I don’t tell any of my people to torture themselves in any way. Enjoy to the fullest. And I don’t give them any promises.Just see the difference: I don’t give any promises for their future, that they will be benefited after death, rewarded. I don’t even talk about the future, I simply talk about this moment. I cannot believe how people can even think of me in reference to Reverend Jones and Jonestown. This is just the opposite place.Here we love, we live, we live to totality, and we try to squeeze every moment to the very last drop of its juice. I have never ordered them anything.And as far as death is concerned, I am life-affirmative. I want death to disappear from the earth. And there is a possibility, if the idiotic politicians don’t go on wasting scientific genius in piling up nuclear weapons. There is a possibility, very commonly accepted by biologists, that a man can live for three hundred years very easily, and without any old age.In India I have seen people in a small part of Kashmir, which is now under Pakistan – they have invaded that part. It is a very small place, a few thousand people but they live for 150 or 160 years. The oldest man in that community was 180 years old when I went there, and he was working in the field!I asked him, “How long have you worked?”He said, “I don’t know how to count. People say that I have been working here for at least 150 years. When I was thirty my father died, and since then I have been working.” And he was still young.There are hundreds of people in the Soviet Union who have reached beyond 150; they also are part of middle Asia, the other side of the Himalayas. Scientists think that three hundred years is possible very easily, and if more efforts are made we can postpone death as long as possible.Unless a man wants to die – because who would like to live for one thousand years? Perhaps…I can't figure out why the guy of 185 would want to keep living while he's working in the fields.You cannot. It is difficult to believe when you…Then we'd have to change the whole structure of this planet. The entire planet would have to be changed.No, nothing. All that we have to change is the way we have been producing children. Only that has to be changed, nothing else, because the father’s cell and the mother’s egg have the program for the whole life. The meeting of those two decides the whole life of the person: how long he will live, what kind of nose he will have, what color of hair, what color of skin, what kind of diseases he will have, when he will die. The whole program is in the first two genes.The only thing that bioengineering has to do is to change the program. And they are capable, they are saying they are capable of changing the whole program, that the child will not have any old age, that the child will live three hundred years, that he will not be vulnerable to all kinds of diseases, infections, that he will have the highest I.Q., intelligence, possible.Would that be, in your mind, a healthy world?It will be for the first time healthy. Up to now it has been just a sick and mad world. It will be really healthy when there are no diseases.Osho,When you talk about constructing genes and the DNA progress that's being made, and procreation and the entire picture, would you do away with egos, would you do away with the competitive factor? Could you do away with all of the negatives like jealousy, like greed and things like that?Yes, that can be done.So you're really talking then about a genealogical, bionic person – constructed?Certainly. And that will be the dream of all those people who for centuries have been thinking of a superman.Osho,Does the world really want a superman?This world does not deserve.But this is where it has to start, or at least where our lifetime is concerned.It needs.This is not The Price is Right and you suddenly open the curtain and there is a superman. It's the developmental process, the evolutionary process.Very simple – within twenty years – because one generation of twenty-year-old young people, supermen moving around, not hippies – you will see the difference. Within twenty years – it is not a question of a very long time. And when we can give the child the intelligence of an Einstein, we can give him the aesthetic sense of a Van Gogh, we can give him a face as beautiful as Alexander the Great or Cleopatra, why should we go on living with this mediocre, biological, accidental world?It is strange that whenever I mention it to people, they raise the question that it will be something inhuman, mechanical, but about other things they don’t bother. When you have cancer, then you don’t say, “It is natural. Leave it, don’t do anything, because that operation is going to be mechanical, that operation is going to be technological, and this beautiful cancer in me is natural.”When we are ready to take man-made medicines for our diseases – and diseases come from nature – nobody bothers about it, everybody is willing for medicines, operations, surgeries.Well, they accept it to heal, but not to create.That is just the next step. If so much healing is needed, why not create a man who needs no healing?I don't know if I buy all of that part of it. I see what you're saying but… I don't know if I'm ready to start accepting… We've gone from your bathroom to creating superman and that is a giant, quantum leap for me.It is!And for most people.No, not for my people! They are accustomed to it.But we're back to the acceptance of what Osho says.No, that is not the way. They have been listening to me and they know that I give them every day a quantum leap that they have never expected. And they have been with me for a decade or two decades, and they had not been expecting that I will say this. They go on waiting for tomorrow morning.And then they say, “What has he got for us today?”Yes!Osho,A couple of “popular” questions: there have been reports that the Osho empire – excuse my word – is crumbling, that there are major defections, some of the corporations are not doing as well financially. True or false?It is all wrong. But those people need some consolations; people who are hostile to us need some consolations. If these things give them consolation, good, but everything is wrong: my empire is increasing every day.Well, probably it's because your restaurant closed in Portland, did it not?We closed it, not because we are shrinking, we closed it because we wanted our people to be here.Didn't business get a little bad?No, our business is increasing so much in Europe that we have to send people from here to Europe.Didn't you have a business that just went bankrupt somewhere?Nowhere!I wonder who I was reading about. Where do they get these reports?These reports come to you or to the newspapers and they make big headlines out of them. If a sannyasin has a business of his own and he goes bankrupt, that does not mean that my empire is going bankrupt.But it does to those people who would like to think that your empire is not succeeding.They can go on dreaming.Osho,Is this an empire? Is that a quote?It is certainly an empire!I wanted to make sure I chose the right word.It is the right word.Osho,I found it interesting that when someone asked you at the press conference if you wanted to take over all of Oregon and you said no, it was too small, you wanted the world, they probably took you seriously. Do you want to take over the world?I was serious!Are you involved in an effort to take over the world?Certainly!When can we look for something like this to take place? Antelope today, the world tomorrow?No, we are not going to take the world the way we have taken Antelope. This is nothing. We are going to take the world over in a totally different way which is not political at all. We are increasing our people all around the world. We will take it over spiritually. We are not interested in politics. They forced us to take that dead town, Antelope, they forced us to take it.Had they not forced you, would you have given it back?Now, no.I thought you said earlier that you would have. Not now, I mean had they cooperated.Things have gone… In the beginning if they had cooperated there would have been no question of us taking it, because it is unnecessary trouble for us. We have our own work to do, we need more people here; we don’t want our people to live in Antelope, because it is unnecessary trouble. Every morning they have to be brought here, every evening they have to be sent back.They'd never have to display their courage to me, riding that road two times a day, every day.It is something, because this road, this county road, is worse than the road that goes to hell!I cannot yet speak from personal authorization on that.I can, because I visited.I will take your word for it. Is there a heaven and is there a hell? And would you like to tell me what part of Oregon they are both in?You are sitting in heaven and the county road goes to hell!Osho,You are a man who certainly loves the controversy that surrounds you.I love it.You are a man who I think would like to have every human being in this entire world at least to have heard about you.Certainly, I would like the entire world either to love me or hate me; I would not like a single individual in the whole world to ignore me. And that’s the way my empire is expanding. I have more friends, I have more enemies: every day they are increasing.Osho,You are also a man with, without question, a magnificent sense of humor. And in order to rule this empire – not rule, I'm sorry, you do not rule; you just live in this empire – to accept all of the hassles and controversies and misrepresentations and probably some of the truths about yourself, you would have to have a great sense of humor.I really enjoy.I read in the Visitors Center that if everyone in the world could laugh over a twenty-four hour period – it would change this entire malignancy that we all seem to live in. That's not what you said; that's what I said.It will help, but it will kill that woman. Laughter is a good medicine, but you should take as much as you can absorb; otherwise it can kill you, it can drive you mad.Life is a very mysterious phenomenon, where laughter is part and where tears also are part. Once in a while to be sad, really sad, is not bad. Sadness has its own beauty. You have just to learn to enjoy the beauty of sadness, its silence, its depth.Life is everything all together, and we allow our people to live in all dimensions. If somebody is crying and weeping, nobody is going to stop him here. Somebody may give him a hug and go on his way. That hug was not to stop his tears, just a spontaneous response.We believe in life in its totality – in its days, in its nights, the sunny days and the cloudy days. We believe that everything in life can be enjoyed. You need just a little more awareness, more consciousness of what is happening. You are not your mind, you are not your body. There is a witness somewhere inside you who can go on looking at the mind, at the emotions, at the physiological reactions. That witness is you. And that witness is capable of enjoying everything, once you get centered there.My whole method of meditation is to get centered at your witness, and then let life and its games go on. Enjoy, laugh, cry, but whatever you do, do it totally, with no shame, with no guilt.And, as you said, I am certainly a man who enjoys being controversial. I cannot conceive a man who has any guts not being controversial. The people who are not controversial are simply hypocrites, just goody-goody – nice to everybody, just changing their masks the whole day, to fit with everybody.One of the Americans, Dale Carnegie, has written a book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. My idea is, “How to Influence People and Create Enemies”.Why? Why is it important, by comparison, to create enemies?Because if you can create an enemy, you have created a potential friend. I will tell you one old Hassidic story.Hassids are not traditional Jews. Jews don’t accept Hassids as religious, for the same reason that nobody will accept my people as religious: the Hassids sing and dance and enjoy and eat and drink.This Hassid sent one of his disciples to the chief rabbi of Jerusalem to present him the first copy of his book that had just been published. And he said to the disciple, “When you give it to him – remember, give it to him, not to anybody else – you have to be very alert and watch what he says. Remember exactly every word; what he does, remember exactly his acts.”The disciple went. The chief rabbi was sitting in his garden; it was a beautiful evening, the sun was just setting and the wife of the rabbi was also sitting there. He presented the book of his master and said, “It is my master’s book’s first edition and this is the first book that has come out of the press. Out of great gratitude he sends it to you.”He said, “That Hassid? He has some guts to send me his book.” He took the book from his hand and threw it over the fence into the street.And the wife said to him, “This is not right. You could have thrown that book when the disciple had gone, or you could have put it in the library where you have thousands of books. What harm could that book have done to you?”The disciple came back and he said, “That chief rabbi is just a rotten man! He is not even a gentleman. You send him a present and he throws it with such hatred over the fence into the street. But his wife is certainly a woman worth respecting. Because she suggested to him, ‘You could have thrown it afterwards. Why hurt him? Or you could have just put it in your library where there are thousands of books. What harm could that book have done to your library?’”The master said to the disciple, “I am going to convert that rabbi one day, but his wife is beyond me.”Osho,What kind of a man are you? Not what you believe – we've talked about that – what your thinking is.Just crazy, nothing.Just a crazy old man… Somehow I felt that you would answer something like that.It is a fact!When you say, “Just a crazy man,” what does that mean?Exactly what it means.Mentally deranged?No.Well, in the interpretation of crazy, to some, that's what it means.No, crazy simply means one who has gone out of his mind. Now, two types of people go out of their minds: one is the madman that you know ordinarily as crazy, another is the meditator. He also goes out of his mind, but going out of his mind he goes higher, to the witness. The madman going out of the mind goes lower, to the mind. Both are crazy! I belong to the first category.Osho,Tomorrow I'm going to talk to some of the people who are involved in your city and I look forward to that. After that I'm going to talk to the former and current residents of our favorite subject, Antelope.Good!If you were to want me to say something to them during this conversation, what would it be, if anything?No, I have nothing to say to them, because I don’t consider they will be able to understand anything. I have seen idiots around the world, but Antelope simply defeats all the idiots. You will come across them tomorrow.Thank you for your time. I have enjoyed it. I think you enjoyed it too.I enjoyed it even more!Thank you!Good!

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Carlo Silvestro, (Svatantra Sarjano)Panorama, Milan, ItalyOsho,Our magazine is a weekly magazine in Italy with a reputation of an opinion maker – like Newsweek in America. Since it is the first time any Italian journalist has this opportunity to speak with you, we will have a lot of questions and we hope that we have an answer for all of them for our readers.The first question is: you say that you are not a prophet, you are not a messiah, you are not a god, you are not a saint. So we want to know: who are you?Is it necessary for anyone to be a messiah, to be a prophet, to be a son of God? Cannot one just be a human being? I am simply a human being as everybody else is, with a very little difference: I am awake and others are asleep.It may look like a great difference to the person who is asleep, but to the awakened there is no difference at all. Just a little shaking, shocking, and the asleep one will be awake and they both can laugh at the whole stupid game of master and disciple, of messiah, of the savior and the saved. Except laughter there will be nothing, because they will know that they are both exactly the same. And because these names – prophet, messiah, incarnation of God – have been used in the past to exploit people, to create bondage for their spirits, for their psyches, these names have divided people into different religions and the ultimate result was thousands of wars. Five thousand wars in three thousand years – crusades in the name of God, people killing thousands of other people, burning people alive in the name of God, and with the authority that they are the representative of the messiah or the prophet or the successor.I don’t want to be in this company of criminals. I want simply to be an ordinary human being – that’s what I am.Do you think that you have a big power?I don’t have any power. I have love – big love – but love knows no power. Power is desired by those who are incapable of love. Only the loveless become politicians, power hungry. They think that if they have power over people perhaps their desire for love will be fulfilled. It is never fulfilled. No politician dies contented. It is impossible – he has gone wrong from the very beginning. The path of power leads farther away from yourself, and from love. The path of love brings you closer, home to yourselfI have immense love to give, inexhaustible love to give, but no power to order or command or tell somebody to be this, be that. I don’t have any Ten Commandments.Osho,Why have you said that you are a guest here?Do you plan to leave, to travel?No. I have always been a guest wherever I was, because I belong to the whole universe. So anywhere I am, that particular place is only a guesthouse. I am not planning to leave – I never plan. I can leave any moment, I may not leave ever.Osho,You said, “If I must choose, I prefer to be Zorba rather than Buddha.” What does it mean?It means that Zorba is the foundation and Buddha is the palace. Buddha is the peak, but the foundation stones are laid by Zorba. It will be foolish to choose to be a Buddha without having the foundation stones.I am absolutely mathematical about it: Zorba should be there and the stronger a Zorba is there, the better a Buddha is possible, so I can become Buddha any moment. Zorba is absolutely needed as the basic energy out of which the Buddha is going to be carved. Zorba is the marble rock out of which the Buddha statue has to be carved. I choose the rock – and the Buddha is easy.It is just a question of opening your eyes. I don’t bother about Buddha; I am worried about people who are not Zorbas. How will they become Buddhas? They don’t have the basic material out of which a Buddha is made.And this poverty has been given to people by our religious leaders. They have been told not to be materialists. They have been told to be celibate. They have been told to live in poverty. They have been told that life is out of sin. All these things have destroyed their Zorbas. Otherwise, every man is a born Zorba the Greek.And if everything goes according to me, every man will die as Zorba the Buddha. Between the Greek and the Buddha there is not much distance, but first you must be the Greek.Osho,What do you mean when you say that you are the guru of the rich people? Are you rich, as are many of your sannyasins? Your critics – and I'm trying to understand – say that you collect money just as you collect the Rolls Royces and the watches. Are you against the poor?First, I collect nothing. There is not a single thing that I possess. For thirty years I have been the poorest man in the world. And on the judgment day, if there is a line you will find me in the front, ahead of Jesus Christ.But my people who love me are there; that is my possession, that makes me rich. Their love is more to me than power over the whole world. I would not like to become Alexander the Great. Out of their love, whatsoever they want to do, they do.If they want me to have Rolls Royces, they are free. If they want me to have diamond watches, they are free. They know my taste, and for that simple reason my people can manage to offer me everything that not even a king or queen is capable of having.The reason is very simple: whatever I teach can be understood only by the very intelligent and creative people. So only the cream of intelligence comes close to me.I am against poverty and against the poor. I don’t want any poverty, any poor people in the world. I am not in agreement with Jesus that the poor are the blessed; they are the cursed, they shall inherit the kingdom of hell. There is no need for anybody to be poor. We have enough intelligence, we have everything that can make the whole earth a beautiful garden. But politicians will not allow it to happen; priests will not allow it to happen, because if the garden of Eden can be created here, then what is going to happen to their paradise, their God, their hell and all the business that goes on around those bogus words which mean nothing?Politicians would not like that there are no poor people in the world. If there are no poor people in the world, communism will lose all hold immediately. If there are no poor people in the world, it will not be easy for the capitalists to exploit anybody. In the capitalist countries, the capitalist wants there to be poor people because they can be purchased easily. In India you can purchase any vote for two rupees; that is the highest price for any vote. Now what kind of democracy can exist where you can purchase a vote for two rupees?The rich people want the poor to exist; the priest wants the poor to exist, because without the poor, who is going to go to the church? The rich people have their Rotary Clubs, their Lion’s Clubs, the Club of Rome – who is going to the church? The priest wants the crippled, retarded, blind, sick, old, starving, all kinds of people who are not wanted at all. The priest needs them; otherwise, who is going to gather around Billy Graham?If there are no orphans, who is going to give a Nobel Prize to Mother Teresa? These people are exploiting. With all the scientific and technological developments in the twentieth century, I am saying that it is absurd to allow poverty to exist for even a single moment longer.Osho,We've been here a few days now and the commune looks so peaceful and people are really beautiful. Your words are very beautiful, too. How come the press and the Oregonians are so unusually aggressive against you and your people?Because I want them to be aggressive. They are simply following my wishes. If they are not aggressive, then there is not much hope. If they are aggressive, we can put them right.Their being aggressive is their first step toward friendship. They may not understand, but I understand it. For my whole life I have been creating enemies and turning enemies into friends. And in fact it is better this way, rather than vice-versa: you put all your energy into creating a friend and then he becomes your enemy. That is sheer wastage. The better thing is to put your whole energy into creating enemies, and then let them turn into your friends. And they are bound to turn, because whatsoever they are carrying is absurd. The moment they come to know the truth, they will become your friends.And it is a simple psychology: the deeper their hate, the deeper will be their love, in the same proportion. I do not believe in people like Dale Carnegie. I work just in the opposite way, and you can see my business is succeeding. And where is Dale Carnegie? And how many people has he turned into friends?I want the whole earth, the whole humanity, to be divided into two camps – no more Russian, no more American – either they hate me or they love me, but both ways they are connected with me, and I love both of them. They are like the two wheels the bullock cart moves on; they are not aware that they are playing into my hands.Osho,You said, “I am a simple man.” But why do thousands and thousands of people, simple men, follow “a simple man”?Because it is very difficult to find a simple man. Nobody is simple, everybody thinks himself extraordinary. He may not have the guts to say it – that’s another matter – but everybody, deep down, thinks himself to be the most superior, the most beautiful, the most intelligent person in the world. And if he is not succeeding, it is because the whole world is hostile to him, everybody is preventing him. Otherwise, he would be on top of Everest.I am a simple man with no ambition to be anybody other than I am, and these people have been attracted toward me just because of my simplicity, humanity. They have fallen in love with an innocent man who has no secrets and no privacy, who is absolutely open, available.You cannot find people open, available, innocent, simple. Even the most idiotic people think they are great geniuses. I am not a genius, just an average, ordinary person.Osho,Do you have any kind of personal strategy for the future, any message to leave? Do you have any idea of Rajneeshism and Rajneeshpuram after you? Do you have any successor?No, because all the religions who have followed those lines have turned poisonous, have turned into curses on humanity. I don’t want to be a curse to humanity. I am a blessing and I want to remain a blessing.So nobody is going to succeed me. And my message for my people is that the moment I am gone, your religion is gone. Then whatever remains is just a corpse. Don’t start worshipping the corpse. I am a free man and I want every sannyasin to be a free man. My love is the only binding force between them; otherwise, there is no theology, no belief system, no agreement on anything.Only one thing is keeping them together around the world, and that is their love for me. When I am not there nothing can keep them together, there is no bridge. Each sannyasin is individually connected to me. You don’t ask the sun, “If one day you stop rising, what is going to happen to the rays?” You know that the rays will not be there.The moment I am dead and gone… They have lived with me, they have danced with me, they have enjoyed with me – now they know the secret of how to enjoy life, how to live life. And there is no need to go on making a church, popes, successors, because they have done so much harm. I will not allow my people to do that.When I am gone, then disperse. What is the point? My love was keeping you together, and I am no longer there. It is good that I am no longer, because now your last attachment is also dropped. I was the last attachment to be broken, now you are totally free. You were free from your family, from your nation, from your religion, but a small thin thread of love was binding you with me. Now I am no longer there; I give you the last, the final taste of freedom.And then whatever happens, happens. I am not responsible for it. The people who will be coming after me will have the responsibility. And I never think about the future. I am so totally involved with the present. I am talking to you, and at this moment only you exist for me. The whole space has disappeared and the whole of time has stopped. Just you and me: only then can there be some communication.And I don’t think about what is going to happen tomorrow. I am not thinking what you are going to write about me, and I am not going to read it, whatever you write! It doesn’t matter at all. What matters is that we enjoyed this moment together, loved this moment, laughed together, felt each other’s humanity.I cannot see anybody as a journalist, as a doctor, as an engineer. Those are not your realities, they are just your jobs. When I look at you, I put aside your journalist, I am talking directly to you. Journalism is just your way of earning bread and butter. What importance does it have? I cannot love bread and butter, but I love you as a person, as an individual, and whatsoever I am saying is totally different from what you would have found in the past with the many other people you have interviewed. Even in the future you may not come across a man like me.My whole interest in this moment is how to help you rejoice the time you have been with me. Your magazine, your writing, does not come between me and you – so when he started introducing the magazine, I was going to stop him, but just out of politeness I listened. What concern do I have with magazines, newspapers?My concern is purely with the individual, and then it is up to him. Whatsoever he wants to make out of it, he will make out of it. I trust in my love, and I trust in the dignity of the individual that is sitting before me, and the trust will take care of everything. I never think of tomorrow.Osho,But you don't think that you are responsible for all the sannyasins living here, for the life and the future of the children I have seen in this city?I am not responsible for anybody. I am not even a member of this commune. I live outside the City of Rajneeshpuram. And I am not a sannyasin, as you can see. It is the commune’s responsibility. I am very irresponsible.When I was leaving the university, one girl used to love me. But just the way girls are – and particularly in India – she was shy, and I am not the one to chase anybody. I do chasing sitting in my chair… I am just a lazy man. She loved me, and she was continuously sending messages to me. She wanted to get married to me. Then the day of departure came and we were leaving. We had passed our final examinations and then she could not contain it any more.She pulled me aside and told me, “I have loved you for two years, but I had not the courage to say it. And you are a strange man. I made so many efforts and so many messages, and you just remained as if I am not here.”I said, “You do not know: it is just out of compassion that I have remained that way, because I am a very irresponsible man. I may marry you, and tomorrow morning I may forget all about you. I may give birth to children and then I will not bother at all what happens to you and your children.”Just out of compassion, I kept out of it. It is enough that I am carrying my own responsibility toward myself That’s why I have never accepted any responsibility for anything.India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, wanted me to join politics. I was introduced to him by India’s very old, senior-most parliamentarian, who had been a member of parliament from 1916 up to 1976. He was known as the father of the Indian parliament. Jawaharlal used to stay at his palace; his father was given the title of rajah, king, so his house had become the palace – and it was palatial.Jawaharlal was a man of tremendous intelligence. He talked for just five to ten minutes with me and he said, “You’d better join politics. Don’t waste your time here and there, you have a great future, and I am with you and I will support you.”I said, “Thank you for your generosity, but I am not going to be in any position where I am responsible for anybody.”Politics means responsibility, and if you are not responsible you have to become a hypocrite. That’s what all the politicians have become. They talk about being responsible and nobody is responsible.Now, millions of tons of food in Europe have been thrown in the ocean, but they will not send it to Ethiopia. One hundred thousand dollars were needed to take it to the ocean, and they dumped it there – fresh fruit, fresh food. But its presence was going to bring the prices down, and that they would not like. And who cares about Ethiopia? And why should anybody care?In speeches, everybody will talk about Ethiopia and responsibility, but the real face is totally different. The prime minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, is one of my friends. He is Jawaharlal’s grandson. If I had accepted Jawaharlal’s offer, perhaps I would have been in his place. He is selling wheat to other countries while half of India is starving and dying.And they go on talking about sympathy and compassion for the poor… But he needs nuclear weapons. For that he needs money, and India has only raw materials to sell. It has no technology, no high technology. The poor man works his whole life producing wheat and dies starving while the wheat will be sold to purchase uranium to make nuclear weapons.I don’t take anybody’s responsibility. In this way I help whoever comes close to me to be responsible for himself. People who take others’ responsibility are responsible for creating retarded, dependent slaves all around the world. If nobody had taken their responsibility, they would have taken the challenge of life and struggled for themselves.I have heard about a very super-rich woman. She had come to a holiday resort, to the best hotel. Her boy, who looked perfectly healthy and young, was carried from the car on a stretcher. Even the hotel manager and others thought that there must be something wrong. The young man looked perfectly healthy, in the best of health. They said, “What is wrong with this young man? What has happened?”She said, “Nothing has happened, but he can afford to be carried on a stretcher. Why should he walk?”Now, this woman thinks she is making the life of the boy luxurious, but she is crippling him. He may become crippled, he may not ever be able to walk. Somebody took away the whole responsibility.It is a known fact that in the whole history of humanity, not a single genius has come from super-rich families. And the reason is simple: all that he wanted was available, there was no challenge. When there is no challenge intelligence goes out of function, it is not needed.It is strange; it should have been otherwise. The richer people should have given birth to better geniuses, better Einsteins, better painters, musicians, poets, but they have just given birth to buffalos.I don’t take anybody’s responsibility, because I love people and I have compassion enough not to take their responsibility on my shoulders. They have to take their own responsibility.Osho,Is the sannyasin a sort of new man? You say that the sannyasins are innocent children. Your critics say that they are your slaves – slaves of your attitude toward work, life, love, sex. May we have your opinion of the sannyasins?I don’t care at all what the critics say. They all can go to hell – the sooner the better. But I can tell you about my sannyasins.I don’t have any dogma that they can follow. I have no philosophy that they can live. I don’t have any catechism that they have to repeat and cram.Being with me, all that happens is a very delicate deprogramming, and once a person is deprogrammed I don’t have any program for him. In fact, my sannyasins are simply losing what they have, and I am not going to replace it with anything. They will lose Christianity, they will lose Hinduism, and I will not replace it with another program. I will leave them to themselves.They are not my slaves; neither am I their slave. Because slavery is a very strange phenomenon, it is a double-edged sword. The master is dependent on the slaves as much as the slaves are dependent on the master.I am nobody’s slave, nobody is my slave, because I know that if you create slaves you become a slave immediately. My sannyasins cannot even expect anything from me for the simple reason that I never expect anything from them. When I said that I am not celibate because I am not unnatural, a few sannyasins were shocked. They started writing letters to me, and I informed them that they cannot have any expectations about me. I can do anything I want. We don’t have any contract that I will follow your expectations or you will follow mine.I have no contract of any kind. My sannyasins cannot expect what I am going to do tomorrow. I can do anything, and they also are absolutely free. They can do anything they want: they can be here, they can leave. It is their freedom.Out of freedom they have become sannyasins, out of freedom they can become non-sannyasins. There is no problem. It is not a church and it is not some contract which has always existed between the leader and the follower, the master and the disciple. But this delicate thing is rarely understood – that they both become dependent on each other.I am reminded of a beautiful story about Diogenes. Greece has given a few beautiful people to the world, but none comparable to Diogenes. He is not much mentioned in the history of philosophies or even if he is mentioned, it is only in the footnotes – for the simple reason that the man was so rebellious and such an outsider that the professors of philosophy would find it difficult to explain the man and his behavior.He lived naked. Now, in India it is a tradition, there are many naked sannyasins. But in Greece he was the only one in the whole of history who lived naked. Just like Buddha in India, he used to carry a begging bowl to beg food or to drink water.One day he was thirsty. It was hot and he was rushing toward the river to fill his begging bowl with cool water. Just before he was going to dip his begging bowl, a dog came running in and started drinking. He stopped, for a moment he thought, and he said, “This dog seems to be more independent than me. I have to depend on this begging bowl. If a dog can manage without a begging bowl, then Diogenes is going to manage it, too.”He immediately threw the begging bowl into the river.Even in small things…What to say about human beings? When you make human beings your slave you are entering into a mutual slavery, a mutual dependence. I have no contract with my people. I have not promised them that I should be this or that, so they can never question my behavior. I remain individual; and that’s what I want them to remain – individual.Now, the persons who were shocked when I said I am not celibate had carried the idea for centuries that a religious person should be celibate – and particularly nobody has heard that an enlightened man has made love to any woman after his enlightenment. Naturally they were shocked.It is up to them. They can think that perhaps I am not enlightened. Perhaps it is time for them to leave this place, they have come to a wrong person. But as far as I am concerned, I am going to be totally free, absolutely frank, no secrecy, no privacy.I know for certain that celibacy is unnatural unless you are impotent; and I don’t think any impotent person has ever become enlightened. No, there is no mention of it. In fact, just the opposite is the case. The people who became enlightened were really much too sexual, that’s why I call them Zorbas. They were really much too sexual – so much that finally they understood that there is nothing much in it. They experienced it through and through, and found nothing in it. And that was the point from where they started searching for something else. That led them toward buddhahood, enlightenment.But once they had become enlightened – they were fulfilling people’s expectations because they wanted to be great enlightened masters, prophets, messiahs – they could not go on fooling with women. Buddha would not even look at a woman. What cowardliness! Buddha would not allow any woman close to him, she had to remain eight feet away.Is this enlightenment? So afraid, so shaky, that a woman even coming close and you become afraid? This is repression, this is not enlightenment.I want to declare to the whole world that unenlightened people can have only sexual relationships – which they call love, which is not right. They should stop calling it “making love”; they are simply “making sex”. Only an enlightened person can make love, because it is no longer his need. He can be without it for years and not even for a single moment will he feel its need. But he can enjoy it as fun.I can play cards; it is not a need. I can drink once in a while; it does not disturb my enlightenment. I can make love; I don’t see it can disturb people’s idea of enlightenment – that is their business. My enlightenment is not made of such fragile matter, it cannot be disturbed by anything. In fact, they have been asking whether enlightened people transcend sex, and I have sent the answer to them that the enlightened person finally transcends enlightenment too.And I have transcended enlightenment too. Now I am again the same old ordinary man I was before all this round-trip journey. I am back home.I have passed through everything, all meditation, all enlightenment, and come back home, but with new eyes, new clarity, new vision. It is almost like living continuously on LSD.Osho,Why are so many women sannyasins?Because I am a man, and it is natural for women to be attracted to me. You can see my gray beard. This beautiful gray beard is the work of the ladies. The whole credit goes to them, otherwise I would have a black beard at this time. But so many ladies… But I don’t bother about the color of the beard – the gray is so beautiful!It seems the whole commune is run by women. Is there a particular purpose or strategy to that?Certainly there is a particular strategy. Man has dominated women for centuries and forced the idea on them that they are the weaker sex, that they cannot do anything that man can do. They can do small homely things – that is their world. I want to destroy that idea completely. And you can see I have destroyed it.My communes are run by women, and they have proved far superior to men in every possible way. My sannyasins are doing better business than any man can do, finding better bargains than any man can find. I wanted it to be a solid argument before the whole of humanity that women are not inferior, that if you give them a chance they can even prove superior in many matters. At least they are going to prove equal.And this is a strange way: to keep half of humanity in a downtrodden state. How much is the loss? Half of humanity means that women, if they were accepted as equal, would have produced a Dostoevsky, a Turgenev, a Chekhov, a Gorky, a van Gogh, a Picasso, a Nijinsky. They may have proved a Buddha, a Jesus. Half of humanity! It is a vast ocean to whom you have denied all possibilities of creation, expression. And you have behaved with women as if they are cattle, not human beings.It is not going to be so in my commune. And I do not agree with the liberation movement of women, because that is going in a reactionary way, creating hate for men – so much so that their basic approach is now that no woman should love any man, that they should all be lesbians.Here, women are running the whole commune, everything, but no man who is here has ever felt that he is inferior. In fact, for the first time he feels a respect for women. He can see the dignity of women. Every day I receive letters from my male sannyasins asking, “What is happening? The commune sannyasins, the women, are becoming juicier and juicier, more and more graceful, more and more beautiful. And they are working so hard!”For the first time, they have been given the chance to show their mettle. It is not a loss to men: you have found a companion, equal to yourself, side by side with you.You were missing half of humanity. And remember, because you have repressed that half, that half was trying to take revenge in every possible way. Of course, the woman has her own ways of taking revenge, and every man knows how the woman can take revenge. Every woman has been taking it for centuries. She will be nagging the husband, she will be spying on the husband. She will make the husband just a henpecked person.All husbands are henpecked! I have never come across another category. Outside they may roar like lions, but that is not to be believed. Just look through the keyhole in their houses – the woman is roaring and the husband is hiding like a rat behind this chair, behind that table. It is natural, because if you repress their energy, somehow they are going to revolt against it. Here, men are also feeling tremendously relieved because no woman is nagging them.Women’s liberation is automatically men’s liberation. Women’s slavery is automatically men’s slavery. They go together.But this is only a transitory period. Once I have proved my point, all around the world in different countries and different communes – even where I am not present – women will be on the top, once the point is proved and people can see.Just four years ago, when we came here, we did not have a single dollar. My women sannyasins managed to purchase 126 square miles, an area three times bigger than New York. In four years we have poured almost two hundred million dollars into creating this oasis, and all has been managed by women. They have proved their mettle – and without insulting men, without putting them down, without in any way taking revenge. And they are not lesbians.So it is in fact a tremendous revolution which is needed, which has been needed for centuries. And the sooner the whole world goes the way my communes function, the better, because I don’t think women will be ready to use nuclear weapons in the Third World War. Women won’t want to kill, that is not part of their feminine psychology. They would like people to come closer, to be more loving.If the world is run by women – and man can take his place more significantly in scientific research, in the service of life and creativity – and the governments and all other functional things are run by women, we will have a tremendous balance.It will take a little time for women to produce Einstein and Picasso and Michelangelo. It will take a little time to bring a Mozart, a Leonardo da Vinci, because for thousands of years – in fact, for the whole history – they have been repressed, so it will need a little time. And once the repression changes into expression, it will be just like land which has been lying fallow for thousands of years gathering all kinds of fertilizers, rain water, and nobody cultivating it. When you cultivate it, it is going to give you a bumper crop. All other fields will look poor because they have been exploited every year; they have lost their energy to produce more.The same is the situation of the human mind. The feminine mind has not been used, has not been allowed to function. If it is allowed, it may take a quantum leap. And it will be a blessing for all.An intelligent woman, respected as equal to men in the society, will not become a lesbian because it is unnatural, absolutely unnatural. She will be heterosexual. And if all women turn to heterosexuality, we will be declaring war on homosexuality too, because from where are they going to find men? They will chase the homosexuals to their deaths. They are chasing them here. We have got a few homosexuals, and they go on writing letters of complaint to me: “We are homosexuals and women are chasing us. We are not interested, but we do not want even to declare that we are homosexual.” I say, “What can I do? Drop your homosexuality.”We can make a better world together. Men and women should be really half-and-half of a whole. There are qualities which men have and women do not have; there are qualities which women have and men do not have. Both together, the human being will be richer in every possible way.Just think of a woman pilot dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I cannot conceive of it. If there had been a woman pilot, she would have refused to follow the order. She would have preferred to be shot dead, but she would not go to kill innocent people who have nothing to do with war.And anyway, the war was ending. Germany was already on its knees, it was only a question of a week or two until Japan would surrender. There was no need of an atom bomb to create a hell for two beautiful cities.I don’t think a woman could have done that. A woman would rather have said, “You can court-martial me. You can shoot me. That seems to be easier than killing one hundred thousand people in one city, and one hundred and twenty thousand people in another city.”But what did the man-pilot do? He dropped atom bombs on both the cities, came back to his base, had a good dinner, smoked the best cigar, joked with his friends, and went to sleep with a woman. In the morning when the journalists reached him, they asked the man if it had been very difficult for him to sleep having caused two hundred and twenty thousand people’s deaths.He said, “No, I slept beautifully. I did my duty, and once the duty was fulfilled – and it was a great duty to be fulfilled – I was feeling so happy that I managed to do it that I went to sleep with a woman and had a beautiful sleep.”Because it had been his orders, President Truman was asked early in the morning the next day, “How was your night?”He said, “I felt immensely relieved. Now there is no question of the war being prolonged any more. Not only that, we have made a point to the whole world: don’t come in conflict with America, otherwise the result will be more Hiroshimas, more Nagasakis.” Not a single word of sympathy for those innocent people. They were civilians, they were not in military camps.I have seen a picture that I cannot forget. One friend from Japan sent me a photograph of a small child, maybe eight or nine years old. His bag hanging on his shoulder, his books in the bag, he was going upstairs into the attic which was allotted to him as his place to study and sleep. And just when he was on the middle of the staircase, the atom bomb fell on Hiroshima. The boy simply got burned and got stuck to the wall – just a burned body with a burned bag, burned books.When I saw that picture, I could not believe that man can do this to man. If a woman was president of America, I don’t think this could have happened. Man has been given enough chance; now let the woman come up, and man can pour his energies more into scientific fields. Meanwhile, women will pick things up.Yes, there is a certain basic strategy why my communes are run by women. But you can meet my male sannyasins. They are not in any way thought to be inferior. No woman is treating them as inferior, as they have always treated women as inferior.Perhaps it is that the male ego functions in that way: unless it makes somebody feel inferior, it is not satisfied. The woman functions in a different way: unless she feels somebody needing her, desiring her, she feels frustrated. A man’s need seems to be to dominate, and the woman’s need seems to be to be needed. That is a far better need – to be needed.And I am doing an experiment. I am not a philosopher. I hate philosophy because it is simply a wastage of time. My commune is my experiment, and everything that I have envisioned has come true in it. The same can happen all over the world. This is a prototype.Osho,You have also said, “We are not missionaries.” Why? Don't you want more sannyasins?We are not missionaries because we don’t want anybody to be converted into sannyasins by us. We are available for anybody who wants to join us. He is welcome. We are receptive to anybody without conditions, but we are not going after people like the Christian missionaries or the Witnesses of Jehovah, forcing their Bible on you, knocking on your doors every morning. We are not going to knock on anybody’s door.Yes, we will spread the message – that’s why I am talking with you. We will spread the message and if anybody wants to come with us and join our caravan, we are perfectly happy.But this is a very different approach from missionaries. It is not aggressive, it is receptive; it is not masculine, it is feminine. That is the difference I make between these two psychologies. The male psychology is to go after the woman – that is the missionary. The woman’s psychology is to escape from the missionary, but remain receptive. She never escapes too much. She always remains within the boundary so you can catch hold of her, but she allures by running away. By running away she becomes more beautiful; by running away she becomes a dream girl. A very homely girl can become a dream girl.I trust in the feminine psychology, because these missionary types of people around the world are aggressive. They are in a kind of war; very subtle, but it is a war. They are in politics – very subtle, but it is a politics of numbers. What has the pope got that he should be respected? I have seen his statements – which are not even his statements, his secretary goes on writing them. Even then, all those statements prove only a thick head. Nothing of importance ever comes out of these popes.And the missionaries I have been in touch with in India were of a very high caliber – men like Stanley Jones – but the whole effort is how to convert people into Christianity. What did Stanley Jones do? He created a “Christian ashram.” To exploit Hindus, he used the word ashram. He managed his ashram just the way Hindus live in their ashrams: getting up early in the morning, going to the Ganges for the bath, then going to the church to pray. Every ritual of the Hindus was copied.The only difference was that Krishna was missing, and there was Christ. And that is not much of a difference – because there are scholars who say that Christ never existed, it is just another name for Krishna. I was looking at how Krishna can become Christ in Indian languages, and then I came across Bengali: in Bengali, Krishna is called Christo. Now, that comes very close to Christ.There are scholars who think there has never been any Christ; it was just that the story of Krishna, changing through many forms, finally took this Aramaic transformation, and Christianity was born out of a borrowed myth.I asked Stanley Jones, “Can’t you see your diplomacy? Whom do you want to deceive?” He used to wear Hindu clothes. In his ashram, everybody used to wear Hindu clothes. Nobody could smoke there. No alcohol was allowed. But the whole point was somehow to attract Hindus there, and then convert them.This is aggression, violence. It is interfering in your inner being. It is far worse than cutting off your head. At least I cut off your head without changing you. I respect you as you are and cut off your head. They don’t cut off your head, but they destroy your mind, they reprogram you. They replace Krishna with Christ, they put a cross in place of a flute – which is an ugly replacement.The flute is life-affirming and the cross is death-oriented. No Jonestown could have ever happened under Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism. It is impossible. A Jonestown absolutely needed a Christian context. It needed a cross.And Reverend Jim Jones was doing exactly the same foolishness that Jesus did – he was simply following step by step. Jesus had told his people that they would be coming with him into the kingdom of God. Of course, he would be going first to make arrangements for them. And for two thousand years he has been making arrangements – and the idiots are still waiting.Jim Jones was more contemporary. He thought it better to take the whole lot, the whole congregation with him. Why should he go first and prepare the ground? And then Jesus has not been heard from for two thousand years. Perhaps people are not allowed to come back here; it seems to be better to take everybody with you. This could happen only in a Christian context.If women are leaders in politics, leaders in science, leaders in poetry, painting, they will bring a totally new perspective to everything. Women should be professors, educationists, they should be everywhere. They are half of the world – they own half the world. And my experience here is that they are tremendously capable, reliable. You can trust them more, because they connect with you not from the head but from the heart.Osho,You say you can't coexist with the rest of the world. Do you want a red Oregon, a red world? And are you ready to fight for this purpose?We never plan anything, but we are always ready to fight for human rights. Whatever the consequence, we will fight for democracy. We will fight for freedom. We will fight for respect toward the individual. We will fight for America and will not allow Americans to destroy its beauty, its Constitution, its Declaration of Independence. We are on the side of America, and the Oregonians are not. That is my basic standpoint.We have not committed a single crime, we have not done anything illegal. We have not done anything against the Constitution, and the State of Oregon has done everything against the Constitution, against the law. They have used the law in a way it has never been used against anybody. They have taken advantage of the loopholes in the law.But my commune is not Reverend Jim Jones’ uneducated black people. My commune has four hundred law experts. There is no other firm in the whole world which has four hundred law experts.We are going to fight to the very end. And remember, we are fighting for the values America stands for, and they are fighting against their own values, their own Constitution, their own law.They are fascists, and I don’t think fascism can win. We are a small minority, but we are not threatened by them; they are a big majority, and they are threatened by us. You can see clearly what is the reason.The reason is that we are standing for their Constitution, and they are going against their own Constitution. In the courts they are getting defeated everywhere. In the lower courts perhaps they may succeed, because they belong to the state, they are under the pressure of the state; but as we move higher, our score of wins gets bigger.The moment we are in the federal courts we immediately win. And I am absolutely certain I myself am going to stand in the Supreme Court of America, to save the Constitution of America against all those who want to prostitute it. Is it a Constitution or a prostitution?We are not threatened, we are really enjoying the whole game.Anything more?Osho,The last question: once you spoke about a holocaust between 1984 and 1999. What does it mean?It means nothing. Eat more spaghetti! There will be no holocaust.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Penny AllenFreelance journalist, Sisters, Oregon, United StatesOsho,I am so delighted to be here. I've been working on what I am writing for almost a year now, and I think I've been here fifteen or twenty times. I always hoped that I would get a chance to talk with you, but you weren't talking then.It's been very exciting these days since you've been talking because I've been hearing about what you've been saying, all over.I want to communicate something to people about what's happening here and about you that will intrigue them and that will make them want to know more.I have read that your goal is to make enlightenment available to as many people as possible. Now I hear that you're saying that enlightenment is not all its cracked up to be, and that you want to be normal. What's happening?Enlightenment is only the beginning. There is infinity to go far. Enlightenment is only a door, and then there is an unending existence, an unending evolution, expansion.The people who are unconscious, for them enlightenment is the goal; but they are not aware of the fact that enlightenment is only a door. Once you have reached it, then a new kind of pilgrimage starts. Up to this door you were an entity; beyond this door you will not be an entity, you will be just pure consciousness without a body, without a mind. You will be just a fragrance which will go on spreading all over existence.And the fragrance is luminous. It is full of awareness. It knows itself and it knows the whole existence around it – not as separate but part, a kind of at-one-ment. It is the universe and the universe is it; there is no division, no duality. Now the observer becomes the observed, the seer becomes the seen. He is both. It is difficult to explain to people who have not even thought about the door, whose lives go on like sleepwalkers, somnambulists. They live – but at the very minimum level, without any intensity, without any totality.And this calamity has happened because of a few vested interests. The priest, the politician, all those who have been in power – they never wanted man to be awake, because if humanity consists of awakened individuals there is not going to be any Christianity, there is not going to be any Hinduism; there is not going to be any American, any Russian, any German; there is not going to be the white man and the black man; there is not going to be man the superior and woman the inferior. All these stupidities will disappear. For the awakened man the whole existence is one – not only this earth, but now he is joined with the stars too. And in his vision the smallest blade of grass is as significant and important to existence as the biggest star, millions of light years away.The priest does not want people to be awake, because they can be exploited only when they are asleep. The politician does not want people to be awake, otherwise they will not be democrats, republicans, socialists and communists. They will be individuals, intelligent and conscious enough to decide for themselves. They will not need parties and religions and cults and all their struggles and squabbles.The vested interests have kept man almost drugged. I don’t agree with Karl Marx on any other point, but on one point I absolutely agree with him, that religion is the opium of the people. On that point also I have my reservations. First, he was only aware of Western religions: Judaism – he was a Jew – Christianity, which is an offshoot of Judaism, and a little bit of Islam – that too is an offshoot of Judaism. He had no knowledge about the Eastern religions: Buddhism, Jainism, Tao, Zen. They were unknown dimensions to him.Secondly, he was not aware, he could not be aware, of me, my people – we were not yet there – and a totally new quality of religion which I call religiousness. Not religion, but religiousness; no God, but godliness. I change every noun, every pronoun, into a verb, because existence is a verb, it is not a noun. It is continuously growing, flowing, expanding.Now physicists say that the stars you see in the night are continuously moving further away from the center. We don’t know where the center is, we don’t know where they are going – and the speed is immense: 186,000 miles per second. With that speed, though, the stars are going further and further away. This continuous growth needs not static things but growing things.That’s why you will find so many contradictions in me, because I have never stopped anywhere. I have been going in absolute tune with existence, wherever it leads. And if it contradicts my yesterdays it is perfectly okay; they are dead anyway. I am happy that I am in tune in the present moment. I am happy that I know the secret of being in the present, because time has no other tense. It is always now. And once you know the secret of being in the now, you have known the greatest mystery of existence.But the people who are in power would like human beings to remain involved and occupied with very stupid things – communism, socialism, this party, that party, Christianity, Hinduism. The people are burdened with their own problems; they, too, are mostly created.For example, marriage. It is a problem created by the priests. It is unnatural, it has not happened naturally. Now the man is being nagged by the wife, the wife is being continuously put down by the man. Then there are children, and the pope and Mother Teresa go on telling people that these children are sent by God, don’t use any birth control methods – that’s sin. So people have dozens of children, thousands of worries. How to bring them up? How to educate them?We have made a world so difficult for human beings, and on top of it there is hell. If you just slip a little bit you fall into eternal hell – for small things. And there is paradise, luring you with all those things every religion condemns here on earth. And the saints are enjoying all those things there.I have heard a story of a Zen master. He was always teaching his disciples that celibacy is categorical; without it you cannot enter into nirvana, the kingdom of God. The poor disciples were trying hard to be celibate. It is really doing something unnatural, almost impossible. They were all feeling guilty. And then the master died. His last words were, “Remember, celibacy is the foundation of religion.”After a few days one of the disciples died, and the moment he entered paradise he was so full of joy that now he would be meeting his master. He had been with the master for thirty, forty years. He saw the master sitting by the bank of a beautiful river under the shadow of a very huge and ancient tree, with a beautiful naked woman sitting in his lap. The disciple could not believe his eyes, “What is happening?” Still, just out of old habit, he fell at the master’s feet and asked, “What is happening? What happened to celibacy?”The master said, “You will always remain an idiot! This is the reward for all my celibacy. Now I can enjoy as many women as I want. And here no woman grows old, no woman perspires, no woman has menstrual periods; you cannot improve upon the women that are available here. Their very bodies are fragrant; they don’t use French perfumes.” But the poor disciple was at a loss. It was such a shock.This is the situation of all the religions. All the things that they deny people here, they will give a million times more as a reward in paradise. Naturally, the poor human being is pulled: To be or not to be? To enjoy a woman here or to wait just a few years more and enjoy for eternity as many women as you want? No marriage happens in heaven; all marriages happen in the churches. And they say that marriage is made in heaven. In heaven there are no couples, only individuals. The poor man is pulled apart. His fear of hell represses him, his greed for heaven represses him, and so many problems of day-to-day living… He has no time to think of enlightenment. He has no time to think that there is anything more than this miserable world.And this is a created situation, because only in such a situation can you keep them enslaved. You can send them to Vietnam to kill innocent people, without any hitch. You can send your pilots to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki within seconds, without any feeling. You have turned people into robots. Millions of people around the earth are in the armies, just functioning like robots. And those who are not in the armies are also imprisoned in some kind of social, political, religious ideology. It is so difficult to find an individual who is clean, completely clean.And that’s my whole effort: to create a completely clean human being – unburdened of the past, unburdened of any guilt, unburdened of fear and greed, unburdened of politicians and priests – just clean, so clean that he becomes a mirror. And in that mirror you see for the first time where the door is. In that mirror the door reflects.Just as our eyes are mirrors in which things reflect – we find where the table is and where the chair is because our two eyes are mirroring things around us – when a man is completely clean, silent, serene, his inner being becomes a mirror. And the inward door that was always there is reflected in it. And the magnetism of the door is such that once one has seen it, there is no way to escape from it. You start moving toward that door the way the moth moves toward a flame, the moth knowing perfectly that coming closer to the flame he is going to be burned, is going to die. But some strange attraction… The moth is ready to die.The same is the situation when you see the door of enlightenment for the first time. You become the moth and the door becomes the flame. You know you are going to die, but at the same time you know that you are going to be reborn on the other side. This is resurrection.Osho,If I could ask you a question about your past: you spent a year – when you were a student in India – mad; in which you couldn't formulate a sentence, and you lost your perspective. Is that the time that you were looking for that door?I had been looking for that door as long as I remember – from my very childhood. I must have carried that idea from my past life, because I don’t remember a single day in my childhood in this life that I was not looking for it.And as far as my craziness is concerned, naturally I was thought crazy by everybody. I never played with any children. I never could find any way to communicate with the children of my own age. To me they looked stupid, doing all kinds of idiotic things. I never joined any football team, volleyball team, hockey team. Of course, they all thought me crazy. And as far as I was concerned, as I grew I started looking at the whole world as crazy.In the last year, that was when I was twenty-one, it was a time of nervous breakdown and a breakthrough. Naturally, those who loved me, my family, my friends, my professors, could understand a little bit what was going on in me – why I was so different from other children, why I would go on sitting for hours with closed eyes, why I sat by the bank of the river and went on looking at the sky for hours, sometimes for the whole night. Naturally, the people who could not understand such things – and I did not expect them to understand – thought me mad.In my own home I had become almost absent. I would be there in the room and my mother would be asking me, “If you see someone in the house just tell me, because I don’t see anybody here and I have to send somebody to fetch some fruits or some vegetables from the market.” The market was not far away, just two minutes’ walk, but I was not considered to be somebody. They had accepted the fact that I am good for nothing.And they were right. In the morning they would send me to purchase something which was needed immediately, and I would return in the night. And then I would say, “I think you had sent me for something, but I completely forgot about it. If you remind me, I can run again.”And they said, “Please excuse us, that we sent you. If you go again now, then the whole night… Nobody knows when you will turn up.”By and by they stopped asking me anything, and slowly, slowly they started feeling as if I were not there. And I loved it, the way I had become a nothingness, a nobody, an absence. That one year was tremendous. I was surrounded with nothingness, emptiness. I had lost all contact with the world.If they reminded me to take a bath, I would go on taking the bath for hours. Then they had to knock on the door: “Now come out of the bathroom. You have taken enough bath for one month. Just come out.” If they reminded me to eat, I ate; otherwise, days would pass and I would not eat. Not that I was fasting – I had no idea about eating or fasting. My whole concern was to go deeper and deeper into myself. And the door was so magnetic, the pull was so immense – what physicists now call black holes.They say there are black holes in existence. If a star comes by chance to a black hole it is pulled into the black hole; there is no way to resist that pull. And to go into the black hole is to go into destruction. We don’t know what happens on the other side. My idea, for which some physicist has to find evidence, is that the black hole on this side is a white hole on the other side. Because the hole cannot be just one side; it is a tunnel.I have experienced it in myself. Perhaps on a bigger scale the same happens in the universe. The star dies; as far as we can see, it disappears. But every moment new stars are being born. From where? Where is their womb? It is simple arithmetic that the black hole was just a womb – the old disappeared into it and the new is born. This I have experienced in myself, I am not a physicist. That one year of tremendous pull made me farther and farther away from people, so much so that I would not recognize my own mother, I might not recognize my own father – so far that there were times I forgot my own name. I would try hard, but there was no way to find what my name used to be.Naturally, that one year, for everybody it was that I was mad. But to me that madness became meditation, and the ultimate of that madness opened the door. I passed through it. I am now beyond enlightenment – on the other side of the door.Osho,Even though you're beyond enlightenment, on the other side of the door, do you still have black moments?NoFor example, this spring when you stopped giving discourses for two months, where were you? Were you in a black hole?No. I have passed the black hole. Now I am always in the White House! Presidents will come and go, but I am going to remain in the White House all the time.Is there a reason why you were silent for over two months? Were you sick?I have been silent for three years – more than three years. The reason was that I wanted… I had gathered around me more than half a million sannyasins all over the world, whose number has been continuously increasing. I went into silence because I wanted only those people with me who can stand – and understand – my silence.But this spring, why were you silent?Now, I have been continuously silent for three and a half years. This spring was included in it. I was not silent especially in this spring.No, but you started talking again in November and you gave a discourse every day. And then, I understood that you were ill or something in April or May of this year, just a couple of months ago.Yes. I was sick at that time. I was not feeling well, so I simply rested. But I was not in silence.I see. It wasn't a loss of perspective, or something like that?No, nothing. That cannot happen now. That is an impossibility.Osho,You have said that here on the ranch, in the buddhafield, your sannyasins experience and share moods, that joy is contagious. Does a bad mood ever pass through the commune?Just wait a minute. First let me finish your first question, otherwise you will be in difficulty to figure it out. For three and a half years I was silent to sort out those people who were hanging around my words, who were enchanted by my words, who loved my voice, who loved the way I speak, I argue.But that is not my basic function. I speak to help you to be silent. I say something so that you can go beyond words. I use words to help you to go into wordlessness. It is just like having a thorn in the foot: with another thorn you pull it out. Your mind is full of words, so many, and so much chattering – yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak – it goes on and on. But then people became intoxicated with my words. That was not my purpose. I continuously insisted, “Don’t be concerned with my words. Be concerned with my silences, the gaps between the words, the gaps between the lines.”Three years I remained silent. A few remained hanging around for a few months, some managed to hang around for one or two years. Three years was too much: by and by, they all left me thinking that I was going to remain silent forever. The day I saw that all those people who were interested in my words – but not in silence – had left, it was time to speak.And this speaking is totally different from the speaking that was there three and a half years ago, because I was speaking to people who were listening through the head. I was arguing, I was rationalizing, I was doing everything to convince their heads. Now there is no need of that, I have got people with whom I can talk heart to heart. My words don’t pass through their heads; there is no scrutiny in their heads when they hear my words. My words simply penetrate directly into their hearts.Albert Einstein has proved according to non-Euclidean geometry that there are no straight lines in existence. He is right as far as objective lines are concerned. Every line is a curve – of a very big circle, so you cannot see it as a curve. If you go on drawing the line at both ends, one day you will find that you have made a circle.In existence there are no straight lines – for the simple reason, if we draw a straight line here on the floor it looks absolutely straight, but it cannot be because the earth is round. This small straight line is just a piece of a vast circle which goes around the earth. Einstein is dead, otherwise I would have said to him that I know there are lines which go straight too. But those lines are not of geometry, they are lines of love.I experience it every day. My being and my sannyasins’ beings are joined not by curved lines but straight lines. Now it is a totally different affair; I can say whatsoever I want to say. Three and a half years ago I had to say things which people wanted to hear. I had to drop a few things because they would not be able to digest them. I had to impose interpretations on Jesus, on Krishna, on Buddha, for the simple reason that if I impose that interpretation on Jesus I can have a certain communication with the Christian – we can come close.Now I have my own people, so I don’t take the trouble to interpret Jesus, Mohammed, Mahavira, Buddha, Lao Tzu. On the contrary, I am saying now all the things that I left unsaid before my silence began. And the interpretations that I had managed through Jesus’ mouth I am taking back – and putting Jesus in his own place!So my work has really started now. Before the silent period I was just preparing the ground and finding the people who will be able to remain with me in every climate, in every season, in every change, because I am not a thinker who remains consistent. I am an existential man who moves with existence, so only those who don’t bother about what I said yesterday can move with me. If today I am contradicting it, they don’t worry about it.One thing is to be understood very clearly. To my sannyasins, whatever I am saying is not important, what is important is that I am saying it. Whatever is being said has no significance, but in saying it on my part and hearing it on their part, something else, side by side with the words has transferred. Those words were just vehicles creating a way for something which cannot be said, cannot be reduced to language at all. That’s why they are never concerned about contradictions. I am not creating a philosophy or a theology; it is a religious field of experience.Now, you were asking something. You can ask.I asked about the energy field here; and I was wondering if it ever happened, particularly when you were not feeling well, that a melancholy caught on? Or is the energy here always positive?It is always positive. My sickness is a physical thing; the energy has nothing to do with my body. The energy is never sick. It is never negative – I mean the energy of an enlightened person is never negative.The energy of an unenlightened person is always negative. The unenlightened knows nothing of positive energy. He only reads books on positive thinking, and this and that. Idiots like Norman Vincent Peale go on writing books on positive thinking, and millions of people read those books, thinking that perhaps by positive thinking they can become millionaires, by positive thinking they can produce palaces. And they don’t bother about how many palaces Norman Vincent Peale has created. They don’t bother at all that Rockefeller has never read Peale, that Henry Ford has no idea of Peale.It is not a question of positive thinking. Positive thinking is appealing only to negative people, because they know their negativity continuously. But without enlightenment you cannot have positive energy. So I say: throw away all those books on positive thinking. They are deluding you. They are giving you a sense as if without being enlightened you can be positive. That is impossible. Positivity is beyond the door of enlightenment. Negativity is on this side, the night is on this side – the black hole – and the day is on the other side, where the sun never sets.So as far as I am concerned, I am always overflowing with energy. My body can be sick, but that makes no difference to my innermost being; it remains exactly the same. And whether I am speaking or silent, my field is vibrating – is ready to welcome anybody who comes with an open heart, is ready to receive into the innermost center of the energy field one who is not resistant, not reluctant, but is ready, vulnerable, open, is willing to risk.There is a field already existing, and the moment you enter Rajneeshpuram you will feel a different air, a different milieu, a different silence, a different loving energy all over the place. But those who come with closed eyes and closed heart, those who come with prejudices already determined, with their conclusions… Naturally they come, they go – and they remain untouched by the immense energy that was available, free.I have been known around the world as the “free sex” teacher. Now they should change it, because things have gone far beyond sex. Sex is energy, the energy of the sleepy man; the moment a man becomes enlightened, the same energy turns into a positive field. Now they should start calling me the “free energy” guru, because I have traveled miles and they go on calling me something which I have left far behind.Even if I die, and my people can remain rejoicing, loving, the energy field will remain. I cannot take it away with me. But if they start being ordinary again, jealous, full of hate, hostility, violence, then they will destroy the energy field.I have created the energy field; now it exists almost independent of me. And my whole effort is that while I am alive I should detach myself completely from the energy field and see whether my people can manage it.And that’s what I am doing every day. I am giving more and more responsibility to my people. I am sending people from one commune to another. If twenty people are ready here, I send them to Germany. If in Japan they need people, I send them there. Twenty people go to Germany and from that commune twenty people come here. So in both ways it is a great exchange program. My twenty people there will try to create the energy field, and those twenty people here will learn how energy fields are created and how one should preserve them.Soon I want a belt of energy around the earth. And as far as I am concerned, that energy belt is the only hope for life to exist beyond this century. Otherwise, the politicians have already arranged for global death.Osho,How can the energy field continue with no children being born? I understand your views on that subject and I agree with them, I just wonder how it can continue if everyone just gets older and there are no young people coming up?They will be coming. I am telling my people not to produce children. There are enough young people all around the world – why bother creating children and waste your energy in raising them? I need all that energy for my energy field. So right now I cannot spend any amount of energy in giving birth to children and rearing them.And what is the use when all over the world there are millions of young people frustrated with the old society, searching for a new way of life? It is so easy: when you can get ready-made young people, it is simply uneconomical to produce children. And we are going to get hold of all the youth because there is no competition around.The young man has fallen away from the old generation, and the old people are trying hard to bridge the gap. Their priests are learning psychology, doing research work, getting Ph.D.s in psychology, in psychiatry and philosophy, to somehow figure out what has happened – why this generation gap goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. But they are not going to be able to bridge it, for the simple reason that they are still trying to bridge it so that they can keep the young people in the old fold. The young people need a milieu of freedom, love, responsibility, joy. They are not concerned with your God, whether he exists or not. They are not interested in your heaven and hell.The whole old mind is so out of date that just by changing words and paraphrasing old things into new language, they are not going to manage to fulfill the needs of the young people. In fact, they are the cause of creating this whole frustration, anxiety, anguish in young people all around the world.I am the alternative. I will tell my people to produce children only when we cannot get any from the ready-made market. And I don’t think that is going to happen. The ready-made market is so big, and people are continuously bringing new children into the world, not knowing that they are bringing people for me! They would stop if they knew that Pope the Polack and Mother Teresa-type people are all working for me, preventing people from using birth control methods, the pill, by teaching people that abortion is a sin. They don’t know – unknowingly, they are my agents, they are working… And you need not worry, for centuries new people will be coming in.And when we have enough energy field that the whole earth is surrounded by a certain belt of energy, then I can tell to my people: it is time, you produce. Certainly, your children will be far better. They will come out of your meditativeness, out of your love; they will not be accidental.But not now. The way I have got all these people from ready-made shops… I am going to continue my business the same way.Osho,I know that you have said that you don't worry about what the community in Oregon thinks about you – that they worry about you, you don't worry about them. I finally came to the conclusion that the polarization was a kind of public Dynamic Meditation that you were carrying on to try and increase tension for a long time, so that after a while it would relax.I will go on finding new ways to create more and more madness in the Oregonians, because that is one of my ways of working. That’s what I have been doing in India, and I am going to do it in America. Wherever I am, my way of finding friends is to create enemies. Then a clear-cut polarization happens. If there are no enemies outside, your friends become lousy, lazy, dull, dead. A certain hostility around is absolutely necessary for you to be alert, to be stronger, to be together. This happens naturally. I can create any kind of opposition – if one dies, another; there is no trouble in it. And since we are not troubled and we are always the beneficiaries of it, why should we stop it?That’s why I refused point blank the question of a journalist who asked if there was any possibility of coexistence. I said, “Never. Either we, or they.” It is a question of either-or. It is not politics in which nations coexist. Jews and Christians coexist, with all their hostility repressed; they are not friends.Now the pope is trying to make some arrangements with the Jews, trying to forget all those two thousand years of hostility. But neither can the Christians forget that Jesus was crucified, nor can the Jews forget what has been done to them continuously for two thousand years. This is a political way: you keep your hostility repressed and I keep my hostility repressed, because somehow we are here. We have to be here, so we coexist.I don’t like that word at all. I have my own word, I call it parallel existence: we will exist the way we want to exist, you exist the way you want to exist. There is no question of coexistence, it is parallel existence – two lines running parallel, never meeting.The only way is for you to convince us that you are more joyful, more dancing, more blissful. I am not concerned about theories, that you convince us about God; I am concerned about people. You have to prove that you are more joyful than we are, you are more blissful than we are, you are more peaceful than we are. Then certainly we will mix with you. What is the need to remain separate? Or, sooner or later, you have to recognize – in fact, even in their hostility people have recognized it, reluctantly – the fact that these people here are certainly happy, far happier than they have ever been. Their theology has not helped; it has helped them to become more miserable. Their Jesus Christ has not come to save them, their politics and their politicians have failed them, their leaders are just professional liars.They have to see that there is a small oasis amongst them where no politics exists, no competition exists, no jealousy exists, where the people are working so hard for twelve and fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, with no holiday. Since I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe that on Sunday he stopped working, so I cannot give any holiday! People are working fourteen hours a day and looking so happy and so radiant and so joyful and so dancing – how long can they ignore that fact?It is something existential, not theoretical. It is not like Protestant Martin Luther arguing with the Catholic pope, it is not Hindus arguing against Buddhists. It is a totally different kind of argument. We are not saying anything; we are showing them something, and sooner or later they will have to see it. They will have to hear our laughter, they will have to see this desert again becoming green, bringing flowers. For fifty years it has been a dead land. They will see birds coming again, animals coming.I don’t think that they are more stupid than the animals. Go in the commune in the night and you will find deer standing on the road, not caring at all about you. They know my sannyasins – nobody is going to hurt them. People have to get out of their cars to push them away.In my own garden I have one hundred peacocks. They don’t allow even me in the house. They are blocking my way all over the place – not only blocking, if they are somewhere else they rush toward the car just to stand in front. I enjoy it. That means they have understood that nobody is going to harm them, and they love the play. I move the car slowly, they go on moving backwards slowly, but they will not go out of the way. I don’t think Oregonians are more stupid than the peacocks and the deer and the swans that we have. Nobody is worried here, not even animals.When I came to this place the junipers were small, almost dead – dying. Now they are lush green, have become thicker, bigger. Just four years more and you will see all these hills green and all this valley full of laughter.Oregonians cannot resist the temptation to come here, to see the people, to understand the people. That’s why I don’t believe in coexistence. My denial was not understood by the journalist who had asked, because the moment I said “Never,” she immediately left the mike. She should have asked what my implications were, what I mean by never, why I was saying never. Perhaps she had come to hear that word, and once she got it her prejudice was fulfilled and she immediately left. If she had asked my implications she would have understood: we coexist only with enemies.I would like to be one with the Oregonians, not coexist – that word is ugly. But that woman was so prejudiced she could not stay a single moment. She did not give me a chance to explain what I meant. That’s what I was going to do, but when I looked she was gone. So I said it is better to let her go; that will create more hostility and it will do something good!In my life, everything has done good to me. I have never come across any situation which has not been a blessing, finally. So I have learned to trust life and its ways.Osho,So much original music has come out of this place; do you think that there will ever be literature coming out of here?Soon everything will be coming out of here, and everything that will come out of here will have a different flavor to it. Because… We have sculptors here, but right now they are making houses, roads, and other things which are of more basic necessity. Once we are finished with the infrastructure of the commune, all our sculptors will be free, all our painters will be free, all our poets will be free – and you will see something of a totally new quality coming in every direction, every dimension.I have around me here the most intelligent group you can find – the most talented people who can do anything – you just have to give them time, the opportunity, and they are ready to do anything.Do you see my watch? Piaget was asking half a million dollars for it. I sent one of my sannyasins to Switzerland to learn how to make watches. Within two weeks he was back, and since then he has made four or five watches and he has been teaching other sannyasins. Another sannyasin has made this watch; it is far better than the Piaget, far more accurate, and it is made of real stones, not of diamonds. It is not fake – real, authentic stones.One of the idiots from Portland said on television that I was wearing a fake watch. He does not understand language. These stones are not fake; these stones are as real as any diamonds. If he cannot distinguish between diamonds and stones, that simply means he should accept his ignorance about jewelry. But he cannot make my watch fake! It has been made with so much love that to me these stones are far more precious than any diamonds can be. I will not sell this watch for ten million dollars; no price will be accepted for the watch. It cannot be sold: love cannot be sold and purchased.Hearing the man calling the watch fake, I could see how people are blind. If I was saying that these are diamonds and later on you find they are not, then certainly it is a fake watch. But I am saying these are stones. And if you cannot understand any difference between stones and diamonds, it shows your state of knowledge or ignorance. To me it makes no difference. These stones are so beautiful, I don’t see any reason why diamonds should be costlier than these stones. These stones have cost nothing, and my sannyasin’s work was a meditation for him.We have all kinds of people here. We have made all the houses ourselves; we have made the big Gurdjieff Dam, and soon we are going to double it, because there is still space and we can go deeper into the mountains. We have made all our roads – and sometime I can take you to my own road which my people have made especially for me. Perhaps I am the only man in the whole world who has a road for himself. No traffic, no need to follow any rules of the road. I can go the British way or the American way or the Russian way – it makes no problem; the whole road is available.And my people who made the road had never made roads, but they learned it immediately. You need just a little intelligence to learn anything. My people are doing all kinds of computer work. They have become so expert that now they are selling their expertise in the outside world. My people had never made any houses; now they have become so expert that they are making houses for others in Germany, in Switzerland, in England – cheaper, better, more comfortable, more contemporary.Novels will be coming, dramas will be coming; everything that man can do we are going to do, and better. We just have to settle down.And we are settling down – even against the Oregon government, the Oregonians; nothing makes any difference – we are settling down, we are settled. Nobody can throw us out of here.Osho,Would you personally like to ever travel again?No, because there is nothing outside. Here, yes – I went to the disco yesterday. I enjoyed it!Did you dance?Yes.Osho,I read in the Osho Times from one of your interviews this past week that you said that you didn't have the energy to make love to a woman anymore – you didn't have the energy for those gymnastics. But now that you're going to the disco…I have energy for women also. I just wanted my men sannyasins not to be worried – because if I am interested in any woman, then her boyfriend is finished! It is just to solace them. I have enough energy, there is no problem. So all my male sannyasins have been immensely happy. The women sannyasins look a little sad, but I find other ways to make them happy. There is no problem.Osho,What happened to your glasses?That was just because of these lights. My eyes were feeling teary. Continuous exposure for two hours in the morning or two and a half hours, and two and a half hours in the evening, my eyes started feeling teary. That’s why I used those glasses; I don’t need them now that they have managed to put the lights a little farther away. I think they need still to adjust them because I can feel the strain on the eyes a little. Otherwise, my eyes… Just look at my eyes.People think they get hypnotized… I don’t know. Journalists avoid looking into the eyes – perhaps they may get hypnotized… And for me it is such a simple job that I don’t need to exert too much energy – just a little smile toward a woman is enough! I don’t have to chase her and go through all the dramas and traumas; there is no need. In my whole life I have never met a single woman who was not ready the moment I looked into her eyes. Where else was she going to find such a simple man who has not even asked her name, who has not asked her address? And on the next railway station I get down and we shall never meet again. The introduction has not happened, but I have made love to the woman. I am not British – they will not do anything without an introduction!But to me everything is love. Talking to my people is making love to them. My words reaching into their hearts create orgasmic reactions in their being. Just coming and going, dancing with my people, just for a second stopping to dance with someone, and that’s enough. That woman is not going to sleep the whole night. You can ask the woman – she is going to dream continuously of the dance. I had already made love.To me, love is nothing in particular to do with sex. There are a thousand and one ways of making love. Sex is the lowest, the animal heritage. And I would like my people to rise above biology. Only then will they be really free. Then you can find thousands of ways of making love. Just sitting silently together, doing nothing, but full of love for each other, and there is a certain meeting which is happening between the two energies. So I am continuously making love to my people in every possible kind of way.Don’t be worried about my energy. And don’t be worried about my eyes – they are perfectly okay. And I am a non-serious man, so I have the freedom to say anything that comes to my mind without ever bothering about the consequences. My whole life’s experience is such that nothing has ever gone wrong, so I have become absolutely certain that nothing ever goes wrong. You just have to trust existence, and whatever happens is right.Meet my people and ask them: everybody will say I have made love. Talking is a way of making love, dancing is a way of making love – but these are higher qualities of love. Animals cannot understand it; you can go on playing the flute and the buffalo will go on chewing the grass. She will not even stop to look at what you are doing. The flute makes no sense to her. But play the flute to the lover, and something immediately starts transmitting from your song and showering on your beloved.And my people are searching all possibilities, finding all possibilities of being in love. Sex is only one of them, and the very lowest of the kind. In fact everybody should have a film of himself making love and see it once in a while. Then he will see what kind of gymnastics – and what happens to the woman’s face, distortions, and you call it orgasm? She is having a fit. And the man is trying so hard, huffing, puffing!Everybody should have a film of his own lovemaking just to see it whenever the desire arises. Just see the film and that will be enough. That is the very lowest type of thing that is available to all animals. Man can manage to have many other dimensions, many other levels. And the higher you reach toward enlightenment, new dimensions open up.For a man who has passed through the door to the other side, everything is love. My whole day, twenty-four hours, I am making love to existence in different ways. If I am taking a shower I enjoy it as much as making love to a woman. So what is the difference? I am contacting existence through water. It is not necessarily that I should make the contact with existence through a feminine body.Eating, I am making love, because I eat with such joy. And I don’t see any difference: my joy is the same. So twenty-four hours a day I am in love; it does not matter what I am doing. That you can take as a criterion of the man who has gone beyond enlightenment: whatever he does is love, whatever he says is love. If he does nothing, that is love. If he remains silent, that is love.Now, should we start dancing?

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 21 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Pat HealyKNBC– TV, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesOsho,How should I address you? What name do you prefer?Whatever you like.Choices make it so difficult for me. Alright…Choices are always difficult.Well, first off, let me ask you: during the three years of your silence, was there anything special occurring in the world that alarmed you?Two things: one is that nuclear weapons are coming to a point where either we have to stop producing them, totally, or we have to be ready to evaporate from this planet. The second thing that has been of tremendous significance is the discovery of the disease AIDS.Now it seems humanity is between two ditches – almost walking on a razor’s edge. Either nuclear weapons will destroy it, or the disease AIDS will destroy it. The destruction is becoming more and more probable than it was before.It is easy to control the politicians, convince the politicians not to go forward, but how to convince the virus that creates AIDS, and how to convince the people to turn away from all the perversions that religions have forced upon their sexuality? AIDS is the culmination of homosexuality, lesbianism and all kinds of perversions.But the source is the insistence of religions on celibacy, which is unnatural. If you force people to be celibate and you force men and women to live separately in monasteries and nunneries, homosexuality is bound to happen; you cannot prevent it, because man’s sexuality will have to have to find some way out.And AIDS is the ultimate of that perversion. They don’t know whether there is any possibility to find a cure for it. Almost all the experts are agreed that a person who has confirmed AIDS is going to die within two years. But within two years he can spread the disease to thousands of people. By sexual contact, just by kissing somebody… And a few experts even suspect that it may be contracted by breathing. Then we are in a wildfire which can spread all over the earth without any limitation.It seems everything is against humanity; it is as if this planet is going to die. That’s why I started speaking again. I felt that seeing the death of the planet just as an observer, is irresponsibility. I have to respond to the situation. And I am spreading – through my sannyasins, through mass media, in every possible way – how we can destroy the idea of celibacy from religions, how we can convert homosexuals into heterosexuals, how we can convince the women’s liberation movement that lesbianism is not liberation but sheer stupidity, and how we can create an atmosphere around the world that will force politicians to stop piling up more and more nuclear weapons.It is almost an impossible task, but not absolutely impossible, and when the life of the whole planet is at risk everything should be done to prevent it. Every intelligent man’s door should be knocked on. It is time to take the challenge and come out. The artists, the painters, the scientists, the dancers, the musicians, all the creative people around the world should declare that any government that goes on piling up nuclear weapons is anti-people, anti-humanity.Osho,You speak of changing human nature. Now that the virus AIDS is here, it is present, now the nuclear weapons are in existence, is changing human nature akin to closing the barn door after the animal has escaped – now that the problem is already here?Yes, changing human nature can make a lot of difference – because AIDS is not a natural disease.How do you know that?Because all the medical experts are agreed that it is a by-product of homosexuality. No heterosexual couple who has remained together without sexual contacts with other people has come up with AIDS. Homosexuality… If we can simply convince the popes and the imams and Ayatollah Khomeini and all these idiots to stop this idea of celibacy; allow your monks, your nuns to make love, and allow humanity freedom from the guilt of making love, don’t make it a sin. At this moment every resource should be used to convert perversions back to nature. Heterosexuality is a natural phenomenon, and out of heterosexuality there is no possibility of AIDS.Secondly, the very fact that we have so many nuclear weapons that we can destroy the whole of humanity seven hundred times is enough, if everybody comes to know about what the politicians are doing. Even the politicians are no longer so enthusiastic about a nuclear war. They can also see that in this war nobody is going to be defeated and nobody is going to be victorious. This war is a global suicide, it is not war. Just the huge amount of nuclear weapons is enough to prevent their being used.So I am not without hope. I see every possibility that we can change the course of where we are unconsciously going. There is no need for AIDS, and there is no need for a nuclear war. In fact we can change the nuclear energy into creative resources. We can make this earth a beautiful garden without hunger, without poverty, without disease. It will be simply idiotic to use so much energy for destroying innocent people, and for destroying the only planet around here that is alive.Osho,Are you getting used to the tape changes, the interruptions?I am accustomed to every kind of change.Osho,We heard a lot of rumors during your three years of silence about your health. How do you feel now?I am feeling better.The back problems, the allergies, they are improving?No, they are there, but these are not sicknesses which can ever be cured. You have to take care and avoid the situations in which they can occur. I am as allergic as I have ever been, but all the possibilities of allergy are prevented. If I don’t come in contact with any perfume, I don’t come in contact with crowds, perspiration, smells, dust, then I am perfectly okay, there is no problem. Those allergies are not diseases, they are simply my heritage.Are they frustrations, limiting you?No, no frustration in it. In fact it keeps me absolutely clean. And it keeps me isolated, which I enjoy.Why?Because to be silent and alone gives the greatest bliss that is possible in life.So I don’t take allergies as a disadvantage – it has proved a blessing in disguise. My back also has been a blessing in disguise. It is the same, the problem is there. The best experts in India and from England confirmed that it is not something that will leave me. I will have to live with it.And you will be surprised: because of my back, only a Rolls Royce suits me – no other car, no other chair. So you can see the blessing in disguise: my back has brought Rolls Royces to me!So that's the reason! I've been wondering!Yes, that’s the reason. Everybody has been wondering, but that is the reason. I keep people wondering about many things.Osho,Another thing I've been wondering about – how can a man who likes Rolls Royces dislike spaghetti?That is a long story! I used to have a very beautiful woman around me – an Italian woman – twenty years ago. I don’t think she ever took a bath. She was simply against it, it seemed. She smelled just disgusting! But she was a beautiful woman.It was worth putting up with for a while?At that time I was not aware that I am allergic. The day I became aware that I am allergic I got rid of that woman. She was the first woman who brought spaghetti to me, and it smelled of her. That’s why I am against spaghetti – even the name spaghetti reminds me of that woman, and I immediately start feeling that an attack of asthma is coming. Otherwise I have nothing against spaghetti.Osho,Well, let me ask you about a subject that may be less pleasant than spaghetti, or more unpleasant…No, nothing is more unpleasant.What will happen to your followers when you pass on?Who cares? What was happening to them when I was not here? The world goes on. When I was not here, it is not a problem to me; what was happening in the world was happening. I was not here, I was not responsible for it. When I am gone, to you I am gone, to me you are gone. So the curtain falls.Osho,Why is it important to you now to be here, to remain in the United States, to remain in Oregon, to have the attorneys fighting the battles with immigration?I enjoy fighting. And because I have found the most backward people here in Oregon, that’s why I have chosen it. The fight is going to be long. The longer it goes, the longer it will keep me alive. The longer it goes, the stronger it will make my people. And we are on the right path.We are fighting for those values America stands for, and they are fighting against America. We are fighting for the Constitution of America, and they are doing everything against the Constitution. So it has to be seen who wins. We may be a small minority, but I promise you that we are going to win in every case against the state of Oregon.And we are going to prove to these people that it is not so easy to go against the only constitution in the world which has some democratic fragrance about it.Do you think it is possible to persuade the people of Oregon, or do they have to be defeated?I don’t want to persuade anybody. Either they defeat me, or I defeat them. No compromise. Truth knows no compromise. Lies are always ready to compromise – naturally, because in compromise truth will always be the loser and the lie will always be the gainer. The lie is zero; it has nothing to lose.Yes, the state government have been trying to compromise, the federal government have been sending their mediators to compromise. I am not going to compromise. And when the other party is trying to compromise, that shows where they are. They know that if they don’t compromise they are going to lose the whole thing. And why should I compromise when I know that the whole thing is going to be mine?Osho,You use phrases that are taken by the people of Oregon and others as inflammatory in your discourses. You have referred to people who are held very dearly by people here by phrases such as, “Pope the Polack,” “Christ the Crackpot,” “Mother Teresa the Criminal.” Are those phrases intended to bring enlightenment to people, or do they instead fill the hearts of those people with such hatred that they cannot hear what you are saying?It works in many ways. Those are my devices. First, I am talking to my own people. They are not hurt by what I am saying about Pope the Polack, Teresa the Terrible, Christ the Crackpot – nobody is hurt. On the contrary, they start looking at things in a totally new way – the way I want them to look at them.I want outside people to get hurt, shocked. I want them to be angry, hate-full, because it is a very fundamental principle of psychology that if you can create hate in a man, it is very easy to change it into love. Love and hate are not as different as people think, and certainly they are not opposites. They are two polarities of one energy, just like darkness and light.So without going anywhere, just sitting in my room, I can manage to give shocks all around the world, shake people in their sleep, in their slumber. Because to me their Christianity is a kind of opium, and their Hinduism is a kind of marijuana, and so on, so forth. These people need to be shaken really badly.And I will go on throwing ice-cold water in their eyes as long as they don’t open their eyes and jump out of bed. It is not a question of persuasion; you don’t persuade a sleeping person to wake up, because between a person who is awake and a person who is asleep there is no possibility of communication. So whether they hear me or not, I want them to be hate-full against me. That’s enough – I have done my job.All these people… And there are almost one million sannyasins around the world. Even in Soviet Russia, even in East Germany, I have my sannyasins. Of course, they are underground sannyasins. From where are these people coming? First they were shocked, first they were hurt, but their shock and their hurt started a great question, a great quest in their minds. They became suspicious about their own conditioning: perhaps Christ was a crackpot? – Let us give it another thought.And the pope is certainly a Polack, there are no two opinions about it. You cannot find a thicker head than Pope the Polack’s, because the world is suffering from overpopulation and he is preaching around the world against birth control, against the pill, against abortion. This man – if I call him a criminal I am not condemning him, only describing him – perhaps he is the greatest criminal alive. And the same is my attitude about the Hindu leaders, shankaracharyas, Mohammedan leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini – I call him Khomeiniac – because these are the people who are insisting for more and more population on the earth.Ethiopia is dying, India is dying; soon the whole third world will be dying of starvation. And who will be responsible for it? Mother Teresa will be responsible for it, the pope will be responsible for it. In the eyes of the future, these people will be as criminal as the popes of the Middle Ages are criminal in our eyes. They burned innocent old women, just calling them witches. So what? If somebody wants to be a witch – the word is not bad, it just means a wise woman – whose business is it to prevent them?In the Middle Ages, the same popes representing the same Jesus Christ, calling themselves infallible, burned thousands of women alive because they decided that they were in conspiracy with the devil. Now, no intelligent person today can take their side in that matter. They themselves feel ashamed. In fact they burned Joan of Arc as a witch, but it was so much against people’s love for that courageous young woman that finally, after three hundred years, they changed their verdict. One infallible pope burns the woman alive, declares her a witch; another infallible pope declares Joan of Arc a saint. The bones are pulled out of the grave and worshipped.Now, these idiots: do you want me to be polite with them? And they are dragging the whole world toward poverty. They have a vested interest in poverty; they have to be exposed. Mother Teresa wants more and more orphans in the world, otherwise who is going to give her Nobel Prizes and all kinds of awards and titles? She is roaming around the world – I don’t know when she finds time for serving humanity – receiving rewards, awards, titles, opening functions, conferences. I can’t think when she serves humanity. All she is doing is collecting Hindu and Mohammedan orphans and converting them into Catholics. This is sheer politics of numbers; she is a cunning politician. It is not even right to call her a woman – she has no heart. She is simply a puppet in the hands of the Vatican.Osho,Is it possible for you to look at a child dying of starvation and not to feel a tug at your heart, a desire to do something for the child?I will do something for the child: I will give him an injection and send him into eternal sleep. That is my compassion. To keep him alive for his whole life to starve again and again, fall sick, create more children who will be sick, who will be again orphans – this is sheer stupidity.I am a simple man of mathematics. If Ethiopia is dying, my compassion says there is no point in sending food because with that food these Ethiopians will create more Ethiopians. This is not a solution. Either give them so much that they can live at your standard of living – but for that you will have to stop all your nuclear weapons and all your war efforts and all the money that you go on pouring into them. Or, if you cannot do that… And nobody is willing to do that. These hypocrites go on calling themselves compassionate. What kind of compassion is this – that on the one hand you are preparing for the global suicide, and you are trying to send a few loaves of bread, a little butter to the Ethiopians? For four years they have been dying, because for four years there has been no rain. And now every day thousands of people are dying. All over the world politicians feel compassionate. They send a little bit, but their gifts prove to be only spoonfuls of sugar thrown into the ocean to make it sweet.No, I am not so gullible. I can see the point is either: if you want to wipe out poverty from the earth, stop war, stop all this nonsense of America and Soviet Union, or at least be honest and say we cannot save Ethiopia, we cannot save India. Why allow those people to starve and suffer? We can easily send medical teams – I can send my own medical team. And this is such a simple affair: just one injection and the person goes into eternal sleep. And there is no problem, because if the soul is eternal, as all the religions say, then you have not done anything. The house was falling down and you have moved the soul into a new house, a better house, a fresher house.But if all these religions are wrong, and communists and materialists are right, then too there is no problem. They say that when the body dies, everything dies; there is no soul left – there is no problem. So whether one believes in the soul or does not believe in the soul, it is better to let these poor people at least die peacefully. You could not help them to live peacefully, joyously, but you can at least send them to death peacefully, silently. That is my compassion.Osho,Let me ask you about some other misfortunate souls.You can ask about anything, because I have no secrets to keep about anything. I have nothing private, I am absolutely open to all kinds of queries. And I am going to say exactly what everybody wants to say, but they don’t have the guts to say it. I don’t care about any respectability – I am already notorious enough. And I enjoy it.You enjoy it? How so?Yes, I enjoy it. To be respectable means bourgeois; to be notorious means rebellious. Every revolutionary will be notorious in his time, and every respectable person is nothing but in the service of the vested interests. Certainly, you don’t give Nobel Prizes to notorious people like me; you give Nobel Prizes to Mother Teresa. She is respected because she is serving your vested interests.I am notorious, but I enjoy it. I don’t want to be respectable. To be respected by this mad humanity is insulting.Osho,Let me ask you about one of the things that's perhaps made you notorious – bringing the unfortunate souls, the hobos, the transients, the derelicts who were brought here last fall. Did you approve of it? Was it a wise thing to do?We enjoyed doing it, and it was the best thing to do. And we are going to do something better soon, so you will forget about it completely. And each year we are going to do something better – that’s the only way.When you have a headache and you feel it is unbearable, I will just set fire to your house, and soon you will forget all about your headache!Why did those men not forget about their headaches? Why couldn't they adapt here? Why did they leave?Because they were uneducated, because they had been provided for their whole life – food, clothes and other things, by the churches and Christian associations, to live a life of misery on the streets. Those people were retarded.But you knew that. Why did you still bring them here?I tried it as an experiment. Those who could understand me are still here; those who could not, have left – they were free. In an experiment you have to take the risk. I am going to take a greater risk soon.Could you amplify on that?No.When will you?Not right now. It is going to be declared in a world press conference. It is not a simple, small thing. It is really big.But the intent is to bring the word to additional people?No. Just to bring more notoriety to me!Osho,Are you happy with the way this commune has developed? – in particular the security precautions that apparently have become necessary to maintain the integrity of the commune. Is that the kind of environment in which you live to live?No. Your question is wrong. I am absolutely happy with the commune and its development. But behind the question you are being journalistic. You are saying, “To save the integrity of the community there are guns and guards.” That is absolutely wrong.What is the reason for them, then?The reason for those guards is because I have been attacked many times in my life. I have been poisoned. An attempt was made to kill me with a knife, before ten thousand sannyasins and twenty police officers: because they had got the message that something was going to happen that morning, they arrived in time before the knife was thrown at me. The man was caught red-handed. Ten thousand sannyasins, twenty police officers as witnesses – and still the man was freed by the court without punishment.Now, if my people feel to protect me, I am not going to interfere – for the simple reason that I don’t interfere. If somebody is going to assassinate me, I will say hi to him too. I will not interfere.And if my people who love me want to protect me… And what protection? In a nuclear world, do you think those guns mean anything, except their love for me? Those guns are toy guns – what can they do?But I respect their love. I don’t care about their guns. And those guns are not for the integrity of the community. The community is integrated on its own. Those guns have nothing to do with it. And those guns have not been used to harm anybody in four years, and they will never be used to harm anybody.But if somebody tries to harm the community, certainly, we will do everything to fight back. I believe in tit for tat.Osho,At the risk of belaboring that point, let me ask you to pursue that one more step: the commune here defending itself if there should be some attack – is that in concept any different from a nation stockpiling nuclear weapons to defend itself from an attack?No.I gather from your condemnation, then, of stockpiling nuclear weapons that you are not pleased with what the commune is doing.No. I am not stockpiling nuclear weapons here, and I won’t allow my commune to stockpile nuclear weapons. And I don’t want nations not to have armies, not to have other weapons; I am just against nuclear weapons. Other weapons are just a football match, and man is an animal – once in a while there is an itch to fight.I am in favor of pre-First-World-War weapons. Do your best: those weapons were perfectly good. And the world was a far more pleasant place to live in before the First World War, because the population was small, and your wars helped to keep the balance of population. You need wars.I am not a pacifist. I think if wars disappear completely, it will be a loss. It is perfectly good for this mad humanity once in a while to erupt into a war, destroy a few people, because they were surplus, and keep the balance.I am against nuclear weapons because that will destroy the whole of humanity, and then there will be no Fourth World War. And that I don’t like! I would love a Fourth World War, a Fifth World War, and history goes on… But this Third World War is dangerous – it simply puts a full point on history. That’s why I am against it.Otherwise, I am not against war. It is just children playing. Let them play – there is no harm. So if my commune wants to collect First World War weapons, I am for it!I think they are a little further ahead of that, though – I don't think they had Uzis in World War I, did they?They are not nuclear weapons, they are freely available in the market; anybody can purchase them. The government does not think them serious weapons. Anybody who wants to purchase them in any numbers, can purchase them. They are freely available.And if Oregonians have them, I will not prevent my people. If Oregonians have one, my people will have two, because in a game you should not lag behind. And what does it matter? People have to die anyway.And the strangest thing is that most people – ninety-nine percent of people – die in their beds. That is the most dangerous place! Ninety-nine percent! Only one percent manages to die in varieties of ways.So this is nothing wrong. If people want to fight, have a good fight, enjoy it, celebrate it! Oregonians will be fighting with hostility, and we will be fighting with songs and dances and celebration.Perhaps they will be able to kill us, but they cannot kill our spirit – the spirit of ecstasy. And that will haunt them more. The ghost of Rajneeshpuram may haunt the whole of America!That's an ominous statement… Do you have a vision? Is this commune going to become some form of martyr?No, no. I am just joking.Osho,Thank you! That's a relief.How much of the time are you joking?All the time!One hundred percent?One hundred percent. I am absolutely a non-serious person, so I can say anything, because a non-serious person has no bondage.But what do you do about the people who take you seriously?They are foolish. They should learn to take me non-seriously, the way I take the whole world non-seriously. If they don’t learn it then they unnecessarily get terrified, go through nervous breakdowns. I am absolutely non-serious. What I am saying to you I may contradict tomorrow – or if you want, right now! I can do that, too.Just don’t change the tape in the middle!Osho,Let me ask you about some of the folks you like to talk about on occasion – religious leaders.You at times have spoken well of some of the things Jesus said, some of the words that are attributed to Buddha, to Mohammed. And I have also understood you to say that much of what they did that is good was lost in the formalism of their followers, what the followers tried to establish.I want to ask you if you see a parallel happening in this commune here – that what you are saying is being lost in the formalism of your followers?No, it is impossible. First I have to remind you that whatever I have said about Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed – and that there is much good in them which has been lost by their followers – is centuries old. You are quoting the Old Testament, and I am now in the middle of The Last Testament.Those statements belonged three and a half years ago, before I went into silence. And do you know why I went into silence for three and a half years? Because I got tired of telling beautiful things about Jesus, knowing perfectly well that he was a crackpot.Why did you say it then?Because I wanted to catch hold of Christians – and I got them! I have my devices: I may be a madman but I have my methodology.Do the ends justify the means?Yes.You believe in Machiavelli? Is that part of your philosophy?Machiavelli can be my disciple, and he will enjoy learning a few more things that he has missed. I spoke on Jesus and I said that he had said many beautiful things. I interpreted him – but that interpretation was mine, it has nothing to do with Jesus. I was simply trying to catch hold of a few Christians. But that I was doing with all the religions.It is natural, because all the people of the world are already divided. When I came into this world, somebody was a Mohammedan, somebody was a Christian, somebody was a Hindu – no customer available! And I have to do my business, too; I have every right. So how to get customers…?I had to plan devices. And the natural way was – the simple way – that anything that is wrong in Jesus, throw it on his disciples. And anything that can be seen as good, can be polished, given a more contemporary ring, bring it up and give the credit to Jesus.Great Christians like Stanley Jones – who was a world-famous missionary – he told me, “I am puzzled. No Christian down the centuries has even been able to give such beautiful meaning to the words of Jesus.”I said, “The trouble is, I cannot tell you the truth.”That poor fellow is dead now – but to you I can tell the truth.What beauty can there be in Jesus’ words? He was uneducated, uncultured, a carpenter’s son. In his time, it was said laughingly, “Look at the messiah – who has ever heard that prophets and messiahs are born in Bethlehem?” Bethlehem became a laughing stock because of Jesus, and he was seen as a buffoon. Riding on his donkey, proclaiming himself as the only begotten son of God. Just see it, visualize it: a man sitting on a donkey looking like a perfect hippie, declaring he is the only begotten son of God, and telling you, “Unless you follow me, there is no way to be saved. At the last judgment day I will choose my sheep and they will enter into paradise, and those who are not chosen by me will fall into eternal hell.”Have you ever thought of the meaning of eternal hell? In a seventy-year life, how many sins can you commit to deserve eternal hell? Is there any fairness, justice in existence, or not? In seventy years – because Christians believe in only one life – how many sins can you manage to commit to deserve eternal punishment? This is simply stupid. Because of this simple statement, Bertrand Russell went against Jesus. He wrote a book, Why I Am Not a Christian, because this is simply unfair, unjust, inhuman – the man is certainly a mental case.Now I have got my people: from all sources I have caught them – from Buddhists, from Hindus, from Christians, from Jews. From every land, from every country, from every race, I have caught hold of those who can now listen to me directly. I don’t need any Jesus, any Buddha, any Mohammed to stand between me and my disciples. So I am kicking them out.For three years I remained silent, just to give a gap so people forget all about what I said before those three years, and I can start from the very beginning again. So don’t quote anything from my books: those days are dead, those books are dead.Osho,Do you wear that watch except during TV interviews?I have got hundreds of watches. And this is the least costly – just $180,000. I have watches which are half a million dollars or more. And I have hundreds – but they don’t belong to me, they belong to my sannyasins. This watch, too, is borrowed. Nothing belongs to me; everything is provided for me. I am just a guest here in this commune. I am not even a sannyasin.Osho,Let me go back to a point we were discussing a few minutes ago – that you saw speaking highly of Jesus as a strategy to appeal to Christians, to get your word to them, as a tactic. Do you have new tactics now? Is your talking to us this evening – is this part of a new tactic to reach people?Everything I do is a certain device – talking to you, too. I am involved in some great alchemical work of transforming people from their sleep into enlightened souls, and I have to try every kind of device possible.This, too, is part of it. Everything that I say or do is part, an organic part, of my whole work. And my work is to bring to people awakening, on as big a scale as possible, as it has never happened before.Osho,You used the figure earlier of a million sannyasins around the world.Would that be your estimate?Yes.I have read – I have not personally ascertained the accuracy of this – that a number of your meditation centers in the United States and in Europe have closed, and the conclusion that some people have drawn from that is that the number of sannyasins is shrinking.Their conclusion is wrong. We have closed a few centers because those centers were too small, and the sannyasins were finding it difficult to live amongst the hostility around them. So we have consolidated a few centers into a big commune. So those centers have disappeared, but a new commune has come into existence.The number has not decreased, the number has increased, because many who were afraid before to become sannyasins are no longer afraid, because they have five hundred sannyasins with them. Now their enemies are afraid.I am consolidating all over the world, and the number is increasing every day. From a half-million it has reached to one million, and these are above-ground sannyasins. The underground sannyasins are not included in it.In communist countries, in China, in Russia, in other small communist countries, I have my sannyasins, and they are spreading fast there too. In fact, they are more excited than sannyasins anywhere else. Naturally, human psychology is such that in Moscow they have to meet in a basement of a friend’s house, silently, afraid – even the walls in Russia are detectives and belong to the KGB.There is great excitement in meditation, in reading my books, listening to my tapes. For sixty years in Russia, religion had almost disappeared except in a few places which the Russian government has been keeping up for tourist purposes. Only a few churches are there which are maintained for foreigners to visit and see that religion has not been disturbed: everybody is free, and you can see…But in fact all the churches have become either hospitals or schools, and the whole country has become atheistic. After sixty years… These people were born after the revolution, they have been brought up in an atheist atmosphere. They have been conditioned that there is nothing in you – you are only a component of physics, chemistry, biology, but there is no spirit in you.And for the first time they are becoming aware through me that they are consciousness. All these things are just their house, and they are not just a composite whole of all these things; they have individuality, a consciousness. The only way to discover it is meditation – and people are meditating.And the government is already starting to persecute them, trying to find out where they meet, what they do, where they go. They have started taking my books from them. My books are banned. These are good signs – this means the youth will get more excited. It has become a revolution, and that’s what the young blood always needs – some rebellion.I have one million people, and they will be growing every day, for the simple reason that there is no other alternative. The old world is already dead – or almost dead, which is worse!And for the new world there is no other movement except this movement. It is not a political movement. It has no national background; it does not belong to any nation. It does not belong to any race. It does not belong to the past. It is absolutely fresh – just born, young.And you are asking, can your followers do the same as happened with Jesus? In the first place, the followers have not destroyed Jesus. Jesus had everything ready. He had sown the seeds, the followers have only been reaping the crop. Jesus is responsible.I am not giving any theology to my disciples. I am not giving them any catechism. I am not giving them any belief system. And my statements are so contradictory that there is no possibility for anybody to figure out what kind of man this was. Nobody can bring any deformation, because I am not giving anything to the disciples – no discipline, no dogma, no creed. What can they do?I am giving them freedom to do whatsoever they want to do. I am giving their responsibility to themselves. I am not taking their responsibility on me. I am not their savior or prophet or messiah – no.You are their master.Yes, I am master of myself.Are you their master, as well?No. I am trying to help them to be masters of themselves. I am just a catalytic agent. I am master of myself, so I know how one becomes a master of oneself. I am simply sharing my experience with these people. They are not my followers, they are my fellow travelers. And they are absolutely free to do anything they want. No restrictions, no inhibitions, no repressions.What can they do? The moment I am gone, they will also go on their way separately, because their connection with me is direct. They are not interconnected like Christians or Hindus or Mohammedans. They are connected to me directly. Each sannyasin has a direct communication line with me. The moment I am gone, his last barrier is also finished. Other barriers I had finished before – now the last barrier, the love toward me, is also finished.He is now totally free. Utterly free – to be himself. So there is no problem. The followers of Buddha or Confucius, they all destroyed their master’s things, because the master himself has given all the poison that was needed to destroy it. For example, Buddhas has given thirty-three thousand rules of conduct. Even to remember them is impossible; the question of following them does not arise! And any man trying to follow thirty-three thousand rules of conduct will soon be in an insane asylum. He will be in the same position as happened in Aesop’s fable of the centipede.A centipede is just going for his morning walk. One hundred legs – a small rabbit could not believe his eyes, how he managed to walk. One hundred legs? Which one first, which one second, which one third…?He stopped the centipede and said, “Uncle, I have a question, if you don’t mind. How do you manage to walk with one hundred legs?He said, “My God, I never thought about it! Now I will watch how I walk and then I will tell you. Up to now, I have been simply walking without thinking.”And he could not walk even a single step. He fell down, because he was trying to figure out which leg first and which leg second – and the number was one hundred. Even a great mathematician like Albert Einstein would have fallen with one hundred legs. That poor centipede – knowing no arithmetic…But the centipede was very angry and told the rabbit, “It’s okay that you asked the question to me, but here is a big commune of other centipedes. Don’t ask such a stupid question to anybody. Perhaps you have crippled me for my whole life! I will never be able to walk again – because I don’t know how I used to walk. It was simply natural.”Thirty-three thousand rules of conduct? Are you trying to drive humanity insane? And if they don’t follow, they feel guilty. If they follow, they look mad. And if you look at those rules, you will be absolutely aware.For example, one sannyasin, Buddha’s disciple, was going to spread his message. Buddha said to him, “You are going far away. Never look at a woman.”The man said, “It is a little bit difficult, because half the people are women. Everywhere is full of women, and you are giving me a message not to look at a woman? But how am I supposed to know, before looking. that a woman is coming? And by the time I know that she is a woman, I have already looked.”The man raised the question that it would be almost impossible for him to follow it.Buddha gave him the advice, “No, it is possible. I will give you the clue. Walk looking just four feet ahead of you, so if you see a woman’s feet, you know. Don’t look up, always keep your eyes glued four feet away.”In India, women use ornaments on the feet, on the toes, and just by looking at the feet you will know it is a woman.The man was a little bit of a philosopher. He said, “That’s okay. Anything else?”Buddha said, “Never touch a woman.”The man said, “But there can be a situation. For example, a woman is drowning and I am standing on the bank. What do you want me to do, jump in the river and save the woman, or just go on my way without looking at her? A woman may have fallen on the street – sick, or old, or blind – and she needs the help of someone to take her at least to the nearest town, and I am passing by. What do you suggest?”Buddha said, “Okay, you can touch a woman, but remain absolutely alert. Keep yourself as a witness, don’t get in any way involved. Do it as if she is only a corpse, and you are fulfilling your duty.”Now, this kind of discipline will soon create disturbances. People are going to disobey such things and find loopholes and destroy the whole thing.I have not given them anything in which they can find loopholes – I have given them only loopholes. Now what can they destroy? It is said that a fishing net consists of holes. I have given them only holes – no fishing net. Now they can do whatsoever they want to do with holes. I give them absolute freedom to be themselves. No guilt, no promise, just enjoy the moment to the fullest, and you are not responsible to anybody.No God to be responsible toward, no hell to be afraid of, no heaven to be greedy for. All that is present this very moment, enjoy it intensely, totally, because no one knows – the next moment may come, may not come.OshoWhat conclusions do you think history will reach about your experiment here?I don’t know.And furthermore, you don't care!I don’t care. Who cares when you are dead? You are not going to come back to read what others are writing about you, whether your name is in the history books or not. What is the point?Alexander the Great did so much, tried to conquer the whole known world, almost succeeded. But what is the point? He died when he was thirty-three – and after that he has not been seen around, reading history and enjoying that his name is everywhere. And he is one of the greatest heroes in history. What does it matter?I don’t know, and I don’t care either. I am perfectly happy right now – so blessed that I can bless the whole world, still my blissfulness will not be exhausted.Osho,Why share it with the world? You mentioned earlier your happiness in your own person – why not keep it within yourself?Because it goes on increasing if you share. It is profit-making.There are a few giggles there. Define what you mean by profit-making.The more you share your bliss, your joy, the more it increases. It is a totally different kind of economics from that which you are aware. In the ordinary economics, the rule is: if you go on sharing your money it will decrease.In the higher economics, which is my business, the more you share, the more existence goes on pouring into you. It is just like a well: you go on drawing water from the well, and new water goes on flowing from everywhere. If you stop drawing water from the well, the water will become stale, dead, even poisonous.Bliss has to be shared. It is not out of compassion. That is why I said it is profit-making. It is not out of compassion that I share my bliss. It is just out of simple profit-motive. It increases the more I share. It is like the rain cloud full of rain. It has to shower somewhere, otherwise it will become heavy, burdened.Yes, I say if you don’t share your bliss it will go stale. It will start stinking very soon. It will die. You have to share it to keep it alive, flowing, increasing, expanding. I am an imperialist. I don’t believe in any limits on anything.I can understand why you are scratching your beard. You don’t have a beard, and you are scratching it. And I have a beard and I am not scratching it! Take a few grapes – that will help you. That scratching is nervous. Just take some grapes! Those grapes are there just to avoid doing anything else that shows nervousness.But it is nothing new. All journalists feel nervous, because they have never met such a crazy man before. Who will not feel nervous? Take a few grapes.I don't think they allow me a meal break until I'm off work.Okay.Osho,Let me ask you about something you mentioned.Why is it important, or necessary, to sell bliss – why can't you give it away?No, because anything that is just given away is never taken by anybody. The higher the cost, the better people will keep it, save it in their treasuries. Give it free and it has no value – because people don’t understand value unless it has a price. They understand price, they don’t understand value.In that case, how much are you going to charge me for the grapes?Nothing.So, no value?I know that if you eat those grapes your program is going to be for me. Just taste something sweet, so you are not bitter on television. It is all profit-making business! I am a very simple man, and truthful. If you are shy about eating right now, when I go, please…I would like to ask you to repeat some of the words you just said, when he's back on the tripod, so that I can just have a good audio of that.I want you to explain again if you would, please, why bliss has to be sold – why you sell bliss. I heard the camera cutting in and out, so I don't have one smooth statement: could you grant us three more minutes?I can, but I cannot repeat what I have said; I will say something else.Go right ahead!I don’t believe in repetition.All right. Well then, give me another theory why bliss is to be sold.Everything in this world has to be achieved. You have to pay a price for it, and the bigger the price you pay for it, the higher is your estimate of it. If bliss, ecstasy, joy, were all available, like water, free, nobody will be able to appreciate their value. You don’t know the real value of water unless you have been thirsty in a desert.While he was in India, Alexander was asked by a great master, “If you are in a desert and thirsty and I have a full bottle of water, how much will you be ready to pay for it?”Alexander said, “I will pay half my empire in such a situation.”But the master said, “I will not sell until you pay me the full empire. Why should I sell? If you are willing to pay half, that is indication enough that if I just wait a little more, the customer is going to feel more thirsty and is going to pay the full empire.”And Alexander agreed that perhaps he would give the whole empire.The master laughed. He said, “Then what are you doing? Wasting your whole life for a bottle of water? Are you stupid or something?”The world understands things in its own way. Otherwise, my bliss is freely available to anybody who can appreciate it, who is vulnerable to it, who is open to receive it. There is no price tag on it. But those who cannot understand anything unless they pay for it – for those poor people, we have to put a price on everything. It is out of compassion.That’s why I said my answer will not be the same.Thank you very much. I appreciate your granting us this time.I enjoyed it.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 22 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Anand NartanOsho Times, Tokyo, JapanOsho,Buddha the Japanese seems quite conceivable, yet Zorba the Japanese quite inconceivable. Would you comment?It is one of the most significant questions to ask. Buddha is not only conceivable in Japan, a Buddhist country; Buddha will be conceivable anywhere, even though the countries are not Buddhist. Perhaps Buddha is the only human being in the whole of history who is loved, respected by all, not only by Buddhists.On the other hand, Zorba is inconceivable in every old culture, civilization, religion, because they have all condemned materialism and they have all raised spiritualism to its ultimate height. They have created a duality between matter and spirit, between the mundane and the sacred.Zorba represents all that has been condemned for centuries upon centuries by all the religions. Buddha is certainly loved by Buddhists, but respected by non-Buddhists too. He represents something of the purity of the highest conceivable spirituality. That’s why I say the question is significant.My whole effort is to bring Zorba and Buddha closer and closer – so close that both can exist in one human being without any contradiction, as complementaries, helping each other, not fighting with each other. Separately, both are missing much.Buddha is absolutely bloodless, just a skeleton, because he has denied everything that life is. Life is love, life is laughter. Buddha has denied everything. He is just a skeleton. Zorba is full of life, love, laughter. Eat, drink and be merry is his whole religion. He does not know anything beyond eat, drink and be merry. He does not know… He has no question or curiosity about something that is higher – higher than the alcohol, higher than the woman or man, higher than this world, the visible world, the tangible world. Zorba has no quest; he is perfectly happy drinking, dancing, enjoying.Buddha is missing the blood, the life, the love, the joy, the celebration. Buddha cannot dance. It will be simply inconceivable, Buddha dancing. Zorba cannot sit silently and meditate. That, too, is as inconceivable as Buddha dancing. Zorba is dancing, singing, drinking; he is making love to any woman who by chance meets him.Zorba represents the materialist in its best form, Buddha represents the spiritualist in its best form. But you are both, spirit and body. Existence is both, matter and consciousness.Therefore I say that spiritualists have been denying the very base of the temple. They accept the temple but they deny the foundation of the temple, and without the foundation no temple can stand. That’s why religions have failed.Gautama the Buddha has failed – for the simple reason that he was trying to make a temple without any foundations going down into the earth. He was trying to grow roses, but he was not ready to accept the roots under the ground which live in darkness and, of course, are not as beautiful as the roses. But neither can the roses exist without the roots, nor can the roots afford to exist without the flowers. The roots without the flowers will be barren, and the flowers without the roots can only be of plastic.So all the religions of the past have created a plastic humanity. Denying Zorba, they have denied all that is solid in you. And the materialists, communists, Marxists, and other brands of materialism – Epicurus in Greece, Charvaka in India – they are eating, drinking, womanizing, but at the very end they find nothing but frustration. Something is missing. They may have all the money, all the power, everything that a man can ask for, but still inside they are empty, hollow. They may be dancing, but their dance has nothing of divinity in it. Their dance is just an exercise of the body; there is no soul to it.These are the two ways humanity has lived up to now – divided, split, schizophrenic. Both have to repress something. Buddha has to repress Zorba, Zorba has to repress Buddha. As far as I’m concerned, both are sick because both are half of one whole, which can be healthy only if both the parts meet and fill the gaps. Zorba can become the foundation, Buddha can become the temple.I don’t see that there is any conflict between the rose and the roots. On the contrary, the roots are continuously sending food, water, nourishment, color, fragrance to the rose. The rose is on the receiving end. All that the rose gives to you comes from the roots. Cut the roots away and the rose dies, disappears. All fragrance, all life, all dance in the wind, the joy in the sun, simply wither away. Take the roses away and what meaning is left for the roots?That’s why materialism is bound to come to a point where it feels meaningless, everything meaningless. It is the Zorba in the West which has come to its climax in the so-called philosophy of existentialism. Existentialism is the ultimate logical conclusion of Zorba. There is no meaning in life according to European existentialism. There is only anxiety, anguish, despair. Zorba had started with love, laughter, life, and it is strange that in the end the conclusion is that there is only one way to get rid of it all – this whole mess and madness – and that is suicide.The whole of Western intelligence is in a great insane space, because they have accepted only the roots and now they are asking, “Where are the flowers?” They never allowed the flowers to grow. On the contrary, they went on cutting the branches, the leaves, the trunk of the tree, and now they are asking the roots, “What is the meaning of you? For what do you exist?”And in the East, just the opposite has happened: only the spiritual is true and the material is illusory. All the spiritual masters in the East have been emphasizing only one thing, that the world in which you live is only a dream. It does not matter whether you are rich or poor – what does it matter if it is only a dream? Whether you are hungry, sick, old, healthy, it is only a dream. It is not the reality. The natural consequence was that in saving their spirit and their spirituality they have lost their roots. That’s why the East is poor. Gautam Buddha is responsible for it.If you deny materialism, then how can science develop? If matter is illusory, then the whole of scientific endeavor is illusory – Hiroshima and Nagasaki have never happened, it was just the Japanese dreaming about it. If matter is illusory, then how can the atom be real, which is the constituent of matter? And if life is illusory, then why make so much fuss about life disappearing from the earth in a Third World War?Because Gautam Buddha and people like him in other religions emphasized only the other world, this world was neglected, ignored. No science was developed – which could have been developed long before it started to develop in the West. The Western development of science is only of three hundred years; mathematics was discovered in India ten thousand years ago. But what happened? Guns and dynamite were discovered in China five thousand years ago, but then what went wrong? In three hundred years the West has developed nuclear weapons, and they have managed to reach the moon. What has the East been doing for ten thousand years?You will be surprised to know that when Marco Polo came back from China, he brought many presents for the pope from the Chinese emperor. He was laughed at for everything that he brought – and he thought he was bringing something of immense value. For example, up to that time the West had no idea of printing machines, and he had brought printed books from China. The West had no idea of currency notes, but in China currency notes had been in use for three thousand years. What went wrong? People who invented mathematics, people who invented the printing press, people who invented guns and gunpowder…?The whole responsibility goes to Gautam Buddha and his type of people. They emphasized that all this is illusory – don’t waste time. The small time that you have has not to be wasted in the desert of materialism. You should devote your whole life to the search for truth, for that which is far above what you see. Seek the invisible, the intangible. Seek the eternal, the immortal. Seek the immaterial.Emphasis from people like Buddha who had charismatic personalities influenced the whole of civilization for centuries, and all progress stopped. India knew everything about mathematics, but could not produce an Albert Einstein. If things had moved rightly, India would have reached faraway stars by this time, not just the moon. The moon is very close. If Western science can reach the moon in three hundred years, India could have reached the farthest star in ten thousand years.All the basic principles of mathematics were known but they were never applied. They remained theoretical, they remained undeveloped, because the genius of the country was attracted by Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Shankara, who were emphasizing that matter is illusory, that this life is just a dream, and the only use you can make of this life is to find that which remains forever. Naturally, the East has remained poor. Nobody else is responsible for it – it was bound to happen.If I had been there at Buddha’s time, I would have predicted that what he was teaching would result in poverty, sickness and death to the same people who were influenced by him. And remember, when people are poor, hungry, dying, do you think they can meditate? With a hungry stomach, can you go on sitting silently and let the grass grow by itself? Basho’s stomach was full when he wrote those lines. He must have begged and eaten well. Then, sitting under a tree by the side of a pond, he could write beautiful poetry of tremendous significance.We should not forget that Basho was not hungry. If he had been hungry, then there was no possibility of these beautiful lines coming out of him: “The ancient pond, the frog jumps in, the sound.” Or “the silence.” It is difficult to translate exactly the Japanese word, because Japanese has no alphabet. In India we have a word which is pronounced chapak – the sound of the frog. When a frog jumps into the pond, there is something like chapak.But these beautiful statements are not out of a hungry stomach. The East went on becoming poorer and poorer, because without technology and science you cannot be rich. And if Ethiopia is dying today – almost one thousand people are dying per day, and in the last four years millions have died in Ethiopia – who is responsible for these people dying there? Why have they not been able to develop enough technology and science to create and produce wealth? Because wealth was condemned by their religious leaders. They listened to their religious leaders.Wealth was condemned; children were declared to be gifts of God, so they went on producing only one thing – children. Now, no child brings with him a piece of land, seeds for the new crop, water to nourish the plants. God goes on sending children without any equipment to be here, and the religious leaders go on saying they are gifts of God – but they have proved to be the very curse against humanity.The East was bound to remain poor because of Gautam Buddha. It was bound to remain unprogressive, backward, because of Gautam Buddha. And I love the man; you can understand my anguish that I have to say that Gautam Buddha is responsible for this whole misery. For twenty-five centuries, millions of people have suffered, have gone mad, have become perverted – and the man who is responsible for it, I love him.I love Zorba too, but I know it is because of the materialists that we have suffered two world wars, and now the third is threatening to destroy the whole of humanity at any moment. Because of Zorbas, the West has remained superficial. Yes, its stomach is full – perhaps too full – but its being is empty. The house is really beautiful, a palace, but nobody lives there. It is empty. Yes, there are precious paintings on the walls and great sculptures in the garden; everything is immensely valuable, but nobody lives there. Nobody is there, because the materialist forgot completely to come back home. He went out and out and out, and went on searching farther and farther away from his home base. Now he has completely forgotten who he is, where he comes from. Now he is asking, “What is the meaning of my life? What I am searching for? Where am I going? What the hell am I doing here?” He is angry, angry at life itself.In one of Dostoevsky’s novels, The Brothers Karamazov, there are three brothers. One brother is an atheist, one brother is a very pious, religious, innocent person, and the third brother simply does not care about either. The atheist says, “If I meet your God, Ivan…” – Ivan is the religious one – “if I meet that fellow anywhere, the first thing I am going to do is to return the ticket, and ask the gentleman, ‘Is it right to send me into the world without asking my permission? Who are you? What authority have you got to force me to live a life which is meaningless? And everything that is joyful, you and your representatives condemn it. You have done a great job of creation. You create us without asking us; that is the first crime you have committed. Then you give us instincts which we have not asked for, and send your prophets and messiahs who condemn those instincts saying that sex is sin, that attachment is sin, that possessions are sin. So what kind of game is going on? Are you some kind of sadist? Have you created us to suffer? Are you enjoying our suffering and misery?’”That brother is speaking for the whole of the West. Everything is available, but what is the point? You will go on making love to this woman, to that man, but what is the point? After a few experiences you simply look silly. What are you doing? You may eat in this restaurant, in that restaurant – Japanese food, Chinese food, Italian spaghetti – but sooner or later you are bound to recognize what is going on. What is the point of it all? Why should I go on living tomorrow, because again tomorrow – spaghetti!It is enough for any intelligent man – and the more intelligent a man is, the sooner he gets bored. Retarded people can go on living with a woman or with a man their whole life. But intelligent people, the greater their intelligence, the greater is their capacity to see that there are thousands of beautiful women – why remain with one? There are thousands of beautiful men, so why cling to one? There is no natural law that you have to remain clinging to one. Why create a bondage?But even if a man goes on moving from one woman to another, soon he gets tired and finds out that he is in a vicious circle. Finally he finds, to his great surprise, that all women are exactly the same. What you call “making love” – whether you make love to Cleopatra or Mother Teresa, it is the same, the same stupid thing.So the whole of the West has created the foundation of the temple, but a foundation is meaningless without a temple. They go on making foundations and then they are stuck. “What are we doing? For what are we making this foundation?” They don’t have any idea that a temple has to be created. They have denied that temple for centuries: there is no consciousness.Karl Marx says that consciousness is only a by-product of matter. See the point: Shankara, Buddha and Mahavira say that matter is illusory, that consciousness is immortal reality. Charvaka, Epicurus and Karl Marx say just the opposite, that matter is the only reality and consciousness is only a by-product.It is just like a clock on the wall that goes on ticking, giving you the time. If you bring an aboriginal into the room and show the clock moving, he will look all around and say, “Where is the spirit of the clock?” – because if it moves, there must be a mover hidden inside. But there is no mover; the movement is a by-product of a certain mechanism. You can take apart all the parts. Do you think the soul of the clock will go upwards to meet God? If it was a good clock, giving the right time all the time, it will go to God; if it was a bad clock, giving the wrong time all the time, it will go down into hell to suffer. But you know there is nobody who is going anywhere. You can put those parts together again, and the clock starts ticking. That ticking of the clock is just a by-product.The West denied consciousness; the result is a tremendous feeling of despair. The East denied matter; the result is Ethiopia, India. Half a million people are going to die of poverty this year. Two million people will be barely able to survive. You cannot tell them that being barely able to survive will be life. And who knows about next year?Right now, the world population is four billion. Every decade we are producing one billion people, so by the time this century ends we will be nearabout six billion people. Our resources are being exhausted. And this increase of population will be happening in the poor countries, not in the rich countries. The poor countries will become poorer, much poorer, and it will be impossible for the richer countries to give any help. And why should they give? The poor don’t give their meditation to the rich, they don’t give their experiences of ecstasy, blissfulness to the rich – why should the rich give the fruits of their technology to the poor? And they are going to be in difficulty themselves, because they are piling up nuclear weapons. This is where Zorba has brought them. Sooner or later, nuclear weapons are going to destroy the world. Yes, they will die with their stomachs full.In fact, just in America half a million people suffer from obesity, fatness. They go on growing like monsters. They don’t have anything else to do except eat – eat more!A small child, an American, was puzzled: why do the Ethiopians go on dying? He told his father that it seems so stupid that one thousand people are dying every day, starving. Why don’t they open their fridges? If there is nothing else available, they can eat cakes, biscuits.Now, the American child cannot conceive of a home without a fridge. What a distance we have created amongst human beings! The Ethiopian has never seen a fridge and perhaps will never see one. There seems to be no way for Ethiopia to survive.Zorba has brought half of the world to where they have everything. Only the man is missing, the spirit is missing – and with the spirit all meaning, all ecstasy, all joy, everything has gone down the drain. In the East they are poor, dying, sick, suffering in every possible way, and that is the consequence of what Buddha has been teaching these people.I want East and West to disappear into each other. I want Zorba and Buddha to disappear into each other. Only then will we have a whole man – and the whole man is the need of the day.It is because of this that I am going to be condemned from both sides. The religious people will condemn me as a materialist; and the materialists, the communists, are condemning me for diverting people’s minds toward meditation. That means the young generation is being diverted away from the revolution, that I am serving in some way the interests of capitalism.I am the greatest danger to them, because I am attracting so many young people. If they had not come to me they would be communists. But now the situation has come to such a point that red no longer represents the communists, it represents me!They are both angry: Zorba is angry, Buddha is angry. But I am not to be stopped by either. I am going to put both of them into a mixer and put the electricity on, so that when the juice comes out, you cannot find which is Buddha and which is Zorba! That is my sannyasin: one who will live with intensity and totality like Zorba. But that is not the end, that is only the beginning. He will go on searching, seeking for something higher to live, something better to live.He will be in favor of science and technology. He will not deny this world; he will not call it a dream. It is true – as true as anything can be. Who can say roots are untrue? Just to prove that roses are true, have you to prove roots to be illusory? I don’t see the point. Roots are roots, and as roots they are real. Roses are roses, as roses they are real. The problem is that they are joined together and they depend on each other.I have told you that juices are flowing continuously from the roots toward the flower. But it is not a one-way affair: the flower is taking the sun rays deep down to the roots. Because those roots are underground, they also need the life that sun rays give. Without those sun rays, those roots will die. The flower does not open for you to make a garland, it opens for the roots which are hidden. In fact it is an extension, a hand of the roots to catch hold of life and energy from the sun, the wind, the rain, and send it back to the roots which are hidden deep down. It is a two-way traffic.And this is how it should be between Zorba and Buddha. If Buddha has eyes – and certainly he has eyes – but if he doesn’t have legs, what is he going to do with his eyes? The house is on fire: he can see it. He can see the way out, but he doesn’t have legs, he is crippled. And somebody is sitting by his side who is blind but has strong legs…I am suggesting a simple thing: get introduced to each other! Tell each other what you have got and what you have not got. It is a simple thing to come to an understanding that the crippled man, who can see, sits on the shoulders of the strong man, who is blind but can walk. Now they are together, functioning as one unit. One sees and shows the way, and the other follows – that’s the only way to get out of the house which is on fire. And we are in a house which is on fire.It is exactly the right moment for Zorba and Buddha to drop all their antagonism and become one. Yes, Zorba is blind, but he is a strong person. Buddha has eyes but he is fragile. He can sit under the bodhi tree, but if the jungle goes on fire, perhaps he will not be able to escape.It had happened in Buddha’s life… I have been to that place near Bodhgaya, where Buddha became enlightened. There is a small river, Niranjana. Buddha was so weak because of fasting, meditating. He had devoted everything to meditation. He had forgotten his body, he had forgotten everything else. He went to take a bath in Niranjana. It is a small river – when I went there I could not believe it. Perhaps at that time it may have been a little bigger river – but the story is that he was so weak that the current of the river started carrying him away and he could not manage to stand against that small river’s current. He tried hard to somehow get out, and had to hang onto the root of a tree at the side of the river. He had to rest for some time to gather energy enough to get out of the river.This situation, this story, is the story of the whole of the East. Yes, Buddha has got eyes. He can see as far as existence is – his vision is limitless. But he has done one wrong thing: he has gone against the body, against nature. His achievement is partial. And so is the achievement of Zorba partial.Remember one thing: truth can only be whole. It is just like a circle. You cannot draw half a circle; that is not possible. Just the word circle means full circle. You cannot draw half a circle; that will be only an arc, not a circle. A circle has to be whole. And that’s the situation with truth: truth has to be whole. Half a truth is worse than a lie.Buddha is half of the truth, and Zorba is half of the truth. It is going to be difficult to explain to Buddhists that I am making an effort to create a synthesis between Zorba and Buddha; they may feel offended. But that does not matter. Truth is on my side, and I am ready for an open discussion with both Buddha and Zorba. And my vision is clear that both are half and both have disturbed the whole of humanity.Now it is time for Zorba the Buddha to appear. Perhaps I am the first Zorba the Buddha. I take the responsibility for bringing this new kind of animal into the world. My sannyasins have to be Zorba the Buddha. Nothing has to be sacrificed, and everything has to be experienced. From body to soul, from earth to sky, all is ours.Osho,The problems of South Africa are basically reflected in the government's attitude toward the Japanese. We are acceptable in business, but culturally we are considered colored and have semi-human status. Is there any solution possible in South Africa?South Africa is not a big problem. Like all problems, it is very simple – but the vested interests make everything complex. In South Africa only fifteen percent of the population is white, and that fifteen percent are invaders. Eighty-five percent of the people – the natives of the land – have been living in slavery for centuries. They are simply slaves, servants, working in the coal mines, gold mines, diamond mines. Those mines belong to them, but they get only a little bit of money to survive. And the fifteen percent, the white people, exploit their rich country, and have been doing so for three hundred years.Now it has come to the point where something has to be done, but the problem is that these fifteen percent came three hundred years ago, and now they don’t have anywhere else to go. There are Dutch people, English people, Italians; there are others, but the majority is Dutch. Their own countries are not ready to accept them back, because no country wants its population to grow suddenly. Somehow, they are keeping things in balance. Neither do these people really want to go, because in their own countries they will be ordinary second-rate citizens – maybe clerks, waiters, porters – and in South Africa they are kings. All their investment is in South Africa. All the technology that they have brought, all the mechanization, is in the mines of South Africa, and they know how much more is still there to be exploited. They have only scratched the surface. So their greed, their fear of going back to their own countries where they will be almost foreigners.They have started calling themselves Afrikaner, they don’t call themselves Dutch. No, they have become a new race, Afrikaner, and they call their language Afrikaans. They don’t want to leave. I can understand the human greed, and I can also understand their problem of who is going to accept them. Nobody is willing to accept them – but that does not mean they have to continue to exploit eighty-five percent of the people, their country, their land; nor that they have to go on being the ruling ones.It is strange that in the twentieth century only this fifteen percent, the white people, have the voting right in South Africa. The majority of eighty-five percent has no voting right, so the question of their coming into power does not arise. They have nothing to do with power; they can’t even vote. It is inhuman.I can see the difficulty of the white people; I can see the exploitation of the black people, but it cannot continue the way it has up to now. It has come to a point of explosion. Now there is emergency rule. The whole country is under military rule, and South Africa has one of the biggest armies in the world. No journalist is allowed in, so nobody knows how many people are being killed and burned every day.My suggestion is simple: fifteen percent of the land should become a new country – Afrikaner. Fifteen percent of the wealth should go to the new country, Afrikaner; fifteen percent of the army should go to the new country, Afrikaner. Everything according to the percentage, with South Africa divided into two countries, Afrikaner and South Africa.It is so simple, if people really want to solve the problem. The white people should remain there. They have been there for three hundred years, and their old countries are not going to accept them back. It is time enough. But they should get according to their percentage. If they don’t want to divide the country, then the eighty-five percent majority should be given the voting right. Naturally then the government will be of South Africans.These are two clear alternatives. And I think the white people will prefer the first. They would have at least fifteen percent of the country – fifteen percent of its wealth, diamond mines, gold mines, and fifteen percent of the army – and they would be their own rulers. And eighty-five percent of the people would have eighty-five percent of the army, eighty-five percent of the wealth, eighty-five percent of the land, and would be their own kings. I don’t see a problem at all. They just have to sit with each other and find out the way to divide.If they insist that they don’t want division, then they must give the eighty-five percent majority their voting rights. But then they will not have even the fifteen percent that was possible in the first place, because eighty-five percent of the people will throw them out of the government and then they will be at their service. They have served you for three hundred years – now you serve them. They have worked in your mines and died – now you work and die.The whole world should insist that either of these two alternatives has to be accepted; otherwise the South African government will simply be rejected by all the governments of the world. They should be thrown out of the U.N.. They have no right to represent a country where eighty-five percent of the people are against them. They should not be given any support. All business from other countries should be completely stopped. The present government should be forced either to accept the first conclusion, or accept the second alternative.And I think the first is perfectly beautiful. They don’t lose; they get as much as they deserve, fifteen percent. The South Africans don’t lose anything, they get as much as they deserve. One needs just the clarity to see. But this is the problem: even when things are very simple, millions of people have to die, innocent people have to suffer. The idiotic politicians and power-hungry people go on massacring poor innocent children, women, old people.In South Africa now the army is given the power to shoot anybody they suspect. No inquiry is needed, no arrest warrant is needed, no court has to decide. The military itself has the power to shoot anybody, and suspicion is not something that you can later prove wrong or right. Whether it was wrong or right, it makes no difference – it was not a certainty, it was only a suspicion. So now they are killing anybody they want to kill. It is the responsibility of the whole world to reject South Africa as a member of civilized humanity, because what they are doing is barbarous.But even countries like America that are supposed to be the most advanced, progressive, democratic countries do things which are inconceivable. In the Second World War, when Japanese armies attacked Pearl Harbor, one and a half million Japanese – who were living in America, who were American citizens, who had been living here for generations, and most of whom were born in America – were given fifteen days notice to sell their properties, land, everything, and move to a special place that the American government was providing for them. And the whole of America was kept in darkness. Even today that part is not mentioned in American history books about the Second World War.In fact, all around the world, nobody knows what actually happened to those one and a half million Japanese-Americans. Fifteen days was such a short notice – how could you sell your businesses, your houses, your lands? And who is going to purchase? – because Americans knew that within fifteen days you will have to go, that the lands, the buildings, your car, your shop, your business, everything will be in their hands, free. Why purchase?These one and a half million Japanese-Americans, who had earned all this with their own labor, with their own intelligence, were really rich people. The Japanese have the knack of becoming rich; they know how to create wealth. They had to leave, and they were not supposed to ask why or where they were going. Just one thing was told to them – that the government suspected that when America and Japan were at war, they might favor Japan. And in a democratic country, the government had not a single proof that a single Japanese in America supported Japan. Out of one and a half million people, they could not find a single proof that anyone was ready or willing to support Japan. They were ready to support and fight for America, because they considered America their country; but they were taken into isolation in the desert where they were told that they would be taken care of on a reservation, just like the Red Indians. But it was not a reservation. Now facts have become available: it was almost the same kind of concentration camp that Adolf Hitler had created in Germany for Jews.After the Second World War, the people who had been running those concentration camps in Germany were punished. But America was not punished, and they had behaved in the same way with absolutely innocent Japanese who were not in favor of Japan. They were tortured, no medical facilities were given, their food was not up to standard, and they were crushed like sub-human beings.When they were brought back after the war, their properties were not returned, and have not been returned even yet. And this is a democracy! During the whole period of wartime, America was not able to find any proof to support their actions. When they came back, their businesses were in American hands, their cars were in American hands, Americans had taken over everything without giving a single cent in compensation.Now forty years have passed and they are still asking the American government, “Give us some compensation. It is your duty. You forced us, and we had not committed any crime, and you don’t have a single case against us.” And it is not a small thing – one and a half million people and their property – and the American government is silent.That’s why I say that civilization has yet to come; it has not yet happened. There are only pretenders, hypocrites, but not truly democratic people anywhere. America is different from the Soviet Union only in hypocrisy. The Soviet Union is straightforward, a dictatorship. America is a dictatorship proclaiming itself as a democracy, and now we can say it from our own experience.For four years we have been harassed by the American government – the state government, the federal government – without any legal reason on their part to support their acts against us. All their laws are in our favor and their constitution is in our favor, because from the very beginning I have made it clear to my people not to do anything knowingly or unknowingly against the American constitution: that it is the only constitution which at least accepts democracy, accepts freedom of speech, accepts respect for the individual – so don’t do anything.We have not done anything against the constitution, but still we are being harassed in every possible way. They are taking advantage of all kinds of laws which have never been applied to anyone in the whole history of America. Suddenly those laws have become applicable to us – and those laws go against the American constitution. So now my new stand is that we will fight the American government in Oregon and, if needed, then the federal government – to save the American constitution. We are for the American constitution and its values and, even if we have to fight with the Americans themselves, we will fight to the very end. Because that constitution is the only hope for humanity someday to become democratic, someday to become really civilized and human.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 23 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/the-last-testament-vol-1-23/

Nathan WoodThe Rogers Cable System, Portland, Oregon, United StatesOsho,You look very nice in blue. Is that one of your favorite colors?All colors are my favorites – except red!Do you see a lot of red around here?Your type… That is a lot.Osho,Why do these people like you so much? Why are you so appealing?I also wonder.Is it the beard or the money or the prestige?I don’t have any money. I don’t have any prestige. I am notorious all over the world – what prestige can I have? To be with me needs the courage to be with a notorious man… You will lose your prestige if you are with me.Why is that?Because I am notorious. You need not do anything; you just be with me and you will lose your prestige, your respectability, your service. Everything will be gone.They love me because I love them, and they cannot love me more than I love them. If the love of all my sannyasins around the world is put on one side of a scale and my love for them on the other side, I’m going to be weightier.Osho,When, or if, you pass away, or if something happened, who would take over? Would there be someone to take over? What would happen to Rajneeshpuram?Let me start from some point. I have been waiting my whole life for somebody to ask it, but nobody has asked it: nobody asks me what will happen to me when I die. Nobody is worried about that.I will be dying and you will be living here. The whole trouble, and the journey into the unknown, is for me. Nobody seems to be concerned about that; everybody is concerned about those who will be left behind, living. What kind of minds have human beings got? Very egocentric. I am dying, and even at my last breath you will be asking, “What will happen to all these people who will be living?” Nobody will ask, “Osho, forget all about us. We will be living, and you are going on an unknown pilgrimage. What can we do for you?”What kind of a pilgrimage would you be going on when you die?Whatever kind of pilgrimage, when one is dying at least he is out of this world, out of this life, out of all that is known. He is moving into the dark and the unknown and the unfathomable. If you really love the person you will be concerned about him. But the trouble is that everybody is concerned about himself – although you will be living and I will be dying.What could we do then? What could we the living do to help?At least you could ask the question! But for my whole life I have been waiting and nobody has asked it. I am simply pointing out the fact of how egocentric man is. Now your question…My whole teaching is centered on the present moment, this moment. I do not care for any tomorrows. In the first place, tomorrow never comes; whatever comes is always the now. You are never there, you are always here. Existence knows only two words, now and here.I have heard about an atheist who was very much against God. To remind himself and his clients, his children, his wife, his friends, he had written in his sitting room in big bold letters, “God is nowhere.”Then a child is born to the atheist, a small child. He starts growing and learning. Learning the alphabet, he reads the sentence, “God is nowhere.” But nowhere is such a big word for him, so he splits the word in two. He reads, “God is now here.” That mistake transformed the whole mind of his father. For the first time he could see that nowhere consists of now and here.Existence is now and here. I have never bothered about the future. When I leave the body these people will celebrate, as we celebrate everything. And I have no responsibility for them, so the question of anybody succeeding me does not arise. The successor is needed only when I have any responsibility. I have no responsibility. My approach is that everybody is responsible for his own life.In this commune they are not here to dump their responsibility on me; they are here to learn how to stop dumping responsibility on others, how to take the whole responsibility of life on one’s own shoulders. That’s what gives a man dignity, integrity, self. For the first time he feels he is. And the responsibility makes him free of all kinds of slaveries, enslavements.So, I’m not going to say what they have to do when I am gone. That is manipulating people even when you are dead. Moses is still manipulating the Jews. He was not satisfied while alive. While alive he tortured his people for forty years in the Middle East desert in search of some holy land.So would you say that the Bible is accurate in speaking of Moses, or is that a myth?The Bible is just fiction.Osho,You mentioned God just a few minutes ago and I was wondering what your concept of God is. I know you've been asked that so many times, but…My concept is exactly whole, because I can read nowhere; I don’t have to cut words in two. God is nowhere.I was wondering that, because when…No, wait. Don’t wonder, let me finish. Moses tortured the Jews for forty years. Almost seventy-five percent of his followers died in that stupid search for a holy land. And finally, not because they had found the holy land but just to save face, he declared Israel to be the holy land. Now, there is nothing holy in Israel! And Moses gave them commandments to be followed after he is gone. The same was done by Mohammed, by Buddha. They were too concerned about what their people are going to do when they are gone.It is something of tremendous importance that they were so much concerned. The reason is that in their presence they had persuaded the disciples to repress every natural instinct. Sex has to be repressed and they have to be celibate. Under their influence and charismatic personality people had accepted something absolutely unnatural. Only an impotent man can be celibate. And no impotent man has been known to become enlightened – not yet. He has no energy in him. Enlightenment will need a tremendous explosion of energy. He cannot even create a child; how can he create himself in a totally luminous way?So no impotent man has ever become enlightened. And all the people who became enlightened were really over-sexual. In fact, their over-sexuality was one of the causes for their enlightenment. They had so much energy that the woman was not enough. Many women were also not enough. They had such a great energy that they wanted to make love to the whole of existence itself. And that’s what enlightenment is. It is an orgiastic experience with existence itself.Osho,Are you enlightened?Yes.How enlightened? Are you very enlightened?There are no quantities in enlightenment; either you are enlightened or you are not enlightened.Osho,I wanted to ask you a question as far as other religions…No, I have not answered your first question. You had asked me what I think about these people after I am gone. I am not even thinking now, when I am here.I am giving them total freedom. I have not enforced anything on them that will make me afraid, that once I am gone these celibates are going to create trouble! I have not repressed anything. If they want to smoke, I tell them to smoke the best cigar possible – don’t go for anything second rate. If you want to love, find the best man, the best woman, and go into it as totally as possible. I am in support of expression and all the so-called religions were in support of repression. When you repress people you are certainly afraid that when you are gone there is going to be chaos.That problem does not exist for me. When I am gone there is going to be no chaos, because chaos was all that I have been training my people for. My commune is a chaos – and yet a very organic chaos, a very creative chaos, a chaos out of which stars are born. That’s why that kind of question becomes very difficult for me to answer. I am not giving them any discipline, any rules of conduct; I am simply teaching them to be aware, alert, to be independent. Take your responsibility and do whatsoever you want to do. Don’t bother about Moses or Jesus or Buddha, or me.Jesus lived his way; he never bothered about others. If he had bothered about others the Jews would not have crucified him. Buddha never bothered about anybody else. He was continuously condemning the ancient prophets of the Vedas. I have never bothered about anybody. I don’t accept anybody as my master or my leader. I am nobody’s shadow, nobody’s carbon copy, and that’s what I am teaching to my people: don’t be anybody’s carbon copy, including me.So while I am alive, dance with me, rejoice with me. When I am gone, continue to dance and rejoice in remembrance of a man who gave you freedom, who gave you individuality. What else is there to bother about – future? Wherever I am – I must be somewhere – I will go on showering my love on my people, and I know they will find ways to respond. But that is something very private. I cannot reveal it to a non-sannyasin.Osho,You have made a lot of different remarks about religions, and – I believe this is your most recent one; you can correct me, I'm sure you will – that this is the true religion, this is the true church. Correct?Right.You also said that you were building an orchestra out of all these other religions. How do you propose to do that?I have done it already – there is no question of a proposition. You can see my commune: Jews, Mohammedans, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jainas…So you weren't speaking of the whole world, then, you were just speaking of in the commune?I am just speaking of my world. To hell with the whole world!Osho,You made a comment a few years back, I believe, that two-thirds of the world population would die of AIDS. Now, recently, all the things that we've seen in the news: that the figures are just astronomical – do you feel that your prediction is starting to come true?No need, because they are going to die. There is no way to save them.How soon do you think?Within the last twenty years of the twentieth century they are going to die either by nuclear weapons or by AIDS. The nuclear weapons are the culmination of our whole past politics; AIDS is the culmination of our whole religious past.AIDS is the logical conclusion of all sexual perversions – and religions have caused all kinds of perversions in man. Homosexuality is a very religious discipline. Monks were forced to live together in monasteries where no woman was allowed to enter. There is a one-thousand-year-old Catholic monastery in Athos; in these one thousand years not even a six-month-old baby girl has entered the monastery – even that is not allowed. I sometimes wonder, a six-month-old baby girl… What is the fear and what kind of monks are living inside? Are they monks or monsters? And in Athos the rule is that once you enter the monastery only your dead body comes out. You will never come out alive to have any contact with other human beings.There are nunneries where only women can live; no men can enter. Now what do you want? You are creating the situation for homosexuality, lesbianism, masturbation, and all kinds of things. These monks, these nuns, are the original source of AIDS.So your politics have brought you to the Third World War, which is looming on the horizon, and your religions have brought you to AIDS. Your political and religious leaders have done great service to humanity and to this planet!I am certainly concerned about my people. They have been given all the information about AIDS, while governments are trying to repress it – for the simple reason that if they accept that AIDS is spreading, it may create anarchy, chaos, turmoil. Governments are repressing exact information. Rich people can afford private doctors, private physicians, and they can keep their mouths shut with their dollars. There are many people who have AIDS; they are confirmed by the medical profession but the public does not know about them.Just think of the situation. A person who has AIDS can live at the most two years – at the most – which is almost impossible. If he remains secluded, avoids all kinds of infections, does not come in contact with anybody, perhaps he may survive two years. Otherwise, six months is going to be the average. Just think, you are given six months to live: you would not like to be condemned by people that you have AIDS – you bribe the doctor. And you have only six months to live; naturally you will make as many sexual contacts as possible. Life is fleeing out of your hands. You would like to do everything that you always wanted to do but you had time to postpone. Now there is no time to postpone, so these people who are not made known to the public are going around spreading AIDS like wildfire.Osho,So you don't think the federal government is doing enough to control AIDS?Not at all. They are doing nothing. Their senators have AIDS and they have not yet imprisoned those senators. Their senators are homosexuals; they should be immediately arrested. There is no other way – put them into imprisonment.Osho,Would you do that with a sannyasin if he or she had AIDS?There is no need, because my sannyasins are living in a totally different world. I have one million sannyasins around the world and I am trying for them all to come and live in communes, not to live in the outside world. So I am segregating them into different places, into different countries, in communes. We do not condemn anything: every sannyasin goes through the medical test and if he finds that he has AIDS, the whole commune is full of compassion for the person.Are you testing for AIDS, then?Yes, we have our own medical center, all kinds of expertise – doctors, nurses, a hospital. And we have a special place far away in the mountains where we move those people who have AIDS. We take care of them. We give them everything they need – books to read, films to see, games to play. They are respected in the commune, and everybody is responsible that they are no longer to make any sexual contact – not even kissing, because AIDS is caught through kissing.So I’m telling my sannyasins to change their patterns and drop the idea of kissing, which is certainly unhygienic even without AIDS – two persons mixing their saliva, which contains all kinds of germs. And there are idiots who are doing French kissing. I have suggested that my sannyasins change that pattern: start rubbing noses with each other. Hygienic, clean, and if sometimes somebody has a cold, at the most you can catch a cold. And this is not a big problem – nobody considers a cold a disease. If you don’t take medicine it goes in seven days; if you take medicine it goes in one week.And this is not something new, Eskimos have been doing it for their whole history. They don’t kiss, they rub noses – and they enjoy rubbing noses. You can rub as much as you want, there is no problem. I think Eskimos are far more progressive, at least about kissing.There are other aboriginal tribes also, in India, where noses are rubbed and kissing is simply laughed at. In those aboriginal tribes, when Christian missionaries reached to spread Christianity, the aboriginals have not stopped laughing yet about two things. One they call the missionary posture: the man on top of the woman, which looked very ugly to the aboriginals. The woman is fragile, delicate, she should be on top. And this huge animal is putting all his weight on the poor woman and doing push-ups!In India this posture is called the missionary posture, because they came to know about it for the first time through Christian missionaries. Otherwise, eighty-four different postures are known in India, and in those eighty-four different postures the Christian missionary posture is not included.The second thing that they could not believe is that these people kiss. And these people are trying to open hospitals, give medicine – can’t they understand what they are doing, that this is very unhygienic? The aboriginals, who are five thousand years behind civilization, have never agreed with kissing. Even though they have become Christians – they were poor and Christians could provide them with food, clothes, education – they have not started kissing. They still rub noses.So, as far as my sannyasins are concerned, perhaps they will be the only ones who can escape the calamity of AIDS. We don’t condemn anybody; if he has AIDS, so what? – take precautions. And, because he is not humiliated and disrespected for that, on the other hand he becomes the center of the love of the whole commune. Now we have two sannyasins who have confirmed AIDS. We are taking care of them and we have given them the most beautiful part of our land, the most beautiful view.Are they here in this commune?Yes, they are here in this commune. But we have 126 square miles, so they are miles away, beyond the lake, living in a beautiful place and doing whatsoever they can do. They can do proof-reading, they can do editing, or whatever they want. They can simply make a beautiful garden there. And if those two sannyasins want to make love to each other there is no problem. Nothing more can happen to them; what has to happen has happened. Perhaps two persons with AIDS making love may come to discover that this is the only way to get rid of the disease – nobody knows. So we may be able to find out: if they survive more than two years, that means we have found what medical science has failed to find. But we will be taking care of these people. They are victims of the religions – but what can they do?If the politicians and the religious leaders – that means nuclear weapons and AIDS – are in a race to destroy humanity, I don’t think politicians have guts enough to go for a Third World War, because both sides, America and the Soviet Union, have enough nuclear weapons to destroy this planet seven hundred times. I don’t think any politician in America or any politician in Russia has guts enough – and what is the point? The whole point in a war is to be victorious, but in this war nobody is going to be left alive. The question of who is victorious and who is defeated will remain unsettled and there will be no one to write the history, either.Just because of the totality of the war, war is an impossibility. There is no need for pacifists – unnecessary to scream and make a protest march. Just forget all about it. Nuclear weapons have already done it, they have finished the idea of war. Politicians can go on talking about war, because that keeps them in power, but there is going to be no war.Osho,What would happen, in your opinion, if a third-world country got hold of a bomb, detonated it and started another war?Nobody can start it, because everybody knows that starting it is finishing the whole of humanity. And those poor countries who are dying – do you think Ethiopia is going to have nuclear weapons? Do you think India is going to have nuclear weapons? They are trying, but half of their population is on the verge of becoming another Ethiopia. They are selling their wheat. The people who have produced the wheat are dying because they are hungry, and their wheat – their production, their labor – is being exported so that India can manage to have a nuclear plant. Sheer stupidity! But even if they can get it, nobody can conceive of India becoming a nuclear power comparable to the Soviet Union or America.India may not have it now and it may not be a threat, but what about Cuba or Libya – Kaddafi?Nobody: even if they can afford it, even if they can make it, nobody has the guts to start seeing the whole perspective. The whole thing is clear. If you start it, that is not the end; soon you will be retaliated on with nuclear missiles and you will be destroyed. And your starting it will mean the end of the world. So I don’t think there is any possibility of a Third World War. It is simply canceled. It is strange how things happen in history – war goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger, and a point comes when it is too big, and you cannot manage to have it. War itself becomes suicide; that’s what the Third World War is.Once Albert Einstein was asked, “Can you say something to us about the Third World War?”He said, “I have no idea. If you want to know about the Fourth World War, I can say something.”The inquirer was simply at a loss. He could not believe what Einstein was saying, “About the Third World War you cannot say anything? What can you say about the Fourth World War?”And Einstein said, “It will never happen; that much can be said about it. But about the Third World War there is no way to say anything.”So the war is certainly canceled – nuclear war. Any other kinds of war can go on. They are just football games, so I’m not concerned about that.But AIDS is certainly my concern because it is spreading, individual to individual. No government control is possible. Even your president, your prime ministers, may have it. Nobody knows unless everybody is checked. You should begin with President Ronald Reagan – that is the place to start. The White House should be completely checked, because this White House is just like white lies; what is going on inside it is all black. In Oregon, catch hold of Governor Atiyeh and start checking from there. First, all your assembly members, your senators – first do it on the highest level, because these are the people who can keep it to themselves and go on spreading it. And then, by and by, come lower and lower and find those people who are infected; then these people have to be segregated someplace.It is such an urgency that it cannot be delayed. And the whole of humanity has to be made aware of all the facts relating to AIDS, of all the precautions that are possible. And around the world, create the atmosphere that if anybody has AIDS he is simply a victim of centuries of stupid religious ideas. Don’t be hard on him. Help him, so that at least in these last days of his life he can relax. There is no need for him to be employed, no need for him to think of other responsibilities. Free him from all responsibilities. Let him enjoy music, movies, literature. And be compassionate to him.I don’t think your world is going to do it, but my communes are doing it already.Osho,Now, you've made quite an issue in the past that you have had a very openly sexual commune. How does that affect the children, compared to children on the outside? Are they being exposed to sex at an earlier age? Have you noticed any differences?There is no problem at all. Children are told everything about sex, not in any roundabout way of explaining, but direct and exact. And once their curiosity is satisfied they don’t bother about it; they will bother only when they are sexually mature. In the outside society they become interested before their sexual maturity because they see in the movies, they see in the streets, they see in their parents, and they wonder what is going on.A child is very curious to know about everything that he comes across, and you create all kinds of curiosities. He knows his father is reading magazines like Playboy, and he also looks in the magazines when the father is in the bathroom. He knows his mother is flirting with somebody else. Children are very conscious, very alert, silent, but watching everything that is going on around them. Naturally the child becomes curious; something is being kept secret from him. And this curiosity is dangerous. He may try to do something that others are doing – it must be really great because everybody is doing it, every movie, every family, all the children are talking about it, so there must be something really experienceable.But in my commune it is totally different. We tell our children everything. We tell them they are allowed to ask all the questions, that there is nothing to hide, there is no secret. And we tell them that soon they will become mature, soon they will be having sexual experiences, so it is better to be acquainted with all the facts about sexuality as well as all the fictions – which are all untrue but have been told to children down the ages. So we are making them aware of the facts and the fictions.Then, when they are sexually mature, we do not prevent them from having sexual affairs. We simply introduce them to precautions; that is their responsibility. If a girl becomes pregnant she becomes a burden on the boy she loves and she becomes burdened by her own act, so we provide them with all the birth control methods. In every bathroom we have free birth control methods available. They can go to the medical center and get the pill. We help them in every way.We don’t want them to remain celibate, because celibacy is the cause of AIDS. We want them to know many girls, many boys. The richer their experience, the better for choosing a life partner later. If a boy has known hundreds of girls he is more experienced and more capable of finding the right girl with whom he can manage to live. There will be less nagging, less fighting, less jealousy, because the girl has also experienced hundreds of boys before she decided for this boy. The boy had experienced hundreds of girls before he decided for this girl. They both know.And even after marriage, in my commune it is absolutely allowed that if the girl wants to go with someone for a day or two, or the husband wants to go with someone, it should be respected. It is their freedom. Once in a while a little change is always good. And it is not destructive of marriage. On the contrary, it helps people to remain together. Their love becomes more and more a friendship. In the ordinary world, people are together but their love becomes more and more an intimate enmity. Here, their togetherness becomes more and more intimate friendship. And any day they want to change their partners, that is their freedom, their choice. So nobody is crying and weeping and screaming. If you hear anybody screaming, crying, you should know that he is doing Dynamic Meditation; it is not the ordinary screaming that goes on in every household. And we give them one hour every morning to scream as much as they can, so for twenty-three hours there is no need. We are absolutely simple and natural.In the four years we have been here not a single child has been born. People understand their responsibility. We are the only people in the whole world who understand responsibility. Right now the world population is four billion and it is increasing at the rate of one billion per decade. By the end of this century there is not going to be elbow room – on each side you will find somebody standing. What are your governments doing and what are your churches doing? Four sannyasins have died in our commune, but no new child has been born. And we are not going to give birth to children till the world population is one fourth…One fourth of what it is today?What it is today. Unless it comes to one fourth there will be Ethiopias, there will be Indias, there will be small-scale wars. These are just methods of nature to bring a balance. Nuclear war is out of the question; there will be diseases, AIDS and everything, just to cut the population.But my commune is perfectly responsible, happy, rejoicing. It is not that anybody is controlling them; we only inform them, “These are the facts – now you are intelligent enough to draw conclusions.” And certainly my communes are intelligent enough; almost everybody is a graduate. Most of the people have Master’s degrees, a few have Ph.D.’s, a few are D.Litt.’s. And they come from all professions: psychiatrists, professors, doctors, engineers, electronics experts, computer experts. We are absolutely self-sufficient. And that’s what we are doing around the world: we are trying to make every commune self-sufficient.If the outside world dies of AIDS or anything, we can still survive and we can manage humanity’s heritage. The planet need not die with the popes and with the presidents and the prime ministers. It can live, go on living, with dancing and celebrating sannyasins. But we are not serious about anything. This, too, is not a serious affair. We do everything playfully.Osho,I just have one final question: what is a typical day for you?First, I’m an absolutely lazy man. I call myself “the lazy man’s guide to enlightenment.” So I am a non-doer. In the morning I have to be awakened; otherwise I’m not going to wake up. At six o’clock they have to wake me up, and then I take one and a half hours in my bathroom, relaxing in my bath. I love my bathroom the best; it is my temple. They have made really beautiful, gorgeous bathrooms for me. And not only one, because I’m always for two of everything – not less than that – because if something goes wrong in one bathroom, I’m not going to miss my bath. A second bathroom has to be constantly alert and ready.So for one and a half hours I enjoy in my bathroom. I have the best bubble baths. I’m allergic to perfumes, so I can take only herbal bubble baths. If you come to my bathroom you will be surprised to see what a treasure I have got there: the world’s best shampoos, hair conditioners, liquid soaps without perfume – all kinds. Every day it is really difficult for me to choose. It takes me almost five minutes to figure out that this combination will do.After my one and a half hours I take one glass of juice; that is my whole breakfast. And then I go for my morning talk – two and a half hours gossiping with my sannyasins. I don’t have any gospel, I have only gossips, and I laugh with them, enjoy with them. At eleven I’m back. Eleven is time for my lunch, and has been for my whole life. I have never missed my lunch at eleven. At eleven-thirty I go to sleep. That, too, I have never missed. I have always slept from eleven till two for the simple reason that if you sleep in the day for one or two hours, you have two mornings instead of one. And why miss the other?And sleeping is such a beautiful activity that Patanjali, the founder of yoga, has described that the ultimate state of consciousness is very similar to deep sleep. The only difference is that in the ultimate state of consciousness – what he calls samadhi – one is aware; in deep sleep one is not aware. For me now there is no difference: my sleep is my samadhi. I am aware, so I am enjoying my sleep in a double way.Patanjali, Buddha, Mahavira, all those great Indian founders of religion missed something that I am enjoying – they missed the afternoon nap. They could not sleep, because all these so-called great prophets and messiahs were fulfilling the expectations of the mediocre people who were their followers. Now, it doesn’t look right for a Buddha to sleep in the day; it looks lazy, it looks luxurious. And Buddha had not guts enough to say to those followers, “If you cannot accept me as having an afternoon nap, then just get lost. I am not going to change myself just to fulfill your expectations.”Many times, many people have told me that a religious man, particularly in India, should wake up at three o’clock in the morning. That is the traditional Indian spirituality: three o’clock in the morning. I said, “I am ready to lose my enlightenment, my religiousness and everything, but forget completely that I am going to wake up at three o’clock in the morning! That is the best time to sleep.”The most precious time is between three and five; those two hours are the deepest. And now it is a scientific fact – but I have known from my own experience that those two hours are the most important, because you go deeper. And I am fully conscious, so I can see when I go deep. Now science has come to support it; they have found a way. Your temperature falls when you go deeper into sleep. Between three and five, your temperature goes. down; otherwise, twenty-two hours it remains the same, normal. For two hours it suddenly falls.So I enjoy my afternoon sleep. Then at two o’clock I have to be awakened again. I go for a drive – that I have always loved. And my sannyasins have made a beautiful road just for me. Perhaps I am the poorest and the richest man in the world. I don’t possess anything, but everything that anybody can possess, I use. I don’t think even the Queen of England has a private road going into the forest, in the hills, by the side of a lake. It is used only for one hour, and there is no traffic so there is no question of following any stupid laws of being on the right or being on the left. Mostly I follow being in the middle, which is not allowed anywhere else in the world – that’s why I enjoy it.Back at three o’clock, I rest, just sitting in my chair. I have a beautiful haiku from a Japanese poet which says: “Sitting silently, doing nothing, and the grass grows by itself.” That’s all. Haikus are very small statements, but of tremendous meaning. So for one and a half hours I am just sitting silently, doing nothing, and letting the grass grow by itself.And it is growing. My grass is not green, it is red. And it is growing all around the world while I am simply sitting in my room, doing nothing. Even Basho was not aware – he was thinking only of the grass by his side in the Zen garden where he was silently sitting. My grass is growing all over the world, and I am not doing anything for it.But for one and a half hours I enjoy sitting. Then, again for one and a half hours, I am back in my bathroom for my evening shower. Then I have my supper. And from supper I come directly here for the interviews. By nine, nine-fifteen, I will be back. Then my personal secretary has one or two hours – whatsoever she needs – for any advice for the communes around the world, any letters to be answered. Mostly they do them themselves, unless they find something that needs my advice; then they bring it to me. At eleven in the night, all my life I have eaten a certain kind of Indian sweet. I eat and go to bed. Without eating my sweet I cannot sleep.What kind of a sweet is it?It is a Bengali sweet which is not known in the West, but is the best. It is made of milk, but the cream is taken out; you heat the milk and just pour lemon juice into the boiling milk. It separates, and what is left is called rasogulla. It is something that the West has not used. It is the lightest sweet. In Bengal it is given to patients, or to those who are recovering from a long sickness. It is very helpful and tremendously delicious. From eleven to six, I am again knocked out! And if existence wants me again tomorrow, I will be awakened. Otherwise I am gone – gone with the wind!My life is very simple – the same. For thirty-five years it has been the same. I never get bored by it, for the simple reason that I never compare two days. If you go on giving me the same food for a whole year, I will not complain because I don’t compare. Yesterday is gone, finished. I again enjoy the same food with the same freshness, with the same excitement, with the same enlightenment as I have always done.My people go on doing everything for me. You see this beautiful robe – you were impressed by the colors – my people make my robes, my people make my shoes, my people make my watches. Everything that I have on is made by my people. That’s why I say that everything I am wearing is priceless – because it is made of love. If somebody is going to give me a billion dollars for this watch, I am not going to sell it. There is no price which can purchase this watch, because it has been made by my sannyasins with so much love and so much care. And these are not diamonds – and that’s why I love it even more – these are real stones, defeating diamonds.I have always enjoyed whenever a stone defeats a diamond, whenever a genius comes out of the lower classes and defeats all the super-rich. And it has always been so – all the geniuses have come from the lower classes. The super-rich have been absolutely impotent, they have not contributed to civilization in any way. They have not given birth to a single Picasso, a single Dostoevsky, a single Turgenev, Gorky, Marx, Albert Einstein. They are just futile, getting fat.In America there are half a million people suffering from overeating, obesity. And this year exactly half a million people in the third world are going to die of hunger. It is a strange world we have created in which half a million people are dying because they have no food, and another half million are dying because they are eating too much. Their fridges are so full…I have heard a story of a man whose wife was becoming bigger and bigger, fatter and fatter, and was looking ugly. To go with her in society was just shaming. So he brought a beautiful picture of a nude girl, well-proportioned, and put that picture inside the fridge – because his wife was continuously going there – to give an idea of what a woman should be.But the trouble changed its way: the man started going to the fridge to look at the girl! The wife stopped – she hated to see that girl. She would have killed that girl. She stopped going to the fridge and she started getting slimmer. But the husband started going to look at the girl, and while looking at the girl he would get interested in the ice cream and this and that. Soon the situation changed: the wife was slim, and the husband was ashamed to go with her in society!But this is what is happening around the world. A few people are dying because they have too much; a few people are dying because they have nothing. Just a little understanding, and we can create a beautiful humanity and a beautiful world where nobody needs to die, where nobody needs to suffer from AIDS. All that you have to do is to change stupid ideas. Make man a natural human being, and allow his humanity and nature total freedom.

https://oshoworld.com/osho-audio-discourse-english-l/

The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 24 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/the-last-testament-vol-1-24/

Marcel BruynsTROS National TV, NetherlandsOsho,I first of all want to bring you the love of your commune in Holland.As this is film, not video, we have to change the magazine every ten minutes, but since this interview will not be as long as you are accustomed to, maybe we will only have to change it once.That’s up to you. How many questions do you have?It depends on the length of your answers, Osho.No, that’s why I am asking how many questions, because my answers’ length will depend on the number of questions.I would love to ask you not to give too-long answers, so that this can be conversation – and not a lecture like you give every day.Don’t be worried about that.I was impressed when I attended it yesterday.Just ask me…Osho,I wanted to ask you first about your health. How are you doing?Just great.Your disciples are laughing in the background; why do you think they laugh?Just my presence is enough for them to laugh, rejoice, sing, dance. I am here.Osho,How does it feel to be the master of half a million people around the world?Groovy!Osho,You have been silent for three and a half years. What made you decide to speak again?Because the world is in a very great crisis. The politicians have brought the world to the ultimate destruction of this beautiful planet. It has to be stopped.How can you do that?Just by spreading my red people around the earth; creating more and more silence, peace, meditativeness; destroying people’s old programs of being American, Russian, Indian, Dutch, German; destroying their old ideas of being Mohammedan, Christian, Jewish, Hindu – because this whole earth is ours. All the boundary lines of nations should disappear. Only then is there a guarantee there is not going to be a war in the future. I am for one world, one government. If there are nations, then war is inevitable.Osho,Recently you made an attack on the churches and on Mother Teresa, calling her a criminal and blaming her for the poverty and the anguish in the third world. Do you not believe that life is God-given?There is no God.What do all the people in the world believe in, then?Their beliefs are blind. The very word belief means blind. If you know you know; you do not believe. You don’t believe in the sun, in the moon. You don’t believe in the roses, in the trees. You believe in God, you believe in heaven, you believe in hell – those are all fictions.Osho,Are you a god?No.Or a man? You are a man?I am just an ordinary man.But you are enlightened.That is not much of a difference. It is just a difference between closed eyes and open eyes.Osho,You believe in polygamy, but you are afraid of over-population. You believe in free sex, and you are afraid of AIDS. How can you propagate polygamy and free sex without protecting your followers from AIDS?I am protecting them already; there is no question of how. First, I am not in favor of polygamy as against monogamy. I am in favor of dissolving the very institution of marriage. It is the ugliest institution that has happened to man. With marriage dissolved, there is no question of monogamy or polygamy. People are free: if they want to be together they are together, if they don’t want to be together, that is their decision. And children should be taken care of by the commune. Children should not belong to families but to the commune. And I am taking perfect care of my people. In four years not a single child has been born in this commune.Osho,We know that you are living a rather rich life. But do you think that life is worth living for the poor?Those who are poor are themselves responsible for their poverty. They have believed in idiotic religious ideologies which have made them remain poor.And you don't want to help them?They have to suffer whatsoever they have done. And if they have to punish someone they should punish the pope, Mother Teresa, shankaracharya, Ayatollah Khomeini. Hang all of them. These are the people who are against birth control, against the pill, against abortion. These are the people who are increasing the population. The pope increases the population and I am responsible for it? And those poor people listen to the pope, not to me, so what have I to do with them?It doesn't matter to you that you are insulting maybe half the world by saying this?I want the world population to be reduced to one fourth. Only then can this world be comfortable, luxurious; can people live, enjoy, rejoice, create. Life can be a blessing. With this population it is a nightmare, and the responsibility goes to your religious leaders. I am not going to suffer for their crime – me, or my people. We are living in comfort, in luxury.I believe in comfort and luxury. And man has the intelligence to create more comfort than nature is capable of giving, more luxury than nature has ever intended to offer. Man should use the opportunity. These poor people who are dying in Ethiopia, in India, or anywhere, have listened to the wrong people. Now they should take revenge. They should burn the Vatican, they should take over all the churches. I am not responsible for their poverty.For thirty years I have been teaching birth control methods, abortion, and the poor people to whom I have been teaching these things have been throwing stones at me, have been throwing shoes at me, have made attempts on my life. Strange reward! – I am trying to have them understand how to prevent becoming more and more poor, and they want to kill me.I am simply finished with all that nonsense. They should go to their pope, to their Khomeini, to their shankaracharya, and settle their things. I am concerned only with my red people and with nobody else.Osho,Do you really have to be a little bit out of your mind to become a sannyasin? You once said that.Certainly, because there are two ways of being out of the mind. One is falling below it; then you go into an insane asylum. The other is going above it; then you become enlightened. But both are out of mind. Hence there is a certain similarity between the madman and the buddha. A certain similarity.Osho,Aren't you freezing?No.It is cold in here.I love freezing!But you have beautiful clothes on.They are not thicker than yours.Osho,Sure, you are richer than I am.Recently the pope of Rome paid a visit to the Netherlands. Don't you think that you have to come there to see how your five thousand Dutch friends are doing?No, I don’t have any need to go anywhere.You let them come to you?They come here. Always the thirsty have to come to the well.But you once called Holland your most orange country, so I wonder what you are doing in Oregon?In Oregon I am doing something else. In Holland, even without me the country is going to turn red; but in America my presence is needed.Osho,You have made attacks on Ronald Reagan several times. I never heard you talk about the Russian leaders.I simply don’t know anything about the Russian leaders – except that I am against communism.But you do know about Afghanistan, and the Russians being there?Yes, I have heard about it. But I don’t read any books, any newspapers. I have dropped all rubbish. For five years I have been without any contact with the outside world.How do you know what you know then?Just my secretary.She tells you?If she feels some information has to be told to me, she informs.And she didn't inform you about the Russian leaders doing almost the same, but in another angle from the Western leaders?She has never informed me about the Russian leaders. One thing I know is that they are not hypocrites; they are openly dictatorial. They believe in the dictatorship of the proletariat, so whatsoever they do, they do it without hiding themselves behind beautiful words. America talks about democracy, but that is only talk.Osho,What will happen when you leave this planet? Will there be another Osho?I don’t know, and neither do I care. When I was not here, the world was not missing me.But now that you are here, your sannyasins will miss you when you are gone.Only my sannyasins will miss me.So will there be another master?No. Nobody can replace me, nobody can be my successor. I am making it absolutely clear that we are not to create another Christianity, another popedom, another Vatican – no. My sannyasins are related to me. Drink as much as you can from my well, and when my life disappears you are free to live the way you want. There is nobody going to dominate you, order you, discipline you.I am against all discipline, against all commandments. My whole emphasis is on the respect for the individual and his freedom. Even if he wants to go to hell, nobody should interfere. So when I am gone… You see it only from one side: when I die, you have all died to me.Osho,We heard the story of Reverend Jim Jones who ordered his followers to commit suicide. You once said that when you go, many will follow. Do you mean a mass suicide?I am not a Christian. I am not a Reverend Jim Jones.You don't want your disciples to follow you when you are dead?No, never. I want them to live and live abundantly. And when I am gone, I want them to celebrate my death – because we celebrate everything: defeat or victory, life or death. Celebrate, dance, enjoy.Is there a life after death?Yes, there is. But unless you experience it, my answer will be only a belief to you. I know it, but I don’t want anybody to believe in my knowledge. I can help my people to come to the point from where they also can know. And that is one of my basic tenets: unless you know, don’t believe. Doubt to the very end, till you come to know. And when you know, there is no need to believe. I don’t believe in life after death – I know.Do you mind when there are people that do believe?I mind – because their belief will prevent them from knowing. They have moved in a wrong direction.You don't want to take away hope from people, do you?I want to take away all hope from people, every hope, because hope is the opium that all the religions have been supplying to the people.What then should people have, when they may not have hope?This moment is enough. Hope is for those who are unable to live this moment, those who are suffering and are in misery. They need hope; they only think of tomorrow. My people live today – and tomorrow never comes, it always comes as today – they know the secret of how to live today, so they will be knowing the secret anywhere, anytime.Ethiopia needs hope, India needs hope, poor countries need hope, retarded people need hope. Miserable couples need hope that in heaven everything will be perfectly good: your wife will not be nagging you there, your children will not become hippies there, they will not start taking drugs and dropping out of the university there. You need hope. I am giving my people the reality – hope is only a fantasy. The sick man needs hope for health, but why should the healthy man need hope for health? He is already healthy.Osho,Is the message you are bringing only for sannyasins, so only for five hundred thousand of your disciples? Or do you want to bring this message to more people in the world?I don’t want anything. My people are here. I have not searched for them, they have come to me. Those who are in need, they should seek me. If they are not in need – get lost! It is none of my concern.Osho,Now we have to change the magazine. This won't take long.How do you like my tie? This was the only red thing that I could find.That is the only color I hate. I never use red.You must love Sheela.Sheela I love, but not the red color.She is red, and all your disciples are red.That is why I have given red colors to them – because that is the only color I will never use.So none of your cars is red, either?There are a few cars which are red, but I am sitting inside and I don’t see them.You are a very wise man.Of course. The wisest who has walked on this earth.Osho,Very good. Is this climate fine for you? Much better than in India?Much better in every way. The water is clean, pure. In India it is difficult to find water which is not polluted. Just the other day I was informed that in India half the crops are eaten by rats and other animals. And the people, fifty percent of India’s people, are almost starving. Whatsoever they eat, half of it is eaten by bugs in their stomach. So almost three-fourths of their production goes to the animals or to the bugs. All the rivers are polluted. Here, we have the purest water possible, the cleanest air possible. And we have enough land, space – 126 square miles. It is three times larger than New York City.Osho,Are you creating a wonder here in the desert?Certainly, I am creating an oasis. And we have already achieved much; when we came four years ago there was only one house, that was all. Now we have houses for five thousand people, fully equipped with everything modern. All the houses are centrally air-conditioned.The air is dry; that is what has helped me most. Because I suffer from asthma, humidity is a trouble for me. And I suffer from all kinds of allergies, which are not curable. No allergy is curable, you have just to protect yourself against it.So here we have managed everything. My people have done everything so that for four years I have not suffered from any allergy. My back was bad in India, and in India they could not manage to do anything. An expert from England was called – the best expert. He also could not figure it out.I have used all kinds of cars available in the whole world, but strangely just one car, Silver Spur by Rolls Royce, fits to my back.Is this a commercial, Osho?I am absolutely a businessman.But you already have ninety, why would you have more?Three hundred and sixty-five soon.Every day another one?Yes.And you don't want to give them away to the poor people, I understand.No, never!Osho,I know, but can you give the poor people then maybe a bit of understanding, a bit of love?I have given them for thirty years and in return they have given me poison, they have thrown knives at me. I am finished with all that nonsense. These Rolls Royces will go to my sannyasins, not to anybody else.What you are advocating is love. Why don't you give love to people that need it?My people are enough. I have one million sannyasins – what do you want of me? I am loving one million people. Do you want to kill me?You wouldn't mind…Is it not enough? I am loving one million people, and loving as much as nobody else can love.Osho,Are you a better showman than Ronald Reagan?I am certainly better in everything. I believe in the best. And if I start loving all those people, then what is Ayatollah Khomeini going to do? Then Pope the Polack will be out of employment! And what is Mother Teresa the Terrible going to do? I take care of these people also. I leave business for them also. I don’t want them to die without business. I have my business going fast, like a wildfire; their businesses are shrinking. So I leave the whole world to them: serve the poor, because your religion teaches that through service to the poor you will reach paradise.I don’t believe in any paradise. I say: live richly herenow. This is paradise.Osho,You are the guru of the rich, you say, and that means that you will never have very many disciples or followers, because the majority of the world is poor.I don’t want them. I have more than enough.You don't want to convert me, for example?No.Why not?I don’t believe in conversion. To me, conversion is interfering in somebody’s freedom. You can become a sannyasin: I will not convert you, you will have to ask. You will have to beg on your knees to be accepted – and then too perhaps I may not accept.Maybe I won't, hearing about your ideas. Do you respect that?That’s great. I respect everybody, and I respect everybody’s decision, individuality. Even if he is wrong, it is his right to be wrong. But I will never try to convert anybody. In my whole life I have never tried to convert anybody. The people who have come to me have come on their own; if they stay with me, they stay on their own. If they want to go, they receive a good farewell. They can go. It is all freedom: no conversion, no enforcement, no conditioning. So I will not convert you, but if you want to become a sannyasin…You won't like my color in red…I will put you all in red.Osho,One last question: you were talking yesterday about how someone can love Jesus Christ. I think hundreds of millions of Catholics can – and what is wrong with that?How many contemporaries of Jesus loved him?Twelve, at least.Twelve. And how many were present when he was crucified? One, at least, and the eleven had escaped – and these are the great apostles of Jesus. And the one who has remained had denied that he knows Jesus.[the tape is being changed]Take a few grapes.I don't know where to be with the little things.Just take a few grapes. They are…Instead of smoking, Osho.Yes, they are very helpful.I must be a little bit in love with you, because I didn't smoke all day, I didn't drink. I had all my clothes dry-cleaned. And I have cold feet – just to see you and to hear you saying what you want to say!I know you must be in love with me. And you can see in my eyes and see my love for you. That’s why I am saying, take a few grapes.Osho,Thank you very much.So you don't want to take over the world?No, I am going to take over the whole universe.Do you think that there is life on other planets?At least fifty thousand planets have life.And do they come together? Are we visiting them? Are they visiting us?Yes, life moves from one planet to another planet – not bodies, but spirits.Do you believe in UFO's? Unidentified flying objects…No, that’s all nonsense.People from other planets visiting us?No.Invading, maybe? You could be their teacher, a master of the planets…Nobody is interested in invading this madhouse.Osho,What is your sex appeal, having so many gorgeous women around you and in your neighborhood?I love women, and women love me.Are you a celibate?No – why should I be? This is a strange question, because nobody asks, “Do you breathe? Do you eat?”Osho,How do you spend your day since you don't read?With so many gorgeous women, you are asking me, “How do you spend your day”! Read the book Arabian Nights and you will be reading my autobiography.Osho,Why do you speak up now after you have been silent for three and a half years? Is this because the fruit on the tree is ripe?Yes, that is one of the reasons, but even deeper than that. I had gone into silence to let a few people drop out from sannyas. Those were the people who were enchanted with my words, my philosophy, my approach toward the fundamental problems of life. I have been insisting that what I say is not important: the important cannot be said. The truth is inexpressible. You can know it in silence, but you cannot put it into words. So I wanted to get rid of those people who cannot understand my silence. The only way was to be silent. In three years, I sorted out all the wrong kinds of people. In three years, those who remained as happy with me as before, these were my people.After sorting out the wrong kind, now is the time for me to say what I really wanted to say. The right opportunity was not there before; now I have enough people who are ready to listen to me without any prejudice. And I have not to fulfill any of their expectations – they don’t have any expectations about me. So just to sort out the wrong people was one of the most fundamental reasons.Secondly, it is true – in these three years of silence, the people who were living with me have come to a state of maturity, centering, grounding. The fruit is ripe. The flowers have blossomed, and now I would like to spread the fragrance – unaddressed. Whoever wants it can have it. The fruits are here, just by the side, on the table.It is there – but not for a new generation, because you advocate complete birth control.I don’t care – nobody cared about me. All of you are just accidental products. Who cared for you? Do you think your father and mother were thinking about you?Yes.No! You are just accidental.They wanted me.No! Because they never knew who you were. They may have wanted a child – but not you.I have their character, a combination of the two.There were millions of possibilities – not only you. When your father was making love to your mother he released millions of sperms, and one of them – that is you – reached to your mother’s egg. All your millions of brothers could not reach, and died. And their life is of only two hours. If they don’t reach the mother’s egg within two hours they will die. And the problem is that only one can reach; the moment one reaches, the egg closes. It is rare that two male cells reach at the same time so there are twins. Once a cell has reached, all others have to die. In every love affair millions of beings are being killed. And nobody knows who is going to win the race.I don’t think your mother or father knew anything about who was going to win the race. It was fortunate that you won it, but nobody cares.But I am happy to be here, I must tell you, Osho.This was the end of this interview. I want to thank you very much for your wisdom and for all the beautiful things you have said. Maybe this is a message not only for Holland, but for a bigger part of the world.Thank you.Come back again and again. I will be waiting here.Thank you very much. I hope you are not angry with me that this interview might not be the kind you are accustomed to.No, I am never angry about anything. I am always ready to adjust to anything, any situation. There is no problem in it.If you would be so kind to talk via me to your disciples, then the cameraman can make some cutaways in the meantime.Okay. I would like to say to you that you are a potential sannyasin – be careful.Do I have so much love in me?I can see it. I can feel it. And I will be following you… And I will coming in your dreams. I am a little bit dangerous.I am not going to work seven days a week!No – that I can manage. If you want to come here and you want not to work seven days, you can work six days.Then first you must have a golf course here, because I love playing golf.We are going to have it. Whatsoever you love, we will manage to have it. Just come.I can be your green-keeper.Perhaps our golf course is waiting for you to come here. I want my sannyasins to have everything that the world can provide.That is beautiful.And they are having everything they need. Nobody had asked about a golf course yet…But they also are thinking of playing tennis.Yes. They have tennis courts ready, they have grounds ready for football. And soon we will have a golf course. We can have the best golf course in the world.I saw that your grass is greener than anywhere else.It is going to be. It is my grass – real authentic grass – which every government is afraid of.Good.

https://oshoworld.com/osho-audio-discourse-english-l/

The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 25 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/the-last-testament-vol-1-25/

Helmut WerbRock Star, Italy; Music Express, Germany, Netherlands; O’keg, Sweden; Music Man, Austria; Fi, England; Concrete, MexicoOsho,When I came here I didn't know what to expect, and I'm so taken, the last two days. I was really looking forward to finally talking to you – especially after discourse this morning. I greatly enjoyed it.I'm working for twelve different magazines. I asked each magazine to submit one question, and roughly one-third are my own questions. I have about thirty questions, so if we can time it around that. Some are very simple, some will be controversial, and I am told…I will make the simple ones also controversial.I appreciate that very much!Several newspapers in New York reported that the number of Rajneeshees worldwide is declining, and that you're running out of resources. After several years of silence you have started talking again and giving interviews. Is this part of a membership drive, or is it just your wish to communicate?In the first place, sannyasins are increasing all over the world; there is no question of their decrease. Secondly, I don’t believe in converting anybody. I believe that the very effort to convert somebody is trespassing his freedom, his being. I can say what I want to say, but there is no effort to convert anybody to sannyas. In my whole life I have never converted a single person to sannyas. Although there are one million sannyasins around the world, they have all come to me of their own accord. And I am against all kinds of missionary work, conversion, making people Christians or Hindus or Mohammedans. Every individual has the right to be himself.I can say to the person – not as an authority that, “I am the only begotten son of God, so you have to believe me, and unless you believe me you are lost. If you believe me you are saved.” These strategies are simply cunning, political, playing on man’s fear and greed; exploiting man, taking advantage of his innocence, ignorance.I am against the whole company of messiahs, prophets, founders of religions. A single man has declared war against all the religions of the world. For thirty-five years continuously I have been fighting with every argument that they have proposed, and they have not been able to support any of their dogmas, and they have not been able to answer any of my questions.So the people who have come to me have come out of their own freedom, intelligence. They could understand me, what I am saying, and they could see the fallacy that I was showing them. But unless somebody comes to me, asks for sannyas… I am in no way going to interfere into his fundamental right of being himself. Right or wrong, that does not matter – who am I to decide what is right for him, what is wrong for him? I can say how I have found my bliss, my joy; that’s all. If your heart starts feeling me, if your heart starts beating with me, and a desire arises in you for adventure, for new spaces, new ecstasies, I am available – not as a leader but only as a friend.This is the first time that one million people have gathered around a man who claims no miracles, who claims no authority, who claims no speciality – who only claims that he is a friend. And if you enjoy my friendship you are welcome. The moment you feel that our paths now separate, I give you my heartfelt blessings, the same way as I had given to you when you had come to me. Nobody is prevented from going; nobody is pushed, manipulated to come.I have started speaking for my own reasons. I do everything according to my own reasons. I never bother about the world around me, and I don’t care at all. For three years I was silent because I wanted a few people who were wrongly hanging around me because they were intellectually convinced – and that is not really to be with me – so I wanted to get rid of those people. But I am not rude to anybody. I have never said to anybody to come, I have never said to anybody to go. But I have my own devices. Three and a half years of silence was enough for them; they could not stand it. They were interested in words, they were interested in my theories, they were interested in my arguments – their approach was intellectual. They dropped out.The moment I saw that the wrong people had dropped, I started speaking again. Now I am speaking to those people who do not expect me even to speak. In three and a half years of silence they were with me with the same joy. If I was going to remain silent forever, they were going to be with me with the same joy. Now it is a question deeper than intellect, it is closer to a love affair. You don’t think about it – suddenly you know you are in love. Suddenly your whole being starts feeling a dance, suddenly you start whistling, you want to sing. If something like this happens to anybody around me, then only is he with me, my fellow traveler.So I have sorted out the people politely, given them the opportunity to leave of their own accord – so I need not tell them to go away because they are with me for wrong reasons.Logic is a game. If two persons discuss something and one person wins the discussion, that does not mean that what he is saying is the truth. All that it means is that he has more logical, argumentative, caliber than the other one. The other one may have the truth – the defeated one may have the truth but is not articulate enough. So truth cannot be decided by logic, argumentation; its decision is something deeper. It is of the heart in the beginning, and in the end it is of the being itself.So now I am speaking to my own people, and now I can open my whole heart to them without even bothering to argue for what I am saying – without giving any evidence, any proofs. They know me, that unless it is something that is going to help them I am not going to say it. It is not a question of right and wrong; it is a question of helping them on the path.So now I have my people around the world. They are increasing every day, because I am the only alternative in the whole world against all the religions and against all the politicians. Against all nations and against all races, I am the only alternative. I stand for the simple human being – I don’t want him to be German, I don’t want him to be African, I don’t want him to be American or Russian, I don’t want him to be Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, Mohammedan. All these are meaningless.History is full of all this nonsense, and because of this, man has stopped growing thousands of years ago. I want man to be completely clean of the past, so he can become totally available to the present and to the future.The number of sannyasins will be increasing every day, faster and faster, for two reasons. The politicians are creating the situation – I am not converting anybody – the politicians are creating the situation in which, if they succeed, this whole beautiful life on the earth will be destroyed. And the politicians can disappear only if nations disappear; war can disappear only if nations disappear.My people belong to no nation. They claim the right of the whole earth.The religious leaders, on the other hand, have led people to a very dangerous disease: AIDS. Politicians have come to nuclear weapons – that is their logical end – and religious leaders have come to AIDS.AIDS is a by-product of the monasteries, nunneries and the preachers who have been telling people to remain celibate. If you put people…Men confined in one place, women confined in another place, you are preparing the ground for homosexuality. Nobody can be celibate, it is against nature. It is against your physiology, against your biology, against your chemistry. So just taking a vow of celibacy is not going to change the whole program of your biochemistry. Then your biology will find some roundabout way – that’s what perversion is.And that homosexuality has ultimately culminated in this disease, AIDS, which is going to take over the whole world like wildfire. My communes will be the only refuge, because only in my communes I am trying to destroy all kinds of perversions and bring people back to nature, to their natural being; respecting their bodies, loving their bodies, and trying to understand that sex is natural only with the opposite pole. Only a man and a woman can create authentic orgasm. All other ways of orgasm are just phony, and in the name of orgasm nothing is achieved, cannot be achieved.I am the alternative against nuclear weapons because I am creating meditative people, silent people, peaceful people who do not want to destroy this earth. And against AIDS I am creating communes all over the world, like oases where people will be back in the garden of Eden from where that idiot God pushed them out.Osho,In one of the interviews, you mentioned that you want to take over the world.I am taking it over; I am already on the way. But my ways of taking over the world are not those of Adolf Hitler or Alexander the Great. Those idiots have failed so badly that no intelligent person can try to take over the world in their way. I have my own way.My way is to create more and more loving, peaceful, silent people around the world. That’s my empire. But in my empire everybody is an emperor, nobody is a slave.I am taking over the world. There is no other way for humanity to survive. Soon the people who are hostile to me will be begging that they should be allowed in the commune, because in the outside society, if it is found they have AIDS, they are going to be condemned the way lepers were condemned in the past. Lepers were not allowed to live in the cities; they had to live outside. They could not move in the daylight; they had to move in the night. They could not take water from the well of the town; they had a separate well outside the city. And leprosy is not such a dangerous thing.There has never been anything more dangerous than AIDS. So the politicians and the religious leaders are pushing anybody who has a little intelligence to become a sannyasin. I don’t need to go for conversion – they are pushing people toward me.So it will be in the end the only way to survive?This is the only way – not in the end, but right now, in the beginning. Because in the end…That's the end!…it is all finished.Osho,You call Jesus a mental case and a crackpot.Yes.And the pope to you is the Polack Pope and an idiot, and their religion is stupid.Right.I agree with you. You identify yourself, however, as a religious leader…No.No? What are you, then?Just a simple human being, just like you – with the little difference that your eyes are closed and my eyes are open. But you can open your eyes any moment and the difference disappears. Or, I may close my eyes… Just that much difference, nothing much.First I will try for you to open your eyes: but if I feel that everybody wants to sleep, then why should I bother? I should go to sleep myself! I don’t take anything seriously.Leaders are serious people, taking the responsibility of the flock. And that’s why I call them names, because I cannot find worse condemnations for these people. Jesus I call a crackpot, a mental case, a man with a wish to die. And his whole life is the life of a schizophrenic. The behavior is enough proof: he curses a fig tree – can you think a man sane if he curses a fig tree because there are no figs on it? And it was not the season for figs! The poor fig tree, what can she do? But he was angry because he had come from a village where people had refused to give food to him and his twelve fools that he used to call apostles. And they were all hungry and tired, and then they came to the fig tree, and there were no fruits.And this man talks about, “Love your enemy.” Even, “Love your neighbor,” – which is more difficult than loving your enemy! I can love the enemy very easily, because there is so much distance between the enemy and me, but to love the neighbor is just like loving your wife.This man is talking about love, this man is talking about compassion, kindness, and he is not compassionate to the poor fig tree. And somebody cursing a tree – what do you think of him? If I call him a crackpot nothing is wrong in it; he was absolutely insane.He interfered with people’s ways of life. For example, in the temple of Jerusalem, where moneychangers have been doing that kind of business for centuries, since the time of Moses when the temple was built… And in fact those moneychangers were of tremendous help to the land and to the people, because with all the donations that came to the temple those moneychangers were giving loans to poor people on a very nominal interest. And Jesus goes and throws over their tables and pushes them out of the temple with a whip, and he says, “This is my father’s house and I will not allow anybody to pollute it with money.”Now, this man has no proof that he is the son of God. There are many mad people around the world who think they are the son of God, they are prophets, they are messiahs – and they are all in mental asylums. They also don’t have any proof. What proof does Jesus have? Any certificate from God, any message stamped by God, signed by God? What proof does he have – just a poor carpenter’s son? That too is not certain, whether his father was his father.But you are Osho, you are the enlightened one. Are you perfect?No. The “enlightened one” simply means one who has come to know himself, that’s all. The prophet dominates; he predicts; he gives you doctrines, theologies. You have to believe in him. He himself cannot prove anything about hell or heaven or God; all are fictions. But if all are fictions, his being a prophet flops – because then without those fictions, how can he be the prophet? If there is no God, then how can Jesus claim, “I am the only begotten son of God”?So these prophets are trying to keep all the fictions, all the lies, because amongst those lies they can declare themselves to be prophets. And the people who can believe in a God no one has ever seen, the people who can believe in hell and heaven – no one has come back to give us a little detail about these places – are gullible. Any cunning person who is a little articulate can declare himself a prophet and these people will believe him, because believing is all that they know. And if he is the type like Jesus – so angry that he throws single-handedly all the moneychangers out of the temple and declares, “It is my father’s house and I am going to clean it of all impurities” – naturally the gullible will see and believe in him.I am not a prophet, because I don’t have any consolation for anybody, and I don’t have any hope for anybody. I don’t sell opium to people. And that is the basic function of a prophet – he is a dope dealer.The messiahs are trying to save the whole of humanity. They have not been able to save themselves. Now Jesus must have been a fanatical idiot. Even on the cross, he still believes that he is going to be saved by God. But when he sees that time is passing, blood is oozing, he is thirsty, he shouts at the sky. The sky is empty, no answer comes. Never has any answer come from the sky. Millions of people have been praying; no prayer has been answered.Jesus shouts, almost angry, frustrated, “Have you forsaken me?” He is talking to God – he was still believing that God would come sitting on a white cloud, with angels playing on their harps, singing alleluia. Nobody came, nothing happened. People simply laughed at the stupidity of the man. Even on the cross, he had not come back to sanity.And the whole of Christianity is based upon his crucifixion. That’s why the cross has become its symbol. I call it “crossianity,” I don’t call it Christianity. It has nothing to do with Christ. Its whole thing is the cross, and the cross is a symbol of death.So I don’t say that Reverend Jim Jones did anything which goes against Jesus. He simply followed him to the very logical end. Jesus was saying to people, “Soon I will go and prepare the ground for you, and soon you will all be coming, and you will be with me and with God the father in paradise.” Reverend Jones, of course, was an American and believed in speed, and he knew that two thousand years have passed and the “soon” is not finished yet! It seems a different time scale exists in paradise. So he did not want to take any chance; he took all his followers with him. Why bother coming back and then take them?Reverend Jones is just part of the whole Christian attitude. It is strange that Christians started condemning that man.Osho,I would like to come back to Jonestown a bit later if you will allow me.In connection with what you said about a “cleaning process,” I would like to ask a follow-up question. A lot of ex-sannyasins left you disappointed – maybe in that process when you decided not to talk anymore – and some felt that you exploit your followers to sustain an extravagant lifestyle. Your former Italian cook, Deeksha, called you a liar in The Oregonian; your former bodyguard, Shivamurti, said you are dishonest. How do you feel about these people personally? What would you say to them?I love them still, the same as I have always loved them. And what they are saying is not wrong. I have never said that I never lie. If a lie is helpful, I am the first person to immediately lie. Truth is not a value to me – helping those people who have come to me, in every possible way… And they are all asleep: they cannot understand the language of the one who is awake.So every enlightened person has lied and, of course, they did not have the guts to say so. I don’t have any problem in accepting the truth that I lie. The whole question is: what helps to wake you up? For example, if you are not waking up, I can lie and shout in your ears that your house is on fire. It is not on fire, but what to do? Hearing that your house is on fire, you jump out of bed and you wake up – and then I can say I am sorry that I had to lie, but there was no other way to wake you up!How far would you go to wake somebody up?To the very end. I don’t believe in half-hearted things. Anything I can do will be total. So if Deeksha says that I lie, she is perfectly right. There is nothing wrong in it. She is not condemning me, she is simply propagating me.She told The Oregonian reporters that now she has to hide from your followers.That is up to her. You have to ask her what she said and why she said it. How can I answer for her? I can answer for myself. About anything she has said about me I am ready to answer. But about anything else that she says, she is answerable, I am not.If Shiva says that I am dishonest, he is right. To me, everything can be used as a device to wake people who are fast asleep, unconscious. To me it is just a game. If honesty helps, good; if it does not help, dishonesty will do.And I love those people. They have left, the reason must be in themselves. If they say they left disappointed, that means they have some appointment with me? Certainly, unconsciously, they must be hoping that some expectations will be fulfilled by me. And I don’t fulfill anybody’s expectations.Those who can remain with me without any expectations, only they are capable of understanding me, and capable of understanding the work that I am doing. If they feel disappointed, that simply means these people had come with a certain idea, hope, desire – and I fulfill nobody’s desire. I teach desirelessness. I don’t fulfill anybody’s hope.You must have seen, the Christians have put a board outside my commune, “Those who enter here, drop all your hopes forever.” That’s perfectly true. They are doing my work!Do they know that?They don’t know – this is the difficulty. That’s why I call these people idiots!So anybody who leaves me, leaves on his own responsibility. Anybody who joins with me, joins on his own responsibility. So if you see these people, tell them that as I don’t take anybody’s responsibility and I don’t promise you any hope, then the whole frustration is your own making. I am not a party to it. I have never claimed that I am an honest person. I have never claimed that I always speak the truth. Even under oath, you cannot manipulate me to say anything that I don’t want to say. I will say only the thing that I want to say.So all these allegations – they think they are allegations, I don’t think so. By saying such things against me, they are simply showing that for the ten or eleven years they were with me, they could not understand a single word of mine. They are simply saying that they are retarded; their minds are not more than thirteen years of age. Their physical age may be anywhere, but their minds are stuck at thirteen. If they don’t believe me they should go to a psychoanalyst and let themselves be examined, to see what their mental age is.Only people who have tremendous intelligence can stay with me. I am not Jesus. With Jesus, all those twelve uneducated, illiterate, fishermen, farmers, woodcutters, carpenters – those were his disciples. Not a single learned rabbi was convinced. That is very strange, because he was a Jew. He was fulfilling the long waiting of the Jews for the messiah. In fact, they should have rejoiced: “Our days of waiting are over and he has come!”But not a single educated person was converted by Jesus. He could manage only with fishermen and woodcutters – uneducated, illiterate people. It was a kind of bribery and exploitation, because he promised them: “If you believe in me, I am going to take you to paradise.” Naturally, those fishermen, woodcutters, had never thought that they would ever be able to make it. Rabbis, great scholars, saints, prophets – they will enter into paradise: “And this guy is saying that if we just believe in him, we will be the first to enter! So what is the problem? We are not losing anything. He simply says, ‘Believe in me,’ – so we will believe.”But no intelligent person can do that. With my people, you will find just the opposite. My commune must be the only place in the whole world with so much education. Almost everybody is a graduate from some university: most of them have master’s degrees, a few have PhD degrees, a few are D.Litts. They come from all professions – they are not fishermen and farmers.The people who have left me – for example, Deeksha: she is illiterate. She would have fitted with Jesus perfectly well, but not with me. She could not understand me. She was a good cook – but being a good cook you don’t become enlightened. Shiva – what intelligence has he got? If it took him ten years sitting by my side – he was always sitting by my side – if it took him ten years to discover that I am a dishonest man, then do you think I have to answer anything?Osho,You made your point! Let me go to the next question, if I may.Go anywhere!The Immigration Service of the United States is trying desperately to deport you. What would happen to you and to Rajneeshpuram if you had to go?I never think of tomorrow. I am here right now, and we are enjoying! And for four years they have been trying desperately to deport me. If in four years they could not find a single reason to deport me, I don’t think in forty years they are going to find it. Four years are enough against a single individual. And a whole department is continuously working – their people are going around the world to find something so that I can be deported. They will find that this is the most difficult case that has come to them.I am going to fight up to the Supreme Court.But you have said during the press conference several weeks ago that you would go to Australia.That was just to visit.For how long?And if I love it there, then there will be the same problem in Australia. Wherever I am, the problem is going to be the same. So I don’t care whether the INS in America is trying to deport me, or the INS in Australia is trying to deport me – what difference does it make to me?But it would make a difference to Rajneeshpuram, wouldn't it?Nobody can destroy Rajneeshpuram. If they succeed… In the first place, they cannot succeed, because I have applied [for permanent residence] on five grounds. They have only six grounds. I can do the sixth, too – they have six grounds for application. On five grounds, I am capable. They cannot deny me on any grounds. The sixth is marriage – I can do that, too, with as many women as they want!That answers my question perfectly.So it is just out of the question. They cannot deport me. They will simply go crazy, and crack, and retire – and I am going to be here!And if – just for argument’s sake – if I decide to go, they cannot deport me. But if I decide to go, they cannot stop me, either. Let them know it. They are absolutely impotent, either way. If I decide to go, they cannot prevent me. And if I go, that does not mean that the commune will be in any way harmed or wounded.I have prepared my people, so that without me they can exist as beautifully as they are existing with me, because I have not taken any responsibility. You should see the point: I have not taken any responsibility. I am not responsible for anything in the commune; I am just a guest. I am not even a member of the commune. I am not a sannyasin. I don’t have any responsibility, that they will miss me.I don’t do anything. In fact, they have to do everything for me. If I am gone, they should really rejoice! My being here is a constant trouble for them. Once I am gone from here, nobody is going to bother them.And I have my communes all around the world: without me they are running exactly the same way. So there is no problem at all. The INS or the American government, or any government, cannot create any problem for me. I can create a thousand and one problems for them.The moment I decide to create problems, they will be at a loss to find how to tackle me. Up to now, I have not created any problem.What problems would you create, for example?I can create any problem. For example, I can go to the Supreme Court, that the whole American government is functioning against the American constitution. I stand for the American constitution, and the whole American government is against it. And I have grounds to fight: how they are exploiting and deceiving people.The state government of Oregon is doing the same. They accepted this city, incorporated it; everything was done according to the constitution. For two years, the city was legal. We were getting the support of the state, the federal government supported the city – and after two years, suddenly the city became illegal. Then who is responsible? All those people who made this city legal should be immediately arrested and imprisoned! The governor is part of it, the attorney-general is part of it – what were these idiots doing for two years? They were giving state support, money, everything, to the city. What was the federal government doing? They were giving money to the city.And idiots can go about everything in such a berserk way. I don’t think they have given much…[to Sheela] How many dollars have you received from the federal government?Sheela: About thirty-two thousand dollars last year.From?Sheela: The federal government – I think it’s about that much.Thirty-two thousand dollars?Sheela: Something like that, yes.That is nothing. I cannot even purchase one-third of a Rolls Royce.And these idiots are now asking for the money back! In the first place, they did wrong: they gave that money to a city which was not legal. They are responsible for it. In the second place, they have the guts to ask for the money back. From whom? The city does not exist! You gave money to a nonexistent city – so go and ask the Holy Ghost if he knows anything about it!Osho,The next question is something I simply relay to you, because I have no information…Do anything – there is no problem.The Prince of Hanover was one of your favorite sannyasins. He was very ill, and there is a rumor that you asked them to cut the oxygen to shorten his suffering. How do you feel about helping people to die in individual cases?That rumor is absolutely wrong. Do you think if the rumor had any evidence, that the royal family of Germany would have remained silent? And the father of the prince, the mother of the prince, were present at the funeral in India. The brother of the prince was there, the wife of the prince was there, the daughter of the prince was there.If the rumor had any validity, then the Prince of Hanover… His sannyas name was Vimalkirti. He was related to almost all the royalties of Europe. The Prince of Wales is his cousin-brother. His mother is the Princess of Greece: first she married the Prince of Denmark, and then she divorced him and married Vimalkirti’s father. His mother’s sister is a queen – perhaps in Spain or somewhere. All these royalties, against a poor man like me? Could they not do anything if the rumor had any evidence for it? Just their being silent is enough proof that all this is nonsense. So as far as Vimalkirti’s death is concerned, the rumor is simply a rumor.So please don’t get confused with my idea, my approach, about the death of an individual. My way of life accepts that every individual has the birthright to get out of life if he wants. Death is not something that should be in the control of government, law; it is an individual freedom.If I don’t want to live in this body anymore, nobody can prevent me. And in fact, even though all the governments and all the legal systems are against it, suicide goes on happening every day. And it is such an amusing phenomenon that if a person is caught red-handed committing suicide, then he is sentenced to death – because he was trying to commit suicide! What kind if lawmakers do we have? He was trying to commit suicide, now you are making arrangements for his death. He should have come to you in the first place, “I am going to commit suicide: please kill me. Why should I unnecessarily take the risk of falling from a tree, getting broken legs; hanging myself from the ceiling, feeling suffocated but not dying; jumping into a river, but because I know swimming, getting out of it? Why should I, or anybody, have all these difficulties?”So as far as philosophical opinion is concerned, I am for the individual’s total freedom – death included. And it is the duty of the community to provide him with beautiful facilities for death. Why should one wait for old age and the troubles of old age, the degradation of old age, the rejection of the young people, the old person feeling constantly an unnecessary thing in the house, a burden to everybody? He is not capable of doing anything for them, and they have to do everything for him. All his companions are dead, his friends are dead. He goes to the same park where he used to go and sit with his friends; now he sits alone on the bench, nobody comes near him. Mostly he is sick in the bed.If that person wants… It is simply ludicrous just to wait for death to come. And this death is going to be terrible, because he will be old, sick, and he will die, by and by, inch by inch – and we now have every scientific way to send him joyously into deep sleep forever.If you and your society cannot give a man a beautiful life, at least you can arrange a beautiful death for him. If he wants it, it is his birthright. And anyway, anyone who wants to go out of life will find a way, so why unnecessarily create a legal system against it? He will find a way. The people who fail in committing suicide are really people who are hesitant – fifty-fifty. In fact, they have a split mind. One part says it is good to get out of life, another part shrinks back and feels afraid. This inner conflict is the cause of their failure. Otherwise, I don’t see that there is any way to prevent a man from dying. There are so many million possibilities all around.So you cannot prevent him, and you think the penalty has to be an electric chair? Why could you not provide that beautiful electric chair before? The man would have said goodbye to his friends, enjoyed the best meal that he always wanted, but because of sickness and old age and diabetes he was not allowed. He can have beautiful ice cream; now there is no problem. He is going to the electric chair; he can have champagne. One day of absolute freedom, because there is no tomorrow anymore. So he need not worry about his blood sugar going high, his blood pressure going high, or getting drunk and doing something stupid. Who cares now? At least for one day give him total freedom and let him die. Help him.Your medical hospitals, all the hospitals in the world, should have a beautiful place for those who want to die. He can be taught, even on the last day, how to be silent, how to relax – so when he is given the injection which will take him deeper and deeper into sleep he won’t fight it. Otherwise, he will be in suffering. This can be explained simply. He can practice beforehand, do a little rehearsal. And I am ready to provide one of my sannyasins to every hospital to teach meditation. And his room for death should be a temple, beautiful, with flowers and everything. He should go from this earth like a king – just resting, relaxing, and going forever into deep sleep.When we can manage it, I don’t think we should prevent it. And anyway, it is going to help the world-population problem immensely. Because one thousand people are dying every day in Ethiopia. When one dies of hunger, it is a real torture; when one dies of thirst, it is a torture of days together. Why should they not be given an injection, which is simple, so they can relax and die – and be born in America! Because they all want… All over the world, the poor people think America is paradise on earth. So if they die with the idea of being born in America, great; let them die with the idea, and let them be born here.I am perfectly in favor of freedom, and death is only one part of my whole idea of freedom.Osho,The next question is something completely different. How do you spend your day?Have I to spend it?How do you spend it?No: I am asking you, have I to spend it? I live it! Spending is not a right word. Life is not money, you don’t spend it; otherwise, one day you may go bankrupt. No – I live it. And I live it intensely.Each moment of my life is a blessing. Whatever I am doing, I do to the very climax. I don’t believe in Gautam Buddha and his middle path. Gautam Buddha was teaching the middle path; I teach the extreme. If you are enjoying, what will the middle path be? Fifty-fifty: fifty percent enjoying, fifty percent in despair.When I am taking my bath, I enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed my enlightenment – not in any way different. And one and a half hours in the morning, one and a half hours in the evening: three hours I am in the bathroom. And it is tremendously meditative, silent, beautiful, just to lie down in the hot water and play with bubbles. I don’t play anything else.Osho,How important is sex for you?Not at all. Just fun.Osho,Something I realized, that while I have been here I haven't seen any babies. I've seen children, but not small children. Is there a reason behind it?There is a reason, because these are intelligent people and they know what my approach is. I want the world’s population to be cut to one-fourth of what it is now. Only then can there be comfortable, joyous living for people. So my teaching is: don’t bring babies unnecessarily into this mad world. What are you going to give them in inheritance? The Third World War, nuclear weapons, AIDS? Don’t bring any babies into this world, it is already overpopulated. And when you can enjoy sex without giving birth to children, why unnecessarily get caught?So in four years, not a single child has been born here. That’s why you don’t see small babies, and perhaps you never will. People ask me, “Then how are you going to increase the number of sannyasins?” Because they know only one way of increasing. That’s why the pope is against abortion, against birth control.In Nigeria – just the other day I got the information – there is a club, highly prestigious, and only ladies who have given birth to ten or more children can become members. This is Nigeria. Soon it will be Ethiopia. All the governments around the world go on helping world population to grow by subtle methods. For example, if you have four children you will have less income tax to pay than when you have no children. This is strange. The person who has no children should be allowed complete freedom from income tax, and the person who has four children should pay four times more. Because he is burdening the earth, bringing unnecessary people who are not in any way going to live a life with joy. They will be hungry, they will be poor, they will be beggars, they will be sick.I have my own way. In the first place, I have no desire to play the game called politics of numbers. But without giving birth to a single child, I can manage to have one million sannyasins with me. The secret is clear: we get hold of readymade people! Others do the whole dirty job, and finally we catch hold of their young people. Wherever young people are, they belong to us: sooner or later we are going to get hold of them. But we are not going to produce children. That is unnecessary.Osho,Next question. You say that Rajneeshism is the only religion which can really free the people. Indian officials said two years ago – according to several newspapers here – that your organization does not resemble a religion. Does this hurt you personally, or do you feel any remorse about this?No, there is no problem. In fact, that is what I am saying – that my people don’t resemble any people who have ever lived on the earth. They don’t resemble any old religion, nor do we want to be categorized with those insane theologies. It is a totally new phenomenon.Osho,You said once that your religion, your beliefs, will die with you. Will you not ask anybody – if you feel that your time has come or you wish to depart from this earth, or die – will you not ask anybody to continue for you? Perhaps Sheela, perhaps another person, Laxmi perhaps, or an organization for you?Nobody. It is up to them whatever they want to do when I am gone. Do you see the politics in the whole idea of successors? That even when I am gone, I will control the commune through Sheela, because I have trained Sheela, I can trust her, and she will remain in control. Then she prepares somebody else – and in a subtle way, though I am dead, I am controlling the living people. No, I cannot be so inhuman.While I am here, rejoice with me. When I am gone, you are intelligent enough: whatever you want to do, do. I am not going to declare anybody as my successor, and I am not going to say to my people what they have to do when I am gone.Just look at it from the other side. People only see one side, they always ask me, “When you are gone…” But you don’t ask me… When I am gone, you are gone as far as I am concerned; the world is dead. The moment I am dead, for me the whole world is dead. Now, who bothers about a dead world? Death is not one-sided, that only I am dying. I am disappearing to you, you are disappearing to me. It is equal – equal death on both sides.And I have no desire to control. I don’t control even while I am living. But these people… For example: John the Baptist baptizes Jesus, initiates him as his successor. This is a subtle strategy. Then Jesus appoints these twelve apostles as his messengers. And out of all that, by and by, the popes come in, and for two thousand years these people have been torturing humanity. The whole responsibility goes on Jesus, or even on John the Baptist.There is no need. I was not in the world one day, and the world has been here for millennia. Nobody asks me, “Osho, what have you done for the world when you were not here?” Nobody asks that question. It is as relevant as the other question. One is about the past, when I was not here; one is about the future, when I will not be here. But both are absolutely meaningless. I am here, that is the only place; and I am now, that is the only time. And I don’t care. I am not going to write a will that somebody should be my successor. There is no need; I give freedom, I don’t give bondage like the Catholic church.In Spain, just a few days ago, the government legalized abortion – had to legalize it, because the population is destroying the whole economy of the country. Reluctantly they legalized abortion, and now the church is fighting against it. And Spain is a fanatical country; they are protesting and they are saying that anybody who goes for abortion will be expelled from the Catholic religion.These people can’t see. Who are you to dominate the whole world and its troubles and miseries and sufferings? On the one hand you go on saying, “We are here for your salvation” and whatever you do is just to create more misery for people. I do not belong to this mafia gang of popes, shankaracharyas, Ayatollah Khomeinis. I do not belong to these people.My approach is very simple: while I am here I will sing my song, I will have my dance. And when I am gone, I am gone.Osho,In an interview with an American newspaper, your former ranch manager Bob Harvey said that he restored several mines on your request on the grounds of the ranch. What is in these mines?That is absolutely wrong, because in those three and a half years while this man Bob Harvey was here, I was silent. I spoke only to Sheela. I never instructed him; that’s absolutely wrong, I was not speaking.It is true that there is a possibility of mines on the land – it is 126 square miles of land, and it lies in the range which runs directly from Canada and through this property. There is every possibility that it may have oil, it may have gold, it may have silver, it may have copper. But we are not going to open those mines, for the simple reason that we love our people so much that we don’t want any hazard in their lives. If you start working on a gold mine, you have to use chemicals which finally pollute all your water – poisonous. In fact, one ranch just next to us also has gold mines. They were going to open them, and we had to go to the court because their water runs into our ranch. We will not allow our water to be polluted, and we have stopped them.So there is no question of our people digging up all the metals or oil or whatsoever is available in the land. Legally the earth is ours to a depth of ten feet, and unless we allow anybody to penetrate those ten feet, nobody – not even the American government – can dig the gold underneath. And we know how to be rich, how to be wealthy. Who cares about the gold? Let it lie there.This man is absolutely lying that I had instructed him. I had never talked with him. He had no business with me; he was a servant. He used to take care of this land before we came here. The past owners had put him as a servant here, and we accepted him for the time being, so that we could become acquainted with the whole territory. But that man cheated the commune. He was getting one thousand dollars per month from his owners. Our sannyasins are innocent people: he started going to the accountant every week to get one thousand dollars. Just a misunderstanding; the accountant thought perhaps his salary is one thousand per week. Now, four thousand dollars per month for a servant! Even a poor man like me cannot afford it!And what qualifications did he have for four thousand dollars? Even a vice-chancellor of a university does not get that much. The chief justice of the Supreme Court in Oregon does not get that much. He had no qualification, nothing – just an ordinary servant. I had never given him any instructions. And because we are not interested at all in the mines, I don’t think anybody else has given him instructions to find out, because we are not interested at all. So many people have approached us, saying that that they know there are mines here, and they are researchers and they would like to research. We have refused them point blank. We don’t want any research on our ground, because basically we don’t want to create mines here.Osho,Swami Prem Leeladhar was introduced in the Osho Times as a plastic surgeon who specializes in sex changes. Do you perform sex changes on the ranch here?If somebody wants, it is part of their freedom. If somebody wants to change his sex, I don’t think there is anything immoral in it. You have lived as a man; you know what being a man is, and naturally every man is curious about women. In fact, it is said that nobody has yet been able to find the mystery of the woman. This is a perfectly good way – change your sex and be a woman, and find the mystery! There is no mystery.But if you can live both sides of the coin in one lifetime, why not? I don’t see any problem in it. The sex change is such a simple thing. The difference between men and women is so small, almost negligible. It is just as if you pull your pocket out and it becomes man; you put the pocket back and it becomes woman. And Leeladhar is really a great plastic surgeon, one of the best. I only believe in the best. So if anybody wants…Osho,There are consistent rumors that there is a huge arms cache in Rajneeshpuram. I've never seen such a peaceful place– people hugging each other on the street, smiling at each other, waving at each other. Why would you need so many weapons?There are not so many weapons. We have a police force which is part of Oregon state. And for the police force – all the weapons and everything – Oregon state is responsible, not we. We have a commune security force because I have been attacked many times. Attempts on my life have been made; the last time in India, when a knife was thrown at me.There were ten thousand sannyasins present. It was in a morning meeting, and because the police had some information, twenty police officers had reached the place a few minutes before the man threw the knife. So twenty police officers were eyewitnesses, ten thousand sannyasins were eyewitnesses, and yet the court freed that man without any punishment – because the politicians wanted him to be freed, because the religious leaders wanted him to be freed.There is so much hostility in Oregon. But to me it is not a problem – in fact, I create it! But my people are concerned about me, and if somebody comes to assassinate me I will not hinder him. That is his freedom, I will not interfere with it. Although he is interfering with my life, even at the risk of my life I will not interfere with his freedom. But my people – why should I interfere with their freedom to protect me? So those few guards are here.And what a strange thing that in a world which has gone nuclear, just those toy guns… Do you think we are going to attack America or the Soviet Union?No, I don't think that!But the Osho Times said that you kept six hundred Vietnam vets from…That’s absolutely wrong.Sheela: The Share-a-Home program.That is a different thing. For three months we had a Share-a-Home program. Every year after our annual festival we have two or three million dollars surplus. We don’t need them, so we manage somehow to spend them. This year also we are going to create another program.A Share-a-Home program again?No, we never repeat anything. It is going to be far more dangerous. The Share-a-Home program did its work well. The whole of America was shaken, and we enjoyed. We were not interested in their election, we never voted in their election. Those Share-a-Home people were street people. Perhaps those six hundred Vietnam veterans may have come in those Share-a-Home people, otherwise we don’t have any in the commune. And if even someone is, we don’t know, because we don’t bother about what you have been doing, where you have been, who you are. Anybody who wants to be here, our hearts are open.But we are going to do… Because surplus money is again there. Soon, next month, we are preparing for something that will shake the whole of America again – perhaps this time the whole world!I have heard rumors that in the next few weeks…Yes, it is going to happen!Can you tell me a bit more?No.I was wishing you would.Just wait a few days. For a few days I want to keep the whole world in suspense, but when the curtain opens, it will be worth waiting for.Not even a slight…Not even my people know it!Osho,You once declared death as the biggest orgasm of all times. And now we come back to what I wanted to ask about Jonestown: do you want to lead your disciples into this super orgasm, or do you fear another Jonestown among them?No. This is the only place where Jonestown cannot happen. It can happen in the Vatican, it can happen in any Christian context. You should be aware of a few things. Both the world wars happened in a Christian context. Christianity has for centuries killed millions of people, burned people alive. It is a death-oriented religion, in the service of death. Poor Reverend Jones was simply doing the best he could.This is the only place in the world where Jonestown cannot happen, because there is nobody who is a “reverend” here. As far as my idea about death is concerned: if a man can go meditatively into death then death is the greatest orgasm you can feel, because death is the separation of body and soul. It is just like when the physicist breaks the atom, there is such a great explosion. Just a single atom, which is not visible to the eyes, can destroy Hiroshima, Nagasaki.When man’s body and his soul separate, if the man is alert and aware in that moment, he will see a tremendous explosion of joy, light, eternity, truth – whatever you want to call it. But most people die unconsciously. Before death they become unconscious, so they never come to know it.My people are learning meditation. There is no need for them to be especially prepared for death. I am preparing them for life, and in that very preparation they are getting ready for death. Sometime they will have to die.If I might interrupt you… If I understand you correctly, if separation between body and soul is such a tremendous experience, wouldn't it be desirable to achieve that?No. Because before that, you have to learn how to be alert and meditative; otherwise you won’t get anything, no orgasmic experience, because the experiencer will be in a coma. The whole of life is a preparation for death, and you should be able to be so conscious in life that when you are making love there are not only two persons, but four – two persons making love, and two consciousnesses watching, witnessing. Or if you are walking on the road, you have to walk with watchfulness, alertness, so that you can see your own body walking.Your whole life, you have to prepare: only then in death you may be able to retain consciousness. So it is not just separating the body and soul; otherwise everybody who is given the electric chair will enjoy an orgasm. Then Jesus being crucified would have enjoyed an orgasm. Then all those Jews – six million – whom Hitler put into gas chambers, he did really great religious work: he gave six million people orgasmic spiritual experiences, and still these Jews are against him!No, just death won’t do. Between death and you, there must be full consciousness. Then only, can it become an orgasmic experience. Your whole life, you need to prepare, and then death is the climax of life. Then it is not the end of life, but the climax of life. The whole perspective changes.Osho,There's something I don't understand when I read through some of your quotes. You said that everybody who will die in a twenty-four-mile radius of Rajneeshpuram will be automatically enlightened.That is true.Why is that?Not everybody, there you are wrong. Only a sannyasin – not Oregonians. Only a sannyasin, dying within a twenty-five-mile radius, will become enlightened. This is not something new, it has been known in the East for thousands of years. Gautam Buddha said exactly the same thing. He said that within twelve cosas radius any bhikkhu – who is his sannyasin – dying, will become enlightened.I was puzzled myself, that how… What is the mechanism? Twelve cosas are approximately twenty-five miles. But when I saw a few sannyasins dying around me and becoming enlightened… Their death was not a death. I could see it. When Vimalkirti died, we celebrated his death as it is celebrated for an enlightened man. On his face you could have seen the joy, the marks of that orgasmic experience through which he had gone. He was still radiant. The body was still somehow carrying the stamp of the experience. And now, many sannyasins have died in these fifteen years.Then slowly, slowly, I became aware of why it happens. I am continuously in contact with my people. They love me so immensely that it is not a question of believing in me – it is a simple unconditional love. So whenever a sannyasin is dying, these twenty-five miles are something like an existential law – like the law of gravitation or the law of water evaporating at a hundred degrees. Nobody asks why. And the scientist has no answer; he can say only that that’s how it is. Never at ninety-nine degrees, never at a hundred and one degrees: at exactly a hundred degrees the water evaporates. But why has the water chosen a hundred degrees? It is simply a law.Buddha has recorded these twenty-five miles, Mahavira has recorded these twenty-five miles – another founder of a great religion, Jainism, and a contemporary of Buddha. I have experienced it, and now I can feel that the energy of a commune… If it is a single enlightened person, then the radius will be only five miles at the most. But if it is a commune of thousands of sannyasins, the radius becomes twenty-five miles. Why? Nothing can be said about it. That’s how it happens.And I don’t know… If the commune becomes bigger and still bigger, perhaps the radius will become bigger. I hope one day you will see here one hundred thousand sannyasins, and then I want to see how big the radius can be. Can we cover the whole of America? Our effort will be to cover the whole world. We have communes all over the world which will soon have the same effect. They need just one enlightened person amongst them, and then all the other sannyasins will be radiating, reflecting the energy field further and further away.And when a sannyasin dies in this loving energy field, it is easier for him to be awake than otherwise. It is just as if you are sitting amongst a few people who are yawning and dozing: soon you will find yourself yawning and dozing. And you will be surprised – why are you doing it? Those people are creating a certain vibe. If you sit with people who are bored to death, soon you will feel a certain boredom entering you. You may sometimes have experienced being with someone and you feel as if you are nourished, and with someone else you feel as if you have been sucked. These are very simple experiences: everybody knows that with a certain person you gain energy, with a certain person you lose energy. People avoid these people because they are parasites.The enlightened person alone has an energy field of five miles; but if he has a commune around him then there is at least a twenty-five-mile radius, ready to wake any sannyasin dying within it. Why it works, there is no way to say. It is just the same as other scientific laws – it is also a scientific law.Osho,Your secretary, Sheela, has made tremendous waves here and in Australia recently on television and in press interviews. In those waves you've got some really bad press. Did Sheela act under your instructions or do you feel sometimes that she's gone too far?No, she never goes as far as I want. She gets hit every time she comes back home, “This is not enough.”You say that I, my people, my commune, got bad press. I want more of it – because I know certain laws: if we can create bad news, immediately existence balances it with good news. In existence, nothing can remain unbalanced. Soon the balance settles. Now, to create good news is very difficult, almost impossible. But to create bad news is very easy, very simple. And I know that the simplest should be followed: create bad news, and let existence balance it with good news. And you will see the truth of what I am saying. It has already started.But then it would be easy: all you have to do is you have to sit down, have a press conference, and tell everybody there are human sacrifices on the ranch, there are whatever horror stories you can cook up!We will do it! We will do.I would like to have an exclusive on that!We will do everything. But we always wait for the right time to do it. There is a saying that no news is good news. It is not complete: it has waited for me to complete it. It says: no news is good news. Its other part is: good news is no news.Bad news is the only news there is. Create as much bad news as possible – don’t be worried.Then do you create the bad news to wake up your disciples, or do you create the bad news…?I create the bad news to wake up my disciples, and also to wake up those who are not my disciples, but will have to become my disciples sooner or later – the sooner the better.Sheela is doing good, but she can do better.I would like to be present!But let me just go on with this point a bit…The last question.Osho,You have been quoted as saying, “When this is all over, I will buy myself a dark suit, go to the bar, and buy a cigar.” Will you go and buy yourself a dark suit?Someday.Soon?Soon. Just like Jesus said, “Soon.”

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 26 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Steve DavisKGO TV, San Francisco, California, United StatesOsho,I was here once before for several days, less than a year ago.May I urge you please, wherever possible, to recall that television is a remorseless medium as far as cutting things short is concerned. So when a thought can be done in a brief manner, it's I think to all of our benefit. And if it can't, it can't. I have several questions that I have written down in advance and haven't the foggiest notion if we will ever get to any of them except the first one. It may well be that the tangent will be more interesting than any I have laid out in advance. But I have those and I may check them from time to time.Start.What would you have a reporter learn here?One thing and only one thing: that this is the alternative to your world. Your world is on the verge of death. The politicians have brought nuclear weapons to create the funeral of the whole of humanity. And the religious leaders, insisting on celibacy, have brought humanity to the ultimate disease – AIDS. The politicians and the priests both are bent upon destroying the world.We are creating a totally new kind of man, with new values. And these communes are around the world now – one million sannyasins – and we provide the alternative to your mad world.Is that the thrust of the work here?Yes.How is that to be accomplished?First, the sannyasin’s only requirement is to be a meditator. And meditation means going into yourself, to the deepest core of your being, where absolute silence, serenity, peace, bliss are experienced. And once a person experiences those values, then all ambitions about becoming a president of a country, or the prime minister, or becoming famous, a celebrity – all ambitions disappear. And if we can create millions of people who have no ambitions, that is the only way to prevent war. War is the culmination of ambition.And the peaceful man, the silent man, who has touched his own source of being, is no longer Christian, no longer Hindu, no longer Mohammedan, no longer Buddhist, no longer American, no longer Russian, no longer German, no longer Italian. He is simply a human being, and the whole earth is his home. If we can destroy those ugly lines on the map which divide humanity and if we can destroy all those ugly religions which have divided humanity, there is no reason for war: one thing.Second: if we can create such serenity and joy in people’s lives, all their perversions – homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, group sexuality – which have all culminated finally into AIDS, will disappear, because we are creating a man who is so contented that he needs no one to fulfill him. Alone, he is enough.Osho,I suspect that many of those whose religions you feel the way you do about, would probably agree with those tenets and those goals – or at least would voice an agreement with it.They would not. There is no question of suspicion; I am certain they will not listen. They will fight back. They will be hostile toward me – they are. But that makes no difference. I am not a serious man. If the world is going to go, we will do whatever we can do, but our work is playfulness. We are not saviors and we are not here to save anybody – that is just “by the way.” Otherwise, we are celebrants, not saviors. We enjoy, we are enjoying – and who cares for tomorrow? Today is so tremendously beautiful.Osho,Be patient with me please. I see nothing but contradiction here and I'm sure that somewhere it ties together. We began – or at least I thought I heard you begin – by saying that the world is on the verge of self-destruction, essentially.Yes.And that there is an answer, a way, and that sannyasins around the world can bring that about. But now you tell me, however, “Forget it!” But I think there's purpose here. There's nothing in this place that speaks of accident. Everything speaks of purpose and intention.That’s the beauty of being playful and yet not becoming accidental; being nonserious, laughing, enjoying, dancing, and yet doing everything that is needed. There is no contradiction. That’s why I say we are creating a new man in which this contradiction melts, becomes complementary.We are certain that those idiots are not going to hear. Still we will make our best effort, playfully, knowing that it is a hopeless task. We will enjoy the challenge. There is no contradiction in it.Osho,Much that I observe, that I imagine you consider playful, is received otherwise. And the conflict with many around you – which I suspect you relish – is received otherwise. Where is the message in there for the outside world?No message for anybody.Well, if it's a playful attempt, I mean…Not even an attempt. That’s what I am saying; our language is different, our way is different. We are not making any attempt, any effort; we are simply enjoying the game.The world is on the brink of death. We are celebrating our life. If we can make those people also understand, along the way, that there is an answer, and life can be saved on the planet, good. If they don’t hear, if they are hostile, that is their problem. We are not concerned, we are living already and we don’t bother about the future.Our whole concern is the present – herenow.This present you enjoy in this place came through planning for the future, through which you arrived at this day, did it not? That's what I mean by everywhere I see planning, intention, concern with creating what it is that you see to create.That is your way of seeing. For example, I am here. Answering you, do you think I am serious?No, I doubt it.But I will answer you, and anybody may be clear that there is a purpose in the answer, that I am answering out of concern. No, I am simply responding playfully – just a game. You put the question, and I respond with the answer. I don’t care whether the answer receives any response anywhere or not. That is not my business. My business is finished with the answer I have given. And I enjoyed answering it; my basic purpose is to enjoy. I love talking.Is this the best game you've…?The best, because it needs the most intelligent people to play it.I'm sure…It is not football, it is headball.I'm sorry…?It is not football – idiots can do that. It is headball.Osho,You are credited with being a brilliant student in your early years, that you read everything on the subject you studied, and that you had a great grasp of it. What did you study? Was it another game? What was it that you used for preparation?I have never done any preparation for anything, ever.So that was the ending of the moment too, you mean?Yes. I have loved reading from my very childhood. My own personal library consisted of one hundred and fifty thousand rare books of all the religions, philosophies, poetry, literature. And I have read all of them – but with no purpose; I enjoyed it. And the moment I felt that enough is enough – I have enjoyed the best geniuses of the world, and now there is no longer… I dropped it. For five years I have not read a single book, not a single magazine, not a newspaper – no reading at all.The students may have felt that I was prepared. In fact, I would like you to go a little further back with me. When I was a student, my professors felt that I was more prepared than them – and I was. But I was not prepared. They had stopped thirty years before, when they left the university and became professors, and I had read everything that had happened in those thirty years. They were thirty years behind me. I was expelled from many colleges for the simple reason that many of the professors could not stand me. Understanding is out of the question; they could not even stand me.Finally I was admitted to a college with the condition that I would never attend a class. But I asked the principal, “How am I going to enter into the examination? The class is no problem, that is great freedom, good, but how am I going to enter the examination?”The principle said, “That is my problem. I will give you enough attendance to enter the examination. But it is a promise between you and me that you will not come into the college at all.”And for two years, I never entered that college. And I got into the examination, and I got the gold medal, I topped the whole university. The principal was amazed, he said, “This is simply miraculous.”I said, “It is nothing. I have never read your textbooks, I have never listened to your lecturers, but I have such a love for reading everything, and to go to the very depths, to the very roots of everything.”In my reading, there was no purpose, just joy. I relished it. For nine years I was a lecturer in the university after that. That too was a great joy. I relished it. But the students were in trouble, the university was in trouble, because I would teach Aristotle and I would also say that he is absolutely wrong. So first I would finish the course, and then I would destroy the whole thing that I had been teaching them. And they were in great confusion, “Then what is right?”I said, “Now it is up to you. It is up to your intelligence to find out. I have presented Aristotle with absolute sincerity, but I cannot say that he is right. So I have to criticize him with the same sincerity. Now both sides are presented to you; you can choose, or you can remain confused.”I was reported to the vice-chancellor many times, and I told the vice-chancellor, “Any day you want… I am always carrying a resignation. But I will work only the way I want to work, because it is not a serious matter to me. Your service, your university, your textbooks, your examinations, that is nothing to me. To me, teaching is a joy. I am a born teacher.”Osho,You've written that you would trick a follower or a student. I think you don't refer to the sannyasins as followers, although their feet seem to be following you.That is their problem.But you said you would trick a student to teach a lesson, and that you – to paraphrase as best I can – hope they would forgive you that. Is that, for lack of a better word, a technique that's useful to you?I have simply been enjoying everything that I have been doing. And you can enjoy a thing only if you are not serious about it. If you become serious about it, enjoyment disappears; it becomes work, hard work.I have never worked, I’m a lazy man. I call myself, “A lazy man’s guide to enlightenment.” I don’t do anything.So the answer then is that trickery would be work?Just enjoyment. Everything that I have done, or am doing, to me is a joy. What it is to others, that is for them to decide. I have not passed a single moment of my life without enjoying it.Osho,The business of the Rolls Royces obviously raises a lot of silly questions. But I guess that's fair, because it seems to me the whole thing is a little silly.It is not. It is not yet the whole thing.Well then, my question was about to be that it's always seemed to me there must be something else behind that…?There is nothing else.Just to prick the hide of those of us on the outside and get their attention?No. Because I am loved by my sannyasins, whether I have ninety Rolls Royces or not will not make any difference to their love and their trust. And I don’t possess those Rolls Royces; they are possessed by sannyasins. They intend to bring 365 Rolls Royces. So tell those people that the silliness is still not absolute, it will be absolute soon! As far as I am concerned, I possess nothing. Everything that I have belongs to the commune. You will be happy to know that from the shoes to my cap, everything is made by my sannyasins themselves – even my wristwatch.I've heard.They love me and they want to do something for me – love always wants to do something – and I don’t hinder them. Why I should hinder them? Those who hate me, they go on doing their things and I cannot hinder them. I have been poisoned, I have been put in a dangerous situation in every way: stones have been thrown at me, shoes have been thrown at me, knives have been thrown at me, attempts on my life have been made. I have not prevented anybody. And why I should prevent my people who love me if they bring Rolls Royces, diamond watches?It is simply a balance between the hostility and love, and in existence it always balances. I am just a witness, an outsider.A fortunate one, I would say.Certainly, the blessed one – that is the meaning of Bhagwan. The word itself means “the blessed one.” And I am, and far more blessed than any other – Jesus or Moses or Buddha – because nobody had such a worldwide family of friends and lovers and fellow travelers, none of them.Osho,Why do you so pointedly avoid the title of leader?Because it is ugly, it is exploiting. It is putting somebody down.Suggesting that they are followers?Yes, suggesting that I know and you don’t, so you follow me.It is a fair assumption though.That is their problem. You can ask them, you cannot ask me. As far as I am concerned, I am nobody’s leader. I have taken nobody’s responsibility on myself.But if a thing looks like an elephant, why not call it one?I cannot, because to me I have to insist for my truth. If they are insistent on not listening to it, I am more insistent – and will make them listen to it. It is a competition between lovers, nothing to be worried about.Osho,Speaking of competition, it seems to me that the quest to influence the human mind may well be the central issue of the next decade. If you agree or disagree, how do you see that kind of competition for beliefs?My approach is totally different. I want to destroy all belief systems – Catholic or communist, it does not matter.What about the belief system that doesn't believe in belief systems?It is not a belief system. It cannot be a belief system; it simply deprograms people, but does not program them. It leaves them clean, tabula rasa, no writing on them, just the way they were born, innocent. My function here is to deprogram the Jew, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, whoever comes here. I have to destroy his belief system. I am not trying to influence him in favor of another belief system. I have none.It is said that nature detests a vacuum, that something will fill the human mind.No, that is not true, because for thirty-two years I have been absolutely nothing. So it may be objectively true, as far as science is concerned, that nature abhors a vacuum, but as far as the spiritual, interior world is concerned, it is just the opposite. The deeper you go, the more you find yourself empty. Ultimately you find yourself just a zero, and that is the point of enlightenment. Your ego has disappeared, your greed has disappeared far away. You have disappeared. There is only light, life, infinite, eternal. You are not there as a person but just as a pure consciousness, and it is nothingness. Buddha has actually given it the name nothingness – nirvana. Nirvana means nothingness.In the Western world, no religion has reached that point: the three Western religions – Christianity, the Judaic tradition and Mohammedanism – which were born outside of India. The other three religions, which were born in India – Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism – all three have reached the point where you enter into an inner zero. That is their ultimate goal: to be nothing. And it is never filled by anything.You won't be surprised to learn that I don't understand any of that.You will not – and I am not surprised, because how can you understand something that you have never experienced? For example, if you have never tasted sugar, whatever I do, there is no way to explain the taste of it to you. I will have to ask my sannyasins to hold you and force a spoonful of sugar into your mouth. That’s the only way; it looks a little hard, but what can be done? Unless you taste it you will not understand it. So if you really want to understand what I am saying about inner nothingness, come here, be here for a few days. Meditate with my people, who have experienced it. Just being close to them, some kind of synchronicity happens.If there are a dozen people who are deep in meditation, simply sit in the middle of those people and try whatsoever they say; just sit down and watch your thoughts and do nothing. But those twelve people are radiating something toward you, and your effort together will give you the taste. If I have given the taste to thousands of people, you cannot be exceptional – nobody is. Everybody has the same spiritual potential.I think that's… I agree with you. There are…Okay, you can change [the audiotape] and you remember your questions; otherwise your questions will remain unanswered. Don’t get involved with me, you just remember your questions.What do you mean, don't listen to you?You just remember that you have brought questions. I have not brought any answer, so whatsoever you ask I will answer. It is going to be immediate, but to me it makes no difference what you ask.I'm aware of that.But it is my concern to remind you.Well, that's very generous of you. I do appreciate that!Thank you.Osho,I knew that I was to be a catalyst here, a fulcrum, and I hoped that it would be a pleasant one.If I can't know those things, if I can't know sugar without having tasted it, I think it probably follows – at least it does in my mind – that I can't not have experienced those things that I have. Some of what I've experienced in studying – and not just because of what I do for a living – has shown me that there are patterns and similarities between what is taught here and how, and what's taught in other organizations and how: specifically in the manner, which involves rhetoric and psychology as well as other things. The similarity is clear to me, and perhaps that's why people ask you, “Is this place another Jonestown? Is this place another whatever?” But they are clear similarities, and there must have been somewhere some shared knowledge.There are bound to be some similarities, because we are not the only human beings. Outside also, there are human beings, so there are bound to be some similarities. I have two eyes, you have two eyes, but that does not mean that our basic attitude is the same. For example, you mentioned Reverend Jim Jones-town…Excuse me, please go ahead, but I don't mean to suggest that your intentions are the same. I'm observing that a lot of the techniques are.No, neither are our intentions the same, nor is there any possibility of such a thing happening here. Reverend Jim Jones and his Jonestown can happen only in a Christian context.He was a Marxist.Marxism is a Christian product.For the sake of definitions that most of us out there would understand, he forsook religion, as he defined it. I remember a sermon he preached one day where he threw the Bible on the floor and stomped up and down on it and said, “That's all bullshit” – and went on to tell his followers that if they followed him to Guyana, eventually they could go to the Soviet Union, and that religion was to be forsaken.Perhaps philosophically you could connect the two, Marxism and Christianity, but on the level that most people deal with and will understand, they aren't related.They are related.But isn't it misleading to refer to a man who defines himself as a Marxist as being a Christian?Certainly – because he still remains the Reverend Jim Jones. “Reverend” is a Christian title, not a Marxist title. You don’t refer to Reverend Joseph Stalin! And as far as Marxism is concerned, it is simply a reaction to Christianity. Remember that Jesus and Marx were both Jews; never forget that. And both were trying to change the Jewish tradition – Jesus in his own way, Marx in his own way. Because Jesus had failed on certain points – the only begotten son of God, the existence of God, heaven and hell – Marx simply denied: there is no God, there is no question of any only begotten son of God, there is no heaven and hell. In fact, there is no consciousness in man, it is only a by-product of material things.It was really Jesus in a new edition, in which all those points have been deleted which brought Jesus to crucifixion – only those points were deleted. Otherwise, just as Jesus is concerned with the poor and says, “Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of God,” Marx is not different. He says, “Proletariat of the world unite, because you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.” The only difference is that Jesus was talking about a fictitious kingdom far away in the heavens, and Marx was a more pragmatic and practical man. He was saying, “We can create that paradise here – all that is needed is to destroy classes, make a classless society.” But both were in favor of the poor, both were against the rich.Jesus says that a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot pass through the gates of his God. Now this man seems to be the first communist! What do you expect of a communist? Even Marx has not made such a strong statement against the rich. In fact he was living on the money provided by a rich man, Friedrich Engels; his whole life he never earned anything. Friedrich Engels was an industrialist, a rich man, and he supplied all Marx’s needs, his whole life. He could not say that Engels cannot enter into the kingdom of God; without Engels, Marx himself would not find a way into the kingdom of God!Jesus raises the poor to the highest level. He praises them, and that’s what Marx was doing in a more scientific way. Jesus was too young – he was crucified when he was thirty-three – uneducated, knowing nothing. He was just a carpenter’s son. Maybe he knew something about wood, but about God he knew nothing.Karl Marx was just another Jew – against the Jewish tradition, the richness of the Jews, their immense intelligence for creating wealth. Marx was poor, just as Jesus was poor. And you must remember that Marx’s father was a reverend, so he was brought up in the context of Christianity. His father was converted; he was a Christian, and he was teaching Christianity to his children too. The whole of communism is just a reaction against the Jewish wealth, their capacity to create wealth.This man Reverend Jim Jones is doing exactly what Jesus was doing. He was saying to people, “Just follow me, believe in me, and you will enter into my kingdom of God.” The only condition was, “Believe in me!” And that was the condition of Reverend Jones: “Believe in me, and I will lead you to the kingdom of God.” His kingdom of God may have been the Soviet Union – that does not matter – but he was the leader and you were the led; he knew what and where they are going. You need not bother about it, need not even question it.Secondly, Jesus said to his disciples, “I will come back. First I will prepare the ground for you in the kingdom of God and then I will come back to take you.” Reverend Jim Jones was far more intelligent than Jesus: why go and prepare? Why not take the whole lot with you?As an act of revolutionary suicide?This is the only place where Jonestown cannot happen. It can happen anywhere within a Christian context. It cannot happen in India, you cannot conceive of it. You cannot conceive of it in the Hindu concept.Of what – suicide? Though not all of what happened there was suicide.Jonestown. You cannot conceive of Jonestown under Hindu or Buddhist or Jaina or Taoist traditions – impossible, for the simple reason that Krishna, who is the God of the Hindus, is a lover of life. He has sixteen thousand wives. Do you think such a man will…?Commit suicide? Yes, frankly!No! Suicide is committed by people who have only one wife.Suicide is controlled by the wife!Having sixteen thousand wives, one is already living in paradise! What more can you want?Well, frankly, I used the Jonestown thing just as an example of the issue of the similarities to which I would like to return.There are no similarities.I don't seek to draw a conclusion of a similar end, I don't seek to draw a similarity in purpose. It began with my attempt to state what I've seen, and what I've seen is a remarkable similarity in technique.Just tell me what.In the technique of attracting, working with people.What technique?Um… The techniques of meditation – not precisely the same, and I understand those too…Reverend Jim Jones…No, no, no, no. no. No, I don't mean that……or even Jesus, has never heard what meditation is. They knew only prayer, and prayer is not meditation.No, I didn't seek to compare it with that, haven't from the beginning of this conversation found…You are finding difficulty now to show the similarities. Meditation you mentioned, which cannot exist in Jonestown.The control of information.No, there is no control.There is no control of information?No control.Is information not monolithic in its nature?There is no control about anything. People are absolutely free to be here or not to be here.Osho,Oh, I know people can leave – it's not that kindergarten comparison that I hear made all the time that I seek to make. From what I have seen, I can see that those are not the similarities.I know that a number of people from the human potential movement came to see you in India, if I'm not misinformed. Some stayed. Compared to the population at large, there's a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists around. Simple logic suggests that those folks are trained in techniques of “opening the mind” – you may refer to it as “training,” as you did indirectly a little while ago, when you suggested that I stay in the company of some of the sannyasins, to teach me how that's done.Yes.Well, the difficulty I'm having in drawing comparisons probably has something to do with the setting, but I don't seek a trick here and I don't seek a false comparison, so…No, I understand. I understand your intention. Just see one thing: in Jonestown, the majority of the following was black people; in this place the majority of the following is white people. In Jonestown the people were all illiterate, uneducated…Except for a few.Except for a few. Here everybody is educated; most of them are graduates of universities, most of them have master’s degrees, a few have Ph.D.’s, a few are D.Litt’s. Not even a few are uneducated.Sheela: We need to change tapes.You change, but I am going to stay to my point.Okay?The uneducated, the illiterate, the poor, the blacks – these are the people who are very gullible, these are the people who are victims of all kinds of systems of belief.A street black would tell you that that's nonsense, that he's hard to con, so what would your response be?They were just here for three months, to share homes with us. They were not going to be part of the commune, and we were not interested in transforming them. Just, whenever we have surplus money… And our people are so productive all around the world that whenever we have some surplus money we would like to share it with different groups. That was just our first experiment, to share it with the street people and to give them the same dignity as any other human being needs: give them the same love, the same equality, the same clothes, the same food, the same air-conditioned housing – a taste of what they are missing on the streets.Never again are we going to invite them, because we have other, far more dangerous projects. In the next month we are going to have another project which is going to shake the whole of America.I take it from the fact that you didn't volunteer to tell me what it is, there's no point in asking?There is no point in asking, because I would like to keep people in curiosity, suspense.Osho,A sannyasin once told me during the period of your silence that you would begin to speak again when an economic need arose.That’s wrong. We have never faced any economic need, otherwise my Rolls Royces would not go on growing. One has come just now, one is coming within the next week, and one, I am informed, my people are specially making: an old model of Rolls Royce, a Phantom.Excuse me. Pardon me, Osho. I was distracted by you. You seem to have touched a nerve there, with the talk of the handmade Rolls Royce.Yes, it is going to cost four hundred thousand dollars. An ordinary Rolls Royce costs only one hundred thousand dollars. It will take one and a half years to be made, but it will be the most unique Rolls Royce in the whole world. So we are not out of money. There is no question of my speaking because my commune was not going well.My commune is going so well that nothing else in the whole world is going so well! Five thousand people are here. They all have the best standard of food, the best housing; the whole commune is centrally air-conditioned. They have hundreds of cars, hundreds of buses; they have five planes. And we are not expanding, because the legality of the city is under litigation, so they have prevented us from expanding. Otherwise I was going to bring one hundred thousand sannyasins here – and I will bring them. We are going to win the litigation.In a democratic country nobody can defeat me.Where could a man like you be defeated?Only in the Soviet Union, no other place. In the Soviet Union they are afraid, already my books are banned. I have sannyasins underground in the Soviet Union; they are being persecuted already, but because of the government persecution there is great excitement to become sannyasins. For the first time against communism, there is a new movement. And the new generation needs something new. Communism is already out of date. Marx’s books – who reads them? No communist, nobody bothers. It is just “old testament”.So that is the only place where I may be defeated, but not in America. If I am defeated in America, then America is no different from the Soviet Union; then it is a bogus democracy, hypocritical.Do you say that in confidence of your being able to play the game of democracy better than anyone else? Is that what you mean when you say it?Certainly.So that if you can't win then the game is wrong?I know the constitution of America, and I am going to stand for it against the Americans – because the American government, the state governments, are all violating the basic rights given to human beings in the constitution.I can play the game. I can play the game in the Soviet Union also, if the need arises, because I don’t think anybody has read communist literature more than I have. I can play the game, but first I have to try America.May I get back to…? Thank you.Back – or better forward!Osho,Why are there so many people who studied psychology and psychiatry here? What do you need that for?The reason is clear: psychology is the latest development of intelligence, the latest science.Yes.And they can understand me more than anybody else. They are the most intelligent people.Can they teach better than anyone else?That is not certain. To be a psychologist is one thing, to be a teacher is a totally different art.But there are levels of art, and if one is dealing in elementary applications, it seems that a psychologist would know better how to open a mind.We have so many psychologists here that many Ph.D.’s are farming, many Ph.D.’s are creating dams, many Ph.D.’s are looking after my peacocks. A few perhaps are functioning as psychologists, psychiatrists, in the medical center; if somebody needs any help, if somebody is schizophrenic…What about in the meditation courses and in the university?Meditation is beyond psychology. It is not psychology; it has nothing to do with the brain, it has nothing to do with the mind, either. It is a state of no-mind. Even Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung and Alfred Adler had no idea of meditation, of what it is. They all thought in terms of concentration. Concentration has nothing to do with meditation. Concentration is a method of the mind, and meditation is a way to transcend the mind, to go above the mind – so you are on the top of the hills and all your thoughts are just in the valley, and you can watch them and you can have a bird’s eye view of what kind of mind you have.These are three things: the state of no-mind which is your being; the mind, which is what the society has conditioned you for; and the third, the brain, which you have brought into the world with the body. The most bogus is the mind. The brain is a reality. The no-mind is a reality. The mind is only a program: Hindu mind, Mohammedan mind, communist mind – the mind has to be labeled, because it is a program. And meditation is a deprogramming. It is going beyond the mind. Nobody can deprogram a man of meditation – impossible. There is no way. He has nothing.I am available: I give the challenge to any psychiatrist in the whole world to deprogram me. He just has to be alerted that by deprogramming me, he may get deprogrammed!That’s good – go forward!Osho,While going forward I reminded myself of something we said a while ago.Okay.I feel that we're getting bits and pieces of a subject that fascinates me, and again it gets back to what seems to be unfolding in the world today, between factions and peoples. Each time I've broached that, I think you have the impression that I was trying to compare it with you, with what goes on here, and I'm not necessarily. But I see this business of competition for the thoughts of man and for the indoctrination procedures that are going on all over the world – it happens in advertising, it happens in the military, it happens in churches. But it seems to have become more sophisticated, and I guess that's what I see.No, no indoctrination happens here, sophisticated or unsophisticated. If you look at my books you will find thousands of contradictions in them. Talking to me is just a beautiful game with words. I am not trying to preach a certain doctrine; otherwise I would be consistent, I would repeat the same thing.Oh, I believe it!Yes, I have never repeated anything. I have contradicted myself every day, and I tell my people, never bring yesterday into what I said. Ask right now, directly, whatever is your question. But don’t bring in, “Osho, you said this ten years ago, and now you are saying that.” I have never read my books, and I don’t remember ten years back. And why should I remember unnecessary luggage on my head?I am available, more alert, more aware, than I was ten years ago.Do you think that's going on in the world?No. That indoctrination is going on all over the place, except in my communes.That's what I meant. Where do you see that leading – your commune aside – just as an observation?Everywhere: the pope is doing it, Mother Teresa the Terrible is doing it.You've got a lot of mileage out of her.Yes, that woman is terrible!Sheela: We have to change the tape.Change it.You have some way of changing exactly at the wrong time, hm? You can take some grapes while they are changing it. Take some grapes, or water, or something.Thank you, no. No, I'm fine, thanks.Sheela: Some chocolates? How about some chocolates?Oh, thank you so much, Sheela, I couldn't. I'm fine.After I am gone, then he will…!Sheela: Okay.Then they go in the pockets!This quest to make folks see things how whatever particular leader sees them, it just seems to me to be heating up and heading some place that makes me uncomfortable in the world at large.It is happening there, and the politicians are leading the world to a nuclear war. Because they go on piling up nuclear weapons in spite of all their speeches about peace, love, friendship, coexistence – but they are all piling up nuclear weapons.In fact, it seems to be a little crazy: already they have so many nuclear weapons that they can destroy this planet seven hundred times. Now, there is no need: there is no way for life to escape, they have already seven hundred times more than is needed. But they are heading on out of fear of each other.The religious leaders are continuously trying to convert people. Particularly Christianity – which is the biggest religion in the world – is trying to convert the poor people, very cheaply. Because those poor people need food, those people need medicine, they need houses, they need jobs, and Christianity can provide them with a few things. And their own religion cannot do anything else than prayer to a God who does not exist. So Christianity is trying to convert people more and more into the church. It is also a political game – the politics of numbers.Politicians and priests have always been in a certain conspiracy. The conspiracy is that they both need wars, they both need poverty, they both need people in suffering, misery; orphans, widows, sick people – they both need all these people. Without these people…Adolf Hitler has a statement in his biography: “Only in wartime can you become a great hero.” And that is true. All your heroes are wartime heroes, you don’t hear anything about a single peacetime hero. Politicians, if they want to achieve their ambition – and they are ambitious people, otherwise why should they be in politics – their ambition can be fulfilled only in war.The trouble is that the Third World War is going to destroy all. So both parties are waiting, and trying to find out ways to prevent nuclear weapons or sabotage them. Once either America or the Soviet Union finds a method of nullifying nuclear weapons, the war will immediately be on. It will be postponed till that moment, and that moment cannot be very far off. Both sides are continuously working on finding something as an antidote for nuclear weapons. Right now, they don’t have any antidote. While they don’t have the antidote, you can remain assured there is not going to be war. But soon they may find it. There is not much problem in it; if they can find nuclear weapons, they can find something which negates nuclear weapons.The religious leaders are trying to convert the poor countries, the poor people. And that is also part of the program of the capitalist countries. Against communism, America doesn’t have a philosophy to argue. America needs Christianity to argue against communism. You cannot convert Indians into Americans, obviously. You cannot convert Japanese into Americans, obviously. But you can convert them to Christianity. So Christianity is serving the capitalist politicians and is spreading Christianity all over the world.And these Christians, their leaders, are against abortion, because if there is abortion… [tape change]The religious leaders are against abortion.Not all of them.All.Even the ones who say they're not?Everyone is against abortion – the religious leaders. The Hindu religious leaders, the Buddhist religious leaders, the Christians, the Jews – they are all against abortion, against birth control methods, against the pill, for they all want greater numbers. Their strength is in numbers.You paint such an utterly dark picture. You paint such a picture of the totality of selfishness of everyone outside here.It is true. It is true. I am neither…This is the only place on earth where there is selflessness, or where that kind of selfishness doesn't exist?I am not a pessimist. I am not an optimist, either. I am just a realist. So if it is night, I cannot say it is day. And I am not painting it dark; it is dark.And absolute?Absolutely dark.This is the ark?This is Noah’s ark. This is where we are trying to pull the intelligent youth, so they can be saved from AIDS. The outside world will not be able to save people from AIDS. They may be able to postpone the Third World War, but who is going to postpone AIDS?Osho,How will you accomplish that here?Only we can do it.How?We are already doing it. Every sannyasin is going through tests, and if somebody is found to have AIDS, he is not condemned; he is a victim of all the old religions. We love him. We have made a beautiful place – we have found two persons who have AIDS – we have made a beautiful place for them, the most scenic, because their life is now short, and we are supplying them with everything that they ever wanted.And we are going to make that place bigger. If more AIDS people come to the commune we will put them there with all the medical facilities. But AIDS cannot in any way be cured. All that can be done is, those people can be prevented from spreading it – and that you cannot do in the outside world, it is impossible.You're saying it has to be a controlled environment?Yes. It has to be a certain commune, where people love each other, respect each other; even the person who has AIDS does not feel condemned. In the outside world, the people who have AIDS are trying to hide it, otherwise the whole society will be turning their backs on them.Excuse me, but that's where I keep having difficulty. It's the totality with which you condemn “us”. I've been to AIDS hospices, I've seen the tremendous care that decent, giving human beings present to men who are dying. I've seen people of religion – whom you condemn – being generous and good and operating from points of conscience. That's, I suppose, why the absolutes keep sticking in my craw – each time I hear that pronouncement…It is just your prejudice that has given you all these ideas.How so?For example, if you look at Mother Teresa from your attitude…I've never seen Mother Teresa, I'm telling you of things I've seen.No, just from your attitude… I am just taking an example, because I know her and her work – that’s why.But I don't.Anybody who sees her work will appreciate it: she is doing a great service to humanity, saving the orphans. But the real purpose of saving the orphans is converting them to Catholicism. All those orphans are being adopted by Catholic families.One American Protestant family went there; they were not aware that they would be refused. They were asked, “Are you Christians?” They said, “Yes.” So they were taken in, and the receptionist informed them, “There are seven hundred orphans – you can choose. But first fill the register which says to which religion you belong.” When they wrote “Protestant” the clerk said, “Wait, let me inquire first.” And he came back and said, “We don’t have any orphans right now.” A minute before, there were seven hundred orphans.This man wrote a letter to all the biggest Indian newspapers. I condemned Mother Teresa on the grounds of that letter. She wrote a letter to me. I had told her that this is absolutely ugly: you are trying to convert orphans into Catholicism. Your concern is not the orphan, your concern is one more Catholic. Secondly, you are against abortion, you are against birth control – because if there is birth control and abortion, where are you going to get the whole supply of orphans? So, on the outside it is a white house, inside it is all black.She wrote to me, “I will be praying to God on your behalf, that he should forgive you.” Nobody can say that something is wrong in it, but I know everything is wrong in that sentence. I wrote her back, “There is no God, so don’t try to befool me. Secondly, who are you to pray on my behalf, without my permission? You are interfering in my life, without my permission. This is trespass.”So the sentence looks beautiful, but when you dissect it, what she is saying is that I am wrong – so wrong that I will be punished by God – and she is right, and she is praying for me. What great generosity!Sheela: We need to change, Osho.Change.I think that's enough, if it is for you.That’s good.You would like to have…?Obviously, I still don't… I can't, I can't see things that black and white. I don't know about Mother Teresa. I hear stories about Mother Teresa – what do I know? I know nothing. But I do know there are decent people out there.You have to look more deeply into these generous people. These are the people who have kept humanity poor.You began by telling me of the way in which you're treating two people who have AIDS. What you describe doesn't seem to be an evil act designed to do anyone any harm. But what I saw – of two other people out there treating people for AIDS, those…They are not serving. They are not servants of the people, they are not serving the poor. Service is not a respected word here.I understand that.They are simply sharing their love. And in sharing, it is totally different; you give your love to those people who have very little time to live. And without any greed. All the religions in the world are serving the poor with a certain motivation, that if they serve the poor they will reach the kingdom of God.My people have no greed, no motive. There is no God and no paradise.And how do we know that these people I saw working, they weren't members of a church…?They are enjoying it, they are just enjoying it. I have made everything here a celebration – and that is my religion: celebration. We don’t bother about anything else. If those two people are sick, it is part of our celebration to share our energy with them, and prevent the disease spreading to other people. And we can do it perfectly. In the outside world, I know there are senators in your parliament who have AIDS. But…I wouldn't be surprised.Yes, you will be surprised.No, I wouldn't be!Yes. These people can hide it. They are powerful enough – they can hide it. And the person who has AIDS knows that he is going to die within two years, so he will make as many sexual contacts as possible.Do you really believe that we're all so terrible out there?They are!But not they, me. I'm one of them. I wouldn't do that.You are one of them…Yes.But if you suffer from AIDS, then you will do exactly what I am saying.I will go out and contaminate others?Yes.Baloney. Excuse me, but baloney.No “excuse” – that’s a perfectly beautiful word!You're suggesting then that's there's some other… Are you suggesting that I would go out and knowingly contaminate people if I knew?No, no. It is not a question of knowingly contaminating. The question is of a man who knows that he’s going to die. His immediate reaction will be how much he can live in these two years or six months. He has to live with a speed, with an intensity, that he had never done before.Only most of it he won't be able to do much more than sit up in bed.Yes. So this man is going to have as many sexual contacts as possible. Not that he is trying to contaminate anybody; he is just the flame which is going out.It's a mighty narrow line between trying to, and allowing it to happen. I can't imagine people doing so.In the outside world, it is happening.Yes, and in the outside world it's not happening also.Soon you will see.I mean, we're not all people of like mind. Are all people of like mind here? Is this a monolithic society?No, no. It is not a question…Well, it's hard to believe.The question is, you can be contaminated even by kissing and you may not know it, because it is not only through sexual intercourse that you get AIDS.I realize that there is a theory about that.Yes, you can just be kissed by a friend and you may get it; and without knowing it, you may contaminate other people. It is a wildfire. And now there are a few experts who are saying that there is a possibility to contaminate even by breathing. Then it becomes absolutely impossible.But in my commune we will try to prevent that too. Everybody, all the sannyasins, can use doctors’ masks. You will not be able to do that in the outside world. That’s the difference I am trying to make. The difference is that here we are living together, caring about each other, loving each other. In the outside world, you have your family, a small circle, friends, but the outside world is big and it is beyond control.Certainly.All the states and all the governments are trying to repress the information about people who have AIDS, for the simple reason that it is such a condemnation. And if you repress the information, you are a criminal. For example, in Oregon they have made the test for AIDS so difficult that almost ninety percent of the people who are suffering from AIDS will not be caught by it. This is what my medical people have informed me, that the test they are doing is such that ninety percent will be cleared.I'd like to talk with them about that.Yes, you should talk with them. And these ninety percent who are given a clear certificate will not be contaminating anybody knowingly, but they will be contaminating all the same. Knowledge is not needed to contaminate anybody.The outside world is crushed between nuclear weapons and AIDS. Perhaps nuclear weapons may be avoided – for the simple reason that if we cannot find an antidote, nuclear weapons cannot be used. But AIDS is unavoidable. Unless the world turns into small communes, and people start going of their own accord to be examined, and every commune manages special places to live, and supplies the demands of those people who are contaminated – I don’t think the outside world is going to do that. Thirty million people in America are living almost as though in Ethiopia.What do you mean?America cannot do anything for the thirty million poor people in America itself, but it goes on making more nuclear weapons. You have these mad people in power who should be removed immediately. A great concern should be created in the outside world: these people are mad. When your people are dying… Even in India, fifty percent of the people are on the line: any moment, they will be dying like in Ethiopia – one thousand people per day. And the prime minister of India is selling wheat to outside countries, exporting wheat, because he wants nuclear plants, and for that money is needed. Now, these people should be behind bars.Rajiv Gandhi is one of my friends, but still I say he should be immediately imprisoned, because what he is doing is criminal. People are dying, and you are preparing for more death. Strange! And you say that they are generous. The pope is generous, and continuously goes on saying, “No abortion, no birth control, no pill. These are all immoral.” And to go on creating more children is moral?Okay?Have you done your work?Good. Come again.Thank you.I enjoyed it. Although your questions have remained – I’m worried about your questions!Next time, whenever possible, mm?I didn't figure we'd get to them!

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 27 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Pritish NandyIllustrated Weekly of India, Mumbai, IndiaOsho,Namaskar.Glad to see you.Very glad to see you, too.Start.I want to start off with a question which you must have been asked several times in the recent past. For about three and a half years, you kept a maun, and after that you gave it up. Why did you choose to take a maun? Why did you choose to give it up?There were many reasons, but the most fundamental was concerning my sannyasins. I don’t want them to be intellectually related to me, because that has nothing to do with the real experience of your being.There were many people who were just hanging around me. They loved my words, they loved my way of thinking. And I am not a thinker, and I am not a preacher, I am not a prophet or messiah. I want to share my experience – and for that, only those who are capable of living with me in silence are ready to understand me. So for three and a half years, I was silent. The basic reason was that those people who were hanging around my words, were interested intellectually in me, dropped out.And the people who were in love with me – not with my words or theories – they remained. The moment I saw that all the people whose concern was their head are gone, I started speaking again. Now, with these people, speaking is a totally different experience. They can read me between the words, they can read me between the lines, and they are not addicted to my words. If I am silent, they are as happy as when I am speaking to them.But what is the difference between being addicted to your words and being addicted to you?There is a great difference. Being addicted to my words is just intellectual. Being in love with me is total. Being in love with me is not a conviction, it is an experience. Being in love with my words, somebody can destroy it very easily – just a little better argument, and the person is finished.But a person who is in love with me, nothing can disturb him. His trust is not based on any argument: it is not philosophical, it is existential.But both kinds of people draw sustenance from you. One may draw sustenance from his love for you; some may draw sustenance from their love for what you are saying. Why do you want to make a distinction between these two kinds of people? Why do you think one kind of lover is less important than the other and needs to be dropped off?He is not only less important, he is absolutely wrong. His approach toward me is wrong, and what he is doing with my words – creating certain belief systems, creating some philosophy, some ideology, which is going to prevent him from knowing himself.My whole work is to help people to know themselves, and those who become addicted to the words are creating a hindrance for themselves. It does not matter whether they are Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan or addicted to my words – it is the same thing. They are hung up in their heads. And the reality is somewhere far deeper, where no word has ever entered, and no word can ever enter. It is in your uttermost silence, in your meditative, peaceful serenity.So it is not a question only of difference, or degrees; they are polar opposites. Those are the wrong people – unnecessarily wasting their time here.But does a master choose his flock? In any religion of the world, or any beliefs of the world, or any faith in the world, does the master ever choose his flock? He says what he has to say, he leads the way, shows the way, or even doesn't do that – he lives his own life, and by his example, people follow him. How does it matter to him who follows him?I am not a leader, so nobody is allowed to follow me. They are my fellow travelers, they are my friends, and I am absolutely certain who should be my friend.Followers – who cares! Flocks – who cares! Crowds – who cares! These are individuals – I care. And I don’t want any wrong person, for any wrong motive, to waste his time. It is not harming me, he is harming himself. It is out of compassion that I want him to be released.And they went away. The device worked perfectly well: they went away and new people have come in their place. While I was silent, they became sannyasins. Their approach is totally different; their search is different.So remember, I am not a leader, I am not a prophet, I am not a messiah. I have no business to do with all that company. I am a simple man, just like you and my people. If there is any difference, the difference is very slight. The difference is that you are asleep, and I am awake.Osho,Only this morning in your discourse, you said that you are not a simple man, you are an extraordinary man.Only an extraordinary man can say that he is a simple man.I understand.A simple man cannot say that.Okay – these are your friends.These are my friends.But you hardly interact with them.I am continuously interacting. I am dancing with them, I am talking with them, I am sitting in silence with them.But it is hardly a one-to-one communion with anyone.There is no need. I have created a field, where just sitting by my side is enough. Otherwise they will be gone, if there is no communion. What will they be doing here? For what will they be here? I dance with them, and they feel my love, they know my love.Love is something that need not be expressed in words, or expressed even in actions. They can see it in my eyes. You are seeing it in my eyes. Not only are they my friends, you are my friend. That’s why you are here. This is the beginning of a friendship and it is not going to end easily.Osho,In the earlier days of the commune – not here, but in India – you were perhaps in closer touch on a day-to-day level with people.No. Not much, just when I was initiating them into sannyas.But you are slowly withdrawing yourself, one believes.Yes, that’s true, because now I can have a contact even from a distance. Now physical contact is not necessary, particularly with my people. Even though I never come out of my room, they know I am there. They know, and they feel. In the beginning it was necessary to come into contact, because that was the only language those people could have understood.As love deepens, as meditation deepens, distance makes no difference. I have my communes all around the world. Those people who are in a commune in Germany or in Holland or in Switzerland feel me as deeply as my people who are here.But you have this gorgeous feminine mafia in between.That is true. Love always has a feminine mafia in between. It is really gorgeous!Indeed.Just be here and you will see the whole of Arabian Nights is actually lived here.Osho,You speak, among other things, of freedom. Freedom of all kinds: intellectual, emotional, sexual. How can you yourself live such a rigid, boring, dull, disciplined life?It is not disciplined for me, it is not dull for me, it is not rigid for me. To me, it is the most comfortable life. It is not that I have disciplined myself; it is that, living in many ways, I have found the most comfortable way, the most luxurious way to live.But surely the most comfortable and the most luxurious is not necessarily the best way to live one's life?To me it is. To many it may not be. But whatsoever is the best for you is luxurious for you. And I don’t say that all my sannyasins have to live in my discipline, the way I live, or the ritual of my living. No, they are free to find out their own ways. But I have found mine and I am perfectly contented with it. So it is not dull – I am enjoying it every moment.It's an extremely structured life – that's what I meant.It is not structured. It may look from the outside as if it is structured; it is not structured.For example, I have tried to wake up at three o’clock in the morning, I have tried to wake up at four o’clock in the morning, I have tried to wake up at five o’clock in the morning, I have tried to wake up at eight o’clock in the morning – and finally I found that six suits me the best. Now, for an outsider it may look a structured life that every day I wake up at six, but to me that has been the best moment. After that, sleep becomes a headache; before that, the whole day becomes dull, sleepy. But I have found my time, exactly at six.Now scientists say that for two hours every night you have the deepest sleep; if you wake up exactly after these two hours, you will have the most awakened day. In these two hours your temperature falls, so it can be measured from the outside, too. And I have tried that – that when does my temperature fall? It falls between four and six. And exactly at six… And this is a later thing; I had found my time long before, for thirty years I have been waking up at six. It is just recently that I found out what scientists say about these two hours, wherever in the night they happen – and to different people they happen at different times: somebody may find it at five o’clock, somebody may find it at three o’clock.Vinoba Bhave used to wake up at three o’clock, and that became the discipline of his ashram. Everybody has to wake up three o’clock. Now, that is nonsense, that is stupid. For Vinoba it may be the right time, but all those people in Vinoba’s ashram are unnecessarily suffering. Then the whole day they feel dull, sleepy. Then Vinoba’s explanation is that you are lazy, sleepy: change your diet, your diet must be wrong; change your other habits, something must be wrong. And the only thing that is wrong is that they are waking up at the wrong time!So to me it is not structured. I have looked for it and found the right point, the balanced point. The same with my food – I have found what suits me, how much is needed, how much keeps me in a wellbeing, and I go with it.I am a very luxurious, lazy, comfort-loving man, and I have found everything that is needed to make me comfortable. I possess nothing – I am the poorest man in the world, in that sense. Otherwise, I am the richest, because my people have made everything available to me. It does not belong to me, it belongs to the commune, but you will not find such a commune anywhere else in the world – now, or in the whole history of man.No ashram with five thousand people has ever lived in central air-conditioning; this is the only city in the whole world which is completely air-conditioned. And my people are eating the best food possible, enjoying their life in different ways. It depends on them.Well, it's said you are the guru for the rich.Yes, I am.Osho,But how do you combine this highly individualistic philosophy that you spoke about, where you talk in terms of even finding your own personal goal in terms of what time you should wake up and what you should eat – your own levels of comfort at every point – how do you combine that with the principles of community living which your own people follow?My people have every facility available. We have the Italian restaurant, we have the Chinese restaurant, we have the Indian restaurant, we have Continental food available, we have American food available. All kinds of wines and champagnes, all kinds of cigars and cigarettes – everything is available. They have to choose and find.Yes, but they have basic norms of community living which they follow. Now, they may be self-imposed, those norms, or they may be structured by the commune…Nobody is imposing anything.I'm saying “self-imposed.” The commune has certain ground rules…No, not even self-imposed. The very word imposed is not right.Okay – the commune has certain ground rules. How do you combine this highly individualistic philosophy of yours with the ground rules of the commune?There are no ground rules in the commune. It is a commune of individuals who are not in any way parts, but members, living. And they have to live according to their own way. If they feel this fits for them, good. If they feel this does not fit for them, we have all kinds of work available. For example, a doctor is tired of patients and hospitals and he becomes a sannyasin. We have a hospital, but he does not want to become a part of the hospital. He is fed up and finished – he wants to go farming. Perfectly good, he goes farming. And he enjoys it for the first time in his life. He wanted, his whole life, to farm. There are professors…This could be extremely dangerous if a farmer wanted to be a doctor after joining you, and he joined your hospital – that could be extremely dangerous.A farmer cannot be allowed to be a doctor. He will be sent to study medicine. Even the doctors who have come here from different countries are not allowed to practice unless they get the Oregon certificate to practice. The farmer needs no certificate. It is not a qualified job; it is not something that is harmful to anybody.But he must know the land use laws.That we are fighting, and we are creating our own land use. And Oregonians have never used the land the way we have used it. For fifty years this land was just lying barren, a desert. We have made it an oasis. They will have to change their ground rules for land use, because we are showing them how land should be used.When I had come here there was only one house. And 126 miles of land – just barren, dead, only a few junipers. Junipers are known as the camels of the trees, but they were also in a very poor, dying condition. Since we have come we have managed to make dams, we have collected rainwater – enough that all the junipers have become big, thick, green. We are making the whole city a green place – and those idiots are discussing in the courts about land use! They should come here and see how land has to be used. And they have much land in Oregon lying like this. Where else can you find 126 square miles of land so easily?It was for sale for fifty years – nobody purchased it. What would they do with a desert? We have changed it into a garden. Go on coming every year, and you will be surprised that every year you will find expansion – more people, more trees, more birds. There was not a single bird when we came here. Now there are peacocks, swans, and – because of the water – deer from all the other places have moved here. We have thousands of deer now, and we are thinking to make a deer park especially for them. In fact, deer have never enjoyed such a luxurious life as they are enjoying here, because we have sown the grass that they love most – alfalfa. They are eating it so much that you will not find such fat deer anywhere in the world!You will not find such prosperous and well-kept sannyasins anywhere, for that matter.No, you will not. And if you go on the roads in the night, the deer will be standing in the road and you will have to stop. They know my sannyasins don’t harm anybody. So there are peacocks… In my own garden there are one hundred peacocks, and they won’t give way for me to drive. They stand just there in front of me…They are actually there to prevent journalists.No!Because I was actually prevented from seeing your house.You will be prevented, but not by peacocks! For that we have sannyasins.You're telling me!But those peacocks or those deer, they have understood one thing, that these people are nonviolent, not any way harmful. You can be with them without any fear.Osho,The Oregonians don't think so.Oregonians are far more retarded than the deer.Then why the sub-machine guns?For those Oregonians who are retarded – because they will understand only machine guns, no other language. It is not for the deer. No bird, no animal is being killed here. In Oregon, every year there is freedom from the government to kill deer; all over the state, deer are killed. This is the only place we have stopped it: no deer can be killed here. If anybody kills a deer on this land he will be in trouble.Those guns have never been used yet, and I don’t think they will ever be used. Those retarded Oregonians are so afraid, they don’t come near. And we don’t have long-distance guns. But if it is needed, we will have them.We are nonviolent; we don’t want to do any harm to anybody. But we are not Gandhians – if you do harm to us we will give you the other cheek – we are not Christians. We respect you so much that if you hit us, you will get a bigger hit. We respect your dignity, your individuality, your humanity. Christ’s statement that when somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the other cheek, is a humiliation of the other man. You are reducing the other man into an animal, a sub-human species. You are becoming holier-than-thou, just by giving one cheek – what about if he wants to hit you a third time? What cheek are you going to give? We don’t give the other cheek – if somebody hits our cheek, we will hit him on both of his cheeks together, simultaneously. We respect people. We respect their humanity. We don’t want to prove that we are holier than you; we are just as human as you are.The hostility in the Oregonians is perfectly good for us. One thing is that they don’t come here – no disturbance, that’s what I wanted. On all sides, for fifty miles around, we are completely isolated, doing our thing without any interference, without any trouble.What is that “our thing”?Many things: people are meditating. In India it was a trouble…Why?Others were getting disturbed, because my meditations are 112 methods, in which a few are chaotic, dynamic, active. The people have to throw out all their screams, shout, throw out their anger, dance, jump, jog. Naturally the neighbors would be disturbed in the early morning, and every day the police were there, saying that the neighbors are complaining. So I told my people that we have to find a place where there are no neighbors.Secondly, the police force is ours, so there is no problem!That can be very dangerous.No, not dangerous at all. The police force belongs to the state government. They are part of the state police force. They have been trained by the state, but they are sannyasins and they know what you are doing, you are not disturbing anybody. And we have such a vast land that you can go on doing it in one corner and nobody will know.We have a nature institute which allows people to go naked. They have a special lake for themselves. They can go naked, walk naked in the forest; nobody interferes. Even if you move naked in the streets of the city, nobody is going to look back, “What is the matter?” It is your thing – that’s your thing.That is sad. That's a reflection. It's a sad comment if an attractive person is walking naked and no one looks around.…because everybody has his own freedom, and even looking around is an interference. If you look at a man for more than three seconds – that’s the conclusion psychologists have come to – that is an interference.Well, I've been looking at you for about fifteen minutes already.You have been doing immense interference! But it is perfectly okay with me, because you at least blink. I don’t blink. You should see that, that I don’t blink. When I am talking, I forget blinking.But everybody is free to do his thing. If somebody wants to hug somebody on the street – in India it was an unnecessary problem, that somebody is hugging – it should be nobody’s business. If you don’t want to see, don’t see. Just turn your back and go away, or close your eyes.Here we have absolute freedom. If people want to hug each other – and it is a beautiful experience to hug each other…But if you have total freedom to hug each other; you also give total freedom to hit each other. And that could be dangerous.No. When people hug each other, nobody wants to hit each other. When people are prevented from hugging, then the only way to touch the other is by hitting. There is a basic psychology involved in it. Sigmund Freud said that people have invented guns, arrows, because they were prevented from hugging each other, loving each other.Love is really a man trying to enter the woman. Now if that is prevented, the man will try to enter from a distance with a gun. That gun is phallic according to Freud, and all the other psychologists agree with him. If you allow people total freedom of love, violence will disappear. Gandhi and people like him are responsible for violence in the world.In Gandhi’s ashram, nobody could fall in love with any woman. There was strict discipline that no woman meets in secrecy with any man. His own secretary, Pyarelal, could not follow this discipline; his own sons could not follow this discipline – the discipline is stupid.But when you prevent people from loving, then their very energy of love becomes hate. Hate is not different from love; it is love standing on its head, doing shirsasan.In other words, you believe that if Hitler had had a Jewish girlfriend to make love to, he wouldn't have committed violence on the Jewish population?Certainly. Hitler was rejected from everywhere: his parents rejected him, he was never given love by his parents. He was continuously condemned. He wanted to become an artist, no art school allowed him entry. He wanted to become an architect, no school of architecture allowed him. Then finally he became a soldier. Now, there is no way to avoid the fact that the man was basically interested in art, in architecture, but being rejected from everywhere. The army was the only place where he was accepted. And he was even thrown out of the army after the First World War. He was one of the most rejected persons in the world, and he took good revenge – he did well.What do you mean, “He did well”? You would support what he did?It means he has given you a lesson to love people, respect people; a person should not be rejected so much that he becomes simply a maniac – that’s what you made Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitlers will be born again and again if we cannot allow people freedom of love, warmth, dignity, respect – just for being themselves. We respect people if somebody reaches the top of Everest; some Edmund Hillary, then we respect him. If somebody invents something, we respect him. If somebody is a painter like Picasso, we respect him. But we don’t respect people just for being themselves.Everybody cannot be a Picasso and everybody need not go to Everest – and it would be silly! We have to respect people as they are, without any demands on them.But you don't either: you attacked Mother Teresa recently.I attack Mother Teresa because she is doing so much harm to humanity.In what way?These are the people… Mother Teresa is only symbolic; I call her Mother Teresa the Terrible. These people – Teresa or Pope the Polack or Jesus Christ or Mahatma Gandhi – all these people in a very subtle way… I never suspect their intentions; their intentions may be good, but their actions are dangerous. These are the people who are keeping the world poor.Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” Now this is something absolutely wrong. The poor are not the blessed, they are the cursed, the condemned. But he consoles them by saying that they are blessed.But you are selectively using that verse. The full verse is: “Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth.” Those who inherit the earth can never be poor, so he was using the word poor purely metaphorically.Just wait a minute, just wait a minute. You are quoting wrongly, I was quoting rightly: “Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God,” – not earth.There are two versions – the King James version says the earth.There are not two versions!The King James version says the earth.It is the kingdom of God, basically, in Hebrew. The kingdom of the earth is already possessed by the rich, it is already inherited. Jesus can only promise something in the faraway future, after death. All the religions have been playing that game, of promising people things beyond death. There is no evidence of anything beyond death, whether the poor enter into paradise or the rich enter. It is more probable that the rich will enter.There is no possibility for the poor in paradise, if there is no possibility for them here on earth! And these people… Teresa collecting orphans, what is she doing? Creating more poverty in the world. She is against abortion, she is against birth control, she is against the pill: these are sins, naturally. If these things are allowed, orphans will disappear – and with orphans disappearing, who is going to give the Nobel Prize to Mother Teresa?I condemned her; she wrote a letter to me. In the letter she said, “I will pray to God to forgive you.” Now the sentence looks perfectly nice, but not to me. It is nasty.I wrote back to her, “In the first place I don’t believe in any God, so who are you to pray to a God who does not exist? At least you should have asked me. Secondly, who are you to pray on my behalf? I have not given you the authority. And I have not committed any sin, that God should forgive me. If he meets me, he will have to ask forgiveness from me, because what he has done to the world is enough!”All these Tamerlanes, Genghis Khans, Nadirshahs, Alexander the Greats, Ivan the Terribles, Adolf Hitlers, Mussolinis, Joseph Stalins – who is responsible for all these people? Who is responsible for Ethiopia dying? Who is responsible for half the world being poor and on the verge of death? Who is responsible for nuclear weapons?If God is the creator, and if he is omnipotent, omniscient, he knows everything – past, present, future – then he knows that there will be Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And even knowing that, he creates the world? He knows that there will be a nuclear war, and people are piling up nuclear weapons. Even the day he created the world, he knew that one day there would be a nuclear war, and millions of people would suffer tremendous torture and death. “And this is your God,” I told her.She never replied. I again wrote to her, “Reply – because otherwise I am going to sue you in the court. Who can ask for my forgiveness from God, on my behalf, without my permission?”These people are simply trying to increase their numbers. All those orphans become Catholics; all those poor people, aboriginals, become Christians. The hospitals, the schools, the food – these are all strategies. Islam had the strategy of the sword. Christians have the strategy – because the world has changed, ways have changed – they come with bread and butter in one hand and a Bible in the other. Mohammedans used to come with a sword in one hand and the Koran in the other hand. But it is the same – just to purchase you. They are using people’s poverty to make great numbers of Christians, because numbers have power. It is simply politics, nothing else; there is no religion in it. The pope before this Polack who is now the pope, was a homosexual – it was well known all over Italy.The earlier pope?Yes, he was a bishop in Milan before becoming the pope, and the whole of Milan knew about it because he was continuously going around with a homosexual, a young man.But that's purely a sexual preference.That’s what I am saying – that it is perversion, not preference.Osho,You mean a man like you, who believes in free sex, you would object to people exercising a sexual preference?No, it is not a preference. Otherwise, soon you will be making love to the camera, making love to the electric pole. And please, don’t disturb my junipers! It is not preference, it is unnatural. This homosexuality is a religious contribution to humanity. It started in the monasteries, where only men were living and no woman was allowed in. It started in the nunneries, where only women were living and no man was allowed. Naturally, man is intelligent enough to find some way.All the monks have been either masturbators or homosexuals, but in some way they have to do something. You cannot change their biology by just preaching. Their bodies won’t listen to your Bible.But you were a celibate at twenty-one. Why can't they be?I have never been a celibate.Your Bible says that.I have never been a celibate. If people believe it, that is their foolishness. I have always loved women – and perhaps more women than anybody else. You can see my beard: it has become grey so quickly because I have lived so intensely that I have compressed almost two hundred years into fifty.Of sexuality?Yes. But I am not a homosexual. These people have been talking of celibacy, and creating sexual perversion. And the sexual perversion has led to the disease AIDS, which can kill almost two-thirds of humanity. Who will be responsible for it?Osho,Where do you draw the line between sexual perversion and sexual experimentation?There is no sexual experimentation. Sex is a purely biological thing, absolutely determined by biology. For example, in the wild no animal is homosexual. But in a zoo, if only male animals are there and no female is available, they turn into homosexuals. Your world is a zoo, not a wild place. In a wild jungle, nobody… No animal ever turns into a homosexual.So would you, like Rousseau, talk in terms of going back to nature, to the wild?No. I am not saying back to nature, I am saying forward to nature. Not back – back is not my vocabulary – forward to nature. There are tremendous treasures hidden in nature, which these perverted people have denied humanity enjoying. I am against these people, because what they are saying and what they are doing ultimately results in something like a curse.All the religions have been preaching celibacy, and nobody has ever bothered whether celibacy is medically possible or not. Even Mahatma Gandhi at the age of seventy was having wet dreams in the night. And you cannot find a more sincere man, trying more sincerely than he tried to be a celibate. For forty years, no success. And do you know, in the end he started sleeping with a naked woman? But Gandhians don’t talk about it.Gandhians even approached Mahatma Gandhi, asking him, “Please don’t do it.” Vinoba was one of them, Kalelkar was another; Maulana Azad, Kripalani, all asked him, “Please don’t do this ‘experiment’” – in your language. It was not an “experiment”; it was forty years of failure of celibacy.And all these popes… Just two days ago, a Christian minister was jailed for one and a half years because he was abusing small children. That is experimentation. In the pulpit, in the church, he is talking about celibacy, and inside the church he is abusing small children. One of the fathers filed the case, and he got one and a half years in jail. Now many others have come, because they were afraid to say anything against the religious leader, but now he is in jail, many other children have said that he has been doing the same with them.But this is not just about one priest I am saying this: all the priests have to do it! We are forcing them to do it. We respect their celibacy, and that respect is a bribe to remain celibate. And their biology does not know about your respectability; their biology has its own laws and it follows its own laws.The people who have been consoling the poor are the enemies of the poor. Poverty can be destroyed immediately. All that is needed is that nations should disappear – only then can wars disappear.And seventy-five percent of every nation’s income is going into war efforts. America is even pouring eighty percent of its income into nuclear weapons. Now, if the whole world stops this nonsense, what is the need to be poor? We have so much energy, so much money, so much scientific intelligence.But it is strange. In England, in Europe, in America too, they are destroying food – and Ethiopia is dying. And soon India will be in the same position. If you see Rajiv Gandhi, tell him that he will be responsible for India’s poverty and people dying there, because he is exporting wheat outside India, and his own people are on the verge of death – half the country. But he wants a nuclear plant. Tell him that this is not a child’s game, and he doesn’t understand anything about humanity. He had better go and become a pilot again, that is his place! He doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t need to be the prime minister of a country which is suffering from poverty – and he is looking to create a nuclear plant! For what?Even if India puts every penny into creating nuclear weapons, it will take three hundred years for them to be equal in power to America or the Soviet Union. And do you think that for three hundred years, America and the Soviet Union will be staying where they are? It is stupid, absolutely stupid, for a country like India to think of nuclear weapons, atomic energy.But they go on saying to the poor – in India all the Indian religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism – all go on saying, “It is your past life’s bad actions, that’s why you are poor.” That’s the reason – because of these religions – that for five thousand years at least, India has never revolted, has suffered all kinds of poverty, slavery, and accepted it. The religious leaders were telling them, “If you rebel or if you do anything against it, you will have to suffer in the future life.”Let me tell you one thing: you will be surprised. One of the great Jaina teachers in India is Acharya Tulsi. There is a Jaina sect, Terapanth, and he is the head of that community. Their basic philosophy is that if somebody is dying of thirst, and you have water, don’t give it to him – because he is suffering from his past life’s karmas, and giving him water means interfering into the punishment. He will be punished again soon, he cannot get rid of it – and by interfering, you have committed a crime: now you will suffer also.If somebody is drowning, simply go on walking. Let him drown – it is his past life’s actions, and you should not interfere in any way. For example, if you pull that man out of the water and tomorrow he murders somebody, you are also responsible for that murder. You see, the logic is great! If you had not saved that man, the murder would not have happened. So in the next life you will also suffer, because you saved that man and took part in the murder.If you teach people for thousands of years that it is your bad actions in past lives which create poverty, you are stopping them from revolting, you are stopping them from doing something to change their situation. You are telling them, “Just accept the situation in which you are.” And that’s how the East has accepted, and remained poor.And still you want that I should not speak against these people – Buddha, Mahavira? I have to speak. To me these are far bigger criminals than Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, because those people have done very little harm. Adolf Hitler killed six million Jews, but how many poor people has Mahavira killed? And living in poverty is far more dangerous, is far more of a suffering, than dying in a beautifully, scientifically-managed gas chamber in Germany. Within seconds you are smoke – holy smoke! – rather than suffering for millions of years.No, I am against all these criminals. And I mean what I say.Osho,Do you think that if the nations of the world did not invest such a large part of their gross national product in nuclear arsenals, they would have used it more meaningfully – they would have found some alternative means of creating a situation of terror in the world?The question of whether they invest in nuclear weapons or in something else all depends on us, not on them.It is born out of the desire to conquer, to rule: you conquer nature, you conquer other nations, you conquer the weaker half of mankind.I understand, but now it is absolutely idiotic. Up to now, it was meaningful to conquer. With nuclear weapons you cannot conquer – nobody is going to be victorious, and nobody is going to be defeated. All are going to be finished. In that way, nuclear weapons have served a great cause: now war is meaningless.M.A.D. – mutual assured destruction.Yes, so it is meaningless. They are not going for the Third World War. They will talk about it, talk about peace, they will play the games. And they will put small nations into fights and wars so that they can sell their out-of-date weapons to them. But they are not going for a big war. Pakistan and India may get into a war, Bangladesh and India may get into a war, but Russia and America are not going to go to war, because both are perfectly aware what it means. There is no victory.War was meaningful, you are right, because it was conquering. Now, with nuclear weapons the whole situation changes. We can put this whole energy into conquering new planets, going to the stars. We can conquer nature, which is deteriorating, and we can put nature back into its harmoniousness as it always was. We can feed people. We can create “medical food” – just pills; if you cannot grow more wheat, you can just swallow a pill and that will do.The whole world has to be made aware of what a situation we have reached, that war is absolutely meaningless, so now no more pouring your energies into more nuclear weapons.Then why are you investing in missile silos?I am investing only in toy guns. Those toy guns are enough to keep the Oregonians afraid. They don’t do any harm, but just by keeping them here, the Oregonians remain far away.Osho,The rumors that you are shifting to Australia, are they right? Do you have any such plans whatsoever?No, I will be visiting.When is that?That will depend. If America wants me to go out, to go to Australia, perhaps I may stay there forever. I have a beautiful commune there on the sea beach. I may stay there. So there is a great opportunity for America to get rid of me. But first, my green card. Without a green card, I am not going out of America. I am going to fight up to the Supreme Court.They have six classes, six types of people who can apply for an American green card. I have applied on five. On each, I will fight separately. One file will take twenty years to finish by the time it reaches the Supreme Court. Five grounds. Then I will start on the second. For one hundred years, they cannot do anything to me! And for me, the sixth class is not difficult – that is marriage. I can marry as many women as they want. But they cannot throw me out of America. If they are intelligent, they should immediately issue my green card – then perhaps I may never come back. If Australia is there… And I have my communes in many beautiful places. In Holland we have purchased a big, ancient Christian monastery.Where is this?In Holland. It was meant for Christian monks and a school for Christian children – beautiful gardens, accommodation for three hundred people – and we are renovating it. I may stay in Holland.I may stay in Germany. In Germany we have twelve communes of the same size.As this?Yes. Germany is my country. Now the color red is no longer connected with communists, it is connected with me. And we have sannyasins in the Soviet Union. We have sannyasins in other communist countries; we have sannyasins in East Germany. They are not only there, they want to make a commune: I am stopping them, because if they make a commune and they come above ground they will be in difficulty – remain underground. But they are so excited, they want to make a commune in East Berlin. My sannyasins in the Soviet Union are more excited than anywhere else.How do you stay in touch with them? Or how do they stay in touch with you?That I cannot tell you. But I am in touch, and they are in touch, and everything is going just groovy!Anything…?Osho,You were extremely concerned about the spread of AIDS. If rumors are to be believed, you are starting a new program which will possibly have something to do with AIDS.That’s only a rumor.Osho,Why is this particular affliction so important that you keep talking about it everywhere?Because it has no medicine, no cure.Neither has cancer.Cancer only of one type, but there are many types of cancer which have a cure; they can be operated.Only forty percent of cases get cured.Yes, and people who have cancer are not contagious. They will not spread the cancer all over the world. AIDS is a different phenomenon – and with no cure. The person is sure to die within two years. The person can contaminate not only by sexual intercourse but by kissing. If his saliva comes in contact with you, you can get it. Kissing is going to be prohibited. In my commune I have told people to drop kissing completely, learn the art of the Eskimos who rub noses, which is far more hygienic. And no fear of any epidemic: at the most a cold, which is not a disease. If you don’t take medicine, it goes away in seven days; if you take medicine, it goes away in one week.I am concerned about AIDS, certainly, and particularly for my people. My communes are creating every prohibition, precaution, and every sannyasin is being tested. We have found two sannyasins who have AIDS, and for them we have made a beautiful place; we have given to them the most scenic place in the commune. We will take care of them. And they are respectable people; they need not hide it. They are simply victims of religions.In the outside, it is totally different. If somebody is found to have AIDS he will be treated just the way lepers used to be treated in the past. He will no longer be a respectable citizen; he will fall in his own eyes. He will not be allowed into restaurants, he may not be allowed to visit, even his own family will not want him to live in the house.So what is happening – the most dangerous thing – is that people who have AIDS are hiding it. They are bribing physicians, doctors, and hiding it. I know, absolutely for certain, that one of the senators has AIDS. He has the power to hide it, and he will continuously spread it.If it can spread even by kissing or by saliva… And there are a few experts who think that there is a possibility that if the disease becomes of enormous proportions, which it is becoming… But the governments are hiding it, the state governments are hiding it, because nobody wants to accept the fact that their country is full of homosexuals – because it is a homosexual disease.But it has spread beyond gays.Yes, it has gone beyond now; it is not confined only to homosexuals. But it is created in homosexuality, and then it spreads. It can go to a woman, then from women it can go to another man who has never been homosexual. And there is no way…But to stop kissing is like saying that you don't shave because you might get a nick in your cheek with the blade which might give you tetanus.No, it is not that way.In fact, a man shaving his beard looks like a woman – it is ugly. As far as women are concerned, they love beards. You can ask my women here. A man without a beard and a mustache is just half a man. Just think of a woman with a mustache and beard – looking like a sardarji – that’s what is happening to men. A stupid idea, because man biologically feels attracted to the feminine physiology, her face. He thinks that the woman’s face is beautiful, because it is without beard and without mustache. He is just a fool, he does not know the simple laws of nature. To a woman, a man without a beard and mustache has no appeal. And you can see that all your prophets, all your messiahs, they had beards – and beautiful beards. And they influenced people tremendously. Most of the credit will go to the beard.It happened, when Lincoln was standing for the presidency in America, he had no beard, no mustache. He was a thin man, a tall man, and ugly. While he was campaigning, one small girl told him, “Uncle, if you grow a beard and a mustache you will look far more beautiful.” And the idea got into his mind, and he grew his beard and mustache! Now, it is very difficult to know whether that played some part in his winning – I think it did.But Michael Jackson doesn't have.I am not saying that there are not exceptions. I am simply saying that it is not like a beard – that if, out of fear, you stop shaving… Because if that becomes the situation, then ninety-nine percent of people die on their bed. So don’t sleep on the bed! Just sleep on the floor!That's right, I agree.But then how do you stop kissing? That's exactly what I'm saying.No, kissing is a totally different matter, because we can find better ways.Of foreplay? Hardly any.Many! You don’t know the feminine body. It is all erotic.I'll ask you those questions separately, perhaps!You can ask separately. But for this, you have to remember that the woman’s whole body is erotic. You can play it from anywhere – it is a strange musical instrument. Vatsyayana knew it five thousand years ago, when he wrote his sutras. He suggests that lovers should press each other’s earlobes, and that gives great joy. That seems very hygienic. And in fact there are tribes… Eskimos never kiss, they rub noses.They don't know what they are missing.No, they know – because they see the missionaries, and they think that these are fools. Even Eskimos think the missionaries are fools, because they are transferring diseases to each other. It is not that they are unaware of kissing – they are perfectly aware. There are aboriginals in India, in Thailand, and in other parts of the world, where rubbing noses is the common practice – kissing is not.And when something like AIDS is standing at your door, it is a small question of being intelligent enough to take precautions. At least try once, and see how you feel. You may enjoy it more than kissing. At least it is more fun – something new and novel.Good.How long will you be here?Two days out here in Oregon, but about a week in the United States.And whenever you come to the United States, this is the capital of the world!

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 28 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Tracy BerryKEZI TV, Eugene, Oregon, United StatesGlad to meet youOsho,Good evening.I wanted to start out with a series of questions about these interview sessions. Journalists, I'm sure, have gotten to learn a lot about you, and I'm wondering what you've learned about some of the journalists?Nothing.Osho,This is probably the highest degree of visibility that you've had in this country since you came here several years ago. Where do you go from here? You've called yourself the world's greatest showman. Are you planning to take your show on the road?No, the roads will come to Rome! All roads will be coming to Rajneeshpuram. I’m not going on any road.Do you plan to continue speaking?Yes.There've been rumors you might go back into a silent period.I create rumors also.Osho,Does this herald an expansion phase for Rajneeshees – your going so public? Is it possible in the next few years we might see communes going to Portland, or Rajneeshees recruiting a new membership, led with you in this more vocal phase?They are increasing, and they are expanding all over the world.Specifically, what sort of efforts are going on?The same that is happening here, is happening around the world in all of my communes. People are trying to live in a new way. The past of humanity has failed, utterly failed. It has not been able to create a better man, a better society. Civilization has only remained a word; it has not been yet actualized. In my commune you can see the beginnings of a new man.The commune is not a family. It is just the opposite – dissolution of the family. Families are small units which have kept people confined, their love confined, their respect confined. A commune is coming into the open, out of your small circle of hypnotic conditioning.In the commune you are not a Hindu or a Christian or a Mohammedan. In the commune you are not a communist or a fascist. The commune does not live according to any ideology – political or religious or social. Each individual lives according to his freedom, according to his responsibility, according to his meditative consciousness. And the more a person meditates, goes deeper into himself, he starts living on the outside with new values which he had never known before: love, compassion, friendliness, joy, celebration – and for no reason at all.People celebrate when there is some reason to celebrate. We simply celebrate, because celebration in itself is a reason. There is no need for any other reason; it is enough unto itself.Our people are free in every possible way. So we are dropping the old patterns of jealousy, competitiveness, politics. There is no politics, there is no competitiveness, there is no jealousy. If one lover moves to another lover, there is no antagonism – it is simply understood that it is human.Many inhuman things have been imposed on man. For example, marriage is inhuman: it is forcing two people to live together for a future about which they know nothing. Here, this moment is enough, and if you find yourselves loving each other the next moment also, good. And if you find that it is difficult, it has become nagging, it has become poisoned – that you are no longer interested in each other – then to go on living in it is ugly. Then being together is wasting energy, the lives of two people. Both can move, and both can move before things become bad, before things go sour. When they are sweet, friendly, they can move, with gratefulness for all those beautiful moments that they lived together.Osho,Do you feel that you have a moral code? Is there a wrong? Is there a right?No, I don’t have any moral code. All moral codes are inventions of different societies in different geographies in different situations, but there is no moral code which is universal.So I don’t teach any moral code, because what is moral today may become immoral tomorrow; what is immoral today may become moral tomorrow. So I don’t teach a code that fixes people with the past. I give them insight – to see, to be clear, to be aware, to be conscious – so that they can find what is good, what is bad, in each situation without any code.My people are not living according to any code, any doctrine, any creed. They are living according to their consciousness. And the whole effort is how to raise your consciousness higher and higher. So to me there is only one morality, and that is being a conscious being. And then act out of it. You cannot act wrongly.The perception outside of Rajneeshpuram is that what you're teaching amounts to anarchy – maybe a pleasant sort of anarchy. Would you agree with that definition?That is absolutely wrong. Anarchy is a reaction against what the governments have done to man. It is not a revolution. It is simply a reaction, and you cannot live by reactions. For example, the founder of anarchy, Prince Kropotkin, simply wants all the governments to be dissolved immediately. That is stupid, because man is not capable of coping – even with all the courts, all the police, all the army and the whole hierarchy of government. Man is criminal, man is a murderer, man is a rapist – so this is a stupid idea, to dissolve all the governments.My idea is not for anarchy – that is not my goal – but to create better individuals. Finally, perhaps, one day we will have so many conscious individuals on the earth that there will be no need of any government. But I am not preaching anarchy.In that case, for your followers who are dealing under current forms of government, how do you counsel them to deal with the laws of the land? Do you urge them to perform civil disobedience where they see it necessary?No. We fight the government, the government agencies – and we follow their rules, because we are playing their game. And we can play the game better than they are playing. In four years we have proved to them how stupid they are. Laws are made by them, rules are made by them, but we can find loopholes in their laws and loopholes in their rules. And we are going to be here, and are going to fight to the ultimate end.So we are not against their laws. But their laws are made by mediocre politicians, and we have far more intelligent people to fight them. We have the biggest law firm in the whole world: four hundred legal experts, continuously getting ready for more and more fights, on more and more grounds.And your governments – the state government, the federal government – are all doing many things illegally, against the constitution. It is their constitution, it is their law, but they are doing things against it, going against it. We will be in favor of the constitution, and we will go against them. We will be in favor of the laws, and prove to them that they are illegal. So our way of fighting is not to disobey; our way is to prove that we are obeying the laws and you are disobeying your own laws. The laws are yours, made by you, and you have committed so many stupidities in them that we are perfectly capable of fighting with you.Osho,After all the time that Rajneeshees have invested in setting up this incredible social experiment, it must be disappointing to you to have met with the level of rejection and persecution.No, in fact, it was perfectly expected. Any new idea has to be ready to accept the challenge of hostility, rejection, persecution. I would have been disappointed if they had ignored me. They could not ignore me. And it is strange: it is a small commune, living in a desert, trying to make the desert green, an oasis – and they are terrified. These people who are living, loving, dancing, singing – what harm are these people going to do to them?In four years we have not committed a single crime. Not a single rape has happened in the commune. There is no prostitute in the commune, there is no murderer in the commune, there is no thief in the commune. The police in the commune are just sitting doing nothing, because there is nothing…We have a city magistrate, but in four years, nobody has been brought in the court as a criminal. Against such peaceful, loving people, the whole of Oregon is afraid. They must be just retarded people.It also sounds, though, like you're enjoying some of the commotion you're causing around the state.Mm…? I want it! Because that gives us strength; every challenge brings us strength. And we will go on creating more and more challenges. We will not let them sleep peacefully. We sleep peacefully, we have no trouble!I don't suppose there is something specific on the agenda that you'd like to discuss?No, nothing on an agenda.Osho,Has the furor throughout Oregon and the U.S. contributed at all to cynicism? You seem to have some very sharp-edged humor and I'm wondering if that helped develop some of that.The U.S. has nothing to give to me. In fact, in that way I am disappointed. I was thinking that America must be more intelligent than any other country, less prejudiced than any other country, really democratic – but being here for four years, what I have found is that democracy is just in the name. Behind the democracy, everything un-democratic is going on. Our own experience is a proof of it. I have not found that America is really a country where individuals are respected, freedom of speech is respected. It is only talked about.And I don’t see any sense of humor – not at all. They have been taking us so seriously, and we are taking them so nonseriously. But they cannot understand. We are joking all the time, but they cannot understand simple jokes. They have secret meetings, the governor, the attorney general, and they did not allow… They were discussing us and they did not allow a single one of our representatives to be there. If you are discussing us, it is simple courtesy that at least one person from our side should be there, and you should listen to what we have to say. They did not allow it. They did not allow any journalist either.The governor said, “After our secret meeting I will talk to you and inform you.” And whatever he informed us was simply lies and nothing else. We have found the confidential file which says just the opposite of what he had said to the people, to the journalists, to the media. He was saying, “Everything is under control and we are pacifying people. There is no problem to be worried about; the heat is cooling down.” And in the secret report that they prepared in the meeting, they are alerting the army to stay ready! Any moment, if they are ordered, they have to be able to reach Rajneeshpuram in three hours.Now, what kind of people are these? And what is the need to bring the army here? We are not a nation, that you have to attack us. And they are lying to the media, that things are getting settled and there is no problem. If there is no problem, then why is the army given the alert? And why have you given them a time, that within three hours you have to be able to reach Rajneeshpuram?So I don’t think these people have any sense of humor. They are just dodos.Who do you feel has treated you fairly since you've come to this country?I mean, I can't believe that everyone here has been against you.No, not everyone. Most of the journalists have been very fair, very loving, and those are the only people I have come in contact with from the outside world. They have been intelligent, and they could understand what I am saying and they could understand the sense of humor.All the journalists who have come here, except one or two, have enjoyed the place, loved the place, wanted to come again and again.Osho,I guess that's one reason I started to ask if you plan to maybe go out and speak to people?No.So many Rajneeshees here have said, “Oh, if only you could meet Osho, you'd find out what a wonderful man he is!” – which to me would logically indicate that if you went out and met Oregon and talked to the people, and they found out you weren't this horrible monster in the middle of a bunch of red-robed followers, it would be easier that way?No, it would not be, because I have been moving around the country for thirty years in India. No, it is not so. Shoes have been thrown at me, stones have been thrown at me. I am speaking, and in the crowd a band is playing so nobody can hear what I am saying. Poison has been given to me twice, to kill me.The last thing before I left was an attempt on my life, before ten thousand sannyasins. And, because the police got information beforehand that someone is going to attack me, twenty police officers were present, and a man threw a knife at me. Ten thousand eye witnesses, twenty government officers as eye witnesses – and still the man is freed by the court because the political pressure, the religious pressure, is too much. And the magistrate accepted it, in privacy, that nothing can be done about it. The man was freed.So I know – and I have had enough of it. So I want to be here. If anybody is thirsty, he can come. If he wants to think me a monster, so far so good. That will give him good nightmares!Well, let's say I'm the average person in Eugene or Portland, I haven't seen anything except what's on the news or in the paper – does that mean that I have to drive to Rajneeshpuram to find out, or how would I get information?That’s the only way. You have to come. And it is such an experiment that there is no other way: you have to come here and be here and meet people and see with your own eyes what is happening.And it is open. It is not like Soviet Russia, that you cannot enter here, that you cannot meet people, that you cannot remain for a few days as our guest. You can move freely, nobody is preventing you. That’s the only way.And we have our communes all over the world. So if Germans want to know about us, in Germany we have twelve communes; if Holland wants to know about us, we have our communes there, on the same pattern, with the same way of life, the same approach toward life. We have places in Australia, in India, we are opening one in Japan, and soon we’ll be all over the world. Small oases, so whoever wants to know about us has to travel.Osho,The past few months, there has been talk of the effort going on in Australia, rumors that perhaps you might be moving to Australia. And yet I see Rajneeshees bidding on heavy equipment at auctions in Eugene, I see a lot of expansion going on here. What is the real story?I was just joking – because Australia seems to be so much afraid of me! Only Sheela has been there – my secretary – and she has created so much turmoil there that they are getting very afraid that I may be coming. So I told the journalist, “Yes, I am coming. Tell them to get ready.”But I am not going anywhere. I am going to be here and fight the American idiots who are destroying democracy and all the human values for which America stands. It is a very strange situation. I am fighting for the American constitution, American values, against the Americans! But this will expose America to the whole world – that is their fear. And I’m not going anywhere.I'm sure Oregonians will be delighted to hear that!A question on the joking: you've rattled so many people's cages by saying, “Oh, well, maybe I'll go to Australia,” or, “Oh, yes, I want to take over the world.”Yes.Do you and Sheela sit down and say, “OK, let's frighten Australia this week,” or is it…?No, it is spontaneous. There is no need, because we are absolutely nonserious about it. In joking, everything is allowed. There is no problem.Osho,The Constitution offers freedom of religion. It seems that what you are offering is freedom from religion.Certainly.So how do you counsel people to pursue that? Is freedom from religion possible?It is possible, and should be made possible, because religion has dominated people, exploited people, kept poverty in the world. Religion has committed so many crimes that it is time we should be finished with it.Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” The same is the tone of Buddha, the same is the preaching of Mahavira. They are all consoling the poor people, that, “You will inherit the kingdom of God.” Marx was right on only one point in all his writings, that religion has been the opium of the people. And I agree with him only on that point. It has been the opium; they have drugged people to remain poor.Even in a country like America, which has all the riches, is the richest country, there are thirty million people suffering from poverty. Thirty million people are suffering from poverty, and Ronald Reagan goes on piling up nuclear weapons. And there is no point in having more nuclear weapons, because Russia and America combined have enough nuclear weapons to destroy humanity seven hundred times. So what is the point now? Nuclear weapons have made war absolutely obsolete. It is meaningless. The whole meaning of war is to win. Now there will be no winner, and nobody defeated: the whole of life will be finished. So now war is against life and in favor of death. It is not a question of American democracy or Russian communism; it is a question of whether life is to exist on the earth or not.Thirty million people in your own country are starving on the streets, and you are preparing for war. And you are already too well equipped. But the politicians are not interested; in fact they want poor people. Every politician wants poor people because they can always be purchased. The religious people want poor people because they can be easily converted. That is what Christianity is doing all over the world. Islam used to do it – in one hand the sword, in the other hand the Koran. You can choose: either the Koran, or the sword will behead you. Christianity has changed the technique. In one hand the Bible, in the other hand bread and butter. A little bit nicer, but the inner game is the same.In India, I tried to find out whether any rich person has ever been converted to Christianity. I could not find a single case. Those who are converted to Christianity are orphans, beggars, poor people, starving people. Now, naturally the Catholic pope and his bishops and the whole army of their priests would like that abortion should not be legal – because if it becomes legal, Catholics will be less in number. Where are they going to find orphans? Birth control should not be allowed, it is against God; the population should be allowed to grow, so people are more and more poor – and that is more customers for the Christians.Osho,I agree with some of your analyses of the major religions of the world; but it seems that one reason so many people become religious is that they need a church to make decisions for them. And if people rely on churches, how could these religions ever be abolished, when it is those people who are supporting them?In fact, this is a very vicious circle. Religions teach every child: as the child is born, immediately religions catch hold if him – either Hindu or Mohammedan or Christian – and they start making him feel that he is not capable of deciding for himself, that he has to depend on those who know, that he has to listen to the parents, that he has to listen to teachers, that he has to listen to the priests. They make children slowly dependent. And those children lose their sense of strength, their being, and then naturally they want to be advised and commanded, to be ordered on everything. They can function only if they are ordered. If they are not ordered, they are in confusion; they are always in search of a father figure.It is not strange that they call the Christian priest “father.” It is not strange that God is called “the father.” There is a simple psychology behind it: they need a father figure. But I am saying it is a vicious circle. Religions create it, and then they say people need guidance. Nobody needs guidance.I have people here – there are five thousand people here, there are one million sannyasins around the earth – and none of them needs any guidance. None of them is dependent on anybody else. If one million people can depend on themselves and take the sole responsibility for themselves – because I am not their father, I am not even their uncle! And I am not their leader, because I cannot humiliate a person by forcing him to follow me. I am just a friend, not more than that. I can talk to these people; it is up to them to decide for or against. I am not asking them to believe in me.And all the religions have done that, that’s why they are called faiths. I am against faith. My whole approach is, unless you know it, never believe anything. And the beauty is that when you know, there is no need to believe – you know it.Belief is always for the ignorant. Faith is always for those who are not courageous enough to inquire. I teach doubt, I teach skepticism, I teach inquiry. And a person has to remain in the state of not-knowing until he comes to know. Belief covers his ignorance. You do not know about God, you do not know about what happens after death: naturally you start believing in somebody who pretends to know.Neither your popes know about it, nor did Jesus Christ know about it. Even on the cross, he shouted toward the sky, “God, have you forsaken me?” He was a believer – just illiterate, uneducated. And the people who were following him were also of the same grade, third rate. Those third-rate people became apostles of Christianity – carpenters, woodcutters, fishermen. The whole of Judea was full of learned rabbis, and not a single rabbi was a follower of Jesus Christ!What does it show? It simply shows that Jesus’ appeal is only for the very ignorant. And those ignorant people want to cover their ignorance – they are ready to believe. You will find a totally different kind of people around me. You will not find ignorant people, you will not find illiterate people; you will find people who are almost all graduates from universities, have Master’s degrees, have Ph.D.s, D.Litts. Most of them are highly qualified professionals: psychologists, professors, doctors. You cannot force these people to believe.They have come to me because everywhere they were being indoctrinated, and their intelligence was in rebellion. Here, they have found a place where no indoctrination is happening. I don’t have any doctrine to teach. I don’t have any program to give. I only deprogram people and leave them to themselves. Now find your way, be courageous and go into the unknown.Osho,Here in Rajneeshpuram, so many of these people who have come to be near you have worked – “worshipped,” I believe is what they call it – and they've made the desert flower. It is impressive how this place looks. A lot of people have drawn some parallels between that and the Mormons settling in Utah, the Jews when they first went to Israel; and there is the theory that the only thing that really separates organized religions from cults, or what you choose to call them, is just time and money and effort. Do you see similarities between the Rajneeshees and…?None: how many Rolls Royces do the Mormons have? In a five-thousand-member community, we have ninety Rolls Royces, hundreds of other cars, one hundred buses, five planes, the city centrally air-conditioned. What those people can…?Well, you have Rolls Royces, they had wives!They cannot have more wives than we can have!Not now, that's true!We can defeat anybody. And just look at my commune women: you will not find more juicy women anywhere. They are just gorgeous!Osho,Which brings us back to sex. I wanted to deal a little bit with the precautions the commune has taken against AIDS, because it is probably one of the foremost efforts worldwide to fight the disease. How did you first become aware of it and recognize the serious nature of that illness?I have a medical center here: we have the best doctors possible from all over the world, not only from Oregon – we have an FRCS from England – and they are continuously watching everything, so that our commune can be protected from any kind of attack. And AIDS is going to be the most tremendous disease that man has ever seen.It is their research on it. And if they feel there is something that I should be informed about, they inform me; Sheila brings the information. And soon we are going to do something about it. We will be the first in the whole world to do something.Right now what is being done about it is that every government is trying to suppress the information about it, because no government wants the world to know how many AIDS patients they have. The Oregon government has made such a test, that ninety percent of AIDS patients will pass it. This is simply criminal, because those ninety percent that you have passed and cleared will be spreading the disease. And the disease is such that even by kissing you can give it to another person. It is not necessary that you should make some sexual contact – just by kissing. Saliva is the carrier.I have told my people to stop kissing. Instead of it, rub noses with each other – and enjoy it! And in fact, there are people, Eskimos, who do it already. They are five thousand years behind, but as far as AIDS is concerned they are far superior to us. It is not that they don’t know about kissing – they have seen missionaries kissing, and they laugh at it: “What kind of dirty people are these?” Because kissing means transferring all kinds of diseases to each other, it is absolutely unhygienic. In India we have many aboriginal tribes where kissing is simply laughed at. They have their ways – and man is so inventive: they rub noses, they rub each others’ ear lobes; these are all erotic points. And woman is so erotic, her whole body is erotic; there is no need to put her in danger.In India, you will be surprised to know that the ordinary position of making love – man on top of woman – is known as the missionary posture, because it was the Christian missionaries who were first seen in that posture. Otherwise, in India, it was insulting. A woman, who is softer, more fragile – and a huge animal is doing push ups on the poor woman! In India it was always otherwise, man underneath and woman on top of him. And in fact it is psychologically also very significant, because if the woman is active on top, then there is a possibility of her having orgasm with the man. But in the West, the stupidity has been that the woman should lie down, almost like a corpse. If she is active, that means she is not a lady.Somehow we keep returning to this topic!It is you!Osho,That's what all the guys say!I peered through the window and watched as your car arrived, and you danced with your sannyasins. When you look into their eyes, what do you see on their faces?Just love, and nothing else. Great love and great gratitude. I don’t think anybody has been loved so much as I have been loved. Jesus had only twelve disciples. I have one million – and out of one million, ninety percent are women. So it is really groovy!Osho,Are you afraid of death?No. Death is not the end of life, it is the culmination of life. It is one of the most beautiful experiences. If you have really lived, then only will you experience the beauty of death. If you missed life itself – in listening to the sermons in the churches, in reading the Bible, and all kinds of nonsense – if you have missed life itself, you will die in a coma. Before death comes, you will become unconscious, so you will miss the experience of death.The people who are living consciously – and that is my basic teaching – live consciously every moment. Even while making love, remain conscious and a witness. It is a life-long growth of becoming alert. Then you can die consciously, and you can experience death as the ultimate orgasm. It is far bigger than any sexual orgasm. In fact, the difference is not only of quantity, the difference is of quality. It is immeasurable.Living moment to moment, one learns how to die beautifully, silently, joyously. One is going on another adventure – unknown. I don’t give them any ideas what is going to happen after death, because that is absolutely wrong, destructive. It is as if I loved a movie and I tell you the whole story of the movie, and then tell you, “I have brought a ticket for you, go and see it!” I have destroyed it already, what is the point of seeing it? I give them the ticket, but I don’t tell them what is going to happen. That, they have to discover on their own.It is tremendously beautiful. I have lived before and I have died before. And I have died consciously, so I know what a beauty it is. It is not the end; it is always a new beginning.In existence nothing dies – cannot. You cannot destroy even a small pebble. You can grind it, but it will be there, now in powder form. You can throw the powder into the ocean; it will be there, resting somewhere in the bottom of the ocean. But now it is an accepted scientific truth that nothing can be destroyed, you can only change its form.And if this is so about matter, what to say about consciousness, which is the highest evolution on the earth? Existence cannot be so stupid, so unintelligent, as to destroy consciousness. It does not even destroy stones – how can it destroy your soul?But I don’t say to anybody to believe in me. I say, experiment. And right now you are alive, so don’t bother about death. When it comes, it comes. Right now, experiment with life, and be ready. Death can come any moment, and particularly in these days when politicians are preparing to destroy the whole of humanity, and religions have made their contribution through AIDS. That will destroy – if politicians cannot, then AIDS will destroy humanity.So we are really living without any tomorrow. Man has always lived without tomorrow, but never with such a crisis. And I say that AIDS is a religious disease, because its beginning is in homosexuality and homosexuality was born in the monasteries of the religions. There, they segregated men and women, they did not allow men and women to meet. No woman can enter in a monastery where only men live, neither can men go into a nunnery: you are creating the situation for homosexuality.Religions have been teaching celibacy, which creates perversions because it is unnatural. It is just as if somebody says to you that unless you stop urinating you will not enter into the kingdom of God. That is just nonsense! But you can find a few idiots who will start making an effort, because if this is the price they are ready to do it. But what they will do is they will pretend, they will be hypocrites, and they will find perverted ways, from the back door.You cannot go against nature. Celibacy is against nature, and all the religions have been preaching celibacy: they are responsible for AIDS. So today the situation is really more dangerous than it has ever been. Tomorrow is more uncertain than it has ever been.So live today – with intensity, with totality, with as much consciousness as possible. And I have here 112 methods for how to increase your consciousness. So if death comes tomorrow, there is no problem. Only my people will be dying joyously, with smiles on their faces.Osho,At your news conference a couple weeks ago, you made the comment… I think you invited someone to assassinate you. I couldn't tell if it was a joke or not. You made the comment that Jesus didn't have the media, you have the media.Yes, I have.Is it a joke? Is it fear of death by natural causes, or is it just because that would be the logical way you could see the end of your life?Most probably that will be the logical end of my life. It is a serious joke! And I would prefer that way, rather than dying on the bed. Ninety-nine percent of people do that; I don’t want to belong to that crowd! I would rather be assassinated than die on my bed.And to me, there is no problem. I have experienced life. I have tasted all its joys. There is nothing that I have missed. If death comes this moment, I will not ask for even one more moment to complete my sentence. It is perfectly okay. In existence, nothing is ever completed. Only in novels stories begin and end. In life, there is no beginning and there is no end. Abruptly things start, and abruptly things finish. There is no preface, there is no appendix, there are no footnotes, nothing. It is always in the middle that the story begins.When I used to read – for five years I have not been reading anything – but I loved reading so much that I had to find ways to make the book more interesting. I would begin in the middle, then go to the end, then come to the beginning. And that was more hilarious, gave more suspense.Life is really hilarious. You just have to know how to love it. We don’t have any God, we don’t have any heaven and hell. We have only this moment, so we can pour all our energies into it. And we are doing that. We are celebrating and enjoying and loving and laughing and dancing. In fact, that is what creates hostility toward me.The poor are hostile toward the rich; the sad people are hostile toward those who can laugh and love and dance. The whole world lives in such misery and suffering that they cannot tolerate me. My existence and my people’s existence proves them wrong. I am not a person just to argue: I give existential argument. My commune is an existential argument to the whole world, that you also could have loved and danced and sung and enjoyed, but you have chosen wrong paths, so you go to church, you go to the synagogue.My people don’t go there. There is no need for them to go anywhere. They don’t pray – they are not beggars. And to whom to pray? There is nobody in the sky to pray to. My people meditate. They sit silently doing nothing; they enter into their own silence, enjoy it. The more you enjoy it, the deeper and deeper you enter into it. There comes a point where you are exactly at your center of being.And that’s what I call enlightenment: a great explosion of luminosity, clarity. All questions disappearing, all doubts dissolved, you have found the answer. The answer is within you – nobody can supply it. And all these prophets and messiahs have been doing just that: they are supplying you with the answer. And a borrowed answer is not going to help. Those borrowed answers have made the whole of humanity miserable. They have taken their individuality, they have taken their intelligence, they have taken their inquiry, they have taken everything away from the people and left them utterly poor.My people are multidimensionally rich.Years from now, when you die, what happens to the Rajneeshees?They will celebrate my death.And then go to the four winds – or stay together?It is for them to decide what to do. I am not going to decide. Remember, that is the strategy of a politician: he wants to control people even after his death. The religious leaders declare their successors – but what is the point of it? The point is, the dead ruling over the living.When I am gone, I am gone. And it is a double thing to be understood: when I am gone, I am gone to you, you are gone to me. I will be doing whatsoever I want to do, you should do whatsoever you want to do. Nobody has to control. You cannot control me when I am dead, you cannot tell me what I should do after death. Neither will I tell anybody.I have made you love life, relish every moment. You know the secret. You will not miss me; you don’t need any successor. You are my successor – everyone, individually. If you still decide to remain together, good; if you want to go separately on your own ways, that is even better. But I am not going to dominate you, either alive or dead. To dominate anybody in any way is criminal.Sheela: We need to change the tape.Change…You can take a few grapes.I think after the interview.After the interview? Okay.Osho,What will Rajneeshpuram look like in ten years? Or what do you want it to look like in ten years?Nothing – I never think about the future. The future is not my concern at all. To me, now is the only time and here is the only space. Beyond that, I have no concern.While I am here, I love my people making a desert into an oasis. When I am gone, these people will be here. These are intelligent people, they don’t need any instructions. Even now, I am not giving them any instructions. They can understand: they know that I love greenery, so they started planting as many trees as possible; they know I love water, so they have made dams, lakes. They love me. From my shoes up to my hat, they make everything for me. Even my watch is made by my sannyasins. That’s why it is invaluable. I cannot sell it for one million dollars or one billion dollars: no price can purchase this watch, because it has been made with such love. And these are not diamonds, just real stones. Not phony diamonds – authentic stones. But love cannot be sold or purchased.I never think about the future. That’s why my life is without any tensions; I never think about the past, so I am not burdened with the past. I never imagine about the future, so I’m not worried about the future. And today is enough unto itself. I enjoy it. When I go to bed, I thank the whole of existence that it has been beautiful today. And if by chance I wake up again, we will see.Osho,You made the comment that you think there can never be peace between Oregonians and Rajneeshees. Why is that? Do you not want peace?I always love peace, but what I had said actually has been misunderstood – and it was bound to be, because the question that was asked was not about peace, it was about coexistence. And I said, “Never,” because coexistence is an ugly word, political. It means you are an enemy: “I am hostile, I am an enemy, but what to do – we have to live. I am here, you are here, and we have to live somehow, so some compromise is needed.” That is coexistence.I don’t believe in coexistence. Either I will turn Oregon red, or they are free to turn us into Oregonians. That is peace, not coexistence: one existence. Till that happens, the fight will continue.What if Oregonians decided just to leave Rajneeshees alone?I don’t think anybody can leave Rajneeshees to live alone. We won’t allow that!Osho,I didn't think so.I wasn't there to hear the comment, but it was said that before you take final sannyas you may tell your followers to wear rainbow colors.Just a joke, because I don’t want my sannyasins to look like buffoons.Osho,One more thing on the Oregon issue: the thing that seems to be the most open wound in the state was when the Rajneeshees won the election in what was then Antelope. It was a legal election, it was by the democratic process, but still there was the feeling in Oregon that this was a take-over. Is there any way to ever bridge the gap that was caused by that? Is there any chance the Rajneeshees would ever pull out of the City of Rajneesh, or is that now always going to be the twin city?No, there is no way, because they are absolutely wrong and we cannot compromise with anything wrong. It is a simple democratic process: the sannyasins are the majority, and whoever is the majority will rule. If they want to rule, they should create a majority and they can have the rule. There is no problem in it. And one should not be so ugly in behavior, that you don’t want to be ruled by the majority, and the minority wants to rule the majority!It is not a take-over. Otherwise, Ronald Reagan has taken over America – kill that man! If the majority supports it, then that’s a democratic process. And in the dead city of Antelope it is not a small majority. There are not more than one dozen people, and there are hundreds of sannyasins there. They can bring more people if they want, otherwise we are going to bring more people.Osho,So what's next, then? Will you and Rajneeshees get involved in the Oregon political system you so despise, run for office?No, there is no political problem for us. And we are not involved in any way with politics. The sannyasins who are living in Antelope were being tortured by the minority; they were not being allowed small, legal things that they wanted. The minority should have thought about it – it was such a simple thing. They were denying the majority things which they asked for legally. They were not asking for anything illegal. If they wanted to make a house, the permit would not be given; if they wanted to purchase land, the permit would not be given – on what grounds? Their children would not be admitted in the school – on what grounds? A minority torturing a majority: that is democracy?And since we have come there, nobody can complain that we have harassed any Oregonian. We invited them: they have taken their children out of school, and still you think that there should be some peace! Many of them have already left, and the others who are still hanging around are hanging around because there is nobody else except us to purchase their properties. We will purchase their properties, so they can leave. If they cannot be with us, there is no reason for them to be there – but we are going to be there.Can we expect people in Rajneeshpuram to be running for the State house or the State senate in the next few years?No, we are not interested in politics. Our interests are our own comforts – our houses, our lands; we wanted more land, we wanted more houses. Our interest is not politics at all. We are not politicians; nobody is running for the assembly. You have many idiots in the state to do that, you need not…I guess I asked because you've received so much opposition from the political arena that you've mentioned, that you've beaten them at their own game before.No, but if sometimes the need arises, we will do everything to beat them on their own grounds. But we are a small minority, and the majority of millions of people in Oregon is threatened by us. This is something ridiculous. We should be threatened by them, we are not; they are threatened by us, which is simply absurd.That’s why I say I have known people from all the countries of the world, but Oregon seems to be special. It seems all the idiots of the world go on being born in Oregon. Strange!For example, they are unnecessarily harassing us. That’s what they did in Antelope. We were not interested in making a mayor or a council if they had not harassed our people. Why should we bother about all that? We are not interested in power or prestige. In fact, it was so difficult for our people to persuade somebody to be mayor, to persuade somebody to be the councilor – nobody wants it. Who wants to get that sort of job? There are so many groovy things going on around, and the poor mayor is sitting in the town hall having a meeting about unnecessary things. We are not interested – but if they harass us too much, we can do anything.Sheela: We need to change…You can change, but I will not change!I was saying, we will fight in every possible way. We do not want to harass anybody, and we do not want to be harassed by anybody. We are harmless people, we will not do any harm to anybody. But if somebody does harm to us, then we are not Christians – we are not going to follow Jesus Christ, that when somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the other cheek. To me, that is insulting the person who has hit you. It is making him subhuman; you are becoming holier than thou. No – we are just human beings and we respect you. If you hit me on one cheek, I will hit you on both your cheeks immediately. Just, I respect you as a human being; you needed it, you deserved it, you earned it.There is a story in Buddha’s life. He said in one sermon that you should forgive a person seven times. One of his disciples stood up and asked, “What about the eighth time?”A reasonable question. Buddha was at a loss for a moment. He had never expected that somebody would ask about the eighth time. So he said, “Okay, make it seventy-seven.”But the man stood up again and he said, “It makes no difference. What about the seventy-eighth time?”I have heard one story of a Christian saint who was hit on one of his cheeks. Obviously, being a follower of Jesus, he gave his other cheek. But the other man was also a man of some guts: he hit the saint on the other cheek even more forcibly.At that moment the saint jumped on the man, clutched his neck and told him, “Now I am going to kill you!”But the man said, “Wait! You are a saint and your master has said that you should give the other cheek.”He said, “Okay, I followed the master, I gave you the other cheek – but now I have no other cheek. Now I am free, and I will teach you a lesson!”If they go on harassing us, we enjoy it – so there is nothing serious in it. But we will harass them in our own way.But you're not planning to run for governor?No, we don’t need, we don’t need. It is far better to harass the governor than to put our governor, and then that governor will be harassed by the Oregonians. No, we will do it this way: let the governor be theirs – we will harass him!And we are enjoying the whole game. If they can understand a little sense of humor, all the clouds can disappear within a second. From our side, there is no problem at all.They are talking about land-use laws, and none of them has come here to see what we have done to their land. They may be knowing land-use laws, but they don’t know what has happened to the land. For fifty years the land was lying dead – it was under land-use law! They were perfectly happy; no-one was bothered with it. It was for sale for fifty years. Nobody purchased it, because it was only a desert – what are you going to do with it?We purchased a desert, we changed the desert to bloom: now we are creating sufficient crops for the commune, we are creating enough vegetables for the commune – and they are talking about land-use laws! They should learn here how land has to be used. We can teach their farmers who have similar kinds of deserts. They should send their farmers to our place to learn. But those people are strange – they never come themselves, they never want to see, they are so afraid.Even your governor is so afraid. We have invited him many times: “At least come once, before you decide against or for, but at least come once, and see what harm we have done to your land.” But I have never seen such cowards. It is so simple to come here and see we have done no harm; we have for the first time made the land here happy.When I had come here, there was only one home. Now we have homes for five thousand sannyasins, centrally air-conditioned; we have created all the roads; we have created the lakes, sufficient for our people in any time of crisis. We are doing everything to make all the hills green. But they won’t allow it, because we are against land-use laws. They should burn their land-use laws, and learn how land has to be used! And we are going to force them. We are going to fight on every issue, up to the Supreme Court. And we are not going to accept any stupid laws; if those laws don’t fit with us, then change them. Man is not for laws, laws are for man.Good.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 29 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Deva BhaskarCorreo Brasiliense, Brasilia, BrazilOsho,I'm so grateful for this moment.Brazil's a very poor country. Seventy percent of the people are living in misery. There is no food, no housing, no education. But they have three hopes: to win the lottery, to be saved by God, or to make a political revolution.There is a very popular expression in Brazil which says, “God is Brazilian.” Do you think so?God must be Brazilian – but it is very unfortunate, because only poor people, suffering people, need a God. God is just opium. You can take the opium and forget your suffering, your misery, your poverty. So the more a country is poor, the more it will be addicted to God. It is always the same proportion. The more happy, contented, comfortable the country is, who bothers about God? For what?Even in the ordinary life of a man, he remembers God only when he is in misery, suffering, trouble, sick, bankrupt. When everything is going great, nobody remembers God; there is no need. God is the need of the suffering, downtrodden. So if you say seventy percent of Brazilians are without food, without houses, then God must be a Brazilian.God is the property of the poor, the hope of those who are living a hopeless life. And they will continue to live in poverty until they get rid of this God. So tell the Brazilians, “God is a Brazilian, so it is our duty to finish him.”Once God is finished from the world, man need not suffer. For the simple reason that then we will start functioning intelligently. There is no need for poverty, there is no need for misery, there is no need for so much sickness, there is no need for man to live only seventy years; these are just because we have not tried intelligence in living. Wherever we have tried it we have reached immense heights.Only as far as man is concerned are we dependent on God. It is only three hundred years since science came into being. It revolted against the world and all kinds of superstitions. And within three hundred years, science has given man so much, that in thirty thousand years religions have not been able to provide. And this, too, science has contributed against the priests, against the politicians. If politicians and priests are not there, man can take a quantum leap.There is no barrier between man and paradise. But the priest wants people to be poor, because only the poor need him. It is a simple business ideology. The politician wants people poor, because only the poor can be conditioned. They are illiterate, uneducated, and they are in so much suffering that any hope and they are ready to buy it. It may be God, it may be communism, it may be revolution – something in the future, faraway – the poor are ready to buy it.The politicians have been selling hope for thousands of years, the priests have been selling hope. And it is really strange that after such a long time, they are still doing good business. Man seems to be fast asleep, without looking at the whole strategy. The priests and the politicians have to disappear from the earth. Only then the new man – rich, comfortable, skillful, creative – can come into being.So it is the Brazilians’ duty to kill God – he must be there. It is the duty of all the poor people of the world to kill God. The rich people would like him to survive. For the rich people God is a beautiful investment, because God creates a buffer between the rich and the poor. And because of that buffer the rich are protected. Remove the buffer and the rich and all their exploitation will be exposed. And then no priest can go on befooling the poor in the name of God, in the name of fate, in the name of the law of action, past lives. All kinds of things have been invented just to keep the poor poor, ready to be sucked by all kinds of parasites.And the poor man has lived in poverty for so long that he has become accustomed to it. He accepts it as his life. He does not know what life is, so he cannot think that he is missing something. To miss something, first you have to have it.And that’s the function of my communes. In every country, I want my communes to live as richly, abundantly, joyously, contented – without God, without heaven, without hell, without politicians, without priests – and prove to the world that people can live without all this nonsense! And they are living far more beautifully than anybody else.Nobody on the earth is singing a song of joy. Nobody on the earth is in a state to dance. We have to create these oases in the whole desert of the earth, so people can at least see the possibility. They can also be part of this ecstasy, this pilgrimage.At first they will be hostile, because it hurts the ego to see that others have attained and you have failed. So the first reaction is that the others are pretending; their laughter is just made-up, their joy, their dance is just show business. But how long can you befool yourself by finding such explanations? People cannot go on working for twelve hours, fourteen hours a day, and still be able to laugh, enjoy, dance, love. Sooner or later, the outside people are bound to be attracted to our communes. Our communes have to finally become a kind of university where we teach not three R’s, but three L’s: love, life, laughter.And there is no other hope for the poor. Revolution has failed. In Russia, the politicians were giving them the hope that after the revolution everything will be paradise. Sixty years have passed; there is no sign of any paradise. Of course, one thing has happened: they have distributed poverty equally. And they don’t allow Russian people to come in contact with the rich countries, out of the simple fear that if they can see how richly, intensely and totally other people are living, then this communism has failed. It could not make them rich, it has only made them all poor – equally poor. So equality has been achieved.The classes have not disappeared, their names have changed. It was the bourgeois class and the proletariat – the poor and the rich. Now it is the ordinary citizen and the member of the Communist Party. The member of the Communist Party has more power than any rich man ever had, is using for himself all the luxuries that any rich man ever had, is living comfortably with all the technological devices at hand.And it is only in Russia that to become a member of the Communist Party is so difficult. In any other country you can just become a member if you want to – any moment. No qualifications, no conditions have to be fulfilled. But in Russia, to become a member of the Communist Party is a long process, a long discipline – far longer than a poor man has to travel to become rich. The distance between the hierarchy that is in power and the people is bigger in Russia than anywhere else, for the simple reason that the middle class has completely disappeared and it has left a big gap.In other societies, the society is divided not only into two classes – about that, Marx is absolutely wrong. Society is divided into many steps. Those two may be the extreme steps – the poorest and the richest – but in between there are many classes. So there is a link. And the middle class is the biggest class, because on one hand it joins the poor, on the other hand it joins the super-rich.In Russia the middle class has disappeared, because the rich are no longer there. So the rich and the middle class both have been reduced to the proletariat. Poverty is so equal that you don’t feel hurt, you don’t feel jealous. There is nothing to feel jealous of; everybody is just like you.God has failed, Marx has failed. And I don’t give any hope – naturally, I cannot fail. They were all giving hope, and they could not fulfill the hopes. I am not giving you any hope. On the contrary, I am taking away all your hopes, all your future, so that you can live in this moment. Even if you have not much to live for, still, one can make this moment a paradise by small things.And if the whole of humanity is convinced that this is the only moment to live, the misers will disappear on their own accord – because they are not living, they are accumulating for the future. The monks and the nuns will disappear, because they are not living in the moment; they are living for some heaven, some paradise somewhere.So the basic thing today is that God, which is another name for hope; revolution, which is a materialistic name for God – they function exactly the same. Their function is to keep people intoxicated. My work is to wake people up and stop them taking all these opiums.If people are just a little bit awakened, we can disperse all nations, all nuclear weapons, all atomic plants – which are simply wasting energy. And the same energy can become creative and make people as rich as no Alexander the Great ever was. The clothes I am wearing, no emperor in the past could have used – and I am a poor man. It was simply impossible, because the technology was not there. We can make the whole earth full of emperors – living better than Ashoka, Akbar, Alexander, Napoleon, in every possible way.I don’t see any problem except the mind of the poor themselves, which is so conditioned that it still goes on believing in God – who has never answered any prayer. It goes on believing in paradise. If God was so compassionate, he would have given you paradise here. Why after death? Why not before death?And the poor people have to see the fact that all the revolutions have failed. The French Revolution failed, the Russian Revolution failed, the Chinese Revolution failed. They were bound to fail, because the revolutionaries who were going to take over the power would become the power elite, and the society would still be divided.And these power elites will be more dangerous than the rich people of old. In countries like Russia and China, you cannot create another revolution – for the simple reason that the revolutionaries who have taken over the power know how it has been taken over, so they have prevented every possibility. Even to talk about revolution is enough to be persecuted, killed, or exiled to Siberia.Even if Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, or Lenin himself, were to be born in Russia, there is no possibility that their books would be published. Only the government has a publications department. Anything that is published is published by the government, approved by the Communist Party. And Marx would not have been allowed to sit in the British Museum the whole day, doing nothing but reading and taking notes. His whole life, he never did anything except reading and writing; his writings are voluminous. But in Russia, that is not possible; he would not be counted as a proletarian.One of my friends was visiting Russia – he is a Buddhist bhikkhu, a follower of Buddha, a monk. He told me, “The first thing that was shocking to the Russians was my hands.”I said, “Your hands?”He said, “Yes. Whenever I shook hands with them, they immediately shrank back. They said, ‘You must be a bourgeois. Your hands don’t show that you have ever worked.’”I told the Buddhist monk, “You touch my hand. Then you will know that you are a proletarian and I am a bourgeois! That will give you great consolation.”Marx would not have been possible – no revolution in Russia is possible.Everything has failed that man has done up to now, for the simple reason that man does not change his conditioning, and goes on doing things with the same conditioned mind.All that is needed is a simple deprogramming. Your mind should be cleaned from being a Brazilian, from being an American, from being an Indian, from being a communist, from being a socialist, from being a Christian, Jew, Hindu. Whatever the name of your limitations, all those limitations should be dropped, so you can become an unlimited being. That is freedom, and that is true revolution – and it is an individual affair.So take my message to Brazil: please stop hoping, and start living! Out of your living, there is hope. Out of your hoping, there is only death and nothing else.Osho,Brazil has the second highest rate of AIDS in the world. Do you think it is possible to find a medicine against AIDS? Why are gays more sensitive to AIDS?First, the homosexuals have created the disease AIDS. It is a homosexual contribution to humanity. Then it can spread to heterosexuals, but the source of the disease is homosexuality.A few things will have to be understood. One, homosexuality is not the way of nature, not the way of existence. Existence always wants the opposite polarities to meet. Then only, can you create a better generation. Homosexuality is uncreative. And homosexuality is between two men, two women: there is no polarity, there is no tension, no challenge.People first started becoming homosexuals in monasteries, soldiers’ camps, school hostels, university hostels – wherever man was separated from women, it was going to happen.Biology knows nothing about your moralities. By the time a boy is fourteen he is capable of having a child; the same is true of the girl. But in all societies this is the time when their sex is repressed – and this is also the time when their sex energy is at its climax, between fourteen and twenty-one. Nearabout eighteen, you have your peak sexual energy, which you will never have again.It seems all societies have conspired that man should not know the blissfulness of orgasmic experience. This was a beautiful way to divert: he has to be educated first, he has to go to the university, and by the time he is back from the university – he may be twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight – he is already on the decline. He has lost the time when he could have attained orgasmic experience. Now he can only experience ejaculation. That proves what the religious people say, that it is a sheer waste of energy, you don’t get anything. And after making love a man feels frustrated; nothing comes out of it. He has missed the right timing – society has diverted him.If we want a more joyous world, the best thing will be that between fourteen and twenty-one, all girls and all boys are given birth control methods, and total freedom to mix with many boys, with many girls. Because you will never have this energy again. If it is lost, then it is lost forever. Then you will have to wait for the next life. That is why everybody is waiting for the next life – because they have missed something very essential in this life. They may not be aware of it, perhaps they are not aware, but there is a wound inside. Something that could have blossomed in them has not blossomed. That’s why there is so much despair.And then all the religions are teaching celibacy. First, they prevent the best time to know the secrets and mysteries of sex, and then they impose the idea of celibacy, that it is very spiritual. It is simply against nature, against your biology.The monks in the monasteries of all the religions, have been the first to find homosexuality. And the disease is basically homosexual – because nature never forgives. You have to follow the law: if you put your hand into the fire, you are going to be burned. Nature simply goes on its way. There is no question that you are a saint so you will not be burned, you are a celibate so you will not be burned, only the sinners will be burned – that is stupidity. Everybody who puts his hand into the fire is going to be burned.The law of nature is impartial, accepts no exception. And anybody who goes against nature, sooner or later will have to suffer for it. Homosexuality was the greatest crime against nature. A few things have to be understood before you can understand why AIDS evolved out of it.In ancient China, it was a common practice that if an emperor was getting old and his people did not want him to die, the method that was used to prolong his life was not a medicine; it was two beautiful young girls who would lie on either side of him in the night. And strange as it may seem, it worked, for thousands of years in China. Finding himself between two beautiful girls, he would become psychologically young again. A great lust for life would arise in him. He would like to be young again. Playing with those girls, there are moments when he forgets that he is old. And the lifespan of emperors in China has been the longest of any emperors in the whole world. This was the medicine.I mention it so that I can explain what is happening to the homosexuals. Because they are both men, their energies don’t have any tension, their energies don’t have any challenge; their energies, by and by, start losing the will to live. For what? There is no challenge. They start losing the desire to live. They may not be conscious of it. Just as the Chinese emperors started feeling a tremendous desire to live longer, perhaps forever – life is so beautiful, it is not to be lost: great lust arises in them. That lust gives you energy. That lust provokes all your stagnant forces into functioning.You can see it happen to a man who suddenly falls in love with a woman. You meet him on the road: you met him yesterday too, but you can see the difference. The man is looking radiant, his walk has a dance in it, he is whistling. And this man used to pass by on the street as if he were dragging himself against his will, because he has to reach his home. But today he is not walking, but running, because he has to reach home – the woman will be waiting there. Something that was dormant in him has become dynamic.Homosexuals, slowly, slowly go on losing their desire to live. That is the basic cause of the disease called AIDS. It is not a disease. If it were a disease, there would be a possibility of finding medicine for it. This is the most strange thing about it: it is not a disease. Otherwise, it might take some time, but we would be able to find some medicine for it. It is simply loss of the will to live. Now, what medicine can bring back the will to live? The man really wants, deep down, to die. He has dropped all hope of reaching the bank; he is ready to be drowned any moment. He has given himself a life sentence. He has crucified himself.Jesus only said that everybody has to carry his cross on his own shoulders – I wonder why he forgot that everybody has to crucify himself also! But people are doing that – carrying their cross on their shoulders, and then finally putting themselves on the cross.Homosexuality has to disappear if we want AIDS to be prevented. All homosexuals have to be taught again that the woman is something significant to their life; her warmth is something significant to keep them alive.Now it is a well-established psychological fact that if a child is given every nourishment except the warmth of the body – blankets are given, he is not kept in the cold, he is warm; all the food that is needed for his growth is given – but there is no human touch anywhere there is nobody to hug him, to hold him close to her chest, to her breast, where he can feel warmth, love…They have tried keeping one child scientifically perfectly healthy, checking that nothing is going wrong, and another child is kept with the mother – no check, nobody is bothered whether anything is going wrong or not. But the first child dies within three months. And this experiment has been done first on animals many times, and the result is same: without the mother’s warmth, the feminine warmth, the child perhaps never gets the will to live.That is my explanation for the phenomenon: he never gets, in the very beginning, a desire to live. This is one side of the case which is now well established. Homosexuals cannot give each other the warmth that they need. They need a feminine warmth.Two women cannot give each other the same quality of energy and love that a man can give to them. But it has to be understood that AIDS is not created by lesbians. That too is very strange. Homosexuals have created AIDS – not lesbians. The reason is clear: a woman is always a receiving center, and man is always an assertive energy.Two women can live together without disturbing each other’s life, for the simple reason that they are not assertive agents. They are completely closed and alone. They can be together, but they will not affect each other – while two men are both assertive. So when homosexuals are making love, they are giving energy to each other which is not needed at all. They both need feminine energy, feminine warmth. So lesbians have no part in contributing AIDS. I am sorry to say that on that point they have not proved equal to men!Homosexuality has to disappear from the world. And at least, in our communes, we can make it disappear. It is just a question of understanding. And because it is artificial, superficial, it can be easily removed.Precautions should be taken against AIDS, because it is already rampant. This is not the beginning: we are almost in the middle of it, the end is not far away. It spreads like wildfire. And now they have come to find that even kissing can give it to you. Now to kiss another human being is a crime. It may be your child, it may be your wife, it may be your friend, but kissing is no longer possible. It looks as though medical people will not be able to find any medicine for it.We have to find a way – and we can find a way. My own understanding is that in our communes, slowly slowly, homosexuality should disappear. Lesbians we can take care of later on. It may not be giving AIDS, but it is ugly, unnatural. Perhaps someday it may bring something better than AIDS – nobody knows – because nobody knew about AIDS before, and homosexuality has been in existence since religions have been in existence.It took thousands of years to create the situation in which AIDS can happen. But to me it is not a disease – it has nothing to do with medicine. Medicine and medical care can keep it from spreading, can keep the man who already has it alive for a maximum of two years, if he is completely isolated in a place where no infection is possible.That gives me the clue. The AIDS patient loses all power of resistance. His life energy has shrunk withinwards. The petals of his life energy are no longer open – they are closed, they are getting ready for the night. Hence, any infection can enter into his body. And because his own will to live is not there, his body will not create the antibodies to prevent AIDS.In my communes I will suggest first try to help homosexuals turn into heterosexuals. Everybody in the commune should go for every possible test, because we love each other so much that we would not like one of us to become the cause of the death of so many people. No sannyasin would like it. And we are not going to condemn, because he is simply a victim – a victim of Jesus Christ, a victim of Mahavira, a victim of Buddha. And those big criminals are no longer there, otherwise they should be shot immediately. Fortunately, they are dead.So help them. They are victims of thousands of years of homosexuality. Respect them. Be loving to them and compassionate. And then each commune has to create a corner for them where they can live. And my idea is that a male AIDS patient should live with a female AIDS patient – perhaps that may be the only medicine possible. I say “perhaps” because it has not been tried, and I am not a man of medicine. I am just crazy, and crazy ideas come to me. But when nothing is working, why not try a crazy man’s idea? All the sane people are saying there is nothing that can be done, so you are not going to lose anything by accepting a madman’s idea.My idea is that a woman and man, both with AIDS – so there is no question of giving AIDS to each other, or whatever they can give, that is up to them, there is nothing more to it – have come to the very end of the journey. But my feeling is that the female energy and male energy meeting again may provoke the will to live. The warmth of a woman, the love of the man, may postpone the date of their death.And this can be done only in my commune, with my people, because they all understand each other. They would like to help each other. Here, we are going to start – soon. And perhaps that may prove the only cure. If it is out of homosexuality that the disease is born, then something from heterosexuality will be the medicine.This is my simple logic.Osho,Your sannyasins in Brazil are trying again and again to make some beautiful space where everybody could live together, and it's always difficult. What would you like to say to them?It is difficult?Yes. My feeling is that because of the economic situation of the country, it is difficult to make business – you know, to make a commune.Talk with Sheela and Savita about that. Some way can be found, and a commune can be created. Start on a small scale, and slowly it can grow. You can do a few businesses very easily, and we can send you sannyasins from outside, from all around the world, to help you. For example, you can start publications. In Brazil, many of my books are published, but they are published by publishers – somebody else is taking the profit from them. Our sannyasins should publish them themselves. Just that, will bring you good money.There is no need to create huge palaces – just workable houses, simple. For example, in India where there are millions of poor people, a beautiful hut can be made in a village for almost nothing. It has been a tradition in Indian villages that whenever somebody is making a house, the whole village will help. And the houses are made with bamboo The bamboo functions as the wall; cow dung mixed with mud is put on both sides of the bamboo, whitewashed. It looks so clean, so beautiful. And just bamboo on the roof, with mud tiles. For two hundred rupees, you can make a beautiful house. Two hundred rupees today means five or at the most ten dollars. You can make a house for between five and ten dollars.So when the situation is bad, then think of your local products – whether bamboo is available, other kinds of wood are available, cheap – and use that material. There is no need for marble, and there is no need – yes, one day when you have money, then have marble palaces. But meanwhile, till the palaces come, you need a certain kind of shelter that can be made very easily.It is not difficult. You can create a commune of five hundred people, with small cottages. And you can start businesses. For example, you can start publication with your own press, your own editors, your own designers. And you can make it an art – hand binding, hand stitching. And in fact you can sell them in the market for a better price than books printed in a mass scale in a factory, because they will not have that beauty. And about other things, talk to Sheela and Savita. There is no problem which cannot be solved.But Brazil needs a commune.Osho,Each day we feel that the Third World War is coming closer and closer. Is there some possible way to prevent the war?The truth is that nuclear war is never going to happen. Even when I say it is coming closer and closer, the reason to say it is not that the war is coming closer and closer. The reason is to awaken you somehow – that the war is coming so close now that there is no time to waste: get up as quickly as possible, before the war finishes you.But the Third World War is impossible – for the simple reason that both nations, America and the Soviet Union, are equally balanced with nuclear weapons. And if a war starts, the whole point of a war is to win. But in a nuclear war, nobody wins. So war has lost its basic foundation. Why should you fight when both are going to be finished by it? The possibility of one being victorious and the other being defeated is no longer there. So I say that with nuclear war, war has reached to such totality that it has committed suicide. Now war is not possible – I mean nuclear war is not possible.Just the other day, I saw a petition of American scientists who had made the first nuclear weapons plant in America – the pioneers of nuclear weapons. Fifty scientists have signed a petition to the president and to the Supreme Court, saying, “We are trembling with fear at what we have done. And we have already so many nuclear weapons on both sides that they are enough to destroy all life on the earth within ten minutes.”Those fifty scientists, who have been making nuclear war possible have visualized the situation that is happening. The same is happening in Russia: the scientists are becoming aware that what they are creating is a mass scale, worldwide, suicide. It is so absurd and meaningless.Those fifty scientists have mentioned one thing which I have been saying again and again: “Up to now, all our efforts to find some antidote for nuclear weapons have failed. And we don’t think that we will be able to find anything that destroys the power of nuclear weapons – no counter energy is available.” It is because of this fact that they have put in the petition – because now it is simply destruction, there is no way of protecting anybody.I am tremendously happy that nuclear weapons have come to the point where fight becomes useless, war becomes utterly stupid. And if, even seeing this stupidity, the politicians decide to go for a nuclear war, then I think this earth deserves it. If its leaders are ready to destroy it, then perhaps it is good – be finished. The universe will go on. It was going on before this earth was born; it will go on, with the same beauty and with the same splendor. It doesn’t matter that the earth is gone. There are fifty thousand planets, exactly like this earth in the universe, where life exists.So if the situation for life to exist on this earth disappears, the bodies will be dead here, and your souls will be transplanted to other planets. They don’t need missiles, they don’t need rockets; they can simply jump – a quantum leap – from this planet to another planet.But as far as I am concerned, I am totally convinced that war is impossible, for the simple reason that they… That’s why they have been postponing it. And they will go on postponing it. They want to find something. Either party, whoever finds the antidote for nuclear weapons first, will immediately go for nuclear war, because then he can protect his country, and you cannot protect your country. Then war again gains meaning: somebody will be victorious, and somebody will be defeated.But I don’t see that there is any way to find an antidote, for the simple reason that three hundred years of continuous creation of war mechanisms, destructive weapons, has led to nuclear weapons. You have never worked for life; you have never thought about how to create more beautiful life – healthier, more intelligent, longer. If, side by side, you were working for these three hundred years, putting your whole energy as you have been putting into war, perhaps you may be able to find an antidote. But there is not enough time. If all the scientists of the world start working together now, perhaps in one hundred years they may be able to find a clue which nullifies all nuclear weapons. But that seems to be impossible.So to me, the Third World War is over. We have passed it. Now think about the fourth, and prepare for the fourth. The third is not possible.And I am not a pacifist, and I don’t want my sannyasins to be pacifists. A pacifist is against war – so much so, that if he had nuclear weapons he would fight with nuclear weapons against war. A pacifist is not a peaceful man.Our sannyasins are not pacifists – but peace loving, silence loving, trying to find their inner serenity. If we can create millions of people around the world who are centered in their meditation, who know who they are, who know the tremendous bliss that comes when you enter into your innermost core, that will create an energy blanket around the earth. That is the only possibility to prevent war.So I am not directly concerned with war. My concern is how to create more peaceful people, more loving people, more meditative people – because if the balance of peace-loving people in the world is greater, then any war can be prevented. If there are millions of meditators in the world, nobody can force them to go to war, to destroy innocent people. In fact, these people who have attained some light within themselves, will become a tremendous barrier – not only against nuclear war, but against any kind of war.I am aware that nuclear war is impossible. And it is possible that the Soviet Union and America will come to a conclusion to throw all their nuclear weapons into the Pacific – I don’t know who gave it the name “Pacific,” perhaps for this purpose – and stop all traffic in the Pacific. Although it is five miles deep, there is always a danger that anything can trigger, and then it can become a chain explosion.So, for at least a decade, no traffic in the Pacific. Drown all the weapons there. And my feeling is that soon Russia and America will come to that conclusion. But that does not mean war will not happen. Then the old type of war – the First World War, the Second World War – that type of war will continue. Thinking of the Third World War, they look like child’s play, but they were immensely horrible. So as far as I am concerned, a Third World War is out of the question. But still, other wars will be there.If we want to prevent all kinds of war in the world, then we have to spread the red people everywhere, to the farthest corners, so that we have a commune of millions of young people who declare that they are the owners of the earth, and they refuse any kind of passport, any visa: movement is our birthright, and the whole earth is ours. If we have millions of people to destroy the boundaries of nations, the boundaries of religions, then there is nothing to fight for. Fight with whom?So my direct effort is not to prevent war, or to be a pacifist and print pamphlets against war, and protest, and put posters on the walls, and scream and shout. All that nonsense is not going to prevent it. They were doing the same thing before the First World War, they were doing the same thing before the Second World War, they are doing the same thing before the Third World War. They are just useless people – well intentioned but unintelligent.My effort is to create a vast atmosphere of peace around the earth, and that will be enough. War will become impossible. In every country we will have thousands of sannyasins who will prevent that country itself. Because they will say, “First kill us and then you can kill the neighboring country.” They will be sitting on the boundary line, meditating: “Kill us first.” On both sides – on the other side also, back to back! And I don’t think any politician has the courage to kill millions of his own people, because then the whole country will destroy the government and the politicians and everything – because these children are not doing anything wrong, and they belong to the whole country.So create peaceful people, and if the time comes we will risk all our peace-loving people. And I don’t think that any country can go to war.It has never happened that the people of a country are opposing their own government, saying, “War is not going to be our game anymore.” And it will happen in both countries, in the enemy camp young people are ready too: “Kill us first and then you can do whatsoever you want.”There are a thousand-and-one possibilities to change this world. But the basic need is to spread more and more sannyasins all over the world. Already the red color is no longer associated with the communists. We have taken possession of it already; the copyright is ours now.Even in Russia we have a beautiful group of sannyasins. Just the other day there was an article against me in a Russian magazine. They have been persecuting sannyasins, they have been taking their books away. The sannyasins have done nothing wrong – nothing illegal, no crime – so they cannot do anything to them. But in the article they have published the most prominent sannyasins’ names, so that they can be recognized by the people everywhere. Because they are my underground sannyasins; they don’t wear red clothes, they don’t wear a mala, and they meet in the basements of houses so that they can meditate and nobody hears. There they can listen to the tapes, they can read a book.And they are more excited than anywhere else, because for sixty years the Russian youth has been missing something which is the very flavor of youth: something revolutionary, something rebellious. For sixty years, the Soviet youth is the poorest youth in the world. From their childhood they simply become adult. That season – youth – never comes. Those days of dreaming of changing the whole world, of changing man, of creating a new humanity – if they are not there, youth loses all its glamour, its splendor.So they are immensely excited. And I know that communist countries will soon have thousands of sannyasins, without any question. And nobody else can provide the communist countries with anything that I am offering to them. They have been taught that there is no God. I say, “Perfectly good, there is no God.” They have been told there is no hell, no heaven – perfectly true. They have been told not to believe – that’s my whole teaching.Only on one point I am giving them something new – that is meditation. And Marx or Lenin or Stalin, nobody has said that meditation is against communism. Just sitting silently, doing nothing. How can it be against communism? Or against anybody?So my sannyasins need not be afraid in communist countries either, because my teaching agrees with Marx on every point – except meditation. But that is the whole secret, that meditation will destroy all those communist ideas, those Marxian concepts. And about meditation, there is not a single word against it in the whole of communist literature, because they have never even heard about it. Marx knew nothing about it.So try to spread meditation far and wide, and find out whatever is possible in your situation. The country is poor, then manage something. But communes have to exist. And once a commune is there, soon you will be able to produce many things, create many things.And the commune is not going to remain poor for long. It will become a prototype for other people that, if we can create and we can live comfortably and we are not starving and we are rejoicing, why cannot you? Just do the same as we are doing.

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The Last Testament Vol 1 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 1 30 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Fred BruningNewsday, Long Island, New York, United StatesOsho,Good evening.Glad to see you.How do you stay warm in such a cold room?It is not cold.To me it is very cold.To me it is only cool.You feel better in cold surroundings such as this? Have you always, even as a child?Always.Osho,I come from a newspaper on the East Coast which is interested in you and your work. I would like to ask a question that, as I understand, is a basic question asked in meditation: Who are you?It is a little bit complicated. It is not an ordinary question. When you ask, “Who am I?” you are not waiting for an answer. There is nobody to answer you. But by constantly inquiring, “Who am I?” slowly slowly other thoughts start disappearing. You become more and more attuned with only one thing – this quest, “Who am I?” When all thoughts have disappeared and only the sound, “Who am I?” remains, that is the miracle moment. That sound also disappears. First it kills all your thoughts, and finally it commits suicide – not that you get an answer, but the question disappears. And that is the moment of ultimate bliss.Maybe if I am a bit less metaphysical, then. How would you describe yourself?Impossible.Why is that?A description is possible only of an object. And I am not an object; I am a subjectivity. I can describe the table, I can describe the grapes, I can describe the whole world – except me. Description is applicable only to objects. I am always the witness. If I describe myself, in the very nature of things that description becomes false, because I am again witnessing it. I am always the witness, which cannot be reduced to an object.Is it possible for you to describe others – other individuals?No – as objects of course, but not as subjectivity. I can describe the color of your hair, I can describe the clothes you are wearing, but I cannot describe you, the being you are – that remains indescribable. And that’s the whole mystery of existence, that at the ultimate core, at the very center, is something that you can experience but you cannot explain.Osho,You seem like a very certain individual, a man sure of himself. But I wonder if you have doubts about your work, about your role?No.You are not subject to self-doubt?No.You don't second-guess yourself in any way?There is no question. For thirty-two years I have not encountered any doubt in me, any question in me. Yes, before I became enlightened I had millions of questions, millions of doubts. The moment I came to know myself, that dark night was over. Now there is no question of doubt, no question of repenting, no question of planning for the future. Just this moment is enough – I am totally contented with it as it is.Things couldn't be better?No, not for me. For you, yes.When you say something like that…hmmm, I am not sure that I understand exactly what you are saying.That’s why I am saying it can be better. You are not sure. I am sure.Well, maybe you can help me understand.I can – that’s my whole business.And you are good at it.I am just perfect – not good.Well, maybe you can spin that out a little before me: maybe things can be better for me, although they cannot be better for you.They can be better for you.But you would have to know how things are for me, before you can determine whether things could be better or worse.No need for me. All sleeping people are sleeping people. It does not matter to me whether this man has a Ph.D. degree and is asleep, this man is a doctor and he is asleep, that man is an engineer and he is asleep – that does not matter to me. My problem is simple: they are all asleep and they can be bettered by awakening.I am asleep as well?You are asleep as well.It is a long trip out here, you know…People have been doing everything in sleep for millions of years.Is everyone in the room asleep, as far as you are concerned?As far as I am concerned, yes.Is Sheela asleep?Yes – sound asleep.How will you awaken her?I am trying!Osho,I have read much about you, I have watched some of the talks, and of course I have talked to people. Do you ever get tired of this? Do you ever get tired of the sound of your own voice? Do you ever feel, “Enough!”?I have never read any of my books.You have never read any of your own books?No, I have never heard any of my tapes. I don’t even bother about what I said yesterday. And if you ask me tomorrow about this meeting, I will not be consistent with it at all – because I don’t carry comparison, memory. I simply go on existing moment to moment. You get bored because you compare: the same wife every night, the same kiss, the same geography. It is strange, unless you are asleep, to remain with one woman for thirty or forty years – it is just a miracle!This is just what my wife warned me about.That’s good. Somehow help her to come here.No way.All wives who run, come here finally. You can run from one husband to another husband, but finally you have to run from husbands – and that is my place. Here there is no husband and no wife.Osho,Do you put any premium at all on marital fidelity? Is it worth anything?Nothing – just nothing.You don't think it might be different, marriage to marriage – good for some, not good for others?No, the very word fidelity is ugly, dirty.How so?If I love you, I love you. If I don’t love you, I don’t love you. I am a simple, sincere, straightforward man.What do you mean by fidelity? Fidelity means, when you don’t love, even then remain faithful. Anything that goes against love is ugly. What is the need of fidelity? If I love you, is that not enough? You need some fidelity too? That means there is a doubt in your mind. You are afraid: today love is there, tomorrow it may not be. So something legal, religious – the church, the court, and some conditioning of fidelity. So when love goes away and the spring is over, you can cling to these props: fidelity, courts, law, religion, church. Love needs nothing.Osho,You have never been married?Never.Would you consider it?Never. Marriage – and me considering?Do you have children?No, how can I have children? Not even my sannyasins have children.Why do you say, “How could I have children?” Of course you could have children.I don’t want my child to be in this world with Ronald Reagan, the Soviet Union, Ethiopia, India. In this starving world, where people are piling up nuclear weapons to destroy the whole planet – I would not like my child to be in this world, no.Osho,You mentioned President Reagan. I wonder who you consider some of history's most admirable figures and some of history's most despicable.Your whole history is bunk.My history?I mean the whole of human history is bunk, because it is written by people who were victorious. It is all false. For example, in India, Britain ruled for three hundred years and they were the writers of history. Whatsoever they wrote was wrong. They were not writing about the reality, the fact; to them the revolution of the Indians was only a mutiny, it was not a revolution. A revolution has a respectability about it, a mutiny is something ugly to be crushed. The moment India became independent, they started writing history again– they changed those three hundred years. Now, who is right?When Stalin came into power in Russia, he changed the whole history of the revolution. He even changed the pictures. Trotsky was the second figure to Lenin, so in every picture he was sitting next to Lenin. Stalin was nobody. He changed the pictures: Trotsky was removed, Stalin’s picture was put instead. And all the old books were destroyed. Trotsky himself had escaped and he was in Mexico, writing history. He was on the last page when one of Stalin’s murderers hit him on the head with a hammer.Looking at Trotsky’s history – and he was one of the chief characters in that history. Lenin was not a very impressive person. Lenin had no charisma, he was a great organizer; Trotsky had charisma and he had influence over the masses. Both together were immensely helpful and complementary to each other.You have read widely, it appears?I have read immensely.Right. And from your reading, I am interested in knowing – despite the flaws in history – whom you consider to be admirable individuals.You will not even have heard of those names that I consider admirable. For example, I consider admirable a poet in Japan, Basho, who has written a few small haikus – three-line poetries. But each haiku is a tremendous experience of meditation. No poet in the whole world has been able to put so much in so few words. But only a meditator can understand it.You have expressed yourself in the past on certain individuals, though.I have spoken on many individuals.Jesus, for instance.Yes, I have spoken on Jesus, Moses, Mohammed; I have spoken on hundreds of people. I have spoken three hundred and fifty books. I have never written anything – those are all spoken words.I have admired one Chinese, Chuang Tzu. He is the most absurd character in the whole history of man, and that is why I admire him.Osho,Why do you admire absurdity?Because life is absurd. To search for meaning in it, is going to be frustrating. That’s why the West has come to a certain philosophy of existentialism, which talks only of meaninglessness.Chuang Tzu says that there is no need to search for meaning. If you search for meaning you will end up in meaninglessness, and that will be frustrating. Life is an absurdity, it is a mystery. You need not search for meaning, you have just to live it, enjoy it. And I agree with him.You seem to delight in contradictions – I think that is part of what you are saying.Yes, I am always contradicting myself, knowingly, so that nobody can make a consistent philosophy out of me.But in the end, then, what will be left but a series of contradictions?Those contradictions, if you pass through all of them, will first create confusion in you; second, will create a tremendous silence in you. If you persist, if you don’t escape from the confusion, they will create a silence in you – and that silence will be a revelation. So I am not giving people a philosophy, I am giving them a device to discover the ultimate silence of existence, which is meaningless – as meaningless as a rose flower.Osho,How then do you want to be remembered?I don’t want to be remembered.But you will be – you can't do anything about that.That is other people’s problem.What do you want said on your tombstone?No, nothing.Nothing? No name?No, nothing. Once I am gone, I am gone. Then whatsoever my people want to do, they can do.Osho,Your life now interests me, your day to day life. Can you tell me a little bit? What time do you get up in the morning? And what are the first few things that you do?The first thing to understand about me is that whatever I am doing, I am not a doer, I am always a witness. Taking a bath in my bathroom, there are two persons: one is taking a bath, another is watching. And the watcher is me. The one who is taking a bath will soon be in a grave. So as far as my inner being is concerned, it is just the same, twenty-four hours a day. Sleeping, I am watching; talking to you, I am watching; sitting silently in my room for hours, I am watching. So as far as my essential being is concerned, I am only a witness. But the doer is there: I have to get up in the morning, but I never get up on my own – I am a lazy person.Who wakes you?Somebody takes care of me. She is here, Vivek. She wakes me up at six o’clock in the morning. And then, for one and a half hours I enjoy in my bathroom.One and a half hours?One and a half hours – that is the minimum.What goes on?Great things!I saw the interview about the very elegant bathroom, and your invitation!Yes. I have not only one bathroom, I have two. Because if something goes wrong with one bathroom, the other is always ready, ready for an emergency. I cannot miss anything.What kind of emergencies could come up?Just some plumbing problem arising.Oh, the plumbing problems!Because I cannot miss anything. I want to take as much out of each moment as is possible. I love taking a bath, playing with soap bubbles. Albert Einstein discovered everything about the universe while playing with soap bubbles. My one and a half hours is nothing, he was sometimes six hours in his bathtub!Maybe he had trouble getting out.His wife had trouble getting him out. But because I won’t have any wife, there is no trouble!So you are ready for the day, after your one and a half hours in the…Yes, after one and a half hours of taking my bath, I take my shower. And I have all the best hypo-allergenic soaps, shampoos, conditioners – I enjoy them immensely.And then, after, do you do any robust work, any kind of physical work? Do you do any sit-ups and push-ups?Just a little exercise in my bathroom.Also in the bathroom!My bathroom is big enough.And then there is period of study or…No. For five years I have stopped studying anything, not even a newspaper – nothing.Osho,Do you have any interest in what you might consider the outside world?No.If I asked you what was happening in Nicaragua or El Salvador, would you know?No, unless Sheela informs me. That is her duty. She is my secretary: if she feels that something is happening which needs to be told, I need to be informed of, then she brings it to me.Are there any events now, is there anything in current history…?Yes, right now she is bringing all the information about AIDS which is significant.Osho,You are concerned, of course, about AIDS, and have made it very clear. It's our understanding – reporters' – that in September you will perhaps invite some victims of AIDS to the Commune for care. Is that true?Perhaps, perhaps. Spread the gossip!How do you think the sannyasins would respond?Just the way they are responding – they will laugh.A lot of nervous giggles!They will laugh, because my sannyasins don’t consider death a calamity. It is a celebration, a new beginning.Osho,Do you think AIDS represents some cosmic punishment for what's gone wrong somehow?No, there is no punishment in existence and no reward. Each action has its consequence. It depends on you, what you want to call it.So AIDS has no significance beyond itself: it exists, it kills, and it means nothing more than that?That’s all – nothing more than that. There’s nothing more in it. Religions bring the idea of punishment and reward. And through that they bring heaven and hell and the whole theology that you are a sinner, that you are a saint. To me, there are only people – neither sinners nor saints. And everybody has to do what he wants to do. If a person ends up with AIDS, it is totally his responsibility; he was doing things which have brought him to a certain end. And he should be perfectly happy with it – nobody has forced him.Osho,What do you think about those things: homosexuality, drug abuse?I don’t. Each individual’s thinking… As far as I am concerned, anything that is unnatural, anything that is not part of the program of your biology, physiology, is going to lead you into trouble. But you may like the trouble, you may love the challenge.I am against homosexuality, lesbianism, and all kinds of perversions. But that is my personal opinion. If any individual chooses to be homosexual, there is no condemnation in me for the person. I am not going to throw him into hell, I am not going to judge him. That is his way. I have told my opinion, if still he feels that homosexuality is the only thing that appeals to him, then he has every right to be a homosexual.But you see that as an unnatural act?Not only see – I also say that it is an unnatural act. But you are free to do something unnatural.What for you is sexual perversion?It is a religious disease – sexual perversion.Is a religious disease?It is a religious disease. All the religions of the world are responsible for it, because first they started forcing celibacy on people, which is unnatural. Unless you are impotent, you cannot be celibate. And the strangest thing is that not a single impotent person has become enlightened in the whole history of man.And what do you make of that?That means that all these people – Gautam Buddha, Jesus Christ, Krishna – all these people were more sexual than ordinary people. It is their over-sexual energy that does not feel contented with women and children and the ordinary mundane world. After all that experience, they are still too full of energy and they want to go on some higher quest. All these people are over-sexual.No impotent person has contributed anything to the world, because he cannot be creative. His basic creative energy, sex energy, is missing. Telling people to be celibate, and then putting monks in one place, in one monastery, and putting nuns in another place, and not allowing men and women to meet – you are creating the situation for homosexuality. So Catholics are responsible, Hindus are responsible, Buddhists are responsible – they are creating the situation.Although there is no reason to believe, I don't think, that Catholics or Buddhists or Hindus are any more likely to be homosexuals than anyone else.They have to be. Particularly their monks – what will they do?Yes, but that doesn't affect necessarily the masses of people.That reflects, because those… For example, in India there are five million Hindu monks. Now, these five million Hindu monks are staying in Hindu families, are coming in contact with Hindu children, women, all kinds of people. And they are bound to spread their perversion in every possible way. They will be abusing children for their sexuality.They have been caught. Just now, three or four days ago, a Christian priest has been imprisoned for one and a half years, because he was abusing small children.But these seem isolated incidents.They are not isolated. They don’t come to your notice, that is one thing – because the church wants to repress them, the society wants to repress them, the government wants to repress them. How many homosexual senators do you have?Got me…!No information about your senators.You suspect that they are all…?I know.How do you know?One, personally I know.You personally know of a homosexual United States Senator?Yes, yes.Can you tell us who he is?Not only homosexual, perhaps he may have AIDS.Who is the person?The name I cannot tell you – that’s your work to find out.Osho,How did you come upon this information?I will not tell you anything. But one thing I can tell you, that every vested interest is trying in every way to repress such information. For example, the pope, before this pope, was a homosexual – everyone in Italy knew. He was a bishop in Milan, and he was always hanging around with a homosexual, and everyone knew. Then he became the pope, and that homosexual man who was hanging around him became his secretary, came to the Vatican.But when you say everybody knew – who is everybody?Because you could have asked anybody in Milan. These are things which people know, but which will not come to be given as evidence in the court. These are not easily provable things.Osho,But people say things about you that may or may not be true.There is no problem. No, no – you can ask me. I am not a pope and I am not a president, and I don’t care a shit about any respectability. You can ask me, and I can correct their information. They may not be well informed: I can inform them about myself perfectly well.Well, there may be some things that you are unable to speak to…No – not a single thing.…to people on the outside.Whatever they say, you just tell me.Well, you know that they say…No, I don’t know because……that you have developed this organization for your own benefit, that you are a liar, that you are a cheat, that you treat people unfairly, that you have been coarse and unkind in your dealings with Oregon and Antelope, for very particular, selfish reasons.So, start with one, so I can answer you.Yes, I…For example, I have not been coarse and unfair to Oregonians. I have been very lenient and very liberal. I should not have been so liberal. And from now onwards, I will be coarse and I will show them what roughness means.How have you been too liberal, too lenient?We have just been factual – calling a spade a spade. But now I am going to call a spade a fucking spade! So you can go and tell those Oregonians.I think people feel that you have been doing that for some time.No, I have not been doing anything.Go point by point, so I can put you right.The point was, though, that things can be said about public people without there being any truth to what is being said.No, you don’t come across a man like me in your “public people.” You can ask me, and I can answer you directly. For example, you cannot ask your public people: they depend on you, their respectability depends on you. If a senator says he is a homosexual, perhaps in the next election he will be gone. But as far as I am concerned, I am not dependent on anybody in the whole world, not even your God. So I can simply be true. Only I can be true – anybody who is dependent cannot be true.Osho,But I might ask you how much money you have in the bank, and you may tell me that you have nothing in the bank. I can't tell whether that is true or not.Just listen to me. You can inquire: has anybody ever seen me with a single dollar? I don’t even have pockets. I don’t have even a diary to keep my accounts. I don’t have any connection with any bank in the whole world. You can put your FBI or CBI – or whatsoever nonsense you have in America – if they can find a single bank account of mine, I am ready to be shot. I am not going to take any stupid kind of thing. They should inquire. And I am ready, if they can find a single paise in my name anywhere…What I am saying, though, is that your being willing to entertain questions, doesn't settle the argument.Nothing settles the argument. Has any argument ever been settled? Is it settled that Jesus was the son of a virgin girl? For two thousand years theologians have been arguing, and he was simply a bastard!Your bank account is more easily dealt with though, I think.No, this is a simpler case to decide, because a virgin woman giving birth is a simple matter to decide. The case of my bank account will take a long investigation.But it could be determined.Yes, it could be determined.The other cannot.The other can also be determined – I determine it! And no medical person can refute me.Osho,That has to do with matters of faith. I am interested in knowing what your notion of faith is.Faith is simply for the ignorant and the idiots; faith is not for intelligent people. Intelligent people try to know things: either they know, or they don’t know. If they don’t know, they simply accept that they don’t know.But people say they have faith in you.Nobody can say that.I talked to many people here who say…Then they are wrong……who say they trust you.…because I am continuously saying to them that nobody should have belief in me, nobody should have faith in me. What more can I do?But it seems to me that that makes you more appealing to people.So what do you say? Should I start saying to everybody they should believe in me, everybody should have faith in me? Will that convince you?I think, though, that people are drawn to you for this very kind of conversation.That is people’s business. But as far as I am concerned, I can only do two things. Either I can say, “Have faith in me,” or I can say, “Don’t have faith in me,” – or I can remain silent. But in all cases, I am guilty. Just look at the situation. You cannot make a person guilty in all the situations. If I am silent you can say that I am silent and that is misleading. If I say, “Don’t have faith in me,” you say, “They have faith in you because they love your idea of not having faith in you.”Osho,Exactly right, yes. You encourage questioning, but is there any format set-up for you to be questioned by the people?No format is settled. They have to ask their questions. And there is no need for any format, for the simple reason that I don’t come to you or to my people with any answers ready. Your question creates the response in me. So if I know, I will tell you. If I don’t know, I will tell you that I don’t know anything about it.But a person who considers himself a follower of yours…That is his fault.Osho,…let me just continue. May feel that perhaps the money should be used differently. How would that person make it known to you that he has reservations about the way money is spent?I have nothing to do with money, and I have nothing to do with how it is spent.Have you no influence in the way money is spent?No, I have no influence, no information. That is different corporations, different corporation heads, they have to settle their own things.I think, when you say that, people on the outside simply don't believe it.That is their business. By not believing it, it does not mean that they are right. Half of the world does not believe in God. All the communists around the world don’t believe in God, all the Buddhists in the world don’t believe in God, all the followers of Jainism don’t believe in God – but even that does not prove that God is not. Neither does it prove that God is because half of the world has faith in God. It simply proves that God is just a bogus word. You can go on arguing about it for millennia and you will not come to any conclusion, because in the first place there was nothing to conclude about.Osho,If we can move back to things concerning money, just for a moment. Would you describe yourself as a capitalist?I am a super-capitalist – without a single cent!You are in a very fortunate position.That’s why I am known as “the blessed one.” I don’t have to bother about any taxation, I don’t have to bother about any bank account, I don’t have to bother how to earn and how to spend – and still everything is available to me.Osho,Have you ever wondered why you have come into such good luck?No, I have simply accepted everything that has come my way. Good or bad, I have accepted it.Osho,Did you foresee anything like this, years ago?No.What were your hopes then?I am a “without hope” person.Never had hopes for yourself, never dreams, as a young man?No, I just had before twenty-one.What were your dreams then?They were dreams about becoming enlightened, and they were fulfilled. They were dreams about knowing myself, and they were fulfilled. And after that, now I have nothing to dream.Your dreams did not have any kind of material element in them.No, from my very childhood I was not interested in anything else than my self.That's unusual.It is. It is – in such an insane world, to be so sane is…Osho,How do you account for that? Is it your upbringing, your parents?It’s very difficult to account for it, because my parents were just ordinary people, as everybody’s parents are. They tried their best to bring me to their religion, but I was rebellious. I made it clear to them, “Please leave me alone, let me search for myself.”When did you begin saying things like that to your parents? And what did they say to you in return?When I was about four, I started. Small – about small things. It is not only about big, spiritual things, but about small things. For example, if my father would say, “Just get out of the room, don’t disturb me,” then there was no way. I would simply refuse, and say, “You can go out, if you are disturbed. I am not going out of the room alive.”Osho,What happened when you disobeyed. Were you punished?I was punished.How?In every possible way. Corporal punishment – but I was never angry, and I had no complaint. I said…You were hit. You would be hit by your father?Yes, my father hit me, and he…With his hand?With his hand. And his whole life, he repented for that one hit. Only once… I had long hair when I was a small child, I had very long hair. And my father was in continuous trouble, because he was a small shop-keeper and I was continuously passing through the shop – the house was behind the shop – and everybody would ask, “Whose daughter is this?”That hurt him very much, that he had to tell everybody, “He is my boy, not my daughter.” One day he became very angry, and he said, “This is an unnecessary irritation. The whole day, you are coming in and out. Either you start going through the back door, or you cut your hair.” And he hit me.I simply went to a barber’s shop, just in front of my house, and I told the barber, “Shave my head completely.” He was an old opium addict – otherwise nobody would have cut my hair completely. So he was in his mood and he simply shaved my whole head! In India, you shave your head completely only when your father dies; otherwise nobody would shave their head.I came back home. But before I came back, other people had already reached there, thinking that my father was dead. My father was sitting there and they said, “What is the matter? I saw your son shaved – and you are alive!”Then I reached home, and he asked, “What have you done?”I said, “This is the answer to your hit. If you are against long hair, you will be half against short hair. I said, ‘Let’s satisfy you one hundred percent.’ So I have shaved it completely. And in the future, remember: if you want to hit me I will not complain about it, but I will respond in my own way.”Osho,Should children defy their parents?Certainly – if Adam and Eve had not disobeyed God, there would have been nothing in the world.When should children obey their parents?Nobody should obey anybody unless their intelligence says it is right. But that is you obeying your intelligence – not your father, not your mother.But is a child prepared to do that?Yes, certainly.So if a child chooses to walk into what an adult would…Perfectly good. Rather than creating this stupid and mediocre world, it is far better that a few thousand children every year jump into the ocean and die. But leave the world with intelligent, rebellious, vibrant people.But that would terrify parents.Let them be terrified! I have terrified my parents – why should I bother about other parents?But you've not been a parent. Isn't that too easy for you to say?No – because I know my parents, and it was not easy for them. In fact, I have not been a parent because of them! Because they wanted me to be married, and I said, “Then there is no way. If you keep quiet, some day perhaps I may get married. But if you continue in any way trying to persuade me, then there is no way.”Let me understand your views on children and defiance. If you saw a child putting himself or herself in danger, you would not reach out to that child?I will tell the child, “There is danger, and you are going into danger; you can die. I can make help available to you if you want help. But if you have decided to go into it, then go – with all my blessings.”You would not physically restrain a child who insisted on walking on the railroad tracks?No, I would not. I will not interfere in anybody’s freedom, whatsoever the freedom is for.But that's only the freedom to destroy yourself.No.In this case – the case of the child.This is only one case. The question is, out of a hundred cases, there may be one case where your example may be applicable. In about ninety-nine cases, there is no death involved. Just for one percent, I am not going to destroy the freedom of ninety-nine percent of the people.But is that any meaningful limit on a child's freedom – to protect the child from danger?I will tell him everything, and if he allows me I will help him physically to get out. But if he says that he wants to go into it, that he understands what I am saying, then with all my good wishes he can go.Osho,What do you say to people who, when they hear you speak in these terms, say that you are too detached from the world, you are making no sense except for yourself, that what you say really doesn't apply to the broad population?I don’t care – why should it apply? Everybody has intelligence, everybody has to decide for himself. This whole idea, that you should interfere in other people’s life, has been brought by the political leaders, by the religious leaders. And they have conditioned the whole of humanity that you have to serve others, you have to sacrifice yourself, that you have not to be selfish.My whole approach is that you have to be selfish. And only if you enjoy serving somebody, serve – because there is no other reward.Osho,Let me ask you something you have been asked many times before, and that is, your understanding of service to the poor, or there not being any need to serve the poor. It seems to me that you've said a few things that are not necessarily consistent on that.I am not a consistent man, you should remember that.Yes, I understand. But on this issue, what is your current feeling? Should you be helping the poor? Are we not obliged as human beings to help those in lesser situations?No, all these are just nonsense words. Human beings – where are human beings? Just in theory. Monkeys never became man – perhaps may have become human monkeys, but I cannot say Ronald Reagan is a man – a chimpanzee, perhaps.Human beings would not have been in such a stupid state, in the first place. Why is there so much poverty? Those poor people are responsible for it.The poor people are responsible for their own dilemma?Certainly, yes.Would you say that to someone who lived in the ghettos of New York or Chicago?I have lived in India, which is far worse.And were you saying those kinds of things?Yes, I have been saying it there, and they were trying to kill me. They are responsible because they have accepted religious ideas which make them poor. They have accepted a certain ideology that your poverty is your past life’s punishment: in your past life you have committed bad actions, that’s why you’re poor.I don't think that is what the poor of the United States believe.No, I don’t know about… This they cannot believe. But they believe that you are born in sin, you are born because Adam and Eve disobeyed God. And the whole of humanity has to suffer for it until you repent, until you become Christians, until you become a follower of Jesus, who will persuade God – because he is the only begotten son of God – to save you.So the question has been removed from its real context, that there is exploitation. The rich are rich because they know how to exploit. The poor are poor because they are not intelligent enough, and are not allowed to be intelligent enough ,so that they are not exploited – one thing. Second, the poor go on increasing the population of their own; the rich people don’t increase in population.So should the poor be punished for that?They are already punished. Who is saying that they should be punished?When you speak this way, you sound so unsympathetic.I am.You are unsympathetic to the poor?I am, because those poor are a great calamity on the earth. And they go on producing, because they don’t have any other entertainment than sex. And they are not ready to listen to me. They are ready to listen to the pope, who goes on saying that birth control is against God, that the pill is the worst thing that has happened to humanity, that abortion is anti-life. They listen to these people, and these people are making them more and more poor.Osho,Could the poor save themselves by listening to you?Certainly – immediately.How would that work, though?It would work immediately. For example, in India I had been telling people, for thirty years, to use birth control methods, to use the pill, to use abortion – whatsoever prevents population growth. But it goes against their religious ideas, it goes against their tradition.But even if they were to begin practicing birth control, that would not pay their food bill for the next month. How can they save themselves now by listening to you?The government was providing, free, every birth control method. And in thirty years they have doubled the population. When I started speaking to them there were only four hundred million Indians; now there are eight hundred million Indians.But what about the poor tonight: the person who is hungry tonight, the person who has no money to pay his electric bill tonight – what can he do?He should go to the church and first ask the priest there, “Give me food. Ask your God, ask your savior. He has been saying that he is coming back, and two thousand years have passed and his “soon” has not come yet. So, you give us.” And your savior was turning stones into bread, walking on water, raising the dead, so why cannot the pope do the same? He’s his representative, an infallible representative – he should do all these things. If he cannot, then burn the whole Vatican.I'm sorry, burn…?Burn the whole Vatican.Burn the Vatican?Yes.Osho,You speak with such disdain for Jesus now, although we are in a part of the commune called Jesus Grove, and in the past you have spoken rather fondly, it seems to me, of Jesus as a figure.Because…Have you changed your mind?No, I have spoken about only half of Jesus before. Now comes the remaining half. Before, I spoke about the day; now I am speaking about the night – twenty-four hours I have to finish!Osho,Again, on the question of poverty: people say you are the guru of the rich, the yuppies' guru.People don’t say – I say!That is how you want to be known? You're comfortable with it?This is actually the fact. That’s why I say I am not like other public figures. Nobody – Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha – had the guts to say that they are the rich man’s guru, and they all were. Buddha had all the kings of India come to his feet, offer him thousands of acres of land and gardens. He was the rich man’s guru, but he had not the guts to say it. I have the guts to simply say what is the fact: I am the rich man’s guru, because only a rich man can be religious – a poor man cannot be.For example, if you ask Albert Einstein, “Can you teach a poor man higher mathematics, physics?” he will say, “How can I? First he has to go through the complete course of the university and at least have a master’s degree in physics. Then, perhaps, I may be able to start from scratch.”Up to now, religion has never asked for any qualifications from anybody – and religion is the highest experience in life. This is a strange situation: only a rich man – who has lived with all luxuries, all comforts, who has attained to his ambitions and is now feeling that nothing satisfies, that nothing brings the delight he was hoping for – is ready to go in the direction of religion. A poor man asks for food, a poor man asks for medicine; he does not ask for meditation.He has more immediate needs, though, Osho.And I don’t have food to offer him.But is it a worthy way to spend a lifetime, ministering to the rich?Only one man in the whole world ministering to the rich, and all the religions – there are three hundred religions – and all their priests and all their public servants are serving the poor. And just look: one man is looking after the whole rich world so well, and everything is going perfectly well! And all those idiots – three hundred religions, and millions of monks and nuns, and what are they doing?Well, your job is easier though, isn't it?So, I am ready to change. If they have guts, I am ready to change – I can become the pope, the pope can come here.Osho,What would you do if you were the pope? What would be the first thing you would do if you were the pope?First, I will destroy Catholicism completely.By papal decree?Because if six hundred million people are deleted from the world, we have solved a great problem for poverty!Osho,Do you have any use for Protestantism?I will take them when their number comes up. First, the Catholics – because Protestantism is nothing much, it is below my dignity even to condemn them.You don't think of Martin Luther as a substantial individual?Martin Luther was simply a politician, and wanted to be a pope himself. Because he could not be a pope, so the protest, and Protestantism. That is just a German mind and nothing else. And you cannot think…What is your idea of a German mind?Just zero. Mind – and German?On a scale of zero to ten, a German mind scores zero?German and mind are contradictory terms.Who scores higher? What kind of mind scores higher?Polacks! They are the highest.So, just see. A single man taking care of the whole world’s rich people, without moving out of his house – and all these people are taking care of the poor. Just compare the work of one man against three hundred religions and their millions of servants, and you can see.In my commune, not a single baby has been born in four years. And I have not told anybody that, “You have not to give birth.” Simply stating that the world is too populated, you should think, you are intelligent…Osho,You would prefer that there be no more children?For twenty to thirty years, there should be no children.Anywhere?Anywhere. Only then can we cut the population to one-fourth of what it is now. And once the population is one-fourth, then every couple can be allowed to have two children.How would something like that be enforced? How could that ever work?If it is not going to work, then AIDS will work, then a Third World War will work.Osho,Do you have a vision of the future that includes a Third World War?If I am not the alternative, then there is no world.It is you, or World War Three?It is me, or the whole world. Really, things have come to such a point: either they have to listen to me or go to hell.Whomsoever they have listened to up to now, has led them wrongly. The politicians have created nations, wars. And now the ultimate war – the Third World War – they are preparing for every day, piling up more and more nuclear weapons. They already have more than are needed – seven hundred times more. They can destroy the whole earth seven hundred times, and still they are piling up. I don’t know what kind of arithmetic these people have learned.Osho,What's your advice to Ronald Reagan in regard to nuclear weapons?Just drop all those nuclear weapons in the Pacific Ocean. That is the meaning of the name “Pacific Ocean.” Drop all nuclear weapons. Be the first, and declare, “We are not in favor of war, whatsoever the consequence.”Osho,Do you fear the Soviet Union?There is no problem, nothing to be worried about. If the whole world drops war, what can the Soviet Union do? Let them conquer the whole world – what is wrong? Rather than being destroyed completely, it is perfectly good to have a Soviet government all over the world. What is wrong in it?You know in this country there is a term, “Better dead than red.”So then, be dead! But we have decided to be red. We are not deciding in favor of being dead. So our slogan is: Better to be red than dead. It is only a question… Just think, if I say this to the Soviet leaders, they will ask the same question: “If America overruns us…?” If I say it to Americans, they think, “The Soviet Union is going to overrun us.” So nobody is willing to do it first – but somebody has to. And America, being a far more intelligent, far younger nation, far more democratic, far more intelligent – I would like to appeal to America first: you be the pioneer.Osho,But you've said some harsh things recently about America. You said that violence is the religion of America.I say all kinds of things in different contexts.But let me ask: you've said that, “I believe that violence is the religion of America,” that America has mistreated many groups – Red Indians, black people…That’s true.Why then do you remain here if you find so much evil in the United States?I will fight it.Osho,Well, can you give me some sense about what you are doing about, say, racial discrimination?We are creating a commune of joyous, happy, silent, dancing, singing, loving people. And this commune is going to create a sabotage of your whole American society. If just a small atom can explode and destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then don’t think a small commune cannot sabotage the whole American continent.How will that work?You will know only when it has worked. Had you any idea how the atom bomb would work before it worked? Even those who made it had no idea how it would work. Einstein suffered his whole life after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, repenting that in the first place he had written a letter to President Roosevelt that atom bombs could be made. He was not aware that so much is possible through a single explosion. And now we have seven hundred times more power to destroy.This small commune is a life-energy phenomenon. If dead matter can explode… This type of experiment has never been done. What we are doing here is totally new: we are creating a certain kind of energy field.This is what the evangelicals say. They say that, “It will spread, it will pass word to word, and finally we will have influenced millions.” Realistically, do you think that will happen?Those people have no idea what is going on here. Don’t compare us with all those retarded people.Like Billy Graham, for instance?Yes, Billy Graham is the final word as far as retarded people are concerned. You can even just look at his face, and it is the face of a chimpanzee, not of a man. Well shaved…Why do you see in him a chimpanzee?He is – dressed in the American way, but he is a chimpanzee. Just undress him and you will find…Which ideas of his do you find most offensive?Everything, because I find Jesus a crackpot, so what about these people? I don’t criticize Billy Graham or that kind of person. I think of Jesus as a crackpot, and these are…What do you think of Reverend Moon?He should be sentenced for his whole life, not for one and a half years. And, with him, all the other bishops and priests who have signed a petition for him that he should be released and should not be punished.Are you distressed that sometimes people put you and Reverend Moon in the same category?They can put me wherever – everybody is free to do that. In fact, Moon’s and my name mean exactly the same thing: the moon.What's the difference between the two of you?The difference is absolute – there is nothing similar. I don’t have any God, I don’t have any paradise, I don’t have a savior, I don’t have a gospel, I don’t have a holy book. I don’t teach a certain theology, doctrine, creed, discipline. On the contrary, I teach individuality, freedom, doubt, skepticism, agnosticism. These words are anathema to people like Reverend Moon.Osho,And yet in your community there is a sense of order and authority here.There is a sense of order, and that sense of order is coming out of the intelligent people living here. Nobody is ordering.But those people say they draw their energy from you.They can say whatsoever they want to say – what do I have to do with that? Nobody is ordering, nobody is trying to enforce a certain system on them. I am simply explaining my experience, my attitude, my approach to life, and leaving it to them. If they want to live it, they are free; if they don’t want to live it, they are free. If they want to be here, good; if they want to go away, that is even better.Osho,I spoke to a young woman today who said once that – while she thought there was no chance that you would ever do this – that if you did, as Jim Jones did, suggest a mass suicide, that she would hope that she would do that. When you hear that, what do you feel, what do you think?Certainly, that woman is speaking her heart. She is not saying anything about me, she is speaking about herself. And as far as she is concerned, you have to ask her. That is her love for me. But I have not asked anybody to die for me – I have asked people to live for me.This is the only place on the earth where Jonestown cannot happen, because I am in total love with life – with everything that life is. There is no denial, no renunciation of anything. And I would like my people to live as long as possible. But if somebody feels that way, that is his freedom, what can I do?Would you consider that a fanatical kind of response?No, not at all. Not at all.Why not?It is simply her love.Isn't that a dangerous kind of love?Love is always dangerous. So people who are not capable of living dangerously are not capable of loving, either.Osho,I know you've often had to speak about Jonestown, and I'll just ask you to be patient with me. When you heard about the incident, what did you think?I thought, “This is where Jesus has led people.”Where Jesus had led people?Yes, this was Jesus’ doing. If I get him, I am going to slap on both his cheeks together, so he cannot give me another cheek.Why did you think that – that this is Jesus' doing? Jonestown is Jesus' doing?Because that’s the whole conclusion, the logical conclusion, of Jesus. Jesus was telling his people that he is going to his father’s house to prepare a place for them, and then he will come and take them. Two thousand years have passed; he did not come back.Now it is simply logical that Jim Jones thinks, “Why bother going first, preparing? It is better to take the whole lot with me.” I think this seems to be more logical and mathematical. If Jesus had done that, that would have been better, there would have been no Christianity. That would have been a great blessing in the world: if he had taken those twelve fools that he used to call apostles, humanity would have been saved from so much misery and suffering.Your followers have been called fools, though, as well.They are!Do you tell them that?Yes, they are here – I tell them.They just don't listen, though, huh?They do not. They know me – they don’t care what I say.Osho,You once lived a very simple kind of life; now you live a very opulent kind of life. What happened?I am just a contradictory man. One day, I can again live a simple life, there is no problem in it.I'm sorry…?One day, I can again start living a simple life, there is no problem. But whatsoever I do, I do it totally.Is there a possibility that one day you will give all this up?Every possibility, any moment – because in the first place nothing belongs to me, so I have not to give up anything. This watch is given to me for your interview. In my room, I am not…Timex in your room, huh?…I am not even wearing a watch. The car comes to me when they have to bring me here. Nothing belongs to me, everything belongs to the commune or their Trust. So in the first place, I am still a poor man, pretending to be a rich man!You're doing a good job!I am.Osho,If you gave all this up, what would you do?I would just go to sleep.Permanently, or for the evening?Permanently.Osho,What should happen to all this after you are dead?I don’t care, because nobody bothers… When I was not here, I was not concerned abut the world, neither was the world concerned about me. When I am not here, you think only one thing, that I am dead. You forget the other part – that you are dead for me, too. The connection is finished. The world is no longer there for me, just as I am no longer there for you. I become absent to you, you become absent to me.Osho,Do you believe in reincarnation?I know – I don’t believe. I don’t believe in anything.What do you know?I know my own past lives. That’s why I know there is reincarnation.What were your past lives?Now, that will be a belief for you, only fiction. And a man who can write three hundred and fifty books can write three hundred and fifty fictions also. So that is not much use.But how many lives have you had in the past?As many as you want. One thing I can say: I can lead you to the point from where you can look at your past lives – at least one life – and that will be proof enough of reincarnation. Telling my stories will not be of any use.But maybe you could give me some example of how it happened in the past.No, I never give anything which can become a belief in any way.Osho,What are your feelings about funeral preparations? Have you made some arrangements?No.Would you want to be cremated in the new crematorium?That, my people will think of. Who bothers? I will be gone. People are so worried about controlling things, even after their death. When I am not there, this body is just matter. So whatsoever they want to do… If they want to throw it into the river, most probably that will be the right thing!Osho,Do you think you will be in Oregon for the rest of your life?I don’t know. If I get the green card, I may go out. If I don’t get the green card, I am going to be here.You've got the people in Australia worried now, as I understand.I have my communes in the whole world, but everywhere I will have the same problem. So first I will have to settle here. If the green card is settled here, then I will go to Australia to fight again, for whatever card they have.Osho,The last thing: do you have a message for the people of America?I certainly have a message. Because America is not an old country like India, which has existed for thousands of years and has a burden of a long past, prejudice, conditioning. America is just a child compared to a country like India or China – three hundred years mean nothing.America has a very superficial layer of conditioning. If it can drop that conditioning – being Christian, being Jewish, being American – America can become the first country in the world to open the doors for a new humanity. It is a risky thing, dangerous, but only America is young enough to take the risk.Drop all religions, drop the boundaries of the country, throw away all nuclear weapons, declare to the whole world, “We are no longer for war. If anybody wants to invade us, we will welcome them.”Osho,I don't think that's a platform you could win the presidency on! If you were voting – if you were an American citizen and you chose to vote – would you be a republican or a democrat?I will simply be what I am. I cannot conceive of myself in any other role.But from what you know of American politics, where do you think you would be most comfortable?They are both the same type of people. This is just a political conspiracy. It depends on a certain psychology of people, and democracy is using it. People’s memory is very short – three years. So for four years, five years, one party rules, and naturally it cannot fulfill all the promises that it has given to the people. It starts falling, in people’s eyes. And for five years, the other party has been giving promises that, “We will do what they have not done.” So after five years the other party comes on top. And this game goes on being played. Those two parties are conspirators, shareholders in the same company. It is a rotation of a wheel.I don’t see any difference in their ideology, I don’t see any difference in their principles, I don’t see any difference in their faces. They are all the same people, playing a game. It is a football match: one team on this side and one team on that side. It doesn’t make any difference to me.I am against parties. I want democracy to be party-less. Unless it is party-less, it cannot be democracy. It is only temporary dictatorship. For four years, five years, or whatsoever time in different countries – you give a party four years’ dictatorship. It is a temporary dictatorship, it is not democracy.Democracy will be possible only when there are no political parties, and each individual decides on his own. Nobody is going to campaign, nobody is going to convince him. He is not a party member, he has not to follow a party line – he has to decide himself.Ronald Reagan thinks he presides over a democracy. Is he incorrect?Absolutely incorrect. He does not preside over Rajneeshpuram.Is he a deluded man?He is – senile.Think he's too old to be president?He really should go back to cowboy work, cowboy films, to Hollywood. Don’t waste the time of the world unnecessarily. Even as a cowboy, he was a third-class actor.Osho,You like movies, isn't that right?Once in a while, if my people suggest them to me.What are some of the movies you've seen lately on video?Perhaps one or two which I liked. One was, The Brothers Karamazov. That is the novel of Dostoevsky that I have always loved, and I consider it more valuable than the Holy Bible. Another was Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. That is a masterpiece of genius. So once in a while, if somebody sees something beautiful that they would like my time to be wasted on, they bring it.I read somewhere that you liked “Patton” and “The Ten Commandments.”“Ten Commandments” I liked – as a film!You didn't like the book! No, commandment – the very word – is not for me.Do you spend much time looking at videos?No.And you're not reading anything anymore?No, for five years I have not read anything. But before that I read as much as people will read in five lives.Well, thank you, thank you for your time. My pleasure.Good!

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Amano Wilfred,Author of Das Rote Tuch, GermanyOsho,Looking back on the development of the neo-sannyas movement, it appears to me very well planned, just like a seed which has the whole plan of the tree inside itself. In which state of growth is the tree of your religion now?It is true, but nobody has planned it. Looking back, you can see all the stages from the seed to the flower, but if you look at the seed you will not be able to predict what is going to happen.The seed is completely closed. It has potential, but we don’t know whether the seed will fall into the right soil, or will fall on a stone and will never grow, or may be eaten by animals, destroyed by children. Nobody knows what is going to happen in the future. The future remains open; unknown, unknowable.And that’s how sannyas has grown. I have never planned it – not the way an architect plans how a building is going to be. A building is a construction, it is not a growth. A construction can be planned, but growth is life. It is an opening into many dimensions; what root, what dimension it will take, nobody knows.I have functioned continuously from this innocence. I am not a man who plans; I trust existence so much, and planning means distrust. I know that existence has helped me up to this moment, and I have never done anything. The next moment also will be taken care of. To me, this trust is real religion, not believing in Jesus Christ or God, or believing in the Bible or the Koran.No, living a life of spontaneity without any plan, trusting whatsoever happens, is the right thing. And when I say “whatsoever,” I mean whatsoever – because we don’t have any plan, so we cannot have any judgment of what happens. If we have a plan, then there is every possibility of disappointment.Existence has no obligation to follow my plan. That’s why religious people have been saying through the centuries, “Man proposes and God disposes.” There is no God to dispose; we have disposed of God himself. But if man proposes, he is bound to come to a point where there will be disappointment.Our vision is small, existence is infinite; so whatsoever we can decide will be of no significance. In fact, it will create all kinds of hindrances. If existence is going to the south and we plan to go to the north, then there will be a tension between you and existence. This is the cause of so many people around the world living in anxiety, anguish, tension, disappointment, frustration. The reason is, that in the first place they started expecting, planning, hoping, desiring. Existence is not at fault. Existence is not “disposing their proposals,” existence is simply going on its own way. And my experience is just to go with existence. I call it the “let-go way.”So, wherever the river takes. Yes, retrospectively you may be able to figure that there seems to be planning, but there has never been planning. But things have happened that should give every sannyasin courage to live without bothering about the future. My whole experience proves this. Things just go on happening – allow them to happen. That’s all. Don’t hinder, don’t try to change the direction. Relax, trusting like a small child holding his father’s hand, unworried that the night is descending, that the way is long, that there is every danger on the way. Wild animals, thieves, robbers – he has no worry. He knows his father is holding his hand.While the father is tense, in great anxiety, the child just by his side is enjoying every moment, not affected by his anxiety at all.Are you the father who is holding the hand of the sannyasins?Existence itself – a father is not of much help. That’s what the old religions have provided man, they have provided God the father. That is a small projection. The child had trusted the father, and now he is grown up; now he knows perfectly well that his father is fallible. When he was a child he knew his father was infallible. But now he is in a great dilemma; the father is fallible and he has become dependent on an infallible God.This is the simple reason why every religion projected an infallible God, far above. Omnipresent – everywhere present – so you need not worry that he may not be seeing you. Omniscient – knowing everything, past, present, future – so you need not worry that he may bypass or may ignore something. Omnipotent – all powerful – he can do everything, there is nothing which is impossible for him.The religions used the child’s psychology to create God the father. But it is a dangerous game. It means you are depending on a fiction. It means you are living in a dream world. It means your prayers are addressed to nobody; no answer is going to come.Existence is there, surrounding you everywhere. There is no need for any theologian to prove that existence is. There is a great need to prove that God exists. Still nobody has been able to prove it. For five thousand years, philosophers, theologians, logicians have all been trying hard to prove the existence of God, but nothing is proved.So I am not projecting anything, I am simply saying you exist. It does not need any proof. The trees exist, the sun exists, the moon exists, the stars exist, so many animals, men, women. No theologian has ever tried to prove that existence exists. Existence simply means “that which exists.” It needs no proof; it is solidly here, now.So I am not in favor of projecting any imaginary thing, because if you live with an imagination you will never grow. You will remain a child. With God the father, you will remain a child, retarded. It is your retarded child’s need that a fiction of God is required. Without God the retarded child feels nervous, afraid; he does not know where to go, what to do. Nobody is there to take care of him, nobody is there to guide him, nobody is – all is darkness, and there seems to be no possibility of light.But with God in heaven, the retarded child is perfectly happy.Isn't there a danger that sannyasins project all these things onto the master?I am continuously destroying their projections. As far as I am concerned, I am not allowing any projections. And this is being done for the first time. In the past, the so-called masters all allowed people to have all kinds of projections about them. It was a simple, logical thing: they were projecting God. The fiction of God was being projected by those so-called masters. The people had no acquaintance with God, but they knew the master, so they believed in the master.To create such a belief, faith, masters have been doing things which are really ugly, things which may be right for a street magician, but are not right for a master. For example, all the miracles of Jesus either never happened and were created by his disciples after he was dead – because in no Jewish literature contemporary to Jesus… It is impossible to ignore such a man, he must have been big news. A man who walks on water – do you think contemporary literature can ignore him? Will a man who makes a dead follower come back to life again be ignored?If these things are ignored, then what is news? Not a single mention of Jesus Christ, not even his name. So, most probably all those miracles were created by the followers, to make that man into a reliable representative of God. No ordinary man can walk on water – and he walks. Naturally, he has some direct relationship with the original source of life.So, firstly they were most probably invented around all the masters of the world. And a few cunning people even managed to arrange them.I know a man, a friend of mine, who was worshipped like a god. He did a small thing – he was traveling from Howrah station, and he entered the first class. He was a Mohammedan fakir. The ticket collector came, and asked for the ticket.The fakir said, “I never travel with a ticket. I am a godman; everything belongs to me. Don’t waste my time – move on!”This was simply insulting: a government servant doing his duty and you are without a ticket, and behaving in such an arrogant manner! The ticket collector also became adamant.He said, “Get down from the train otherwise I will call the police. The train will not move until you get down. And don’t force me, because I don’t want a religious man to be arrested. Simply get out. I have nothing to do with you, but I am not going to allow anybody to travel in this train without a ticket – God’s man or not.”The fakir said, “If you want me to get out, you will have to push me out. I am not going by myself.”One thing led to another, and finally the conductor became angry and pushed the man out of the door, threw out his box, his bags. The fakir laughed and he said, “Now, you were saying that if I am inside the train the train will not move. Now listen to me. If I am outside the train, the train cannot move!”A crowd gathered. And the driver was trying his hardest; the engineer was trying his hardest. Nothing seemed to be wrong, but the train was not moving. The guard was showing his flag, but the train was just standing there. By and by, all the passengers got out. There was a huge crowd, and the fakir was standing there with closed eyes.The station master came running and he asked, “What is the matter?”The conductor said, “Now, it is my duty…”But the people in the crowd were so angry at the conductor that they were ready to kill him: “You insulted a man of God, and we are being unnecessarily delayed! Somebody has to attend court, somebody has to do some business, somebody has some appointment – who will be responsible for this?”The crowd forced the conductor to give an apology. The fakir said, “Touch my feet, and remember, never misbehave with any man who seems to be religious and is traveling without a ticket.”He had to touch the fakir’s feet. The fakir entered the train, and the passengers had to rush into their compartments because the train started moving. That made him famous to thousands of people: “This is divine power.” And it was nothing – he had bribed the conductor and the driver. Just two persons and a miracle is done, and he becomes a godman.Now, it is possible that Lazarus was Jesus Christ’s friend. It could be very easily managed that his death was bogus, and Jesus brought him back to life. Lazarus was not the only person who had died in Jesus’ life. He was here for thirty-three years: in thirty-three years, thousands of people in Judea must have died. And if the man knew how to bring them back to life, then he was really cruel – knowing the secret and not bringing the people back to life. Why only Lazarus? – a friend who can conspire.In that way, I am the first man not allowing my people to make me an object of any kind of projection. Many of them will feel hurt because of their expectations. It is a very complicated phenomenon; if I am a miracle man, then they are disciples of a miracle man. If I walk on water, then I am fulfilling their egos, too. And I am a totally different man – I would start drowning in the water! That would destroy their egos. And they would most probably run away from me, would never mention my name: that they were my followers, a man who drowned in the river.Only people who are really ready to grow can remain with me. Thousands have come to me, but they all wanted some fulfillment of their egos from me. And that I cannot do. I cannot be a source of their retardedness, stupidity, superstition – no. Because I would not support them, they had to find some other master somewhere, who was ready to support them.In fact, there have been moments when, without my knowing, they managed to project something. I came to know about it only later on. But the moment I knew it, I destroyed it completely.A young man came one night. I had never seen him before; he was well educated. He told me, “My doctor has suggested coming to you and asking for a glass of water.”I said, “But who is this doctor and why should he suggest me? Because I am not a doctor and I don’t treat patients.”He said, “He told me that you would refuse, ‘But remain there, don’t leave.’”It must have been nine o’clock at night. Until twelve he was sitting there in front of me. I said, “Okay, you can sit.” I continued my work, whatsoever I was reading.I went on reading, and once in a while he would ask, “Why? I have to go four or five miles; my house is far away and my mother will be waiting.”Because I was sick, my mother had come to visit me. She had gone to sleep, but seeing the light was on in my room and I was talking to somebody at twelve o’clock, she came out and asked what the matter was.That young man just fell at my mother’s feet and he said, “Help me! I don’t want anything, just a glass of water.”So my mother said, “Why don’t you give him a glass of water? And there is no problem in it, I will bring it.”I said to her, “You don’t know. That glass of water can be very dangerous.”She went in and brought a glass of water just to satisfy herself, otherwise she would get very upset: “What kind of compassion have you? He is simply asking for a glass of water. If it can help him, why should you hinder me?”I gave it to the man, and as he drank the water, I could see his whole face changing. He touched his stomach and said, “My God, the pain has gone.”He had been suffering from stomach pain for six months, and the doctor finally got fed up with him – because there was no pain, there was just something psychological. And the doctor knew me.I had to tell that man, “It is good that your pain has disappeared. But be kind to me; don’t start talking about it to other people. Otherwise, there are so many sick people all around, and I don’t want to be surrounded by that kind of crowd.”He said, “No, I will not say anything. Just do one thing: once in a while I will come with a bottle of water – just touch it, and I will do it.”He cured many people!And I told him, “I myself fall sick, and I have to call the same doctor who has sent you to me. I myself am drinking the same water. Can’t you see a simple thing?”He was not willing to listen. He said, “I have experienced a miracle and not only in myself, I have seen the miracle happening in others. And you have just touched the water!”It took me months to convince that man that it was just his mind: that there was no pain, that’s why the doctor had failed. Finally, I had to call the doctor and tell him, “Explain to him that the medicines were creating more trouble.” Because there was no pain, and he was continuously asking for medicines.The doctor told him, “I sent you there because your thing was completely mental. You may have helped a few people, because almost ninety percent of people are suffering from diseases which don’t exist, which are in the mind.”That’s why there are so many “pathies” in the world: allopathy, naturopathy, homeopathy, acupuncture, ayurveda. In every country there are many pathies. And the miracle is that they all work, and their working is totally different. Except allopathy, no pathy is scientific. But even allopathy cannot defeat those other pathies – they also cure people. Just ten percent of the people they will not be able to cure. But ninety percent of the people can be cured by any pathy, and these ninety percent are the people that allopathy will not be able to cure.So, if you look at the figures, those bogus pathies are doing greater work than allopathy. Allopathy is certainly going to cure the ten percent; about the ninety it cannot be certain. But those other pathies certainly will not cure the ten percent, but they can manage the ninety percent.I had a friend who was a doctor. Without any degrees, without any education in medicine, but if you count the people that he cured, he was a great physician. In his house – he was a bachelor and he lived alone – his lab was worth seeing. His lab was all bogus, there was nothing in it: test tubes, bottles, all kinds of colored water moving from one bottle into another bottle, and many kinds of beds and chairs, electrical chairs.Seeing his lab, any sick person would be immensely impressed. He never took a stethoscope in his hand: he had invented a certain bed, you had to lie down on it. The stethoscope would be put on your chest, and above you there were two bottles of colored water. They would start jumping up and down because of the stethoscope. You would see them – and this man seemed to be a great scientist! And he would watch those colors, and that’s how he decided what kind of medicine was going to help you. And it was all water.He was caught, because the medical profession would not allow him to do it.I stood up for him in the court. I said, “It is not a question of whether he has a certificate or not. The man managed to save thousands of people from suffering. And you bother too much about a piece of paper: that he is not an MBBS. And all these MBBS’s who have filed the case against him, the reason is not that they are against him. The reason is that he is attracting patients, and they are all losing their business. They cannot compete with him; he is really such a genius.”The magistrate laughed. He said, “What you are saying is right. I know this man, he has even cured me! But as far as the law is concerned, I have to prevent him from practicing medicine. And because I understand your argument – and my own experience is in his favor – I will not give him any punishment. Just he should not be a physician anymore.”I told the man, “Don’t be worried. Move to another town, in a faraway place where people don’t know you. Take all your instruments and start again.” And he is still doing it!And I told him, “Remember, as the medical profession becomes alert about you, change your place. You cannot remain in one place. They won’t let you. This time this magistrate has helped you. We don’t know if any other court will help you or not.”I have been trying in every possible way, to destroy the projections. I don’t want my people to have faith in me. I want them to experience me; I want them to experience what I have experienced. I can show the way. I cannot walk for them; they will have to walk alone. I can give them encouragement, but I cannot give them the truth.And the real function of the master is to give you encouragement. Just by his presence, his blissful life, peaceful life, he creates a certain milieu in which you can easily move toward dropping your plans, projects – and allow existence to happen.So, what is happening in sannyas is not a doing on my part or on anybody’s part. It is a happening. And it has gone so beautifully. And it is going so beautifully. I don’t see that I can ever be disappointed, because in the first place I don’t bother whether the river is going to the north, or to the south. Wherever it goes, wherever it lands, that’s my home. That’s where I always wanted to go, but I was not aware of it.Osho,The modern age, the so-called “age of enlightenment,” is an age of liberalization from old belief systems and religions. You claim your religion to be a modern religion. Isn't this a contradiction in itself?It is; it is a contradiction to call it a modern religion. Or better, a religionless religion, which will make the contradiction more clear. But to me, existence allows contradictions. It is not logical, it is very illogical. In fact, existence depends on contradictions. What are life and death? Are they not contradictory? But both are going to happen to one person, to the same person. In fact, a dead person cannot die. That would be consistent. If some dead person dies, it would be absolutely logical. But what happens is contradictory: a living person – life suddenly becomes death.If you look into existence – and I am not a philosopher, I am simply existential; not even an existentialist, just existential. I see contradiction everywhere. Light cannot exist without darkness; darkness cannot exist without light. For example, ordinarily people think that a blind man must be living in darkness. They are wrong. A blind man knows nothing of darkness, because to see darkness you need eyes. If a blind man cannot see light, he cannot see darkness. They are two poles of one phenomenon; for both, eyes are needed.Now, what the blind man experiences is something almost impossible to conceive. No light, no darkness. Then what? Is there something else that he feels? No. You must be thinking that a deaf person is enjoying continuous silence. You are wrong. A deaf person knows nothing of silence, because he knows nothing of sound. Sound and silence go together. Light and darkness go together. Everything – find anything and you can predict that there must be something polar opposite to it. Without the polar opposite, it cannot exist.For example, men cannot exist without women. They are polar opposites, and that’s why they are so much attracted to each other. They are like positive and negative polarities of electricity. They are polar opposites. You have to understand the whole thing. First, they will be attracted to each other and they will be opposed to each other. This is the whole problem of all the couples in the world, of all the lovers in the world. They are attracted to each other, and the same is the cause of their continuous fight. They are the opposite of each other. That’s why homosexuals became known as gay people – they have no polarity. There is nothing to fight about. They are always smiling, they look really gay. But their gayness, their delight, is very superficial. It has not the tension of the opposites. The force is not there.Have you ever heard any story about gay people which can be compared to the stories of Romeo and Juliet, Majnu and Laila, Siri and Farhad? Not a single love story exists about the millions of gay people who have lived on the earth. There was not the attraction to create a story; there was no conflict. In fact, a man loving another man simply loves his own mirror image. So, you can go on loving your mirror image. There is no trouble.Lesbians have no trouble with each other. But these are mirror images. If you want excitement, you have to pay for it. If you want a tremendous experience of ecstasy and love, then you have to fight for it. It all comes in a single package. That’s why I am continuously contradicting myself. It is absolutely in tune with existence.I call my religion, religionless religion. I call it religionless because it has nothing to do with all the religions which have existed up to now. To deny any connection with all those religions, I call it religion-less. But still I call it religion, because I also want to deny the atheists, the anti-religious. They were both part of the old game. The theist and the atheist were the polarity in the past. If I simply call this a religionless phenomenon, it becomes atheism. And it is not atheism. I want to insist that I am not a theist or an atheist. In fact, both are idiots. They are discussing something which does not exist. One is saying, “God is,” the other is saying, “God is not,” but both are concerned about God, and they are wasting their whole life arguing about God.So, I am giving a new term: religiousness. It is no longer concerned with God, no longer concerned with heaven and hell, no longer concerned with all kinds of theologies or anti-theologies. It is a scientific search into your consciousness. But because it is a search into consciousness, I call it religion. I cannot call it simply science, because science is arrowed toward the objective reality. Religion is arrowed toward the subjective reality.A scientist goes on working with all kinds of things, except for himself. In his lab he has done all kinds of experiments, but he has completely forgotten himself. He is the only one in his lab who has not even been touched by any experiment. Religion is experimenting on your own consciousness. So I use a slightly different word, just to make the distinction. Science experiments; religion experiences.Science is objective, religion is subjective. Science is concerned with all that you can see, and religion is concerned with the one who sees. To make this distinction clear, I have to use a contradiction. There is no other way. Otherwise, I will be falling into something wrong, something which is not my approach.Osho,In Germany there are more sannyasins and more communes than in any other country. The critics say the reason is that the German soul is drawn toward the irrational, and longs for a leader. According to you, why is your religion, and why are you, so attractive to Germans?The reason is simple. What the critics say is absolutely wrong. The reason is that Adolf Hitler has cheated Germany; deceived its youth, as nobody else has ever done to any country. They are so frustrated with political leadership, messiahs. Adolf Hitler was pretending to be a messiah. He thought that he was a reincarnation of the Old Testament prophet, Elijah. And in the Second World War, Germany saw something which no other country knows. Millions of people were killed, and the people of Germany were not aware what was happening. They were not aware that six million Jews were being gassed, and what they saw – the smoke from the chimneys of the concentration camps – was thousands of peoples’ lives becoming smoke.Adolf Hitler cheated them by saying, “You are the people who are meant to rule over the world.” Of course, the people could not say that they were not responsible for supporting Adolf Hitler. They were as responsible as Adolf Hitler; it was a mutual thing. Adolf Hitler was giving them a great ego project – to conquer the whole world – and they were overjoyed that they had got a prophetic leader, a charismatic leader. For five years continuously he was winning, which made Germany feel, “Now there is no doubt at all.” The man went on being victorious, so more and more support came to Adolf Hitler.But, finally, all such ambitious projects fail – sooner or later. Existence cannot support any such idiotic thing. Five years does not mean anything in existence, not even five seconds. So, Germany saw just a little dream, and the glory, and then the tremendous fall. It was almost as if Hitler had taken Germany to the top of Everest, and from there, the fall.It has created two things in Germany – that’s why it now becomes my country. One, now no Adolf Hitler can deceive them. Enough is enough. No prophet, no messiah can deceive them, they have suffered too much. They know perfectly well that nobody is special – neither the Germans, nor the Italians, nor the English – nobody is special. The suffering that they have gone through, and the suffering they created for the whole world, at least proves one thing: that nobody is meant to rule over the world. And purity of blood is simply nonsense. You cannot tell whether a certain blood is German, English, Chinese, Hindu, Mohammedan – impossible. There are blood types, but they are not German, Italian, English. Blood is simply blood; there is no pure blood or impure blood.So on the one hand, there is a tremendous frustration with Adolf Hitler and what he did to the country, and on the other hand, the guilt that they were also part of this stupid game. Now they want to get rid of all messiahs, and they also want to get rid of the guilt that they are carrying within themselves.They have no alternative other than me, because every religion will create guilt. They cannot be freed from guilt; all religions are based on guilt. I am the only person who frees you from all guilt. There is no such thing as sin. There are mistakes, and to err is human. In fact, that is the only way to learn; there is no other way to learn.So, I say to my people, commit as many mistakes as possible, just don’t commit the same mistake again – that is stupid, not sin. Committing the same mistake again simply means you are not watching what you are doing, you are not being intelligent. And you are not going to suffer in hell because of your mistakes; you will suffer in the mistakes themselves.If you don’t commit a mistake, the reward is there. There is no need for a God, and a paradise, where all those people who did not commit mistakes will be rewarded. There is no need; each act brings its punishment, or its reward. And there is no need to feel guilt, because there is no idea of sin in my approach to life. Sin is the opposite polarity of guilt. If you have any idea of sin, then the idea of guilt is bound to be there.No religion in the world can free the German youth from a tremendous burden of guilt. In fact, they will exploit it. And no religion in the world can make the German youth independent, free from all those saviors, prophets, messiahs – because they themselves are dependent on these people. It is a strange thing that I am the only person who can free you from messiahs, and who can free you from guilt.Naturally Germany needs me, and I need Germany. Soon you will see that the whole of Germany will be my commune. Adolf Hitler has made the ground for me; that’s why I have a certain love for that man. Without him, my work in Germany would have been impossible. It is difficult in America because there has been no Adolf Hitler – just a poor Nixon!Osho,A few weeks ago a young woman who was very much interested in sannyas and very much afraid that she might became a sannyasin, said to me, “But I hate the personal cult around Osho.” I tried to explain to her that there was no personal cult, but I wasn't very successful. Can you help?Just tell her that if she hates enough, she is already in love with me. She cannot escape. She can delay, but hate is already a relationship, and who wants to remain in a relationship of hate? It is not bothering me, it is bothering her. I don’t know about her, but her hatred will torture her. She will have to change it into love, only then will she be free of that torture. This is one thing.The second thing: Bhagwan does not mean “God” or “personal God.” In fact, the problem has arisen because in India there are three religions, and these three religions have three different languages. Hinduism has Sanskrit as its language, Buddhism has Pali as its language, Jainism has Prakrit as its language.Hinduism believes in a personal God. So when in Hindu scriptures the word bhagwan is used, it means a personal God. Buddhism and Jainism don’t believe in any God; they are God-less religions. So, when in Buddhist and Jaina scriptures bhagwan is used, it simply means “the blessed one.” That is actually the meaning of the word: the blessed one. It has nothing to do with God.I am reminded of H. G. Wells, and his famous statement about Gautam Buddha. Buddha did not believe in God, but he was known to his disciples as “Bhagwan Gautam Buddha.” H. G. Wells was very puzzled when he was writing his world history, so he inquired, “What is this? – Gautam Buddha denies God, and his followers are calling him God. And he never denied it to his followers, that he should not be called God.” Then he came to know that in Pali, bhagwan means the blessed one, it has nothing to do with God.In English there is only one word for God, in India there are many. The Buddhists don’t believe in God, they deny God – but to deny you have to use a word. The word that is used is ishwara. The Jainas also deny God. Naturally you have to use a word, so they use the word paramatma. Bhagwan is not used by either of those religions for God; it is used for the enlightened person. And it simply means, “One who has come to a fulfillment so deep, that there is nothing missing anymore.”So, tell that woman that I myself don’t believe in any God, personal or impersonal. I am not a God, and she need not be worried about that. But I insist that I am certainly the blessed one. That I cannot deny, because that would be a lie. And my whole function is to make you also the blessed one. If I myself am not in that space, how I can lead you into that space?Ask that woman, “Do you want to be ‘the blessed one’? Then there is no way other than falling in love with someone who is already the blessed one. Or, if you want to be ‘a miserable one’ you can go to the Vatican – the Polack pope is there – and be as miserable as you want.” So make it clear that it has something to do with self-realization; it has nothing to do with God at all.Osho,Many aspects of your commune and your vision are very similar, in my view, to Karl Marx's vision of the classless society, as there is no personal property, no money. Everybody gets what he needs; everybody works out of joy and creativity, and feels responsible for the whole; no politicians, no nations, et cetera, et cetera. Nevertheless, your commune feels totally different from any Marxist vision. The Marxists of today seem to be more afraid of you than any other people. Can you say a few words about that?It is true. The Marxists have to be more afraid than anybody else, because the others are really fading out on their own accord. The real conflict – and the decisive conflict – is going to be between my red colors and the communist red flag. There is nobody else in the field. And their fear is natural, because they cannot condemn me on all these points.So, everything that Karl Marx wanted – a classless society, a nationless world, and everybody according to his need – I am in perfect agreement with. What I am not in agreement with is that Karl Marx thought that consciousness is only a by-product of material things – chemistry, physics.About that he is absolutely wrong. He had no right even to say that, because he had never meditated. He had never sat in silence even for one hour in his whole life, to look into what he is talking about. On what grounds does he say that? He pretends to be a scientific thinker; he calls his philosophy “scientific communism.” Now, that pretension won’t stand: if he is scientific, on what grounds does he say that consciousness is a by-product? He has to prove it in a scientific lab, mixing all the chemicals and things that a man is made of. And if consciousness arises, he has proved his point.But he never entered any scientific lab in his whole life. He was sitting in the British Museum reading books on economics, politics, but he never knew anything about the Eastern ways of finding oneself. All he knew about religion was the Christian religion and the Jewish religion. He was a Jew.Jews have contributed such great people to the world: Jesus, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and they have all given as much insanity to the world as possible. These three people, this is the real trinity of the whole insanity of humanity. And the whole credit goes to the Jews – all three were Jews.Karl Marx knew only about Judaism and Christianity, and both are third-rate religions. There is nothing, they don’t have any philosophic ground, their arguments are childish. Compared to the Eastern religions – Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism – they are simply in kindergarten. To condemn them is very easy; it does not need a great mind to condemn Judaism or Christianity, it is such a simple job. But to condemn Gautam Buddha is not a simple job. You will have to face the basic thing, meditation, because his whole structure is based on meditation. And meditation is not a belief; you have to experience it. So that is the trouble for the Marxist.In India, Marxists were constantly coming in contact with me. They have written books against me. I seem to be more dangerous to them than anybody else, because nobody in the whole world – no religion – is capable of giving a counter-argument. They cannot prove the existence of God. They cannot prove that Jesus was born of a virgin girl. They cannot prove that Moses really saw God, or simply went mad roaming in the hot desert for forty years. Anybody can go mad; it is nothing special to Moses.Forty years of wandering: hungry, thirsty, people dying, and he was responsible for all this, because he had promised the people to take them to the holy land. And there was no sign of it. People were dying – forty years is a long time, the original people who had started the pilgrimage had all gone by the time that he declared, “We have arrived at the holy land.” I can say with certainty that it was not the holy land he had arrived at, it was simply despair. “Now people cannot be deceived anymore, so this is ‘the holy land.’”Israel is not worth anything. If Moses had stopped a little earlier, the Jews would have had all the oil in the world. Every Jew knows that he cannot forgive this fellow Moses! They passed all the oil fields and reached a place where there was nothing – and that was the holy land. Moses was God’s representative, and what kind of God would not say, “Moses, stop! This is the place.”I don’t think he saw God. In the desert heat, forty years can drive anybody with so much responsibility, mad. And everybody was torturing him: “Where is the holy land?” People were dying; he was not able to arrange for their food and water. This man is part of the foundation of Judaism. He had no time to meditate; he had no time to create a scientific methodology about meditation. He had never heard the word meditation. All that he knew was prayer. Prayer presupposes God.Communists are not concerned with Jews. All their religious doctrines can be very easily finished, there is nothing to it. And Jesus is just an offshoot of Judaism; he does not bring anything new to the world. He is simply repeating Jewish ideology. Even the Jews got fed up with this man: “He has nothing to offer, all that he says is to repeat the scriptures, which any rabbi can do in a better way.” He was uneducated, illiterate; any rabbi would have been far more philosophical, intellectual. And this carpenter’s son was declaring himself the only begotten son of the Jewish God.Remember, it is the Jewish God. He has nothing to do with the Hindu gods; he had never heard of Hindu gods. He has nothing to do with any other God; his God is the Jewish God. Now, the Jews are angry, naturally: God giving birth to his only begotten son in a poor carpenter’s house? He was born in a stable – God could not manage a better place for the fellow? For his whole life he was riding on a donkey; God could not even manage a Rolls Royce for him. And the things that he was saying were nothing but old scriptures. He had to repeat those scriptures because he wanted to prove that he was the promised messiah of the Jews, that he had come to save the Jews.The Jews could not accept it, it was simply insulting. This man is their messiah? And his whole following consisted of twelve fools! Those fools are called apostles.When Jesus was crucified, they had all escaped. Only one remained there, and that one also denied that he knew Jesus – because people were looking at him and found that he seemed to be a stranger there, he did not belong to Jerusalem. They insistently asked, “Who are you?”He said, “I have come to Jerusalem for a pilgrimage, and I have nothing to do with this man. I don’t even know anything about this man you are crucifying.” Eleven escaped, one denied – these were the followers.So, it was very easy for Karl Marx to criticize Christianity and Judaism. But facing me, Karl Marx would be in difficulty – because I have the whole heritage of thousands of years of inner experimentation in the East. He would not be able to argue that consciousness is a by-product. He would have to prove it, because he says he is a scientific thinker. “Then why, on what grounds, are you accepting this as a belief – calling consciousness a by-product of matter?” In fact, modern physicists proved just the opposite: matter does not exist anymore.Karl Marx is simply out of date. Absolutely out of date, because he was thinking that only matter exists and consciousness is a by-product. Now physics has come to the conclusion that matter does not exist. Then what does exist? Except consciousness, there is no other alternative left. Something certainly exists.I was arguing with communists, and they were in difficulty. I proved that Marx is unscientific; he is simply an atheist believer. And a man who is not even scientific about the most important thing – consciousness – how can you rely on this man about other matters? In fact, on all other matters he was proved wrong. He had never thought that the revolution would happen in Russia. If somebody had suggested that revolution would happen in Russia, he would simply have laughed. He would not have conceived that revolution would happen in China. He thought that revolution was going to happen in a capitalist country like America – where it has not happened, and there are no signs at all that it is going to happen.The Communist Party in America is the weakest party in the whole world. In all other countries the Communist Party is far stronger. In America – what Communist Party, what revolution? Here it should happen, because here the rich are super-rich, and the poor are super-poor. The distinction is vaster than anywhere else. Marx’s predictions have not proved right. Revolutions happened in poor countries like Russia and China.And whatever Marx was thinking about the revolution and its after effects, nothing has proved right. He thought that once the revolution had happened, the country would not have any classes. It would take maybe five years, ten years. But seventy years have passed, and in Russia the classes still exist. Only their names have changed. The poor are still poor; in fact, more poor than in America. And the communists who are in power are more powerful than any rich man who has ever been in power. So there is a new class division, the powerful and the powerless.In America there is a possibility – I say only a possibility – because at least one is free to express. In Russia there is no possibility for revolution. Marx could not be born in Russia; there was no way for anybody to say anything different from the government policy. The classes are there, and there is no sign of their disappearing; they are becoming more consolidated. Marx thought that those who were in power would soon decentralize power, but they go on centralizing power.When Stalin died – and perhaps no man had that much power for that long a time, for almost forty years he was omnipotent. In Russia, at least, he was God, had all the qualities. His detectives made him omniscient; he was looking at everyone, watching everyone. People could not even talk to their spouses, because one never knew – the woman may be a detective or the husband may be a detective. People could not talk to their kids, because those kids belonged to the children’s Communist Party, and to prove themselves loyal to the country and to communism, they were telling their leaders everything that was happening in the family: what the father said, what the mother said. Wives had their own Communist Party; husbands had their own Communist Party. For the first time in history, everybody was completely surrounded. For the first time, walls were hearing you.Such slavery. And Marx wanted that great freedom would happen. Marx was thinking that once rich people were no longer there, immense riches would suddenly fall from the sky. That has not happened; the Russian people are very poor people. So, communists are worried by me because I say they have only distributed poverty. And that is not my way.I also want a classless society, but not enforced by a dictatorship – a classless society because people have so much money that nobody wants to hoard it. For example in a desert, if you have an oasis you hoard it. You have people on guard so that nobody takes the water; the water is scarce. But when enough water is available, there is no question of hoarding it. You don’t hoard water for tomorrow, because tomorrow the tap will be available. Money can be created, and to me, just as there are people who are born poets, born painters, born scientists, there are people who are born wealth creators. Not everybody is Henry Ford, and cannot be; not everybody can be a Rockefeller. And if you destroy Henry Ford, Rockefeller, Morgan and other people who continuously create wealth, the poor people will not become rich. They will be poorer than before, because the creators of wealth are gone.I would like money to be respected in the same way that any other art is respected. Wealth should not be condemned; in fact, we should encourage people to become wealthier. I would like a classless society which is totally rich. Marx’s classless society is totally poor. I want it to be equal on the highest peak, and he wants people to be equal crawling on the earth.My commune is working in that way.Secondly, I respect the individual; Marx has no respect for the individual. Marx is utterly a socialist – society is important; all individuals can be sacrificed for the society. To me, that is not the case. On the contrary, every individual is so unique and valuable that he cannot be sacrificed for the nation, for the society, for ideology – no.So my commune will be rich; it will have all affluence, abundance, but still individuals will be free. They will not be forced to be of equal size. Somebody prefers a Ferrari and somebody prefers a Mercedes – I don’t think that everybody should have a Ferrari whether he likes it or not! Individuals should be free. Not only about expressing their words, because all these things make your individuality. Your car is also part of you, your expression. Your dress is also part of you, your expression. Everything should be allowed to individuals, but things should be in such abundance.For example in this small commune, where only fifteen hundred people are permanent residents, we have hundreds of cars, hundreds of buses, five airplanes; the whole commune is centrally air-conditioned. The commune tries to provide everybody’s need, whatsoever it is. Still, they are not cut equally – that your size should be equal, that everybody has to be six feet. Then those who are six feet five inches have to be cut, and those who are five inches less have to be given traction and lengthened! This is stupid.To me, a classless society simply means that we give everybody an opportunity – an equal opportunity – to be himself. If somebody wants to live naked, in my society he will be allowed. In Russia, no. In China, no – in China he has to use a certain dress determined by the government. Nobody can even have the freedom to be naked. This kind of inhuman society is not my vision.My vision is, people having so much that they can have anything they want. There is no need to hoard, because everything is always available. You can get it any moment you want. And still there will be differences. Somebody does not want to use a car at all, likes walking? Now, you cannot force a car on him, “You have to go in a car because it is an equal society and everybody has to be in a car.” People should be allowed their differences. All should be equally allowed to be themselves – and at the highest peak. That is why communists are very much against me.In fact, all religions are against me, the communists are against me, the fascists are against me, the capitalists are against me. It seems only I am for myself, nobody else in the whole world!Osho,Can I add one last question?Recently you have said all your sannyasins should join the commune. For me, that creates a problem. I have two very small children and a beautiful wife – she is not a sannyasin. We would like to live together with other sannyasins, but as the communes are now, we can't live together in a commune. So what to do?Take the challenge and accept the trouble of it. Don’t choose the easier way. The easier way will be to live outside with your wife, with your children, because that is where you are. Nothing has to be changed. Moving into a commune will bring many problems, many of which you are not yet aware of. Your wife may fall in love with another sannyasin – most probably, she will do. You may fall in love with some sannyasin; in fact, you have already been thinking of it! So there are going to be troubles.But my suggestion is, choose the way where there are troubles, because one grows through them, facing them, encountering them. In the outside world you will remain safer, more secure – a salary, a job, a position, a house. In the commune you have nothing. All that you have you pour into the commune’s pool. It is risky, but to take risks is one of the basic devices for growth.Many kinds of new dimensions will open to you. For example, you think you have a very loving wife. Give it a chance – whether it is just an idea or a reality. If she is a very loving wife she will soon fall in love with somebody!What about the children? They are really very small.They will be part of the commune. That’s my approach toward children, that children should not be possessed by the parents. It is creating one thousand and one psychological difficulties for the children.Humanity has not yet become aware that the family is one of the most criminal institutions in history, because it gives the child a very limited area of growth. The husband, the wife, the child: a very small area. And the child learns to depend on the father, on the mother. He learns their habits, learns their religion, learns everything from them. His learning is very linear; he is not rich in his learning. If the child is a boy he loves his mother, and hates his father. If the child is a girl she loves the father, and hates the mother. The mother is almost a competitor. You can see small girls flirting with their fathers, not knowing it is simply the way of nature, that he is the only man available.If the family moves into a commune, and dissolves itself into a commune, the children have a tremendously vast scope; hundreds of uncles, hundreds of aunts. Every woman is different, every man is different. And the child will have the opportunity to learn from everybody.You can give your love, but you should not possess the child. You should give him freedom to move, relate with as many people as possible. It is one of the greatest problems for psychologists, that no man ever finds a woman who is totally satisfying. Neither does a woman ever find a man who is tailored just for herself. The coat is always either loose or it is too tight, because it is not tailored for you. The boy raised in a family unconsciously gets continuously conditioned by the mother. In his unconscious, an image of the mother becomes so deeply impressed that his whole life he will try to find a woman who is exactly his mother. But that is impossible. Existence never repeats. So, whenever he falls in love, it is only a part of the woman that resembles his mother, but it is always only a part.So, when you are just having a love affair everything goes good, because something in you resembles the father of the girl, something in the girl resembles your mother. On the beach, in the garden, it is good – you are both at your best. But when you get married and you have to live together twenty-four hours a day, then it becomes troublesome, because you cannot pretend that the whole is only that part with which you were in love.The whole is far bigger, and when the whole starts showing it – and it happens from both sides – the woman wonders that she never knew this man, she could not have conceived that this man will be like this. The man could not have conceived that this woman would throw tantrums and pillows and scream every night, and the neighbors would come. And even if you are right you have to apologize, otherwise she goes on screaming and crying. You had never thought about this. On the beach she had never behaved like this!No couple in the whole world fits absolutely, and the reason is the family. If a child is raised by the commune, then he will not have a fixed image, he has known so many women. One day he sleeps with one aunt, another day with another aunt, once in a while he sees his mother, too. Once in a while, his father. Otherwise, there are so many uncles and everybody is loving to him. He never gets impregnated with one idea. He has a very vague sense of womanhood, not of a particular woman. The same is true about the girl: she has a certain idea of what it means to be a man, but she has no fixed picture.There will be no disappointment in their lives because they will be more flexible, they will be more adjusting. And they will be able to cope with new realities that may be coming, because they have seen so many people that they know that people are different. And they don’t have some picture to compare with. They can love more. They can accept even difficult parts of the other person, and they will never be angry with their parents.Otherwise, every boy remains angry with his father because the father was the person who was making love to his mother. He was the hindrance; otherwise he would have been the lover. That’s what he wanted. But the father was always there and was stronger and bigger and more powerful, so he had to repress himself.No girl ever forgives the mother because she was always there. And as the girl grows, comes of age, the mother is continuously watching whether the father is taking too much interest in the girl, or the girl is taking too much interest in the father. And she is continuously cutting in, and creating barriers between them. The girl cannot understand. She cannot be forgiving, she will always be angry.In a commune, the child will not have any anger against the father or the mother. In fact, his experience of richness will be vast, because a commune is already a world. For a child, five thousand people are enough of an experience. With this experience, he will enter into the world. He will not need God the father; he will not need the priest – the father. He will be independent enough, because he was never dependent on the father or the mother. He was not dependent on anyone. To belong to a commune means he was independent, he was not dependent on anybody. So he has been nourished and nurtured into freedom. And that should be the new man.So my suggestion is, take the risk. And help other sannyasins who are outside the commune, to also move to the commune – because only in a commune will you have a real experience of sannyas. Outside, you cannot have. The world is rotten, simply a graveyard. Drop all the security of the world, the safety of the world, and take the risk.And don’t be afraid. Just look at me – not a single cent.When I resigned from the university, my father started crying. He asked, “What are you doing?”I said, “From this moment, I want to live totally with existence. If existence wants me to be hungry, I will be hungry and thankful.”He said, “You have always been difficult. Now you have taken the most dangerous step.”I gave all my property to the other children, because I told him, “I don’t want any inheritance – because when I refused your religion, which was my inheritance; when I refused your party politics, which was my inheritance; how can I accept your money, your house, your lands, your garden? That will be very insincere of me. So I cannot accept, because I have rejected everything else. And if I accept only the money, I don’t receive anything from you. Your love, your blessing is enough.”So he had distributed all the money and he said, “You should have told me a few days before. I would have kept a part reserved for you, for any time you are in difficulty.”I said, “I will never be in difficulty. Nowhere will I be in difficulty, for the simple reason that I know how to love, and that’s enough. I can take any risk, I can jump into any challenge, because I know how to love. I know how to trust.”And it is such a tremendous joy to discover every day that you are still here, with not a single cent. I must be the poorest man in the whole world.You don't look like!I live like an emperor, because what can a poor man lose? I live like an emperor. Even an emperor is worried about losing land, money, this and that. I don’t have anything, so I can live as no emperor has ever lived, without any anxiety. But the fact is that I am the poorest man in the world. Even beggars have their accounts.So don’t be worried, just take a jump. And next time you come here, bring your loving wife.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Questline, CJOR Radio,Vancouver, CanadaGlad to see you.Osho,Good evening.In one of the talks I heard, you were talking about a merging of Zorba and buddha, an aligning of the spiritual and the material. Can you please define enlightenment for me?It simply means becoming aware of yourself. Ordinarily, a man is awake to everything around him, but is not aware who is awake and aware of all the things around. So we remain on the periphery of life, and the center remains in darkness. To bring light to that center, consciousness to that center, is what enlightenment is.It is just being absolutely centered in yourself, focusing all your consciousness upon yourself, as if nothing else exists. Only you are.Your own enlightenment came at the age of twenty-one?Right.And you likened it to an atomic explosion. You said it was like a light that never left you. How would your perception then, being enlightened, differ from people that have not awakened to their own enlightenment?Just as, when a person is asleep, how are you going to define the difference between the person who is asleep and the person who is awake? The person who is asleep is dreaming, or not dreaming, but one thing is certain, he is not aware that he is asleep. The man who is awake, whatever he is doing one thing is certain, he is aware that he is awake.This is the only difference on the spiritual level, too. A spiritually asleep person is not aware that he is asleep. And a spiritually awakened person is aware that he is awake. And, of course, he is aware of all those who are asleep.The awakened person has two definite positions: first, that he is aware; second, that all others who are around him are asleep. But the sleeping person has neither of these two. He is not aware that he is asleep, and he is not aware that others around him are asleep.What is blocking the awakening in most people?Just a continuous flow of thoughts.I'm sorry?A continuity of thoughts, which is functioning as a barrier – that is the layer that keeps you unaware. Either you are thinking about the past, or you are thinking about the future. But neither the past exists nor the future. And between these two is the very small gap of the present, which you go on missing. That is the point where awakening happens.That small gap, I make equivalent to an atomic gap – the smallest possible gap. It slips away so quickly, that if you are not completely free from thoughts you are going to miss it.Osho,I saw some deer here, and they were obviously very much in this moment. Is man's intellectual mind the baggage that we're carrying around, which blocks our own awareness?That is the only mind you have. And the deer are not aware of the present; it is you who are thinking that they are aware of the present. They are not. They are neither aware of the present, nor are they aware of the past, nor of the future. They don’t have any thought process.It is man’s prerogative to be aware of the past, to be aware of the future. And, if he makes effort, then there is a potential in him to be aware of the present. No animal can become enlightened.Every man has the potential to become enlightened. If he does not become, he is responsible – nobody else is responsible for it.When you talk about enlightenment and being in this present moment, surely there must be planning for the future? There must be a certain amount of planning that's gone on around Rajneeshpuram?I have not planned anything.Well, the people around you have.They are asleep, and they are free to plan.Which brings me to my next question.They are sound asleep and doing great things! I am the only person who is not doing anything.Well, you're enlightened.Because I cannot afford to dream, and to project, and to do. They can afford it; they are asleep.Osho,When I hear you say that – in terms of my model of society, and my framework of reference to the society that I've been brought up in, if everyone were truly awakened, what type of society would it be? There has to be planning – but can you plan in the nowness of this moment for the future?If everybody is awakened, there will be no planning and there will be no need for planning. People will function spontaneously. For example, I have never planned my life. I don’t know what I am going to say in the next sentence. You will ask a question, and my response will be there, but it is not prepared, no planning has gone into it.So, if everybody was enlightened we would have a totally different world, almost inconceivable now. You will not have atomic weapons, you will not have war; you will not have crime, you will not have courts. You will not have politicians, you won’t have saints, popes. They will all disappear. You will have very innocent, simple, but joyous people all around. They will be doing things, but they will be very simple things, not complicated – nothing like nuclear weapons. They will make houses, but they will not have architecture and schools for architecture. They will do whatsoever is needed simply, without getting deeply into details. They will start a thing without knowing where it is going to end.That’s how I have lived without planning all these three decades; not knowing anything about tomorrow. But everything has gone perfectly well. In fact, I cannot conceive that it could have been better.How many enlightened beings are there, at this point in time?I don’t know. There is no way of knowing.Do you think the experience of enlightenment for other individuals would be the same as it was for you – that atomic explosion you referred to?Not necessarily.So it's a very individual situation?It is very unique, and very individual.And that's why it's so difficult for someone like yourself to explain what it is?I am explaining it.Yes, but it's still difficult.And I am explaining it better than anybody else has ever explained it!You've written…350 books have now been published on the subject.I have not written a single book.Osho,Let's talk about how to get to enlightenment, or how to become awakened to your enlightenment. I've read some of your work, and you say that there's two ways to do it: the alone route, through meditation; and the other, through relationships.Would you talk about the subject of relationships, please, because in North America particularly we have a good track record of relationships coming and going, coming and going. And I don't see that awakening that you were talking about!The basic thing is meditation. But meditation can happen in two ways: either it can happen in your absolute aloneness, unrelated to anybody – you can move inward in your silence. Just sitting there watching your thoughts moving, as you watch, you become aware of a strange phenomenon, that the gaps between thoughts are becoming bigger and bigger. The thought process is no longer as thick as it was before.Just a few days of sitting silently, doing nothing, no interference with thoughts, no judgment about them, whether they are good or bad, just as if sitting by the side of a river and the river flows by – but the strange experience comes to you, that the more you are watchful, the less are the thoughts. As your watchfulness grows higher, your thoughts go on becoming less and less and less. A moment comes when your thoughts are nil and your awareness is full. It is exactly proportionate: one hundred percent awareness means zero thoughts; one hundred percent of thoughts means zero awareness.So, either it is possible in your aloneness, or it is possible in your relationship. In relationships, particularly in moments when you are making love, meditation is very easy, because the very experience of making love brings you to a point where thoughts stop.You are referring to the orgasm?Yes, when thoughts stop and you are simply there, experiencing the thrill. If you know that this moment can be transformed into meditation, then this is the simplest way. Rather than sitting under a bo tree for six years, it can happen in your bedroom – there is no need to go into a forest – and far more easily, because you are following a natural course. Your biology will support you, your physiology will support you, your woman will support you. Everything will be supportive. You just have to be alert that when orgasm happens, don’t get lost in it. Remain a witness, remain a watcher.So the whole thing is simple, but that is the difficult point. In relationships, the difficult point comes because in orgasm you are feeling so pleasant, so blissed out, that you will tend to forget your awareness.You're talking about getting attached to the experience?Getting lost into the experience, not attached. Attachment is a different thing. Getting lost, getting drowned in the experience. You should not get drowned in the experience. Your physiology is in it, your biology is in it, your chemistry is in it, but you are not. You are not. Just a watcher. So in your bedroom there are three persons, or even four.Hopefully four! Are you talking about the eternal part of the eternal being, as being the witness?That is the witness.Could you expand a bit on attachment, getting attached? How attachment can also provide a blockage for awakening.You just become immediately unconscious. The whole thing is to be conscious. The moment you become attached, the moment you become one with the experience, you lose consciousness – which will be a natural tendency. Millions of people know the experience of orgasm, but they don’t all become enlightened. For the simple reason, the natural tendency is that when there is such a blissful moment, who wants to be a witness? That will be missing the point in a way. You will be standing away – and when the experience for which you have been hankering your whole life is happening.And it is a very small moment. It is not going to continue for hours so that you can also be there, you can get into it and get out. There is not time. It is very momentary, very atomic. The natural tendency is to be drowned in it. That’s why many people come very close to enlightenment but miss by just a single step.Let me interrupt you here. When you say “merging into the experience,” is that different from you hear a lot of talk about a “oneness,” “being at one with all”? Are you differentiating between those two?They are different things.Could you just expand on that? How that would be different?Being one with all, is a by-product of becoming a witness. It comes as a shadow to it; it does not precede it. Merging into an experience precedes it. And if you are merged into an experience, then you are in the state of a drunkard. It may be love, it may be anything, but you are drunk. You are not alert, aware. And when I say “becoming one with the whole,” that is not in your hands. That comes as a reward of being a witness.What you can do is to be a witness. There, your doing ends. More than that, man cannot do.So, an enlightened person like yourself, you would never react to anything? If I got angry and jumped up and down, or swore at you, you would not react? You would act, would you?No, I would respond. I would not react. Reaction is impossible. Reaction is always unconscious, and response is always conscious.For example, Jesus says, “If somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the other too.” Being a Christian, if I hit you on one cheek, you may remember Jesus’ statement and you may give me the other cheek. This is reaction. You are not responding to the moment. Your mind is reminding you what has to be done, what is right to do. This is the moment when you can prove that you are really a Christian. All these things will not take much time – just in a flash. That will be reaction. Response is unpredictable.It's not conditioned?No, it is not conditioned. It is unpredictable because it is not Christian, it is not Hindu, it is not Buddhist. It is my individuality. So even I cannot say what I will do if you get angry.Osho,Do you have a master-disciple relationship with the people here?No, they are all my friends.Where do you draw the line between love and idolatry? Can you differentiate between these two? There's a lot of love toward you, but is there a point where love can go over to sort of idol worship?That is love going wrong, love moving in a wrong direction. Adoration is not love: you have put somebody on a high pedestal, and that is not an act of love. It has its consequences. If you adore somebody and put somebody higher than you, you are bound to put somebody lower than you. You would like to be adored by somebody. It is an organic phenomenon.It happened: I was meeting one of the shankaracharyas, the Hindu popes. He was sitting on a high platform, and, just by his side on a smaller platform, another Hindu monk was sitting.He introduced me, saying, “Do you see who this man is, sitting by my side?”I said, “I don’t know him.”He said, “He has been the chief justice of the Supreme Court of India. But he is so humble that he never sits on the same platform that I am sitting on.”I said, “I can see that.” He had a smaller platform.But I was sitting on the floor. And I told that chief justice of the Supreme Court, “You should dig a hole in the earth here, and sit there, because I am sitting here. What kind of humbleness is this?”And I told the shankaracharya, “He is simply waiting. The moment you fall into your grave, he will jump on your platform. And there is a third sannyasin sitting on the floor; he will jump on his platform. This is simply a hierarchy. And you call it humbleness? Neither you are humble nor he is humble. You are fulfilling his ego by calling him the most humble person.“And what is the need to remind me that he is a retired chief justice of the Supreme Court of India? What is the need? He is a sannyasin now, he has renounced the world – but he has not renounced the retirement. He has not yet forgotten that he was the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Do you recognize the fact, that your saying this is simply fulfilling your ego too? – That you don’t have ordinary disciples? Calling him humble, you fulfill his ego. And he, refusing to sit on the same platform as you, fulfills your ego. This is a mutual conspiracy. You are each other’s enemies. You are destroying each other, without knowing what you are doing; you are poisoning.”Adoration is dangerous. Anybody who adores somebody, would like in the wake of it to be adored by somebody else. Otherwise, it is impossible for him to adore somebody – that would be only one pole. Where is the other pole? A polarity is needed.In love there is no hierarchy. Nobody is higher than you; you don’t require anybody to be inferior to you. There is no question of equality, either. When there is nothing higher and nothing lower, the very question of equality becomes irrelevant. Everybody is himself.Originally, I asked that because some people look at you as a guru, and feel that they can see themselves through you, that you can mirror them to themselves.That is their fault.Is that a fault?Certainly.Would you expand why that would be a fault, if they…Because I am nobody’s guru.You don't have a capacity to mirror me back to myself?I have the capacity to mirror, but no mirror needs to be a guru.I'm sorry?In your bathroom you have a mirror. Is that mirror your guru?No, no! I'm just asking a question.Then what is the point? A mirror is just a mirror. There is no need to make a guru out of it. It is its nature: just because it is a mirror, it reflects. There is no need to bow down and touch the feet of the mirror, and put the mirror on your head and move around the world saying that you have a guru because it mirrors you! There is no need.Yes, I can mirror. You have only to open your eyes. Otherwise, what can the mirror do? You can stand before the mirror with closed eyes. The mirror will still be reflecting, but a man with closed eyes. The man will not know that he is being reflected, he will not know that there is a mirror. The mirror will be doing its function; it is nothing on the part – in fact, the mirror is not doing anything, it is just the nature of the mirror. If you are not there, and a dog is standing there, he will be mirrored.Osho,Let me get to some of your quotes that are out in the press: the one where you say there is no God. Could you expand on that? Are you saying that there is no God outside of creation, per se?Certainly I am saying that there is no creator. Creation itself is enough unto itself; it needs no outside agency to create it. The moment you accept an outside agency to create it, you fall into a vicious circle, because the reasoning is, “How can existence be there without being created by someone?” That is the reasoning of all the religions. If you accept their reasoning, then the question arises: “Who created God?”And, if God can be there without being created, then what is the problem? Then existence can be there without being created. You accept principally that something can be there without being created, so why unnecessarily go from A to B, from B to C? Those are all hypotheses. God A creates God B, God B creates God C – unnecessarily. The whole of theology is simply nonsense. It begins with God – theo means “God.” And logy means “logic about God” – that is a contradiction in terms.So creation itself is God. We're God, you're God, I'm God, everybody here is God. The whole game is God.Yes, if you want to use the word God.Or source.There is no problem – there is no problem for me. But then you will have to change the meaning, because the donkey will be God, even the yonkey will be God. Better to drop that word, because that word is dangerous. Then, sometimes if you are riding on a donkey you are riding on a god. Sometimes you are…I guess the force that gives us life or whatever it is – energy.I would like to call it pure consciousness, just consciousness. Or, if you are too attached to the word God, call it godliness. But don’t make it a noun, make it a quality. Godliness is perfectly okay.Why do you say make it a quality rather than a noun?Because the moment you make it a noun you kill it. The moment you make it a noun you stop its growth. Nouns don’t grow, only verbs grow.You're saying the verb is dynamic?Yes.So you see God – as brought across by the Christian world here – as outside of creation, as being a stumbling block to being in the nowness of this moment – is that what you're saying?Right.Is that why you have also been quoted as saying that “Jesus was at best a madman” – I'm paraphrasing here – and that you could “find another in any mad house”? Is that why you seem to be recently pushing all other religions per se out of the way? – Because of this attachment, that it's keeping people out of the moment?That is one of the reasons. There are a thousand and one more reasons.Well, share a couple with me!Jesus would be a crackpot even if he accepted that there is no God – that would not make much difference.Why?Because there have been people like Gautam Buddha who does not believe in God, still he makes the same kind of statements as Jesus is making – and I will also call those statements mad. For example, the story is – just as it is in Jesus’ case, who declares himself the only begotten son of God – Buddha cannot say that, because there is no God in his ideology. But he declares, “I am the suprememost awakened person.” That is equivalent to God. Why should you be the suprememost? Past, present, future; Buddha is the suprememost enlightened person. Nobody can go higher than him. If I meet him I’m going to kick him. He is a crackpot.This type of person – he does not believe in God, but he puts himself in God’s place – he is in fact even worse than Jesus Christ. At least Jesus Christ is only the begotten son of God. He does not claim himself to be God. Krishna claims himself to be God. Now, Krishna is a bigger… All these people need psychiatry.Hmm. You also say that Jesus was suicidal.Yes, he was suicidal.The reason I am laughing is that I'm thinking of getting Jerry Falwell on my show, following yours. I'm sort of running through my mind what sort of reaction this would make.Jesus is in many ways trying to prove that he is the awaited messiah of the Jews. And that is the whole conflict between the Jews and Jesus. Jesus was never a Christian, you have to remember that. He was born a Jew, he lived as a Jew, he died as a Jew. He never heard the word Christian. It was only after three hundred years, when the Bible was translated into Greek, that messiah became christ, and the followers of Christ became Christians. This is a three hundred year, later development.Jesus was continuously emphasizing that he is the awaited messiah, and not a single rabbi was convinced of it. Those twelve fools that he convinced – who became his apostles – were all illiterate, poor people: fishermen, woodcutters, farmers, who had no idea of what he was talking about. They were simply happy that they were the followers, the chosen few, of the only begotten son of God. Something was wrong with their psychology too. They were becoming special without any cause, and they were raising Jesus as high as possible – because with Jesus they go on rising higher.The night Jesus was caught, you will be surprised that his disciples asked him, “Lord, now you will be gone, how long will it take for you to come back and take us?”He said, “Soon I will be coming back in glory, with God’s light, and I will take you all. I am going to prepare places for you.”They said, “One more question: of course you will be on the right side of God – who amongst us twelve will be by your side? Who will be second to you?”They wanted to decide the hierarchy. This type of gathering cannot be sane. These people would be perfectly right if they were in politics.Not to defend it, but Jesus himself didn't write any of that, his own thoughts.Nobody has ever written.It was filtered through other people, the disciples particularly, and I am wondering if you are not being a bit harsh – because let's suppose…you have now had 350 books published, and even then, when it's there in writing and your thoughts are there, and you're talking in an analogy at times to get the real message across – people must get behind what you're saying, or people just take things literally. And I think that misinterpretation has happened in Christianity, hasn't it?Let me explain to you: it is not only about Christianity – Buddha has not written anything, Mahavira has not written anything, Krishna has not written anything. No founder of any religion has written anything. They have all spoken, so everything was written by others. But as far as Jesus is concerned, it is more probable that he said it than Krishna or Buddha or Mahavira, because there are four gospels – in fact, five: five disciples writing almost exactly the same thing, without any contradiction. It is enough proof that it has come from the same source, that the person has said something like that, because it is reflected in all the five gospels in almost similar words.There has also been a lot of talk that over two thousand years the Bible has been changed by the church itself. There is talk about references to reincarnation having been taken out.That is true, that is true. The church has changed it. But fortunately one gospel has remained outside the church. It is the gospel of Thomas, on which I have spoken. I’m the only man in two thousand years who has spoken on something which has remained outside the church, because the church accepted those four gospels. Thomas was not there. He was in India, so his gospel remained in South India. But that gospel exactly repeats what the other four gospels say – of course more accurately, more exactly and more significantly. The churches may have done something, but they have not messed about so much, because there is an independent source to compare with.As far as Jesus is concerned, it is very difficult to defend him on this ground – that these were perhaps not his words. These were certainly his words.Osho,Do you find any redeeming features in the other religions – Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity?Christianity, Judaism, – these religions have nothing to offer except stupidity. Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism have much to offer. Hinduism is just in the middle of these two – much nonsense, much sense, all mixed. What Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism have to offer in essence, is the method of meditation. Those are the three religions which are based on the method of meditation. All three have no idea of God. All three are completely free of this father figure, which is really a projection of child psychology – you need a protector, you need somebody to create, you need.Those three religions are more mature. The contribution is the same. Their methods of meditation may be a little bit different – I have tried all their methods – but they reach to the same conclusion. They are all existential, experiential. They are not theoretical, and they are not based on belief. They don’t require you to believe anything. Their approach is very scientific. So those three religions have offered one thing, which is all that is needed. They have offered many more things which are rubbish. And it is very difficult for someone, unless he himself has meditated and experienced the space, to find from the whole garbage…For example, Buddhism has as many as thirty-three thousand scriptures, and each scripture has hundreds of commentaries on it, and then commentaries on commentaries. It is said that if all the literature on Buddhism in India, in Tibet, in China, in Japan, in Korea, in Sri Lanka could be accumulated, then you could put all the books of the whole world on one side, and still the books on Buddhism would be weightier – just in weight.You claim to have the only religion, though.I claim to have the first and the last religion, for the simple reason that except meditation I have nothing else. So I have found the very essential core. No garbage around it, nothing non-essential, just a simple methodology. And I have looked into all the methods of meditation – there are 112 methods.I have spoken on the 112 methods of meditation. And out of 112 methods that have been practiced in the East by these three religions, I have chosen one essential point that connects all those 112 methods. They differ only in small details, but their basic foundation is witnessing.Osho,I'd like to move on, if I might, to your relationship with your neighbors here in Oregon. You're quoted at one time as saying that you are disappointed: “I always loved the American constitution and now I think it would have been better if I had not come here as I am feeling absolutely disappointed. That constitution is bogus. The words freedom, individualism, capitalism, freedom of expression, are all just words.”You seem to have the protection here, though. You have been able to put this oasis in very arid land. Why would you say you are disappointed in the constitution?Because it is a question of degrees. I have respected the American constitution more than anybody else in the whole world – Americans included – because I have respected the constitution as the only democratic constitution in the world. Hence my disappointment. I would not have been disappointed in the Soviet Union, because I had no respect for their dictatorship in the first place. If they had even killed me, I would have accepted it as a matter of course.But I cannot accept any nonsense here in America, because of my respect for the constitution, my respect for the words democracy, freedom, individuality, respect for the individual. We have created this oasis, not because of the American government, but in spite of the American government. They are creating every kind of hindrance, they are making every kind of trouble, and they are absolutely illegal. What they are doing is unconstitutional; it is against their own constitution. That’s why I say that…But the constitution is really that which will eventually protect your rights. I know that the government – which is people – has been causing you problems here. But I just thought the choice of the words, “the constitution here”…that is the protection, that is the umbrella, ultimately.Wait a moment! – That’s why I will protect the constitution.You're doing that?Not the constitution; the constitution is a dead thing. What can the constitution do for me? I will do something for the constitution. I am going to fight for the constitution, against the Americans who are prostituting it.Osho,Why do you think the neighbors around here have been so disturbed about your moving in?It would have been the same anywhere.Anywhere?Anywhere.Why?For the simple reason that man is an animal, has come from animals, has a territorial imperative. It is their territory and we are strangers. And you will be surprised to know that even in India where I was born, I was a stranger – because I did not believe in their traditions, I did not believe in their conventions, I did not support their religions, I did not support their values. I was a stranger in India too, and the Indian neighbors were as much against me as the Oregonians. So the Oregonians are not doing anything special.But why are people reacting this way? Why do they feel threatened by your presence here?It is not a question of my presence. Why was Jesus crucified by the Jews? Why was Gandhi assassinated by the Hindus? Why were many attempts made on the life of Buddha? It is a simple thing to understand. That’s why I’m not angry about it, I accept it as part of man’s animal nature. I am a constant threat to them.For example, my people are happy, rejoicing, dancing, enjoying. And those Oregonians around me look sad, bored – as the whole world is bored and sad. And everybody is feeling cheated by life; nobody seems to find contentment. Nobody is able to rejoice in life. And suddenly they see a few strangers coming here and enjoying, for no reason at all; trying hard, working twelve and fourteen hours a day and changing the desert. And in four years we have changed it. Now we are self-supporting, self-sufficient for our food, our vegetables, for our milk. And this is when everything is being done against us.We are fighting in every court. We must have the biggest law firm in the world – four hundred legal experts. Here, four hundred sannyasins are continually working to fight unnecessarily in so many courts. We are winning in every case, and they know that finally we are going to win. But they can delay at least, they can harass at least – and this is human nature.So I’m not angry about it, and I don’t think that it is anything unexpected. But as far as America is concerned, my expectations were higher than about any other country. It is a new country, only three hundred years old. It should be more fresh; it should be more capable of existing with new ideas, new people. But they are behaving just as idiotically as the Indians.India is an old country, almost dead. I was not disappointed with the Indians. They made attempts on my life, and I was not disappointed even in that. But with America I have a certain love affair.Do you see the possibility of reconciling your differences with the neighbors around here?That depends on them. I never compromise on any point. Either I am right or I am wrong. If they can prove me wrong, I am perfectly willing to be with them. Or I am ready to prove them wrong, then they have to be with me. I don’t compromise on any point. Compromise is only for impotent people.You are also quoted somewhere… You said, “If they would hate us” you could deal with hate, because you could transmute that into love.Yes, that is true.But you can't stand being ignored.That’s right.But from the outside, you've hardly been ignored by the press. I mean since you broke silence.They cannot ignore, and I will not allow them to ignore.Expand on that a bit more. You say “We can't stand being ignored.” You're not being ignored. What did you mean by that?I mean by that, that whatsoever the media is doing right now is not according to my standards. Although my commune is small, it is a worldwide phenomenon. We have communes all over the world, even in East Germany – even in Soviet Russia. Of course they are underground.They're not wearing red and orange, you say?They cannot.Red has become my monopoly. I have taken it away from the communists.So expand on that a bit more. You're disappointed in the news coverage that you've been getting?Yes, it is nothing. Much more is needed, and we will bring it.So you don't mind whether it is sensationalized?That does not matter.As long as you're getting coverage?Anything will do. That we can manage.Osho,You predicted the start of the apocalypse, a ten-to-fifteen-year period of transformation here on earth. It was supposed to start in ‘84. Has this started, and what can you point to, to say that it's started?Just creating gossips – don’t bother about these things.Huh?That’s my way of not being ignored. I can predict anything, without any trouble.You can predict anything?Yes.Well has it happened? ‘Cause I think in ‘83 you said it was going to start in ‘84.It is not going to happen.It's over. We're in the new age!I don’t take life seriously.Osho,That's fine with me.I'd like to take a quote from the Osho Times regarding AIDS, which I know that the entire community here is quite concerned about. And, I might add, is dealing with, I think, more realistically than the outside world: “AIDS is the ultimate development of homosexuality. It has no cure. You have gone so far away from nature that there is no way back. You have broken all the bridges behind you. That's the disease AIDS.”Could you expand on that statement?That’s exactly right.Jerry Falwell says that that is God's revenge on the homosexuals. Are you saying that homosexuality has moved that far away from nature – not God but nature – that it is nature coming back at the homosexual community?God himself is a homosexual. First make it a point. The Christian trinity has not a single woman in it; it is a gay company. If anybody has to suffer from AIDS, it is your God first.Why did you say “your” God?Because you are quoting somebody.I'm quoting you!No.Oh, Jerry Falwell.Yes.No, I said: “How does that differ?” I was asking you…It is absolutely different, because he is again trying to create fear in people. He’s not giving a factual analysis of the disease. Let me give you an example. There was an earthquake in Bihar, in India, and Mahatma Gandhi said that the earthquake happened because God was punishing the sinners. I was very young, but I wrote him a letter: “It is very strange that God should punish the sinners only in Bihar. What about the whole of the world? Do you consider that only Bihar consists only of sinners, and the whole world consists of saints?”And he had neither guts nor a gentleman’s attitude: he never sent back any answer. I wrote a letter to Ramdas, his son – because he was my friend – I wrote to Ramdas, asking him whether his father had received my letter or not. He said he had received it, “But he has no answer to give so he is keeping quiet.”These people are diverting things: now bringing God into it, that God has punished homosexuals. Ask that fellow: “Then why has God not punished lesbians?” – because no lesbian creates AIDS. In fact, if women are intelligent they should all become lesbians. That is the greatest safety for women, and then they will leave men to suffer from AIDS or whatsoever they want to do. And then we will see how God punishes them. This is strange, that homosexuals should suffer and lesbians be protected.If I could just summarize your response: you're saying that Mr. Falwell is coming from a fear perspective. Using fear, emotionally.He is.You're making, from your transparent ego, simply a comment – with no emotion behind it?What I am saying exactly, is that AIDS is the ultimate outcome of a perversion. God has nothing to do with it. Religion has no ground to exploit on this. It is a simple fact that has tremendous implications. One, if men and women are not allowed freedom from marriage, then there is going to be perversion of many kinds, because monogamy is unnatural.It is unnatural for men?It is unnatural. There is no man who would not like to love many women. In fact, Soren Kierkegaard has a statement, “I would like to make love to all the women of the earth. Still I don’t think that I will be satisfied.” And he is stating a very significant point. Religions have managed a certain kind of bondage between men and women, and they have created the idea of sin and guilt so that people cannot easily move from one relationship to another.In countries in the Middle East, for example, it is very difficult to make contact with a woman – even to see the face of a woman. And in the Middle East homosexuality is very ancient, for the simple reason that whenever a man wanted just to change his taste, women were not available. He had to look toward men or even toward animals. This is ugly.If we make marriage dissolve – for example, in my commune marriage is just a game, like any other game. And every game has its rules, so marriage has its rules. But no rules of any game are ultimate. We make them, we can change them. In this commune, it is very easy to move from one woman to another, from one man to another, without creating any kind of scandal, without feeling any guilt, without creating any jealousy.In the traditional marriage, monogamous marriage, if lust is within the individual for different partners, different experiences, then what you're saying is that the individual is trying to control these desires so much that they must be dissipating a lot of energy.It is, it is. The more monogamous a country, the more people will be repressed. And their repressiveness will become violence, war, homosexuality, prostitution, sodomy. It will take all kinds of forms, which will be difficult because they have already moved away from nature. If we want that the world should not end in such an ugly disease, marriage has to be dissolved. Every religion has to drop the idea of celibacy – because all those celibates are bound to become homosexuals.All your popes, all your bishops, all your cardinals, all your priests of any religion, all your monks – Buddhist, Christian or Hindu does not matter, because you have all put men and women separately. There are monasteries where no woman has entered in one thousand years. Then those monks… Man is intelligent: he will try to find some way out for his repressed energy. Now what can you do? Your biology does not change just by the idea of celibacy. Neither does your blood change its ways, nor your food, nor your hormones. Nothing changes by your idea of celibacy. Your idea of celibacy is simply an idea. Your body knows nothing about it.The body goes on creating semen. What are you going to do with it? How long are you going to repress it? And repressing it is a double wastage, because in repression you need much energy to repress your own energy. So you become a vicious circle, you cannot create anything; so none of the monks of any religion have been creative. They have not contributed anything to human civilization. They have been parasites, and they have created masturbation, homosexuality, lesbianism, sodomy.This is all through the repression?It is all because of repression. Man’s sexual energy should be allowed absolute freedom. It should be man’s birthright.Are you saying “man” including both men and women?Yes.Osho,You predicted that two-thirds of the world's population would die of AIDS. Do you still stand by that?Perhaps more, because there is nobody bothering to do anything about it.It's taking a while.Not a single step in any country is being taken to prevent it. On the contrary, every government is trying to repress the information about AIDS. Every individual who suffers from AIDS is trying to repress the information about it leaking to the public, because he will be condemned. If you find that people in a monastery are suffering from AIDS, that whole monastery and the whole religion will be condemned. So every vested interest is trying to repress information.The disease has already spread widely, and the problem is that it is not only by sexual intercourse that you can get it. You can get it by kissing somebody because saliva is a carrier. Now, kissing should be prohibited completely, absolutely, with no exception. Tears carry it: if you kiss a woman and a tear comes into your mouth you can get it. And my understanding is if tears and saliva can carry it, then perhaps soon they will discover that perspiration also carries it – any liquid coming out of the body.This is the first time that there is such a dangerous disease, so contagious, which has no cure – because basically, it is not an ordinary disease, it is more an existential disease. A man loses interest in women – for any reason: religious, physical, medical, legal, or any reason – a man loses interest in women, becomes interested in men. Soon he gets fed up with that, because in man and woman there is a contrast, a polarity, an attraction. Between man and man there is no polarity. It is just like trying to create electricity with only positive poles, without the negative pole.Two men making love simply means similar energy, which will not be creative of life. Lovemaking with a woman is healthy. In places where older people are not condemned for lovemaking, people live longer. In countries like India, where even a person at the age of fifty starts feeling, “Now it is ugly, guilty, a sin, when your sons are married, to make love to your wife – it is not right,” people die sooner.In the Caucasus there are people who are 170 years old still making love, 180 year-old people. But you cannot call them old, because they are still working in the fields, just like any young man. And my explanation is that, in the Caucasus sex has never been repressed, but has been appreciated, enjoyed, loved. In the Caucasus it is just like with the Eskimos: if you are a guest, the wife will be offered to you. Just as we offer food and a good room to the guest, the wife is also offered to you. It is not thought in any way to be immoral. People in the Caucasus live longer than any other people in the world. And they are the poorest people, with no medical facilities, with not enough food.My feeling is that man can live at least three hundred years, if his energy is not disturbed and perverted so that he starts fighting with himself. That is very destructive. AIDS is just your own energy fighting with itself. Your energy has to come to a balanced state, like in those parts of Russia. The balance is such that except death, nothing can disturb it.Osho,I'd like to get to another quote. You say: “That's how we are going to take over the whole of America.” Are you saying that you are going to be taking over America in the sense of controlling it – for example, in government, philosophy? Or just through your happiness?Just through our rejoicing, singing, dancing. We are gypsies, and gypsies have their way of conquering the world.Are you sending out a warning you might be moving somewhere else?Certainly, with my whole circus.That's interesting.And tell Canada – it is not far away!You just told them! Are you the ringmaster of this circus?Certainly.Osho,I'd like to get back to when you say: “I have the only religion.” Are you saying: “I, Osho, have the only religion”?No.Or are we our own masters – each of us individually?Each individual here. When I say “I,” that is not my ego. It represents all my people around the world. I am just their spokesman.What I am trying to get at is, are you saying that “I, Peter, have the only religion”; “I, Tom, have the only religion”; “I, Mary…”? That it's within each individual?No, when I say that this is the first and the last religion, the meaning is that all the religions up to now have not been scientific. They were all superstitious, they were based on a certain belief system. Belief was basic. Now, nobody can believe without repressing doubt. Belief is only repressing doubt. If there is no doubt, there is no need for belief. You don’t believe in the sun, you don’t believe in science, you don’t believe in light. You know they are, there so no belief is needed. All religions up to now have remained beliefs. That’s why they are called “faiths.”Three hundred years ago, for the first time, science started a new movement which was based on doubt: just absolutely against belief. Go on doubting till you find something which is un-doubtable. That’s my approach too. I am trying for religion to have a scientific base.Science inquires into objects, religion inquires into your own subjectivity. But the method need not be different: the same scientific observation, I call witnessing. Very alert, just go on inquiring within yourself, without any belief, without any prejudice. If you have courage enough to go without any prejudice, if you have courage enough to go without any belief system, soon you will stumble upon truth. It is there within you.I say this is the first religion because it is the first scientific approach toward man’s interiority. And I say that this is the last also, because there is no other possibility. There are only two possibilities, either belief or doubt. Hence, I say it is the last, because you cannot do anything else: either you believe or you doubt. If you believe, you will never know the truth. If you doubt persistently, and go on doubting, you are bound to find it. And when doubt finds something, it is no longer belief, it is no longer faith. It is your experience. You can stand by it. You need not go to Jesus or Buddha, you need not take support from the Bible or the Koran. You are your own authority.So when I say this is the first and the last religion, I am not talking about Tom, Dick and Harry. I am simply stating a fact: that no religion up to now has tried doubt as its basic method. This is the first religion. And I am also calling it the last, for the simple reason that there is nothing else that can be done. Only two things are possible and I have done the second thing. The first, all the other religion have done, and failed.Osho,Let's touch on some other things. Clairvoyance – is that a reality?No.What are your comments about people that channel what they claim to be spirit entities?They are just crazy, surrounded by idiots.So somebody like Edgar Cayce – you've heard of Edgar Cayce? – The Sleeping Prophet.Just rubbish.Where does it come from? It would appear to be legitimate – something happens. Is it all from the mind?It is all psychic – just mind.Osho,Can you give me some comments on some people here: Ronald Reagan, the president of the United States.Just a third-rate cowboy-film actor.Are you aware of the prime minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney?No, I have never heard about that fellow.You haven't?He’s fortunate.Osho,What's a typical day like for you?My daily life is just a constant bliss. Everything is blissful: eating, sleeping, talking, just sitting silently doing nothing. Everything to me is meditation. Sitting under my shower is meditation, eating my food is meditation, because I am always the witness. Even in sleep I am a witness: I know that I am sleeping.So it is, in a way, the same witness, but enjoying different things, different scenes. And, because I never think of the past or of the future, nothing bores me. You can go on giving me the same food every day and I will enjoy it the same way every day. My sannyasins who work in my kitchen, they get bored!Are you vegetarian?Yes, I am vegetarian.Is diet important to awaken?No, it is not important, but once you are awakened it is difficult to destroy life for your food. So, before enlightenment it is not important, but after enlightenment it is immensely important.Osho,What are your thoughts on the drug problem in the North American society – cocaine usage, marijuana?In fact, all the governments should help the scientists to find better drugs with fewer side effects, rather than repressing drugs. It is stupid. Whenever you stop something you give great importance to it, and particularly for the youth – it becomes a provocation. The government is responsible for all the young people who are being destroyed by drugs. There is no need.In my birthplace, just in front of my house, there was a beautiful temple. I persuaded the priest of the temple that because of the big wall around the campus, people used that wall as urination place. It was in such a place where you could sit down and nobody would see you.“So write on the wall in big letters that pissing here is absolutely prohibited.”He, of course, was convinced. Before that, nobody had pissed there; after that you could count lines of people!The priest was very angry. He came to my father and said, “Your boy is dangerous. I have never seen people queuing, and when I ask them they say, ‘Just because you have written it, immediately the idea arises.’”Any prohibition is dangerous. But the Christian God started the whole stupid thing, by prohibiting Adam and Eve from eating from the tree of knowledge, and the tree of life. Now, in the Garden of Eden there must have been millions of trees. If God had not prohibited those two trees, I don’t think even now we would have found them. It was impossible. But prohibiting it – and then dumping the whole thing on the poor snake, the serpent – God had done it already. He provoked it.All these governments should make an effort that better drugs are available – which give you more euphoria, more joy, and no side effects. Science is now capable of doing it.But you don't allow drugs here in Rajneeshpuram.No.But you are saying outside of Rajneeshpuram it's okay?No, I am saying these drugs are not okay. And the reason is, because the governments are prohibiting them, otherwise, science could have figured out very easily… LSD can be purified, and it should be made available without prescription, through medical stores, through hospitals. In fact, every hospital should have a room where anybody who wants a drug experience should be given it under medical care, because it is worth having. And I think that is the only way to take away the whole charm from drugs.In India they have tried many times to prohibit alcohol. And each time they prohibit it, many more people start drinking. And they drink the wrong kind of alcohol, because it is made by the people themselves. All kinds of poisoning accidents happen. Thousands of people die because they have drunk something they knew nothing about. Again, and again, the same stupidity. Then they withdraw the prohibition and the percentage of people drinking alcohol falls immediately.In fact, the way you have made society, people are so miserable that they need something to forget what is happening in their life: what their wife is doing to them, what their boss is doing to them, what their husband is doing to them, what their children are doing to them. Those poor people need something to have at least a few hours of relaxation.My people do not need it; that’s why I don’t allow it here. We have better methods. Our meditations are nothing but drugs – perfect drugs, without any chemicals in them. A man who can meditate will not be able to enjoy drugs, any drug, because his meditation gives him so much peace, and the drug will disturb it.Drugs never give you anything. If you are too disturbed, then a drug relaxes you. But if you are at the peak of your bliss, the drug will bring you down. So people who live in the valleys need drugs; people who live on the peaks don’t need them. Our people don’t need them. It is not because of any government law that we are prohibiting people from bringing drugs in – it is because of our own people, they don’t need it. In fact, it is destructive of their meditation, their love, their joy. The drug makes them dull, stupid, takes away the sharpness of their intelligence.But, what I am saying about the outside world is that governments should emphasize the fact, that it is a tremendous problem. Sending young people to prison does not help; you simply destroy those young people, you destroy their education. And I have not seen that a single person who has been imprisoned has been changed. He comes out and again goes back to the drugs. Now he comes out more professional than he had gone in, because there are experts already inside the prison who know more about drugs. He was just an amateur. From all those people he gets ideas of other drugs that you will get in Kabul, Manali, in Kathmandu, in Goa – where you will get the real thing.There is no need for all this nonsense. Courts are involved, jails are involved, young people are destroyed. It is the duty of every government to provide people with some kind of relaxation, some kind of peace, some kind of silence. If you cannot provide meditation, at least you can provide medicine. To me, drugs should be medicine. And if we want, we can change all the bad effects; it can become a healthy thing. Each Sunday morning, rather than go to the church just go on a trip!Osho,On that note I'd like to thank you very much for spending this time with me.I enjoyed it.The listeners, I know, will very much appreciate it.Come again.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Ted Viramont,Madras Pioneer, Madras, Oregon, United StatesGlad to meet you.Osho,How's your day gone?Just…What's an average day consist of for Osho?Only of blissfulness – the same.Do you have leisurely pursuits at all?Nothing.Osho,Do you believe in fighting injustice?I don’t believe in anything.You don't believe in anything? Do you think that one should fight injustice?One should not have “shoulds” and “should nots.” One should simply exist spontaneously. If the moment brings fight, fight – and fight totally, intensely. But don’t fight for a belief, don’t fight for a prejudice. Live in the moment. Be alert, and out of that alertness whatsoever happens, enjoy it.So let me explain it exactly because that may help you to understand other questions and answers.Thank you.I don’t have any belief system. I don’t have any creed, dogma. My whole approach is existential.Right now, you are there, I am here – and this is enough. You may have prepared your questions, I have not prepared my answers.Yes, I can see that.So you can ask your questions. And I am a crazy man, I may say anything that comes in the moment. I don’t care for any consistency, and I don’t care for any respectability. My whole responsibility is to this moment. Beyond that, there is nothing.How's this moment going for you?Beautifully.Great.Your mustache is giving me great joy!Thank you.You are only missing a beard. It is half-hearted – just go the whole way!Well, one is coming up. I've been thinking about growing one, you know.Do it! A man without a beard and mustache is just like a woman with a mustache and beard.Osho,I have to thank you. About a year and a half ago, I had a really dark time in my life, and somebody suggested to get into meditation. I bought your Orange Book on meditation. Some of them I couldn't use, some of them I could, and the one that changed what was happening for me was the laughter meditation. I would get up everyday and I'd say, “Do I have to get up again?” And with the laughter meditation, as soon as I knew I was awake and I started laughing, the whole day went completely differently. So I need to thank you for showing me this meditation.Just one meditation has done that much for you. If you try a few others, you will not find words to thank me.I have 112 methods of meditation. If a person can manage even 10 out of those, his life will be a sheer joy with no dark moments, with no frustration, with no tension, no anxiety. Whatsoever happens, he will be able to accept it without any grudge, without any complaint. His gratitude toward existence will be infinite.We are very ungrateful to existence. It has given so much to us, and without our asking. And we are such ungrateful creatures that we don’t even bother to look around at what existence is continuously doing for us – the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees, the birds, the animals, the people. You are living in a tremendously beautiful dream. But you have to be awake about it. Only then a gratefulness arises. I call that gratefulness true religion.A man need not be a Christian to be religious; need not be a Hindu to be religious. All that he needs is a deep gratitude toward existence. He need not believe in God, he need not believe in heaven and hell – just a simple phenomenon: a deep-felt gratitude that this existence would have been missing something without you, that this vast existence needed you, no one else. Your place was empty before you, will be empty after you – you are irreplaceable. That gives a great contentment.Man’s greatest need is to be needed. And when you feel that the whole existence needs you – otherwise you would not have been here.Osho,Somebody told me, that the only devils running around are the ones that are in our own hearts. Do you think that that's true?There are no devils. With God, all devils disappeared; they were shadows of your God. Without God, the devil cannot exist.You will be surprised to know that the word devil and the word divine have the same root; it is a Sanskrit root. In Sanskrit, divine is deva. From deva comes the English words divine and the devil. In fact, the devil and God are two sides of the same coin. There is neither God nor devil. You are there – either asleep or awake. If you are asleep, then life is misery, suffering, anguish, meaninglessness. If you are awake, all dis-ease disappears. For the first time, you find yourself surrounded by tremendous beauty, bliss, silence, serenity.And to experience this, all that is needed is very simple: one should put his prejudices aside. One should not be a Christian, otherwise he cannot come to this moment of luminosity. One should put one’s communism aside, just for the moment. I am not saying put it aside forever. I am saying just put it aside for the moment, because I know that once you have put it aside for a single moment you have put it aside forever.Why do you think that is?Because the experience will transform you so totally that you need not go to the church; the whole existence becomes your church. You need not read the Bible; the songs of the birds, the fragrance of the flowers, the sound of the running water will give you all the gospels that you need. And they will be living. They will not be dead words printed in a book. They will be alive – as alive as you are.And, if your heart starts dancing with the living that surrounds you, what is the need to be a Christian, what is the need to be a Mohammedan? These are for people who are asleep, and have never tasted anything of life. These are toys given to children to play with, to remain engaged, to remain busy. Your religions are not for mature people; they are childish.Osho,To change the subject here, does society have a responsibility to its disadvantaged people?No.None?None. Society has destroyed people in the first place, and then starts talking about responsibility. Each child is being destroyed by the society, distracted from his nature, distracted from what he was going to be, what existence has meant him to be.First the society distracts him, disturbs him – and then when he is disturbed, these great public servants start coming and saying that the society has some responsibility. This is a very cunning game. First make a man sick, and then run to fulfill your responsibility, service, duty, humanity, compassion, and bring medicine. But why hurt the person in the first place?All children are born so innocent that if you can just leave them alone to be themselves, if you love them – and love is not a responsibility.I am reminded of a small anecdote:A Hindu monk was traveling toward the highest Hindu sacred places, Badrinath, Kedarnath, in the Himalayas. It is a long journey, tedious. Just in front of him a small girl, not more than twelve or thirteen years old, was carrying a boy, fat and heavy.The sannyasin was very tired, and just as he was passing he said to the girl, “My daughter, you must be tired. You are carrying so much weight.”The girl was very angry. She said, “Weight? You are carrying weight. This is my brother.”Love is not a responsibility, love is not a duty. Love is your joy. So, out of your love do whatever you can do. But not out of your Christianity, not out of your ideology, not out of a sense of responsibility. Otherwise you will never be able to forgive your son, and neither will your son ever be able to forgive you. Duty is a dirty, four-letter word. Never do anything for the sake of duty because you are doing it reluctantly. And whomsoever you are doing it for, you are humiliating.Children are there, just like flowers. What responsibility do you have toward the roses? Yes, to give water, some manure, but that is not responsibility, that is your joy – because your roses will be bigger and more fragrant. What you are doing is nothing in comparison to what you are going to get. You are not doing anything compassionate to the rosebush. In fact, the rosebush is being compassionate toward you. What have you done? Just put a little water, manure, taken care. And the rosebush comes with all its thankfulness, with all its flowers, and your whole house becomes fragrant. Suddenly you are no longer in an ordinary house: you are in a palace, you are in paradise.And the same happens with children. They are also flowers: nourish them. But that is not your responsibility, it is your love. If there is no love, please don’t do anything, otherwise you are going to destroy the child. Love is the only safety. The child is too fragile, handle it with care. Responsibility is too big a word, and too heavy. Duty is just ugly. Why not rejoice in nourishing the child? Why not enjoy making him an individual?But you are trying to make him a Christian; you are dragging him to the church, you are forcing him to believe in a God. You are creating fear in him: “If you don’t believe you will go to hell.” You are creating greed in him: “If you follow the church line, you will be rewarded a thousand fold in heaven after death.” You will destroy his whole life. And you will feel great that you have done your responsibility.This is not responsibility, this is simply irresponsibility. A response should come only out of your loving heart. If you love the child, then you would like the child to find his own truth. You would not like him to live on a borrowed truth. Your child, and living on a borrowed truth? What are you doing? – making him a beggar? You would not like your child to be obedient against his reason, against his will. You will teach the child that obedience is not a virtue, neither is disobedience a virtue: “You have to choose. We can offer you whatever our understanding is – which is not perfect, which is not infallible. We can place everything that we have experienced in life, and it is up to you to choose or not to choose. You have to be yourself, not just my son.”He has come through you but he does not belong to you. You have been a passage. But if roads start claiming people who walk on the roads, just think how much more difficult life will become. Once you travel on a road, the road says, “Stop! Now where are you going?” And what are parents except roads?Osho,Last year's program for the homeless, was that your idea?I don’t have any ideas.Were you happy with the results?I am perfectly happy with any kind of result, so it does not matter.Osho,I lived for a time in a tropical environment, and I really liked the frangipani, the plumeria, the large ferns. When I came here to Madras it was quite an adjustment for me, environmentally. What were your first impressions when you arrived here at Rajneeshpuram?I love every challenge, and that was my first response. Seeing this desert – I had not come to stay here, but this desert won’t let me go.Why?I have to make it into an oasis. And in four years we have done much. For fifty years, the land was lying here for sale. And it is not a small piece of land – 126 square miles. The Oregonians had not done anything for this poor land.My first reaction was that I have to be here now.You have to be here now?I have to be here now. I had not come with the intention to stay either in America or in Oregon, but seeing the desert I decided that this desert has to be changed into a lush, green garden.Are we talking figuratively or…?No, I am talking literally. I never talk figuratively. We are going to change it – we have changed it. Now there are houses for five thousand sannyasins, all centrally air-conditioned. We have our own crops; we are self-sufficient, we have our own vegetables. These grapes are ours – you should taste them. And soon we will be making wine and everything – so go on coming.Great grapes.What are your impressions of the city now?I enjoyed it; I am enjoying it. I always enjoy anything which is creative. To paint on a canvas is a small thing, but to change the desert into an oasis is real creativity. And our people are enjoying. They are working twelve hours, fourteen hours every day. Even God tired in six days, and on the seventh day he had to rest – and since then nothing has been heard about the fellow.Osho,Excuse me![for laughing.]That’s great.Our people don’t have any holiday because our work is our pleasure, our work is our worship. And even working twelve, fourteen hours a day, they have enough energy to laugh, to dance, to sing, to love. We are enjoying it immensely. It is really groovy.Osho,I saw on television that you told some reporter to tell the Australians you were coming down there. So do you have any plans in the immediate future to go?No, not at all.You're enjoying this desert too much, I take it.Just I go on creating gossips.Shame on you! You're going to get all those people out there really amped up, and – yeah!How's your health?Health? Very good.Very good?Mmm, because my sickness is such that it just needs to be taken care of. It is not a sickness. For example, I have allergies. In four years here, I have not suffered a single attack of asthma, breathing trouble, because the climate is dry. Humidity is difficult for me.My people love me so much that they will not wear any perfume, they will not come close to me when they have been working for twelve hours and perspiring, because any smell can disturb me. So this small oasis is taking every care. My sickness is not something which needs any medicine. I was born with my problem, nothing can be done about it. You can only take precautions.It was difficult to take precautions in the ordinary world. Now, how can I prevent a neighbor from using perfume, burning incense? And particularly in India, every house has a god, every house burns incense. And they were giving me asthma attacks. I had to find a place where, for at least twenty miles, there is no neighbor. Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” and later on he adds, “Love your neighbors too” – which is more difficult.I don’t have any neighbors; this is almost an island. And my people are aware of my difficulties, so they take care. That’s why I am perfectly healthy. Otherwise I can immediately be sick. It is not a question of time. Just open a bottle of French perfume here and I will be sick. I will not be able to sleep the whole night, my breathing gets so disturbed.So that was one of the reasons I had told Sheela to look for some place big enough that we are far away from neighbors. I don’t want to interfere in their life, and if they enjoy perfume then who am I to prevent them from enjoying it? And she has found the perfect place for me.Osho,What happens to Rajneeshpuram when you die? It continues on as it is?I cannot say anything, simply because I hate to dominate people. Even now, what is happening is none of my concern. I am just a guest. It is their place. I am not even a sannyasin – you can see. You are a little sannyasin – almost half. I am not a sannyasin at all. They love me, so they tolerate me.You must admit that you have something to do with the religion of Rajneeshism?Nothing.Nothing?Nothing. I enjoy talking, and out of those talks if somebody creates any ism, that is their business.Osho,It's written that Christ advocated nonviolence. According to the scriptures in the Bible, early Christians were fed to the lions when Rome ruled the world. And later Christians went on crusades, where they killed a lot of people. It is now hundreds of years later. Do you advocate nonviolence?No.You don't advocate nonviolence? You don't advocate violence?No, I don’t advocate. I simply share my experiences of life. And it is up to my people to decide for themselves. I am not going to decide for anybody. They cannot dump any responsibility on me.Sly of you.Yes.So there's really…And this thing that Christians used violence, they killed people, they burnt people, they did everything – it seems to be going against Jesus Christ, it is not so.Oh?Because Jesus himself is very violent in his behavior. He talks about love; he talks, but he behaved just the opposite. He threw the money changers out of the temple with a whip in his hand. Is that nonviolence?No.He cursed a fig tree, because he and his followers were hungry and the tree did not welcome them with fruits. And it was not the season for figs to appear on the tree. Now, he is not only violent, he is idiotically violent. Cursing a poor tree which has nothing to do – when the season comes, the figs come. Do you think this man is nonviolent?I'd been led to believe that for a while.Yes, every Christian has been led to believe that. It is not…I'm not a Christian.You may not be. Christ himself was not a Christian, he was a Jew. He never heard the words christ or christian, because in Hebrew these words are not there. He was known as the messiah, which is equivalent to the Greek christ. His whole life – and it was not a long life, only thirty-three years – is full of incidents in which he proves himself arrogant, aggressive, violent, egoistic. And if his followers turn out to be the same on a larger scale, he is responsible for all that.No sane person can say, “I am the only begotten son of God.” Just think, somebody in Madras declaring, “I am the only begotten son of God.” What will you think? That this man should be handed over to the police, should be sent to a mental institute: he is a crackpot. And that’s what the Jews thought of Jesus. In fact, they never crucified a messiah, they only crucified a crackpot.Christians have proved perfectly well that the Jews were right to crucify this man. Retroactively, two thousand years of Christianity give evidence that that man was worthy of crucifixion. Jews were right, that man was dangerous. He himself was insane, and he was creating insanity in other people.In fact, they delayed – he should have been crucified three years before. He started teaching only when he was thirty. If I had been there, I would have suggested crucifying him right away. “Don’t wait. In three years he will be able to collect a few fools, a few idiots – which are everywhere – and then it will become difficult. Then crucifying him will be wrong, because crucifixion will become the beginning of a new religion.”So, whatever Christians have done, they have followed Jesus Christ, step by step. And until Christianity disappears from the world, it will be very difficult to live peacefully. It is Christianity which has been making every effort to prevent science from progressing.Science would have developed immensely in these three hundred years, but the Christians on every step, from Copernicus to Galileo to Columbus – America was discovered against the Christians, against the pope, and I am amazed that when the pope comes, still you welcome him!Osho,You were in India at the time India gained her independence from Britain. What kind of an effect did that have on you – living under the British rule, and then not to have them anymore? It must have been rather traumatic for most Indians?I am a little eccentric. I was more pro-British than pro-Indian.Why was that?Because everything that has happened in India – technology, science, education, colleges, universities, railway lines, roads, cars, airplanes – everything has happened because of the British rule. If there had been no British rule, India would have been the same as Ethiopia.Before the British rule, for thousands of years they were burning women alive if their husbands died. Husbands were never burned when their wives died. I don’t see… It is a simple arithmetic, that this is a male chauvinist society. The husband is trying to control even after his death. The wife was forced in such an ugly way, that if you visualize the whole scene you would not believe it. And these are the Hindus who talk about great spirituality.It is obvious that if you push a living person into a funeral pyre, the person is bound to try to escape. So what they used to do is first they would make the funeral pyre, and put the dead body of the husband. Then they would put the living body of the wife on and tie her to the wood, put many more logs on top of her, and then pour as much purified butter as possible. So that when the fire comes up there is great smoke, and you cannot see what is happening.One hundred priests would be surrounding it, chanting mantras. A second circle will be of musicians playing drums, and making all kinds of noise, so nobody hears the screams of a living woman, burning and dying there. And this was all religious ritual. They have been doing it for thousands of years. The whole credit goes to the British Empire, that they prevented it, they made it criminal. It was criminal.India has been poor for thousands of years. It is said in Hindu scriptures that people never used locks on their houses. Even if they were going for a few months’ pilgrimage they would not use locks, because there was no fear of anybody stealing. This is absolutely wrong. My understanding is that first, they had nothing to be stolen. Second, locks were not yet invented.Indians are so lousy – they will not try to do anything. They would rather starve, but they will not make any effort to become rich. The country is tremendously capable of becoming rich, but the people’s minds are not able to use the opportunity.Before Britain came into India’s history, these poor people were giving birth to ten children – only one would survive and nine would die. There was no medicine, no medical care. Now it is just the opposite, because of Britain. Out of ten children, only one dies, nine live. And that one dies also because of Indian stupidity – because Mahatma Gandhi was against vaccination, he was against allopathy. He was against everything that has been invented after the spinning wheel – and nobody knows when the spinning wheel was invented, perhaps ten thousand years before – after that, everything is evil.It seems God made the spinning wheel on the sixth day and after that… Anything – railway trains, telegraph, post offices, telephones, radios, televisions – Gandhi was against all these things, he would not agree to them.You will be surprised. I was a guest in the house of his son, who was my friend. There were so many mosquitoes in his ashram. And there were bound to be, because he was keeping many cows there, which are worshipped like mothers, and there was so much cow dung everywhere. I have never seen a dirtier place in my life. But it was all in the name of spirituality.In the day somehow I managed, but at night I told my friend, “I will have to go to a nearby place” – which was nine miles from there – “and I will sleep there. How you can sleep with so many mosquitoes?”He said, “No, we sleep.”I said, “I don’t see any mosquito nets.”He said, “My father would never allow the luxury of sleeping in a mosquito net.”So I asked, “What substitute has he given?”And he had given a substitute – kerosene oil. You paint your face, your hands, your legs, anything that is open, with kerosene oil. And go to sleep. Now, even the mosquitoes are intelligent enough not to come near you. But how you can sleep with kerosene oil?And I said, “I suffer from allergies. I cannot even try it. This is my first and last visit to you. Any time you want to come, you can come to me. I’m not going to come here. This is sheer stupidity.”Britain introduced much sanity. I am against slavery, I am against Britain dominating India, but I am not a fanatic in any way. I condemn Britain for whatsoever wrong they have done. But they have done so many beautiful things, I have to appreciate them.So when India became independent in 1947, my whole family was involved in the freedom movement. Almost every member of the family had gone to jail, had suffered. But I was absolutely against – against my family, my father, my uncles. And I told them, “You don’t know what you are doing. Britain has maintained peace for the first time in the whole history of India.” Before Britain there was continuous civil war. In Gautam Buddha’s time, India was divided into two thousand independent kingdoms. India had never been one country before the British; it was Britain’s contribution that India became one.And as Britain was leaving, India started falling apart. Pakistan became separate, Bangladesh became separate. Now the Sikhs want their own separate country. Soon the Bengalis, the Assamese – they have always been separate, it was under the British force that they remained one.I used to tell my father, “You don’t understand the enormity of what can happen if Britain simply leaves the country. There will be violence, and millions of people will be killed.” And that’s what happened.My father wept before me, and he said, “You were right. We were thinking that you always argue against anything – any unpopular thing and you are for it. And you were protecting and arguing for the British government so much.”I said, “Now look. Britain has left, the country is divided. Trains are burning, houses are burning, children are being mutilated, women are being raped. This is your independence. This is what you had gone to jail for, and suffered.”And in these forty years after Britain has left, India’s situation has become worse and worse. The population goes on growing. Birth control, the pill, abortion, are all against the religions, against spirituality.When Britain left India the whole of India – including Pakistan, Bangladesh – was only four hundred million people. Now, India – without Pakistan, without Bangladesh – is eight hundred million. It has doubled in forty years. Its soil is completely prostituted.Is there anything that can be done to save India, do you think?I don’t think that anything can be done. Perhaps it is time for India to die. There is a time to be born, there is a time to live, and there is a time to die. It is impossible – because for thirty years I have been trying just that hopeless job in India. Touring all around the country continuously, telling people, “What you are doing is going to destroy you.” And my reward? They would throw shoes at me; they would throw stones at me; they poisoned my food twice; and before I left they made their last attempt on my life by throwing a knife.Ten thousand sannyasins were present when they threw a knife at me. And the police somehow got the information from their agents, so twenty police officers were present there, before the knife was thrown at me. It seems almost impossible that with ten thousand witnesses – perhaps you can say that “They are sannyasins, they may be lying.” But your twenty high-ranking police officers, they were also witnesses. Still the man was released from the court, with respect. He has not done anything, the knife has never been thrown – and the knife itself was presented there by the police, it was lying on the table of the magistrate.The magistrate informed me via a friend, “Forgive me. I know, but I am a man with a family, so many children. My promotion is due. I am being pressurized by the politicians and by the religious leaders, ‘If that man is not freed completely, then you will be in trouble.’ And I don’t want to be in trouble.”The man belonged to a fanatic Hindu organization. That organization is going to rule India sooner or later, because Hindus are in the majority. And every stupidity that was there three hundred years ago will be brought back, because that is the Hindu tradition, the Hindu religion. The tradition of suttee – burning the widow – will be back.Britain introduced divorce, its days are finished. The moment India is controlled by Hindus – and it is not far away – divorce cannot remain legal. In the Hindu religion there is no place for divorce. Marriage is forever.They are interested in strange things – for example, that cow slaughter should be stopped. Not that abortion should be legalized, no, that is not the problem at all; that birth control should be promulgated, helped in every possible way, no, that is not the problem. The problem is that cows should not be killed.Such a country, which cannot even see the priorities – I am not saying to kill the cows, but I am saying to first save humanity. Otherwise, who is going to save the cows? They will be killed by themselves.My feeling is that Britain has done two wrong things. In the first place it imposed slavery on the country; in the second place like a coward it escaped from its responsibility. Britain should have remained there till they had educated people not to be violent, not to be superstitious, not to be against each other – Hindus against Mohammedans, Mohammedans against Buddhists, Buddhists against Jainas. There are so many sects and sub sects, and everybody is against everybody else. And the country is spiritual, and nonviolence is its ideology! This is all nonsense. It is just hypocrisy.Britain has done a very lousy job. I was certainly angry with Lord Mountbatten. He was the wrong person to send to India, to make India free. He had no experience of politics; in fact, his whole life he was just a playboy. Just to keep him away from England – because he belonged to the royalty, and if a person belonging to the royalty is a playboy, then everybody’s wife is in danger, everybody is in danger so they kept continuously sending him out of England. But you cannot send him out just like that – he was royalty, he could have been the king. It was just by chance that he was not the eldest son.First they sent him to Burma. When he came back from Burma, he was immediately told, “Pack your luggage and go to India. You have a great job to do: make India independent.”Just think – the sheer immensity of the work. When you make a country a slave, for hundreds of years you have to fight for it. And within a day, you can make it independent. I don’t see the logic. Even when I was only seventeen I could not see the logic of it. I wrote a letter to Lord Mountbatten, “This is not the right time for this country to be independent. If everything is peaceful, it is simply cold war. Once the pressure of British control is gone, then…”Did the independence of India have any bearing on your outlook on life?No, because I am not interested in nations, I am interested in one world because my understanding is that, unless the world is one, we cannot stop wars; we cannot stop politicians cheating people, there is no way out for humanity except to commit suicide in a Third World War.It's a big job, don't you think, to try to bring the world together in one.It is a big job, but nuclear weapons have made it easy. On both sides – in America and the Soviet Union – now they have piled up so many nuclear weapons that they can destroy the earth seven hundred times. Now, neither America wants to get into a nuclear war, nor does Soviet Russia. But nobody can say it. Both will go on saying that they are ready, and both are continuing to pile up weapons. Now it is absolutely absurd. For what are you piling up weapons? You have seven hundred times more than is needed to destroy this poor humanity, and life on this small planet.Because of nuclear weapons, the Third World War has become almost an impossibility. They will go on talking about it because that keeps them in power. People are afraid; people don’t know the whole information, what is going on. The Americans are afraid of the Russians; the Russians are absolutely in darkness, and they think the Americans are monsters or something. The Soviet clique that rules can rule only if it can maintain the idea that the Third World War is just on the horizon.I have a certain respect for Richard Nixon, for one thing: that if the man wanted not to be thrown out of the White House, he could have simply started the Third World War. That was the simple way out of Watergate. Any cunning politician like Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong or Mussolini or Adolf Hitler would have done that. In that way, Nixon is not a student of Machiavelli. He should read The Prince – but it is too late.The only way politicians know to dominate people is either to keep the threat of war continuously alive through newspapers, television, radio, speeches – keep people frightened so they need your direction, your leadership. Adolf Hitler writes in his autobiography that a nation can become strong, great, only under two conditions. Either you go on creating a threatening atmosphere: “You are going to be destroyed,” or you start a war.Do you think that governments will keep escalating and escalating until they forget what war is like, and then blow ‘em all up?They cannot forget, and particularly at this time when they have accumulated so many weapons. It is dangerous to forget, they can backfire. They can destroy you, if you don’t destroy them beforehand. Either you have to use them in war, or you have to throw them in the Pacific. You have to get rid of them. It is not a time to forget, and who can forget?Just the other day I saw a petition of the fifty scientists who are responsible for creating the nuclear weapons in America, urging the president and the Supreme Court: “We were not aware what we were doing. And now it is beyond our capacity, to conceive what is going to happen if war happens. Nothing like it has ever happened before. So it is time to stop.”Those fifty – the most important American physicists, nuclear experts – are urging: “It is time. Not much time is left; stop creating more, and somehow destroy these weapons or use this energy in some creative way. Find a way that the energy can be used to produce electricity, to run factories; it can be done.” But the politicians want to be on top. And both America and Russia go on threatening each other.Smaller countries like India are trying to create nuclear plants. Fifty percent of India’s population is on the verge of starvation, and India is exporting its wheat to outside countries.Rajiv Gandhi is my friend, but I would like him to be assassinated, just like his mother. What he is doing to the country is simply inconceivable. And what are you going to do by creating a nuclear plant? You can never become a great nuclear power. It will take three hundred years for India to become a power like America or Russia. And in three hundred years, if you are going to create nuclear weapons, not a single Indian will be alive. This is simply a madhouse.So I say that this is the time. We can make people aware to drop all boundaries, if you want to drop wars. And I am not appealing to the politicians. My appeal is to the intelligent people of the world, to the young people of the world.These fifty scientists should join hands with the Russian scientists, and should declare that they are not going to produce any more nuclear weapons.I want that there should be a world academy of scientists. I can give them a place in my commune; we have enough space.Have you let them know?Yes, and that’s what you have to do.Okay.Make them aware that I am inviting them.If all the scientists of the world refuse to cooperate with the politicians – and this is the time to refuse – and if all the scientists of the world can refuse, and all the poets and all the painters, and all the people who are not political, but creative, the masses can be convinced. Then Ronald Reagan cannot deceive anyone.If the whole intelligentsia of America appeals to the masses, “We should withdraw our boundaries. Now there will be no visa for entry, and now there will be no passport. Burn all the passports, burn all the green cards. We are one world, and there is no need for any of that. Movement from one country to another should be the birthright of every human being.”This is the time that, under pressure – humanity is under two pressures: one is nuclear war, the other is the disease AIDS, which is spreading like wildfire and which has no cure. Not a single medical person in the whole world expects that there will be a cure sometime in the future – no possibility. The disease is a category in itself. It is not to be put in the same category as other diseases – cancer, tuberculosis and all that. They are now nothing, you should not call them diseases.AIDS has no cure – and it is so contagious that you need not be sexually involved with somebody, even kissing you can get it.I heard last week they found the AIDS viruses in tears also.Tears also, soon they will find it in perspiration. Any infected liquid coming out of your body will carry the virus. This is going to be an even bigger danger than nuclear weapons. And anybody who has AIDS would not like anybody else to know about it, because he will be condemned. Governments are repressing the information on how many people have AIDS.The government is repressing that?All over the world – because if any government accepts that there are so many people suffering from AIDS, then two things are clear: that that government is declaring that its people are sexually perverted, homosexuals; and secondly, accepting that AIDS is there, then it is the responsibility of the government – what are you doing about it?And there seems to be nothing that can be done. So the only way is to suppress the information; don’t let it surface. But this is more dangerous. Every AIDS person should be stamped, the way you stamp your cattle, just on the forehead. He is a walking nuclear weapon, and he can infect anybody. Kissing should be prohibited, not drugs. Drugs will do, but kissing won’t.People should be made aware of what precautions should be taken. No government is trying to do that. In fact, if you declare of somebody that it seems he has symptoms, no hospital accepts him.We have two sannyasins here who have AIDS. We have made a special place for them – the most scenic place. We are giving them every facility that is possible, because those people are going to live only a few months – at the most two years, that is the maximum. Most probably within six months they will be gone. We are trying to make their six months as comfortable, and as beautiful, and as relaxed, as we can. But in the outside world, people who have confirmed AIDS are freely moving around. But they can bribe the physicians to keep it secret. And that is part of the physician’s oath, that he will not make the disease of the person known. This is very dangerous.They are not allowed in the hospitals because they may spread it in the hospitals. Soon their families – the moment they come to know, then all love and all sacrifice and all responsibility will disappear. Then your own wife will not be ready to live with you. Your own father will suggest, “Get lost.” Your friends will turn their backs on you, nobody would like even to look at you. This was the situation of lepers in the Middle Ages. But lepers are not dangerous, in fact there are many kinds of leprosy which are not infectious.This disease AIDS is the ultimate outcome of homosexuality. It has to be dissected, analyzed, and given the whole perspective. I call AIDS a religious disease because homosexuality was born in monasteries. Keeping men together, not allowing any women to enter the monastery, not allowing the monks to go outside and mix with people, keeping nuns in their nunneries, not allowing any men to enter – what do you expect?All the religions have been preaching celibacy. Now, celibacy should be made illegal. Anybody saying that he is celibate should be imprisoned immediately. All the monasteries should be closed, because those monks are dangerous: they have all been homosexuals. It is not their fault. When you take the vow of celibacy, your body, your chemistry, your physiology, your biology has no idea what celibacy is. And there is no way to communicate the idea to your body and biology. It remains just hung up in your head, and your body goes on functioning in the same way. It goes on creating semen, it goes on creating sexuality. Now what do you have to do with it?In lonely places, people have been known to make love to animals, because even a man was not available. If you make the woman unavailable, he becomes a homosexual; if you make even man unavailable, he becomes a victim of sodomy, he starts making love to animals.Love is such a natural phenomenon that preventing it has caused the whole problem. Politics has brought you to the nuclear Third World War. And your religions have brought you to an even better chance of committing suicide, AIDS.This is a time of such pressure that if we bring all the pressure to the public’s eye, there is a possibility to change the whole situation. It is always in danger that people take drastic steps. Otherwise, who risks? And when everybody’s life is at risk, who bothers whether you are American or Indian or Russian or Chinese? This is the time when we should stop calling ourselves Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Indians, Germans. And the people who have some kind of world fame should appeal to the whole world: “Destroy your identity cards, destroy your visas, destroy your maps, and remember that the whole earth is ours.”War will disappear. There will be no need for war. In fact, just as monasteries are responsible for homosexuality, wars are also responsible for it, because you don’t allow soldiers to take their girlfriends with them. So what are the soldiers going to do?They're not going to make love to their guns. They're going to make love to something else.They can make love even to guns. If you are left only with a gun and nothing else, you are intelligent enough to make an effort.My right hand's better than a gun.A gun is perfectly good. To me, this pressure of AIDS and nuclear weapons is a great opportunity and challenge. And I hope that something good is going to happen soon, that we will not be so idiotic as to die and destroy this beautiful planet. We are going to do something.Do you have any idea what that is?I have. And soon you will know.Okay.Just a few more days.A few more days?Yes, my people are preparing.Okay, thank you.We obviously have a lot of work to do on our planet here.Right.Osho,Do you think that we should, in the meantime, continue to explore off our planet?No.No?Right now there is no time. It is sheer stupidity to waste money and time going to the moon and to Mars, because the nearest planets don’t have life. There is a possibility of life, but those planets will take a lifelong journey, they are millions of light-years away. As far as we know, we are the only living people in our solar system. In other solar systems, scientists guess there may be at least fifty thousand planets that have some kind of life. But this is not the time to discover their life. This is the time to save our life.And if the world becomes one, which I don’t see is such an impossible thing – if Oregon and California can be one nation, I don’t see why Canada cannot also be part of it. Why can other nations not also be part of it?Doesn't that start with ourselves though?I have started. In my people you will find people from all religions, people from all nations, even Russians. You will find people of all races – white, black, yellow.If it's possible for Oregon and California to be side by side, and be part of one nation, is it not possible for sannyasins and the rest of Oregon to live side by side, and be part of one nation?We are absolutely ready. For us there is no problem. Even if somebody descends here in Rajneeshpuram from some other planet, he will be received with celebration. We have no problem. All the problems are on their side, we have no hostility.Are you putting the responsibility on them, then?No, I’m not putting responsibility, just stating a fact. We are a minority, such a small minority that it is simply idiotic for Oregonians to be afraid of us. We should be afraid of them; we are not afraid. It is really a hilarious situation.Oh, I've been out there. You should be afraid of some of those people out there!No, we are not. We are not afraid of anybody. And that is making them more afraid, more hostile. We went on inviting them – we invited the governor, we invited the attorney general: “Before you start saying anything about us, please come and see. And then say whatsoever you want to say.” But they don’t even have the guts to come here.You have such impotent people in your governor, in your attorney general that I am simply surprised that their wives don’t divorce them. We are not going to kill them: we have not killed anybody. We are asking them to come, but they won’t come. On the contrary they have put their army on alert – that within three hours’ notice they have to be ready to reach Rajneeshpuram, any day. Strange. We invite the governor, he is inviting the army. He should have told us. We could have invited the army ourselves! Why go such roundabout ways? We are straightforward people. We can invite the army, just the way we invited the street people. We can have a project: three months Share-a-Home with the army!There are no immediate plans for that right now, is there?That's great! Are there any plans in the future that you can see that would be similar to the street people's invitation?No, I never repeat anything.Uh?No, always something bigger.Well, I understand there would be something bigger.Something bigger is going to come next month.Next month?Next month.I would be happy to hold it until next month if you want to tell me now.You will be there. You will be an eyewitness to it.I'd be delighted. What's the date?Just wait.Okay, I shall pull out my patience and…Yes.…and put it on.Good.Any hints?Do you think it's true that the more light you have, the better you can see what is trivial and outmoded in your conditioning?Right – the more comfortable you are, the more luxuriously you live, the more richness in all the dimensions of life, the more is the possibility for you to become aware of one thing: that you have everything, but you don’t have yourself. You are surrounded by all the luxuries – there is nothing more to be added to it – but who are you? Living in a palace, but what the hell are you doing there? The question is bound to happen.The poor man cannot ask it. He is looking for bread, he is looking for his children’s medicine, he has no house. Do you think he will start inquiring about his interiority, about truth, about the meaning of life?It is impossible for a poor man to be religious. That’s why I say I am the rich man’s guru. It has nothing to do with me. Only the rich man has the opportunity to inquire beyond mundane things. The poor man – I feel sorry for him, but I cannot think that I should go to Ethiopia and teach meditation there. They will kill me, and I am not suicidal.The world has enough technology now. If its old prejudices and stupidities can be dropped, we can make the whole world a paradise. Nothing is lacking. If we can reach the moon, if we can create so much destructive power, why can’t we create creative power? The same power can be transferred into creativity, because power is always neutral. You can burn your cigar with a lighter; you can burn your house too. Your lighter does not give you any instructions what to do.Science has made all the energies available. You are using them in the service of death. Use them in the service of life. It seems all the politicians of the world are followers of Reverend Jim Jones, because they are trying to turn the world into a Jonestown. Except Rajneeshpuram. And sooner they realize it, the better.You said you felt sorry for the poor man because he…I feel sorry. Not for his hunger. I feel sorry that he cannot move into higher realms of experience. I don’t feel sorry for his hunger; I don’t feel sorry for his death. I feel sorry that he could not afford the greatest experience of life: of the eternal flame in himself.The pope may be sorry also, but he is sorry because these people don’t have food, don’t have clothes, don’t have hospitals. I know those who have clothes and have hospitals and have schools, they are also in tremendous misery, suffering. They may not be starving but they are not rejoicing either.I would like the whole world to live so luxuriously that people start becoming bored with luxury. You should ask me how I am bored with Rolls Royces.How are you bored with Rolls Royces?90 Rolls Royces – anybody would be bored. And my people are going to try to have 365. They are bent upon boring me. What can you do?And the whole earth is capable, for the first time, of such luxury that you don’t feel any material need. If all material needs are fulfilled, then what are you going to do?There is nothing other than meditation. That is the only door that is still left open. You have knocked at all other doors and seen there is nothing. Only one door is still open, inviting. And whoever has entered that door has never come back frustrated, disappointed. There is not a single case in the whole history of humanity that anybody who has reached the center of his being was disappointed, felt meaningless, was miserable, committed suicide. Not a single exception.That’s why I say meditation is a scientific thing. That’s how science works. If you can find something without any exception, it becomes a rule. Meditation is a scientific method, because in the whole of history nobody has denied that it leads you to the ultimate blissfulness. But what can I do? It is just a simple question.I feel sorry for the poor man because he cannot understand Mozart. I feel sorry for him because he cannot understand the dance of a Nijinsky; he cannot understand the flute of Pannalal Ghosh or the sitar of Ravi Shankar. My being sorry and sad is for totally different reasons. I would like him to enjoy the best music in the world, the best poetry, the best painting, the best dance. I would like him to reach the highest peak of his intelligence, but his poverty is preventing him. And the politicians and the religious leaders are responsible for his poverty.It is such a strange phenomenon that these politicians go on sympathizing with the poor people, with the starving people, with the dying people; and the same politicians go on throwing food into the sea. Ethiopia is dying, and Europe has thrown thousands of tons of fresh oranges into the ocean.And the political leaders go on talking about sympathy, compassion. The religious leaders go on talking about sympathy, and they are against birth control. They are against abortion: “It should not be legalized.” Strange. They are responsible for creating more population, and that means more poverty. The politicians are putting seventy-five percent of their nation’s income into war, army, nuclear weapons, and people are dying – even their own people.Thirty million people in America itself are on the streets. And you are creating nuclear weapons, and you are making efforts to reach Mars or the moon. You must have gone nuts!And because I simply say the facts, they are angry at me. They don’t have any answer. I am ready for an open discussion with Ronald Reagan, or Governor Atiyeh, or anybody. And I would like them to face me, and say why what they are doing, and what they are saying, are totally contradictory things. On the one hand you are responsible for poverty; on the other hand you are showing so much great sympathy because these poor people are going to vote for you. You are against birth control methods because if birth control is applied, where is Mother Teresa going to find orphans? It is such a complicated vested interest. Mother Teresa will die if there are no orphans. What will she do? And who is going to give her a Nobel Prize? Orphans are needed, urgently needed – the more the better.It is a very simple thing. Just the people of the world have to be made aware of it. And that is your work.That's what I will try and do.Good. So come back again. Or do you have some more questions?No, nothing.Come back – and next time with a little beard!

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Yoga Pratima,Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United StatesOsho,How are you helping to change the world?The world does not exist; it is only a word. What exists is the individual. By changing the individual, the world is changed. What has been done in the past with humanity is that people have been deprived of their individuality. That’s how there are crowds, but no individuals; Mohammedans, Christians, Hindus, but no individuals.It is the same process which has been applied down the ages in the armies. The whole training of an army is a basic effort to destroy the individual completely, and to make him just a number.If a man dies in the fight, in war, his name does not appear on the notice board. What appears is that “number sixteen” died. Now, number sixteen has no wife, no children, no friends, no old father and mother. Number sixteen is simply a number, and number sixteen is replaceable. Some other person will soon fill the gap and will become number sixteen. And the man who was behind the number sixteen is reduced, by and by, with subtle processes.The whole training of the army is that the person is made to do things which are irrational. In the beginning, his reason tries to assert. But his reason is punished, his disobedience is punished, his argumentativeness is punished. His obedience is rewarded. Soon, the person can see that he can only allow his reason to function, if he is to remain in continuous misery and punishment. Otherwise, he has just to follow whatever the order is. Even if the order is to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima, the person does it just like a robot, without considering that he is destroying 160,000 people within seconds.But he is not an individual, he no longer thinks. His thinking has been very scientifically destroyed. For hours in the morning, in the evening, for years he’s been parading: turn right, turn left. He cannot even ask, “What is the point?”It happened in the Second World War – because soldiers were needed, everybody from every profession was asked to sacrifice himself for the country. A professor in Germany was asked to join the army. He had no more students anyway; for three years nobody had entered into his post-graduate research work. He was sitting unnecessarily; he should go into the army. He said, “There is no problem for me. I can go anywhere, but the army will find difficulties with me.”But he was not listened to. And when he was standing in line the first day and they said, “Left turn,” everybody turned, except him. The commander asked him, “Have you heard me or not?”He said, “I have heard, but I don’t see any reason why I should turn left. And these people will be ordered again and again, and they will finally come to the same position in which I am already standing.”“March forward!” And he would not. He wanted some reason for every single act. Why should he march forward, why not backward? The commander got fed up. Such a person cannot be made into a soldier. He asked his chief what to do with this man: “He asks about everything. I don’t know myself, I had never asked myself. This is a simple training of learning obedience, but this man is impossible. Everything is confronted with ‘Why?’”The commander-in-chief said, “You don’t know him, he is a very famous professor of philosophy. His whole life he has been arguing, doubting, and it is certainly difficult for the poor old man to drop all those habits. Give him some work which he can do, something very simple.”So he was sent to the kitchen. And he was given a pile of peas, and told that he had to sort them, the smaller ones on one side, the bigger ones on the other side. After an hour, the chief commanding officer came in and the professor was sitting there with closed eyes – and the pile was exactly the same as when he had left, one hour before. Nothing had been done, not a single pea had been moved.He asked the man, “What are you doing? You have not done anything!”He said, “So many problems have to be solved before I start. You said to me, ‘The smaller ones on one side, the bigger ones on the other side.’ What about those that are in the middle? Where do they go? And it is not only a question of just three grades. In fact, there are many grades. Between the bigger and the medium, there is again the middle; between the medium and the small, there is again the middle.”He said, “It is such a complicated mathematical thing, and I am absolutely ignorant about mathematics.”Finally he had to be discharged because he was good for nothing.What was the problem? The problem was they were trying to take away his individuality. They were trying to make him a robot: “Just follow, there is no question of ‘Why?’”Years of turning left and right, and marching forward and backward. One slowly stops asking, “Why?” What is the point? One simply starts doing things mechanically. Only then can you make a human being drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and he does not ask “Why?” Those people of Hiroshima had done nothing wrong, they had not harmed anybody. They were civilians, small children, women, pregnant women, old people – they had nothing to do with the war as such. Why destroy them?No, such a question does not arise anymore. An order is an order, and to follow it is his duty. He dropped the bomb on both the cities, went back to his camp, had a good dinner, drank with his friends, laughed, joked – and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were burning. Never before in history had such destruction been seen. But this man seemed to be absolutely unaffected. In fact he seemed to be enjoying, celebrating, because he had done a great job. As the first man to drop the atom bomb, he had become a historical figure.In the morning, he was asked by the journalists, “We certainly believe you could not have slept in the night. After killing 160,000 people, how could you sleep?”He said, “You don’t understand the psychology of the soldier. I have done my duty, and I have done it perfectly. And I had a very good sleep. I had not had that good a sleep for months because this project was there, and I was so excited by the project of dropping the atom bomb.”He was being prepared for it. And, naturally, when the work is finished – and finished with perfection – one has the right to relax and go to sleep. So he said, “I ate well, drank, danced with my friends and went to sleep.”Now, something is missing in this man. His heart is no longer functioning. His reason is dead. He looks like a man, but he has become a robot.What has happened in all the armies has happened on a subtler level in all the societies. The basic method is the same. Every child is brought up to follow, to be obedient, to respect the elders. Every child is conditioned that on his own he is always going to be wrong, that he is a worthless person. One is not born worthy; worth has to be deserved, it has to be earned, it is a goal. Very few people achieve it. As a human being, he is condemned. As he is, he is condemned. He is given all kinds of shoulds and should nots. The child is so helpless that sooner or later he is caught in the net.It was a continuous problem for me, and for my family. In India it is an accepted fact that if any elderly person comes into a house, you have to touch his feet. Now, I was not willing to do that. The first time it happened a neighbor came in – he was the age of my father, or perhaps older than my father – and my father touched his feet, asked him to sit comfortably. And then my father told me, because I was still there, “Touch his feet. He is older than you, he is older than me.”I said, “He may be older, that does not mean that I have to touch his feet. In fact, I know this man: he is a drunkard, he goes to the prostitutes, he has been imprisoned twice for stealing. Now the police are suspecting him of a murder, which has happened just two days ago in front of the house.”In fact, my whole family had to force me not to say anything about it, because I had seen it happen. And I told my father, “I suspect this was the man, although he had a black cover over his face. But I know his feet, I know his hands, I know the way he walks – and you want me to touch his feet? I cannot do it.”My father said to me, “Then it is better that whenever anybody comes into the house, you simply move from this place. Don’t remain there to confront the man, to confront us and to create an embarrassing situation. Now what will that man think?”I had said everything in front of him. He became really nervous when I said, “I can recognize this man’s walk and how he killed the man. Just because you are insisting, I am not going to the police station. Otherwise, this man is a murderer.”Hearing this he almost started trembling and perspiring. I said, “Look at him. He should touch my feet, otherwise I am going to the police.” And the man touched my feet because he knew that I had seen him. He had seen me seeing him – I was the only eyewitness.It was not late, just nine o’clock in the evening, and in front of my house there was a small, dark street. He was hiding in that street as the man passed on the road; the man’s shop was nearby, and the time in India to close a shop is nine o’clock.So everything was settled: nine o’clock he would close his shop, and he would walk in front of my house – because his house was there, four houses away, and that was the best place, because the murderer could hide in the darkness. There was not even a lamp post. Electricity had not come yet to that place. I saw him come out of the street.It was a hot summer night, and I have never felt at ease with heat. Cold I love, heat I simply hate. So, I was just sitting on my bed waiting for the air to cool down a little, and then I would go to sleep. At that very moment the case happened. The man was not aware that I was sitting on my bed on the terrace, because all the lights of the house were off and everybody had gone to sleep. I was in darkness, and as he came out of the street I immediately recognized the man, although he had a black cover over his face.I told my father, “Now look. You touched a murderer’s feet, just because he is a little older than you. But there are men, donkeys, many bulls and many dogs older than you, older than me. If this is the rule – that I have to touch the feet of anybody who is older than me – then perhaps I should commit suicide, because I cannot continue from morning to night touching everybody’s feet. Do you think I don’t have any other work?”These are subtle strategies to distract the child from his innocence. If he follows the convention, the tradition, he is rewarded. I was always punished, never rewarded, but I accepted each punishment with great dignity because each punishment made me a more solid individual. They were not aware that they were unknowingly helping me; their rewards would have been bribes, their punishment gave me mettle.Every day I was punished, at home, in school. And they were wrong and I was right. But my crime was that I would follow only what I felt to be right. It has been a great adventure to be right and to be punished. That gave me tremendous integrity, and everybody – my father, my teachers – later on recognized it. Almost all of them recognized that they were wrong. But they treated me just like any other child. They never thought that I would be able to stand all the punishments, and still insist on doing the things I wanted to do.For years, I had been standing outside the class. The teachers would find it easier to teach – otherwise I was constantly asking questions. And I knew, and they knew, that they didn’t know the answers. The moment I would ask anything they would say, “Simply go out of the class.”I would say, “But that is not the answer to my question.”For example, I asked the man who started teaching me arithmetic, why in every language there are ten basic digits, one to ten. He said, “My God, I have been teaching mathematics for almost twenty years.” – and he was a first class MSc in mathematics – “Nobody has ever asked me, nor have I ever thought myself why there are ten digits.”I said, “I know the answer. But first I want to know whether a gold medalist in mathematics from the university knows a basic thing which is fundamental to mathematics.”He was angry and embarrassed. I said, “It is very simple. I have seen the villagers counting on their fingers, and there are ten fingers. Man must have started thousands of years ago counting on fingers. And, because all over the world man has ten fingers, hence every language, every country has those ten basic digits. Otherwise there is no reason.” And there have been mathematicians who have used fewer digits; Godel used only three. He said, “That’s enough: one, two, three. After three, comes ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. After thirteen comes twenty.” And he managed to solve all kinds of mathematical problems with only three digits.I was interested in mathematics, that’s why I had joined the class. But before joining the class, I had looked in all kinds of mathematical books in the library, and found this Godel, who managed to work only with three digits. That gave me the idea, that the ten digits has nothing to do with mathematics, it has something to do with the hands of man.I said, “Rather than answering me, you are telling me to go out of the class and stand there at the window. There is no problem for me, because I enjoy the air outside better than this dark hole which you call your classroom. And this dirty furniture, ugly, hard. And you force small children to sit on this furniture, six, seven hours a day; that is enough to destroy their soul. I am perfectly happy outside. There are trees and birds and fresh air. And particularly you are not there, so I need not bother about any questions.”One day, the principal was on his round, and I was standing outside the mathematics class. She said, “This is strange. Whenever I come on the round, you are always standing at this window looking at the sky. Sometimes, out of curiosity, I simply look out of my office to see whether you are there or not. Without exception you are always there.”I said, “You have to ask my mathematics teacher, because he tells me to stand here. And I enjoy. He is boring, and whatever he teaches can be learned very easily from any book. Standing here, in front of lush green trees, and so many birds and such fresh air, who bothers about arithmetic? And anyway, I am not going to count money in my life. So please don’t disturb me, things are going perfectly well. He thinks this is punishment, I think this is reward – reward for asking a reasonable question.”And I learned with these small things, by and by, that this society rewards lies, punishes truth. It teaches truth, but never rewards the truth. This whole society is against the individual, it wants everybody retarded. The retarded people are good: they never give anybody any problem, they cannot raise questions, they are easily enslaved. The individual is essentially rebellious. He will say yes only when he feels it, otherwise he is going to say no.You ask me how I am preparing to change the world. I am doing just the opposite of what society has done to individuals. I have to undo it; there is no need to do anything else. My sannyas is simply a process of undoing what the society has done to you. I am simply provoking your intelligence again. It is dormant – it is there, nobody can kill it, it can only be repressed. Finding a suitable, comfortable situation, it can again start growing.I want every one of my sannyasins to be utterly unique. This is one of the reasons I am against communism, because communism is the ultimate result of destroying individuals. Other societies have done it partially, communism does it totally – hence in these seventy years in Soviet Russia, not a single rebel. Strange. A country which brags about revolution, but does not produce revolutionaries.It is something worth noting that before the revolution Russia was a poor country, but it had many geniuses. Perhaps no country could have competed in the early years of this century, or the last part of the preceding century. If you wanted to choose the ten best novels of the whole world, from all languages, you will be surprised that at least five will be Russian. And they will be the topmost. And after the revolution, not a single novel. What happened to the genius of the country?There was Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who has written as nobody else has written in the world. His insight is so penetrating that if the Bible is lost, nothing is lost; but if his books are lost, humanity will be always poor, because Fyodor Dostoyevsky cannot be replaced by anyone. And there were all these men: Leo Tolstoy – a giant, each thing that he has written should be written in gold – Chekhov, Gorky, Turgenev. These five people you would have to put first. Only then, five from the rest of the world.A country that produced people like Turgenev has not produced any poet of the same caliber, any novelist of the same caliber since. What happened? What went wrong? The individuality has been completely destroyed: people are just robots. A slight disobedience and you are finished, nobody will ever hear of you.Just a few years ago, Andrei Sakharov was given the Nobel Prize because he was – and he is – the greatest nuclear physicist in the whole world. Any country could be proud of the man. He has gone deeper than Albert Einstein, farther than anybody else in the whole history of man. But because he signed a few petitions – not much, he has not created any revolutionary party or killed somebody or bombed a train, he just signed a few petitions.Before him, three other scientists had received the Nobel Prize, and all three were immediately thrown into imprisonment, because the Soviet government does not want any Soviet citizen to receive the Nobel Prize. In their eyes, the moment a man receives the Nobel Prize he becomes world famous and starts having influence around the world, which he can use against the Soviet government.The Soviet government does not want the world to know who the people are who create the nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union does not want these people to go out of the country even for a single day. They don’t want these people to know that their country is poor and starving, and that all this nonsense about communism is baseless. Outside, the world has everything of which Russians cannot even dream. And intelligent people like Sakharov will immediately be able to see how far the world has progressed.In Russia all publications are from the government – no private publications, no private newspaper, no private magazines. The Soviet people know only what the government wants them to know. It goes on hiding many truths, it goes on spreading many lies, but the Soviet people have no way to find out what is true and what is not. If a man accepts the Nobel Prize, then he will be invited to receive it. He will have to go outside of the country.So, three scientists who were members of Sakharov’s academy – he was the director – had received the Nobel Prize. The government told them to refuse and they did not; that was a crime. They asked the government, “Why? If our efforts and our researches are being rewarded by the world, you should be proud of us. Three Soviet scientists getting the Nobel Prize – you should be immensely happy, because in the same year not a single American is getting the Nobel Prize. But on the contrary, you want us to refuse it.”And what they did with these three people is absolutely inhuman. They kept them awake for fifteen days – they went on giving them anti-sleeping doses – fifteen days continuously, not a single wink. First, after three or four days, they started losing interest in their families. Their wives would come, but they would not look at them; the children would come but they would not respond.After the first week they were like zombies, they could not recognize their friends. After the second week they had forgotten their own names, and they had forgotten all about the subject for which they had received the Nobel Prize. After three weeks they were finished, their whole psychology was messed up. And then they were produced in the court: these people were insane and the court had to decide what to do with them.They had been made insane. Of course, the court asked what their names were, and the scientists were standing there, looking with empty eyes as if they had not heard. One was shaken, forced to say his name. As if he had lost his voice, he looked all around – what is happening? And finally he managed to stutter, “I don’t know. Perhaps somebody here may remember my name. I am trying hard, but no name is coming.”The court decided they were insane. Just three weeks before, these people were declared Nobel Prize winners. Within three weeks, all three persons went mad. And there is no account of where they had been for these three weeks. And why were they not produced immediately after they got the Nobel Prize? If they had refused and disobeyed the government, then they should have been produced immediately. What had been done in those three weeks? Sakharov knew everything that had happened because he was the director. His conscience started hurting, because everything was happening before his eyes. He was not doing it, but it was happening in the academy itself, and certainly he felt he was responsible.The man somehow had saved a little bit of individuality. He signed a petition that this was absolutely inhuman – because he knew what had been done to these people, what kind of medicines and injections had been given to them, and he knew what would be the result. They had destroyed three Nobel Prize winning geniuses, and now the court was sending them to a mental asylum.Sakharov simply signed a petition appealing to the president of the country that justice should be done. Even if they didn’t want the scientists to receive the Nobel Prize, this was not the punishment for it. And because he signed the petition, the same happened to him. He was immediately arrested in the middle of the night. He was removed from the directorship of the academy. But because he had already become a world-renowned physicist, they could not give the same treatment as had been given to the three others. His name was known all around the world. So they sent him to Siberia.Siberia is hell for Soviet Russians. Sakharov is still alive there; his wife has followed him voluntarily. Doing nothing, such a genius is rotting. They hardly get food enough for survival, and the whole day they have to work like slaves. Now, Sakharov has never worked in this way. He is a man of intelligence, not a manual worker.I am against communism because it totally destroys the personality. But this is simply the logical conclusion of all the societies in the world. They differ in degrees; communism has stretched the logic to its very end. In Russia they say the society is not for the individual, the individual is for the society. I would like to say to my people that the society is for you, you are not for the society.Society is simply a word: there is no society. Civilization, ideology, all is jargon; the reality is the individual. So if we can undo, deprogram enough young people around the world, we are sowing the seeds of changing the world without talking about any change. We are changing it.There is no direct way to change the world, because there is no world which you can change. Wherever you go, you will find individuals. So the individual has to be changed. And that is simple, not difficult at all. If the society had been able to make you something which is absolutely not your potential, it had succeeded in doing the impossible. What I am doing is simply the natural course. If you have to take water upward, you will have to pump it, make arrangements for it. But if you have to take water downward, no arrangement is needed. The water will flow downward itself: it is its natural law.The societies around the world, religions, civilizations, cultures, have created very subtle mechanisms to destroy the individual. All that we have to do is to free the individual from those subtle mechanisms. That’s why I am continuously hitting on every device that society has created to destroy people. The moment you are no longer a Christian, something immensely beautiful will arise in you. The moment you are no longer American or Russian or Indian, you will feel wings growing in you.The moment you are no longer addicted to any doctrine, you will be surprised what sharpness comes to your intelligence – how you start looking at the same world with a totally different meaning, different eyes. Everything is the same, but you are no longer the same. As if suddenly a blind man has found eyes, or a deaf person has suddenly started hearing.Those examples don’t do justice, but just give an indication. The man who is completely deprogrammed is my revolution. And we need only a small minority in the whole world. There is no need for a big majority to change the world. The majority in the world has never done anything. It is always a small group of people who has run the world.Now, Jesus is running millions of people. Karl Marx is running half the world. Mohammedans are second only to Christians in number. Buddhists are third, Hindus are fourth. A few people – not more than a dozen, you can count them on your fingers – have been running the whole world.We can create thousands of deprogrammed people, and those deprogrammed people will be like a fire – a wildfire. Wherever they will move, with them will move a new perspective, a new way of life. And they will become magnetic forces, to which people will simply be pulled.So, I have no plan to change the world directly. That has not happened. Many have tried it; basically they went wrong from the very beginning. Start with the individual and release his intelligence. Don’t give him any program, don’t give him any project. Just make him free, and tell him, “The whole sky belongs to you – now you can fly anywhere you like. And whatever you want to do, do because there is no God to punish you, or reward you. You are totally free for any act that gives you bliss, that gives you peace, that gives you serenity.” These people will become models and they will set the whole world afire.So that is my idea of how we are going to change the world. By changing you.Osho,What is the responsibility of a doctor toward a patient who is dying and no longer wants to live? Should the doctor help him to die?It is something very significant to be understood. In the past – in the beginning days of medicine and medical science – nine children would die out of ten, only one would survive. The population of the world was very scarce.Hippocrates created an oath for doctors – he was the father of Western medicine, allopathy. Humanity is immensely grateful to that man, and his oath was perfectly right for those days. The function of the doctor was always to save life. Life was so difficult; to save people was certainly the need of that time. But times change, needs change. Books don’t change.In medical colleges and universities, Hippocrates’ oath is still given to doctors before they can practice. Now, this is so stupid. The world population is four times what it should be. Scientists have been trying to find out how long people used to live five thousand years ago. They have not found any skeleton which is more than forty years old. Around the world, in every excavation, it is the same situation. People had died at thirty, thirty-five. At the most, the longest life was forty.Now things are totally different. The population is four times more than the earth can afford. And the progress of medicine has helped people’s lives to be physically healthy, with less possibility of sickness. And it has lengthened life; in Russia there are thousands of people who are beyond one hundred and fifty. In every country of the world the average age has gone up, even in countries like India. Just forty years ago, under the British Raj, the Indian’s average age was twenty-three. Now it is forty-seven, more than double. The population has become four times bigger, the age has become double – more than double – and India does not have all the modern facilities. Its water is polluted, fortunately; food is scarce. Fifty percent of the population lives hungry, on one meal a day.In spite of all this the population still goes on exploding. If Hippocrates was here he would change the oath, I am absolutely certain, because the man who cared for life would have cared for the whole living earth.Now, in the oath these words should be added: that a doctor’s duty is to help the patient, if he wants to live or if he wants to die. It is his choice and the doctor has to be respectful to the choice of the person. It is his birthright. If he no longer wants to live, only he can decide. In certain cases – perhaps the person is in a coma – then his family, his wife, his children, his parents, can decide. Perhaps he has nobody, he is alone, then the medical board can decide – that if this person is going to live in a coma forever, then what is the point of keeping him alive? This is not life. And in keeping him alive we are keeping so many people unnecessarily engaged, so many mechanisms unnecessarily used, so much money unnecessarily wasted – and he will never open his eyes.So these are the three things: if the person is still in his senses, aware, and makes a will that if he goes into a coma, then don’t go on keeping him alive. And if he wants to die, just today, it is his freedom. Up to now we have been victims of death. For the first time we can become masters of death. Up to now we have been just helpless: whenever death comes, it comes. Now it is possible for us to decide both when to die, and what kind of people will be born. Up to now it has been accidental.You need carpenters and you go on producing doctors: strange. You need doctors and you produce plumbers. Everything is topsy-turvy. The plumber is doing the work of a doctor; the doctor is somewhere catching fish. We are in a position to decide what kinds of people are needed in the society, and it would be the sanest way.You grow certain vegetables which you need; you grow certain foods which you need. You make houses comfortable, beautiful and so you can feel cozy, safe against the wind, against the sun, against the rain, against the snow. And you need a certain comfortable, relaxed place. You ask the architect: you can give him your needs and he knows how to manage those needs in as aesthetic a way as possible. About everything we have become scientific; only about man are we still unscientific. This is unbelievable.We should decide what kinds of people are needed. How many engineers, how many doctors, how many dental surgeons, how many surgeons, how many nurses, how many teachers, professors, scientists; everything can be decided. And we can decide that these people should not suffer from the diseases that are known to us. We can create a protective wall. We can manage that these people will not be indoctrinated into some unnatural life pattern. We can create the first seed of being always a rebel.So, on the one side we have to be scientific about birth, and on the other side we have to be again scientific, human, compassionate. Help the person if he wants to live, perhaps he has not had time enough to live. If he wants to live, give him health, give him life – not a life in a coma in a hospital bed, that is sheer nonsense. If Hippocrates was in such a state, going into a coma, coming out for a moment, going back again, he would have shouted, “Destroy that oath! I want to die, this is not life.”For anybody who wants to die, it is the function of the medical profession, of the commune, of the people who love him to make his death as beautiful as possible. Why make it accidental? Why should he die of old age? Why can’t he die without becoming old, and suffering all kinds of things which come with old age? He has lived, he has loved, he has created, now there is no need for him just to go on and on. And he is not being forced, we are not telling him to die, but we are simply giving the right, the constitutional right that if he wishes to die…Yes, there are problems. For example, this moment he may think he wants to die, and by the time you have arranged everything for his death he changes his mind, he says no. So precautions can be taken, he can be given time, so that if he wants to die, he thinks it over for three weeks. And if after three weeks he still finds that he wants to die, and he has not wavered – he can keep a diary for three weeks – it is enough. And we can give him a beautiful departure.There should be beautiful places – death temples – in every hospital, in every nursing home, where everything is arranged for the best: the flowers, the garden, the people. And every person who wants to die must be given time so that he can learn something of meditation. So while he is going into a deeper and deeper sleep from which he will never return, he can go on doing his meditation.Meditation and death happening together is the best that can happen to anybody – because he is dying, yet he is aware that he will be dead for you all, but not for himself. He will simply be freed from this body. And because he has died with awareness, he will not be born again. He will be free, a white cloud in the vast universe.We have to make death beautiful: music, dance, silence, meditation. Up to now man has been born accidentally, dies accidentally. And between the two do you think you can live meaningfully? – between two accidents? Your beginning is an accident, your end is an accident. Do you think between these two you will be able to live meaningfully? Impossible.The beginning should be considered by the most intelligent people. You are creating a body for a soul; create the best body, so only a better soul can enter into it. You cannot create the soul, but you can create a beautiful house. That’s what scientists are now capable of. And if you can get the best souls, you will have a totally different world – without wars, without poverty, without sickness, without old age.And you will have transformed even death itself into a ceremony. It is a departure. All your friends can be invited, all those who have loved you can be present. The dying man can say good-bye, thank all those people, can have another look, because he will not be meeting them again. In an accidental death, this is not possible. Death has to be made according to the will of the man. And the medical profession is just to serve the freedom of the man, the freedom of the individual. It does not matter whether he wants life or death – whatsoever he wants, he should be provided for.And there comes a moment in life when you would like to die. It is an immense relief. You have done everything that you wanted to do; you have lived every kind of experience that was valuable to you. Now, going on living would be simply repetition, as if you are seeing the same movie again and again and again – because the army is surrounding the movie house, you cannot be allowed to escape, you have to see the movie till you die. And even if you start dying they will immediately call the ambulance and take you to the hospital, because you have to live and see the movie. But you have seen the movie millions of times, and it is time – and you want to be allowed to get out of the movie house.This is exactly the situation. When you have lived a hundred years, you have lived enough. Mostly people start feeling that now it is time to retire from life after eighty. Just as they start feeling to retire from work near about sixty, near about eighty they start feeling to retire from life. There is no point.These people’s wishes should be respected. But provisions can be made, time can be given for them to consider. Time can be given for them to learn a certain simple meditation. They can be asked if there is anything they would like; it can be supplied. For a man who is going to die within three weeks, it is simply human that we should give him everything that he wants, and then let him go with celebration.To me, death is not something bad. It is just a deep sleep. Those who fall asleep without meditation will wake up in some womb almost instantly. Here, you are preparing their funeral pyre, and they have entered into some womb already! You are unnecessarily wasting your time. The man has managed to enter another body.But if a man can die with meditativeness, then he is going to become part of the whole. No longer will he be imprisoned in a small body; he will be as vast as the universe. And that is the goal of true religion, to help you to become part – an organic part – of the whole existence.Osho,What is it that happens within a twenty-four-mile radius of a living master that causes a person to become enlightened when he dies within that radius?It is simply a law of existence, like other laws. The enlightened man has a certain energy aura around him. Everybody has, but different people have different colored auras; the color depends on their psychology. In fact, one can see the aura. There is a certain training how to see the aura that surrounds your body, and particularly your head. Looking at that aura, much can be said about your mind, your past, your actions, your desires, your imagination, your ambitions – almost your whole biography in the past. And, if you remain continuous with the past, the future can also be predicted.As a person starts meditating, the colors of his aura start changing. When the meditation is complete – when you have come to your innermost point – you are surrounded by a twenty-five-mile-radius aura of immense whiteness. It is not like the sunrise, but like just before the sunrise, those few moments when there is light but the sun has not arisen. In the East we have called it brahmamuhurt, “the moment of the divine.”And why have we called it “the moment of the divine”? The reason was because of that exact type of light: without any source because the sun has not yet risen; it is far below the horizon but the night is over, between the night and the day. In India, meditation has a very beautiful name, sandhya. Sandhya means the time just before the sun rises, and the time just after the sun sets – just a few seconds – because they are the same, a light without source.The ordinary person’s aura is an average of two inches around him, but as he grows, becomes mature, the aura also becomes bigger. Finally, at the ultimate peak of your meditation, the length of the aura is twenty-five miles. Now, if somebody is dying in this area who is in love with the enlightened one, has trust in the master, whom do you think he will remember? The last thing is the whole of life condensed.The man who was after money will remember his bank balance. Certainly he is going to remember his money: “Now what is going to happen to the money?” He is not concerned with his death, he is worried about the bank balance and the stupid sons and daughters who will destroy everything. That is going to be his thought.A man whose sex has been repressed – a monk, Catholic, Jaina, Hindu – his last moment is going to be full of sexual dreams, because now there is no life energy to repress it. They have all uncoiled; the spring is no longer pressed by energy. Death is coming, energy is moving away. His past of repression will give him a sexual dream. He will die in that dream.But if a man has loved a master, has been in tune with someone who is enlightened, he is not going to think of dollars, is not going to think about anything else, because that love with the master was the greatest thing in his life. In that moment he will open up toward the master, just like sunflowers open toward the sun. As the sun moves, the sunflower moves; in the morning it is facing east, in the evening it is facing west.The dying sannyasin – the dying disciple – is just a sunflower. So when you do your gachchhamis, you should be sitting in a posture facing toward your master, because in those moments it can happen. If your gachchhamis are really authentic, if you are not doing them just as a formality, if you are really saying with your whole heart, “I go to the feet of the awakened one,” space disappears, time disappears. Suddenly you are available to the master.The dying sannyasin will die with gachchhamis in his heart: utterly open, available, unconditionally available. Now, what is there to be afraid of? He is going to die. There is no risk. Living, there was trouble, there were problems. He could not commit totally, his commitment was divided, partial. He had a wife, he had children, he had a job, he could not say to the master, “I am absolutely, unconditionally surrendered to you, now you are my way. Lead me wherever you want.”But now he can say it. Now there is no longer any wife, no children to go with him, no job, no money. Nothing that has been important up to this moment, and was preventing him from being totally connected with the master, is there any longer. Then why not take the chance? He could not do it in life, but he can do it in death. He can really feel – there is no need to say, “I go to the feet of the awakened one” – you need not utter the words. Your whole being feels it.And in that is the whole secret. If you are within the twenty-five-mile radius, it is as if you are just sitting by the side of the master, because that energy field is your master’s energy body. And the moment you become open, suddenly there is just light, and eternal life opens its doors.First try it in life, because if you can become enlightened in life, you will be able to enjoy this beautiful life which you were just passing by like a somnambulist. There are really a large number of somnambulists – ten percent. So if there are five thousand people here, ten percent of them will be somnambulists. They will not know it, but they will get up in the night and go to the fridge – the whole day they had been trying to diet – and they will come back and go to sleep, and in the morning they don’t remember anything. But they are puzzled: there has been nobody in the house and the ice cream has disappeared – and it is ice cream that the doctors are against – but they have no remembrance.There have been very strange cases of somnambulists who will get up in the night and burn something in the house and go back to bed. And in the morning they will report to the police that somebody is doing mischief, their things are being burned every night.It happened when I was visiting Hyderabad in south India. My friends there said it was not good that I accept the invitation of the family I was to stay with. “They are rich and have a very beautiful mansion with a big garden, swimming pool, everything. But perhaps you don’t know that house is haunted.”I said, “If I had known it, then I would have certainly gone to their house. Then there was no other way. It was just accidental that their letter reached before yours. I am going to stay there and see what kinds of ghosts are haunting the house.”There were not many people in the house: the husband, the wife and a daughter – only three persons. The daughter was not more than fourteen. What was happening in the house was that things were being moved in the night, from this room into another room, sometimes being thrown onto the roof, or onto the terrace, or in the garden. And naturally as neither the father was doing it, nor the mother was doing it, nor the daughter was doing it, the obvious conclusion was that it was haunted.I told them, “I would like not to sleep away from you. I want to sleep in the same room with your family.”The man said, “Why? We have made a beautiful place, the best room in the house with the best view.”I said, “You can all come there if you want, but I am going to stay with you, because I am going to finish this haunting forever.”They said, “But how will you stop the haunting? We are afraid of the ghosts. We lock every door, window, we all check.” First the husband checked, then the wife, then the girl, “To be absolutely certain. Whatsoever happens in other rooms let it happen, but the ghost should not enter into this room.”And they said, “Strange, the locks remain locked, but things from our room are thrown out. Still, the ghosts seem to be very nice people: they are not destroying anything, not burning anything, not stealing anything. They simply change things around. But what is happening…the dining table we find in the sitting room, all the chairs have disappeared and they are on the roof of the house!”I said, “Just leave it to me. Let me sleep with you.”It was the daughter who was doing the whole thing. It happens mostly at the time when a girl or a boy becomes sexually mature, which is a very delicate period. But she was doing it in her sleep. I had to remain awake till the girl got up. I watched her. She was the last one to check, and she used to leave one window or one door available for herself. It was all unconscious; she was not doing it consciously. She would throw things out – I caught her red-handed, her eyes were open but she was asleep. I had to shake her. She suddenly woke up and she asked, “What is the matter? What is happening? Why am I standing here? Why is the door open?”The father and mother came running. I said, “There is no problem. The first sexual desire is arising in this girl.” In India, particularly, you have to repress it continuously. And this was a rich family; the girl had to pass at least a post-graduate degree, then she would be married. So it was going to be at least ten more years. This repressed sexual energy was a kind of poison. Unconsciously she was taking revenge, she was angry. And all that together made her a somnambulist.I asked the parents, they said she was a somnambulist from the very beginning. In her childhood she used to move from one bed to another, from the mother’s bed to the father’s bed, and in the morning she would be puzzled who had moved her from her mother’s side.So I said, “Now the whole mystery is clear. She is a somnambulist, and now because she has to repress her sexuality, she is taking revenge on you. And she has done a really good job. But now it will not happen any more. Do one thing: make her free about her sexuality. If she goes with boys, let her go. Give her the pill, and the pill will destroy all the ghosts, don’t be worried.”And that’s how it happened. The pill worked, and the house is no longer haunted.People are living almost in sleep, but the knock of death wakes them up. Suddenly they see their life is finished, and they are drowning in darkness. In that moment they realize that they have missed life, they never lived it. They always postponed for tomorrow. They always thought to go to Kashmir, to go to the Himalayas; to see this, to see that, but they always postponed, “What is the hurry? There is so much work to be done. I cannot waste time. Three months in Kashmir?”So you go on postponing living, and you go on preparing to live tomorrow. You sacrifice today for tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes. One day suddenly, instead of tomorrow, death comes. It is a shock. You were waiting for tomorrow, you were planning for tomorrow your whole life, and now there is no tomorrow. And you have never learned how to live today, you were always preparing.There is a strange story in Tibet that a man wanted to be the wisest man in the world. He collected as many scriptures as were available in all Tibet. His library had thousands of ancient scriptures, and he was running from one place to another, because in those days books were not printed. He wasted fortunes on every book because it was the only copy. His whole life he was collecting, and waiting until the library was complete. Then he was going to study all these scriptures.But life completes in death. He fell sick, and his physicians said that he could not survive more than twenty-four hours. He said, “My God, in twenty-four hours, how am I going to read all these scriptures that I have collected and wasted my whole life on?”The physicians said that there was only one way: “You can ask the Dalai Lama for one thousand Buddhist monks to go through all the books and condense the essential points in those scriptures. So before you die at least you know the essentials.”But those poor scholars also had to read, and there were thousands of books. They said even one thousand monks wouldn’t do, and time was passing and the monks were trying, and the man was getting more and more nervous – that soon the sun would set and he would be finished.And he was inquiring again and again, what was happening, why the essential message was not being brought. First it was thought that everyone would bring the essential core of the scripture that he had looked in, but then there was no time to listen to one thousand monks and their summaries. So the monks were asked to please make one summary out of all the summaries, “And be quick! – because by the time the sun sets, the man will be finished.”They rushed back into the library, and there were great quarrels, which is always certain where scholars are – arguments about what should be included and what should not be included. And by the time they decided, the man was gone.This is not a story. This is actually an existential fact about almost everybody. I say almost, because I have to leave a few enlightened people out of it. Only in death is everyone surprised. But then it is too late, nothing can be done. Everybody dies in frustration, in despair, in anguish. But a man of meditation dies in joy, in peace, at ease with the whole universe. And it becomes very easy if he is connected in some way with someone who has already arrived.The best is to do it in life, because then you can live life in an enlightened way. And life is tremendously beautiful: it is just a miracle all around. But if it cannot happen in life, because you have this and that and there are conditions, then at least let it happen in death. But it may not be possible for you alone – unless you have meditated so deeply that death will not create any disturbance in your silence. Then it can happen without the twenty-five-mile radius aura. It can happen anywhere.But the chances of such a happening are rare because if it could happen anywhere, it would not wait for death. It would have happened long ago. So this device of a commune is simply to keep you engaged here. If you cannot become enlightened alive, I say, “Okay, at least don’t forget me when you are dying.” But you have to become enlightened – dead or alive!The commune is an immense field of energy and experiment. And soon in other communes around the world, I will manage at least one person to be enlightened, so no commune misses this twenty-five-mile radius of energy.Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Lars Mogansen,Norres Kane, Hasselholm, SwedenGlad to see you.Osho,It's nice to be here. I work for a newspaper in southern Sweden, a small newspaper, and I've got quite a lot of questions.Good.So if you would be as brief as possible in your answers…Unfortunately I haven't read any of your books, so maybe some of my questions, or all of them, are unnecessary in a sense.It is good that you have not read any. And you can ask the same question a thousand times, but my answer will again and again be different. So there is no problem.I was reading on the back of a book called The Book and you're saying, “I teach a sensuous religion; beauty is far more valuable than truth. Beauty is God himself, truth is just an aspect of beauty.” And I'd like to ask you three questions about those quotes: Are you actually teaching a religion?Is there a God? Do you believe in God, or maybe you're even some kind of God to your disciples yourself?And you're saying beauty is far more valuable than truth. Is that why – from what I see – most of the people here are young, good-looking people?That is my way of disposing of God. When I say beauty is God, I’m saying there is no God, but only beauty. And I am making a distinction between truth and beauty because truth is more a question of the head. It is a more logical, philosophical inquiry. Beauty is of the heart. It is not logical, not philosophical; it is more poetic, more aesthetic. You can feel it, but you cannot prove it. You can experience it, but you cannot explain it.Truth – the very word looks dead, a logical conclusion. Beauty is not a conclusion, it is a sudden revelation. When you see a rose it is not that you go through a logical solipsism, “This is a rose, and roses are beautiful, so this must be beautiful.” The moment you see it, the head stops spinning thoughts. On the contrary, your heart starts beating faster. It is something totally different from the idea of truth.Truth is argumentative. Whenever somebody proves a truth, all that he proves is that he is more logically proficient than his opponent. So, in the whole history of philosophy, every philosopher has been contradicted: five thousand years of philosophy, and not a single truth on which all the philosophers agree.Beauty is a totally different phenomenon. It is not a question of proving it. If you see a woman as beautiful, nobody is going to ask why. The question why is irrelevant about beauty. You need not prove it, nor can you. In fact, if the other person is idiotic enough and continues to say, “You have to prove why this woman is beautiful,” you will be at a loss. You cannot prove it, because it is something of the heart, and proofs are something of the head.What I am saying in that statement is that the experience of religion is just like the experience of beauty, love. It is of the heart. It is not a theology, it is not a philosophy; it is more like a poetry, a painting, a sculpture.It happened that Picasso was painting on a beach, and a man was watching him for almost two hours. He looked at the painting from every angle, and finally he could not contain his curiosity. He approached Picasso and said, “Forgive me. I don’t want to intrude into your work. For two hours I have been watching, but I cannot figure out the meaning of this painting.”Picasso looked at the man and said, “Have you ever asked the meaning of all the stars in the sky? Have you stopped in a garden, and asked the meaning of all the flowers? What is the meaning of the songs of the birds? And if nobody is answerable for the beautiful sky, and the gardens, and the birds, why should you torture a poor painter? I don’t know the meaning. I know that what I am doing is tremendously satisfying to me.”But you don't know the meaning, the goal, of what…There is no meaning, and no goal. A life is in itself sufficient. A goal is needed only when something is not intrinsically valuable. The train has a goal, the machine has a goal; without the goal the machine is useless.But love has no goal, it is enough unto itself. And if anybody’s love has a goal, remember, there is no love in it. Perhaps the man loves the woman because she is rich and old, and going to die soon. If there is a motive, any end, it destroys the very phenomenon of love. Love has to be unmotivated, without any goal and without any meaning. When you hug a friend, have you ever asked, “What is the meaning of hugging?” You will not find a meaning – and if you can find a meaning, then it is not hugging, it is just unnecessarily pressing each other’s bones!There is something which is beyond meaning, which you cannot express through words. That’s why you are using a gesture. Your hug is a gesture of something which is inexpressible by words. Your hug is simply saying, “I would like you to be just part of me. I would like to be part of you. It hurts that there is a separation. It hurts that we are two.” Your hug is immensely expressive, but there is no motive in it, no end to it.Everything that is valuable in life is always a goal unto itself. There is no outside goal. Anything that is valuable cannot be a means to some end. Just thinking of it as a means is reducing it, utterly destroying its qualities and values. Your interest is in the end. If you can get the end without this means, you will discard the means and you will get the end. You have to go through the means, because without the means the end is not available. But your eyes are focused on the end.Love, beauty, poetry, painting, dance, music don’t have any goal. But they have immense blissfulness, a tremendous ecstasy. You can be drowned in it, you can forget the whole world. Time can stop. If time does not stop listening to Mozart, it means you are not listening. It simply means you are not capable of listening to Mozart. Looking at the paintings of van Gogh, if you are not forgetting the whole world then you are not looking at the paintings. Or you are only seeing the painting, but it has not been a heart-felt experience.So the point is enjoying what you do at this moment?Every moment, every single moment. Enjoy it so totally that you never have to look back, that you never have to repent that that moment was lost. Squeeze the whole juice of it, because the next moment is not certain. This may be the last moment. The past is gone, the future is uncertain: all that is certain is this moment. And millions of people are losing this moment for a certain goal in the future, a certain end to be achieved.I wanted to say through that statement that religion has no goal, not even God.Yes, but what you're working with is a…you could call it a religion.I can. In fact, I call this the only religion. All other religions are in some way an exploitation of man’s weakness, helplessness, ignorance. They are not religions. This is the only religion, because there is no question of exploiting anybody’s fear and creating a hell, exploiting anybody’s greed and giving a promise of paradise, and eternal joys there.I am not promising anything. There is no judgment, and there is no reward, and no punishment. If you live this moment totally, that is its reward. If you miss, you are already punished. There is no need for anything afterwards, there is no need for a judgment day in the end, when the universe will come to its ultimate death – there is no need. Each moment is giving you its reward, its punishment – and it is up to you. To me, not to live the moment is enough punishment: you missed a living reality. And to live it fully is paradise.Paradise and hell are not somewhere else. Each moment both are available to you. It is your choice. People who are thinking of the past are missing. People who are thinking of the future are missing. People who are not thinking of past and future, and are simply living this moment intensely – burning their life torch from both ends simultaneously – they are the people who come to know what love is, what beauty is, what truth is.Would that denounce people who are trying to make a better future for themselves, as well as for their children, and their children's children? I'm speaking of people that are active in trying to make a better environment, like Greenpeace, peace movements.I understand. Just think, for five thousand years this is what every generation has been doing. The generation that has preceded us was thinking about us and making a better future: our present was their future. What have they done? For five thousand years continuously every generation, every father, every mother, every teacher, every priest, has been creating a better future. And the total result seems to be just the opposite.Two things happened. They destroyed their present. They sacrificed, they thought they were martyrs, they thought they were doing great service to humanity. They were doing great disservice, because the time that was given to them – a gift of existence – they wasted. And they have not been able to create a better future. Those five thousand years should become a lesson.My own understanding is, if you are living your present totally, out of this living, the next moment will be born. You have taken care of the next moment by living this moment totally. Just think how logic can lead to foolish attitudes. The father is told that he has to sacrifice his life for the children; his father sacrificed his life for him. Neither his father could live, nor he can live, nor are his children going to live, because they will be sacrificing their lives for their children. So everybody is sacrificing for somebody else. Strange. Then who is going to live?So my insistence is: Live it. And out of your living experience the future will be born. If your living moment is of tremendous beauty and ecstasy, naturally you are creating the future – without any effort to create it. But if you are sacrificing to your children’s future, deep down you will be resentful – because your life is being destroyed by those children. And those children will be resentful toward you, because you were continuously bragging that you sacrificed your life, and you want your children to feel obliged to you. You would like your children to sacrifice their youth to your old age, because you sacrificed. This is so stupid.I can agree on that. And what you're talking about, from what I understand, is the more traditional family relations both in Christianity and probably also…Everywhere.…all other religions.But let me put it more specifically: more and more people are getting very worried about the situation – the political situation – with nuclear war threats, the environment and pollution, which is not the same sacrifice from father to son, father to son that we're talking about.I understand. It is just superficially different, basically it is the same. The question of nuclear weapons should not be thought of as a future problem. It is in the present moment. So I’m not saying that you have to think about the future. It is a living reality. We are living surrounded by nuclear weapons. So do whatsoever you want to do right now.But your pacifists are thinking about the future – that there should not be a Third World War, that nuclear weapons should not be created. Stupid. Again you are destroying the present moment. And the logic of people who are creating nuclear weapons is not different from yours – they are also preparing for the future, for the future of their people, for the future of their nation. They don’t want to be weak, they want to be strong. They want to remain in the position that nobody can invade them. The warmongers are thinking of the future, the pacifists are thinking of the future.I’m neither a pacifist, nor a supporter of war. I’m saying let these idiots fight with each other, and humanity should live this moment as joyously as possible. If we can manage to live in this moment peacefully, joyously, the Third World War is not going to happen. We will have not done anything about the Third World War: if people are happy, if people are enjoying, nobody can drag them into a war. War is not a simple phenomenon, it is very complex. People have to be miserable, people have to be in suffering, people have to be sexually repressed. People have to be humiliated in every possible way by poverty, by hunger. Only then can you manage to convince them to destroy each other because they have nothing to live for.Karl Marx has a beautiful statement in his Communist Manifesto. I don’t agree with his communism, but the sentence with which the Communist Manifesto ends is tremendously significant. He says, “Proletariat of the world, unite, because you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Fight.” When you don’t have anything to lose, fighting becomes easier. In fact, there is a possibility you may win, you may have the whole world. But if people are living a beautiful life, a loving life, you cannot convince them that they have to destroy other countries, other people. You cannot do it, it is impossible.Secondly, if people are not sexually repressed – which is the base of all wars, every soldier has to be sexually repressed. It is sexual repression that becomes violence. The soldiers and the monks in the monasteries are not in different boats. And both have been calamities to humanity. The monks have been going on crusades, killing in the name of religion – and the soldiers in the name of nation, in the name of culture.But the basic thing is that if they are allowed to live their sex life in a relaxed way – the monk will forget all about the Catholic Church and the Polack pope, and he will say, “Let them go to hell – I am not going on a crusade!” He has a girlfriend, and every moment is so beautiful.You cannot send my people to fight for anything. They will say no because they are enjoying every moment so much – why should they disturb their life and other people’s life?It seems that they're ready to fight for your life, though.No.It seems like it.They are just pretending. My people are not going to fight anybody. They are just enjoying toy guns, and…Osho,I don't think I can agree with you that it takes suffering, sexual repression, poverty and so forth, to make people go to war – because today it doesn't take many people to start a war, because there's so much technology involved.I think – and a lot of people think – that there should be something done now. Are you suggesting that everybody just…Do something…enjoy……now! That’s what I am saying. Dance in the streets, rejoice in front of the White House, have parties before the Kremlin, make love before the White House. Thousands of people making love before the White House, that’s what is to be done.Do you mean that?My people are always ready. It is going to embarrass the politicians and bring them to some sense. And they will see that these are not people you can send to war. It just has to be proved that people are now fed up with politicians, and their continuous hunger for war.Adolf Hitler has written something valuable in his autobiography. He says, “If you want to become a great hero in history, then war is absolutely necessary – because only in wartime heroes are born.” That is true. In peacetime there are no heroes.If Ronald Reagan wants to become a world hero, then a war is necessary. Otherwise, he will be lost just the same way as Jimmy Carter is lost. Do you know where he is?Not at the moment.Nobody ever will – people will know only when he dies. Then there will be small piece in the newspapers, “Poor Jimmy has died.”Osho,So what do you think of your president Ronald Reagan personally?Every politician is basically a criminal. The criminal and the politician have the same kind of mentality, and the same psychology. The criminal is one who could not succeed in being a politician. He’s a failure. That’s why he becomes revengeful, and goes in the direction of crime. The politician is the successful criminal. But nothing succeeds like success: once he’s successful, you forget everything about his criminal mind. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini…Ronald Reagan.They are all criminals, Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte. Your whole history is the history of criminals, big criminals. Small criminals die in prisons; big criminals become presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens. But sooner or later humanity is going to recognize that the history we have been writing is a history of the criminals, who have done everything.When there was the Watergate case against Nixon, Mao Zedong made a statement. He was simply puzzled. He said, “Why is so much fuss being made about it? Every politician does it. That poor Nixon was simply caught red-handed, that’s all. It is not a question of doing.”Mao Zedong’s statement is that every politician does it, has always been doing it – just Nixon got caught. He’s saying it about himself too, because he’s the president of a country and he has done every kind of crime that a man is capable of. But he was successful.So my attitude toward politicians is that they should be treated as criminals, they should be watched as criminals. A climate should be created around the earth, that the moment somebody starts becoming political he should be hospitalized immediately.That takes away the whole idea of democracy, doesn't it?Democracy will be possible only when there are no politicians.Anarchy?No, I’m not an anarchist. This democracy is bogus, it is simply a rotary club of dictators – for four years, five years, one dictator; then for five years another dictator. This democracy depends on at least two political parties, and those two political parties are basically the same. The psychology is that one party rules – naturally it cannot fulfill the promises it has given to humanity, to its nation, to the people. Nobody can fulfill them, because to fulfill them will need such a radical change in everything, which the politicians cannot do.But in those five years people become fed up with them, and the other party starts getting support. The other party says, “We are going to fulfill all these promises.” And the memory of people is not very long psychologically; it is not more than three years. That’s why every election in every country is after more than three years – four years, five years, but not before three years. It is a psychological standpoint. People forget about what the other party did five years before when it was in power.People’s memories are just nothing. They see the party which is in power, and they want to drag it out of power – and the other party is ready. In five years’ time they will be disillusioned about the other party, but by that time the first party will be ready to fulfill again. This is a very cunning strategy. It is not democracy. It is politicians dividing themselves into two groups, with a subtle conspiracy – unconscious, “You rule for five years, for five years we rule.” It is just a rotating dictatorship.Democracy, according to me, will be possible only when there are no political parties at all, and each individual decides on his own. Somebody can stand for the president of the country, but there is no party there to support him. He can approach individuals, he can explain to the country, the people, what he wants to do. And if people feel intelligently that this man has some guts and can do something, they can support him. Otherwise there is no question.Political parties become investments. A political line becomes your commitment: you are a Democrat, somebody else is a Republican. They become almost like religions. You cannot do anything against the political party line; you have to support the president that your party has chosen. This is not democracy.Democracy will be party-less – without politicians – and then there will be a hope that we may find people who are not interested in dominating, in dictating. Who are really interested in making people more happy, more rejoicing, richer.But this is not democracy.Do you consider your commune, your town of Rajneeshpuram, a democracy?It is a democracy because there is no political party.But all the individuals here are working together for the same purpose: from what I understand, making your ideas and your thoughts of how you're supposed to live, real.No. My whole insistence is, never try to follow me. I am not a reliable person. Don’t believe in me, don’t believe in my words. Whatever I say, think over it. Unless it becomes your own idea and you can say, “Now this is my idea”… Work it out. Nobody here is working out my ideas. They are working out their ideas.Which they have all gotten from you to start with.I have not enforced them, I have not indoctrinated them. I have simply explained my vision. And my whole effort is to teach them how to doubt, how to be skeptical, how to argue, so that they can argue against me, they can be skeptical against me, they can doubt me. And if – after all this doubting, skepticism, rationality – if they find that something is true, it has already become theirs. I don’t have any monopoly on it. I may have triggered the process, but I have no monopoly on it.This commune is being run by the people themselves. I’m not even a member of the commune. I have never gone to their commune meetings; I don’t know where their offices are. Anybody who comes here for a few hours will know more about the commune than I have known in four years, because I never go out of my room.In the morning I come to the meeting place, where I spontaneously say whatsoever I feel like saying. I may contradict everything that I have said up to now. Nobody can say to me, “You are contradicting yourself,” because I have never promised anybody that I will not contradict. Nobody can blame me – that I am inconsistent – because I have always said that I am a growing person, continuously growing. And I have to deny every yesterday each day. How can they create a belief system?Jesus had a few sentences which he consistently repeated his whole life. Naturally it can become a catechism. People can follow direct guidance about anything with full details. Moses gives Ten Commandments: you have just to follow, you have to have faith.Here, doubt is the climate. This is not a place of faith. I am explaining to them what I have experienced in my life, and leaving it up to them. And I never inquire whether anybody is following my ideas or not. I’m not interested in that at all. My whole interest is that my people should be intelligent – and then their intelligence will take care. Then whatsoever they do is right, even if it goes against me. But it should not go against their intelligence.I respect individuals. I respect their intelligence, I respect their sensitivity – so much that I will be the last person in any way to give them beliefs, dogmas, creeds, Das Kapital, Holy Bible – no.You keep telling them to doubt everything you say and make inquiries about everything. But it seems to me, that the only thing they really don't doubt is you as a person. They keep giving you gifts, cars, their work, their money.It is true, they cannot doubt me as a person because they have lived with me, and they have doubted enough. And they have found their doubts are meaningless as far as my being is concerned – not my thoughts. As far as a person goes, they have known me. They have experienced my love, they have known that my trust in them is immense.Even those sannyasins who have left, I still love the same way. I still trust in them the same way. If they come back, nobody is going to ask them, “Why have you been missing for so many years?”A few sannyasins that have left have even made negative statements about me, and journalists have asked me, “Some ex-sannyasin has made this statement…”And I say, “If he has once been a sannyasin, then he must be right.” I respect the person. If he says that I am dishonest, then he must have found some dishonesty in me. I cannot distrust him.Osho,I was listening to you this morning, and you were sort of making fun of Christians, they have their Jerusalem; the Communists have their Kremlin, and Moslems have Mecca and their black rock.But what's the difference between these religions and the communists' centers, and the town here, the temples – and you?The difference is immense. I have communes all over the world, and I am going to create more and more communes in countries where they are not. Rajneeshpuram has no prerogative over another commune. All communes are equal. And my effort is that all the communes around the world will make the whole earth holy – not Jerusalem, not Moscow, not Mecca, but the whole earth. With less than that I cannot be satisfied.But isn't this still a place where people come from all over the world, like pilgrims go to Jerusalem, or…No, they do not come here as a pilgrimage. For example, in Mohammedanism it is a necessity that a Mohammedan should go to Mecca at least one time in his life. That is one of the fundamentals, otherwise he cannot enter paradise.You will be surprised: in India, Mohammedans are very poor people. For the simple reason that Mohammed taught them something which has become absolutely outdated and irrelevant in the modern economy. He taught them that interest on money is sin. That has made all the Mohammedans in the world poor, because if you can’t get money on interest, you cannot make industries, you cannot create businesses. And who is going to give you money without interest? For what? You cannot pay interest to anybody, and you cannot take interest from anybody. So Mohammedans have remained poor, basically for this idea.Money has to move faster. That’s why it is called currency. The faster it moves, the richer the society becomes. If I have one dollar and I go on holding onto that one dollar, then in this room there is only one dollar. But if that dollar goes on moving fast, from one person to another person – then, if there are fifty persons here, fifty dollars in a single round, fifty persons have used one dollar. And, if there are many more rounds then that much more. But why should people give money if they are not going to gain anything out of it?So Mohammedans are very poor, but still they go to Mecca. They sell their houses, they sell their land because it is something of tremendous importance. Before they die, at least once they should go to Mecca. Without going to Mecca, there is no paradise for them.Now, here there is no motivation. I’m not promising anything to people – that if they don’t come here they are committing some sin. They come here just to rejoice, to meet here with the same kind of people. And it is not one-way: I’m sending people from here to every commune, so it is a constant exchange. Now many sannyasins from here are in Germany, many are in Australia, many are in Italy and we exchange. If we send twenty people to a commune, then we take twenty people from that commune – for three months they will be there, for three months those people will be here.We want to create just one commune around the earth. And we want the whole earth to be thought of as holy – not just a single small town or a small place to be holy.That has been the wish of every religion so far, hasn't it?No, never. Never has it been the idea of any religion that the whole earth should be holy, no.Why, then, do the Christians send out missionaries and the Mohammedans talk about holy war, and so forth.Yes, they are sending these people to create more Mohammedans; more Catholics, so the Vatican becomes more powerful. It is the politics of numbers. But the Vatican is not saying that Christians in India have a holy land.You will be surprised that Indian Christians have been constantly asking the pope, “There should be an Indian church, just as there are churches in each country.” India has no church, only Christians: the church is the Vatican. All the Catholic churches in India are owned by the pope in the Vatican. They are not the property of Indian Christians.The pope is interested in increasing more and more the number of Catholics. Mohammedans are interested… Only two religions, Jews and Hindus, because they are the oldest religions in the world – naturally, because they are the oldest religions, they never thought of conversion. There was no need. A Jew is born, a Hindu is born.New religions came into existence – Christianity, Buddhism – and naturally they had to convert. Otherwise, from where are they going to get their numbers? Hindus and Jews have both resisted the idea of conversion for hundreds of years, but finally they had to relax. Now Hindus are converting, and trying to make people Hindus, because their numbers are shrinking. Catholics are growing, Christians are growing.No religion has ever tried the idea that the whole earth is holy. For example Hinduism believes that except India, there is no holy country. One who is born in India is blessed: all others are condemned and cursed. The whole world is full of sinners, all the saints are born in India – that is their attitude. And then in India they have their religious capitol, Varanasi.Is there any way to sin in this kind of society?No, in my commune you can commit a mistake but you cannot commit a sin. Sin, as such, does not exist.If I steal one of your cars, or if…Yes, that is…I rape your wife.…a mistake. That is just a mistake, it is not a sin. And if my wife is willing to go with you, it is not even a mistake.What if she's not?If she is not, and you force her, then you are committing a mistake against humanity – not against God. There is no God. And because there is no God, you cannot commit a sin. Sin necessarily needs a God, a supreme person to judge. We are not judges.It is perfectly human if you feel like escaping with my wife – if you love her, if you want her. But if she is not willing then you are doing something inhuman – a mistake of interfering into somebody’s life. And it is not going to give you any joy. A woman that has come with you unwillingly will become a pain in your neck. No hell is needed, she will give you hell.So I don’t prescribe any rewards, I don’t judge that people will fall into hell. To err is human. I can understand that one can fall in love with somebody’s wife. And if the wife is willing, it is perfectly right. But if she is not willing, then you are doing something barbarous. For that you need not be punished; for that you have to be psychiatrically treated. That’s what we do. If somebody commits a mistake, it shows that something is wrong in his psychology. We have all kinds of therapies available. We send him to therapies so that his mind should be put right: so that he should be made more alert what he is doing, so that he should be made to understand that there is a certain territory around every individual and you should not trespass it. That’s the only way to live peacefully, lovingly.Everybody trespassing on everybody else is what is happening around the whole world. Here, nobody is trespassing on anybody. And it is not that wives are not moving, and husbands are not changing. That is happening so fast here, as is not happening anywhere else, because freedom – if it is not even available for love, then what kind of freedom do you have? And nobody fights over the question. Here you will not find a triangle, two persons fighting for one woman. You cannot make a film story here.I'm sure I could.Yes, here it would be difficult to make a film story or write a novel. It would simply be flat – because if somebody falls in love with my wife, I tell him, “Take her, because there are other women who are waiting for me. So be quick, and take all her luggage, so she will not come back! I have lived with her enough, and she has lived with me enough, and we are grateful for all those beautiful moments. Now you enjoy.” Nobody has a monopoly on anybody. Each individual is a monarch, and nobody is a slave.It sounds like a very macho and male way of looking at it.No, this is the place where all machos have been destroyed. This place is ruled by women. If any macho comes here, within just a few days women will be chasing him and he will be escaping. It happens every day.Osho,Why do you think that there are more women here than men – because that's a fact, isn't it?Certainly.Why is it so, do you think?I’m a man and it is natural for women to fall in love with a man. And my whole religion is a religion of love. Naturally more women have understood me immediately, directly.There are men, but if you look deep down into those people, you will be surprised: they also are in love with me, and they have grown their repressed feminine side.Each man is half man and half woman, and each woman is half man and half woman, because we are born between two polarities – the mother and the father. They both contribute to your being. And this is one of the greatest contributions of Carl Gustav Jung to the modern age, that…I didn't get that.Carl Gustav Jung.I don't know him.You don’t know him?No.You must know him, because he’s one of the persons since Sigmund Freud, who has really contributed significant ideas. This is one of his greatest contributions – although it is not new. In India, that idea has been in existence for five thousand years. On my dining table is a statue somebody has sent me – half man, half woman. That statue is ancient, and that has been the idea. But Jung introduced it in the West.The men who are here are not here because they are men, but because somehow I have managed for their woman to surface – because my whole approach is of the heart it is more difficult for men to be in communion with me. In the beginning they have to start with the head, but slowly, slowly I persuade them to go deeper toward the heart. And the distance is not much, just a few inches. Once they get to the heart… The heart is always feminine, the head is always macho.So, certainly there is a greater proportion of women here than anywhere else. You will not find such juicy women anywhere else in the world, because their womanhood has for the first time become respected, for the first time, liberated. For the first time, they are not thought to be second-class citizens. On the contrary they are running the whole commune. It is more a matriarchy than a patriarchy. And they are doing so well that it is a proof that if we had allowed women to participate in all the affairs of men all through history, the world would have been immensely richer.Half of humanity has been crippled: they could not produce painters, singers, musicians, they could not produce scientists, they could not produce mystics. Not a single woman has founded a religion. In fact, even someone like Jesus, who talked about love, did not allow a single woman among his twelve apostles. And those twelve apostles escaped when he was crucified. When his body was brought down there were three women – not a single man. Those three women brought down the body, but they are not even accepted as saints. The Christian trinity has no woman in it.What I am saying is that if women were allowed the way they are allowed in this commune, their contribution would have been tremendous. The heart can do a few things which the head cannot do, and all the great values belong to the heart. Compassion, love, beauty, kindness, sympathy – all the great values belong to the heart. The head is simply a computer: it is good at mathematics, it is good in a scientific lab.So many women are here, and they have been more reliable than men.Reliable in what way?In every way. They will not leave me for any reason – because they have not joined me for any reason at all. A man first joins me because he feels convinced that I am intellectually right. The woman feels me as a person who can be trusted. She has nothing to do with intellectual conviction.Now, if tomorrow I change my ideas, the person who yesterday was convinced will leave – because he was convinced by an idea and the idea has changed. The woman is convinced with my being, which is still the same, and will remain always the same. She has no need to change.For example, I went into silence for three and a half years. A few men dropped out because they had become addicted to my words – but I was silent, and perhaps I would never speak again, so what was the point of hanging around here? They escaped. But the women were the same, whether I was speaking or not. Their love remained the same because it was not based on any intellectual ground. It was a heart-to-heart feeling.One more thing I would like you to remember: that the men who are here are almost feminine, for the simple reason that I have changed their approach toward life. It is no longer reason, it is no longer logic. It is love, it is feeling. Unknowingly their woman – who had been repressed – has surfaced. That has also created a few problems. It has solved a few complexities, but it has created some new problems. For example, if a man’s repressed woman inside surfaces, he is no longer interested in other women, because that will be lesbianism. He’s man…So instead he's interested in other men?Yes, so that is the trouble. But the other man is also…What's the trouble with being interested in other men?Because that other man is also feminine.But everybody here is feminine.Yes, that’s what I am saying.So they've got each other.That’s what I am saying, that this is a really gay society.So what about all the left-over women who don't have any men?Nobody is left over.That's not the right word to use, maybe. But since a lot of the men are gay…No, no, nobody is gay. Nobody is gay.I mean that everybody is so blissed out that it does not matter. People love each other, but their love and its qualities have become more feminine. It is not a macho man loving a repressed woman who is almost a slave – no. A man loves a woman, but his love also has become more delicate, softer, more human.For example, in India a certain ethic has been followed for ten thousand years. Manu must have been a great thinker, he wrote all the laws that have to be followed by Hindus. One law is that once in a while the husband must beat the wife. Strange. When I came across that law I could not believe it. What is he talking about? But when I came to understand women, I immediately understood that he’s right! A woman loses interest in you if you are not macho.Do you believe in that?No, I don’t believe in that. That’s how it has been happening down the centuries. Include my commune out! I’m talking about the whole of humanity. That’s what has been happening: the woman wants the man to be strong, just as the man wants the woman to be beautiful. The woman wants the man to be strong, a hero, and she wants him to prove it. A woman immediately loses interest in a hen-pecked husband. He’s not worth…It is a very complex situation. Every woman tries to reduce the husband into a hen-pecked husband. It is a conflict of power, politics – who is dominating. So unknowingly she tries to reduce the man into a hen-pecked husband. And it is not difficult. It is very easy for a woman to reduce any strong person – he may be Muhammad Ali the Great or anybody – because her ways are such: screaming, crying, weeping, throwing things.The man comes home tired after working the whole day and here he faces this scene. He may be right but he apologizes: he may ask to be forgiven. He says, “I am sorry, I was wrong.” Otherwise he is not going to be allowed to sleep the whole night. And tomorrow morning he will not get tea – and what about lunch? The woman in the house has all the power. So the situation is that every husband finally finds himself just a mouse in the house. Outside he may be a lion, but inside the house a great transformation comes immediately.Here in my commune, the feminine qualities of the men have come to the surface. The feminine qualities of the woman have received respect and dignity. Both have become, in a certain way, whole. As the woman receives respect and dignity, her inner side – the other side, the male side – also comes to the surface. She shows strength. She’s no longer weak: she’s no longer the fair sex. She’s not just a lady. Here you will find women and men – no gentlemen, no ladies, those words are prohibited; just raw people, without any hypocrisy. And because everybody is trying to understand himself, in that very effort he understands others too. Understanding each other gives freedom to each other, destroys jealousies, destroys clingings.Understanding is psychological health, and my people are psychologically healthy. They can accept anything that appeals to their understanding; there is no problem in it. If the woman wants to go with somebody else, she need not escape in the darkness of the night. She can talk to her husband – they have that intimacy, she knows that he will understand. There is no need to escape. And the man will feel grateful that the woman trusted him. Even in such a moment – when she is dropping him – she still respects him, still trusts him. And their friendship continues.So, here you will find many people who have changed their wives and husbands, but their friendship remains just the same. And you can fall again in love with the same woman, there is no problem!Osho,I'd like to ask you another thing: how do you personally feel about living with your luxury cars, your nice watch, the good food; and your creating luxury, both for you, and for the people that live here – at the same time as millions of children are dying every day from starvation in this world?Aren't you a little concentrated just to yourself?Yes.And that's the way you want to have it?Those people are dying because of their stupidity…The children……and I’m not responsible for it, the pope is responsible for it – because the Christian leaders, Jewish rabbis, Hindu leaders, Mohammedan imams, are all preaching against birth control, against abortion. They are the people who are creating an ugly, poor world; they are responsible for it.Not a single child has been born in this commune in four years. And nobody is prohibited – just a simple understanding. The world is so over-populated; if you have any understanding you will not increase the population, you will make every effort for the population to drop.But all the religious leaders around the world without exception are trying to increase the population. They want more poor people because poor people can be converted.In India I tried, but I could not find a single rich man who had been converted to Christianity. Only beggars – Christianity needs beggars; only orphans – Mother Teresa needs orphans. Mother Teresa is against birth control, abortion. She has to be, otherwise from where this supply of orphans is going to come? These people are responsible. Thousands of people are dying, but I don’t feel any responsibility.In fact for thirty years in India I was teaching birth control, abortion – and people were throwing stones at me, shoes at me, knives at me. They made attempts to kill me because I was destroying their morality. If this is their morality then they are responsible. So die for your morality.Whatever I could do as an individual, I have done. And found that there are only walls. Nobody is going to listen, it is simply absurd. Those people are going to be hungry, and those people are going to die, and that’s how it is going to be. I’ve dropped that idea completely.And then I started the movement of sannyas.When was that?It was in 1970, when I became completely fed up with those idiots who didn’t understand, and were not ready even for a dialogue. I had challenged all the Hindu leaders, Buddhist leaders, Jaina leaders that I wanted an open dialogue. But nobody was ready to discuss because they knew what they were saying was simply illogical, it was meaningless. And they are going to create a country of poor people. Right now fifty percent of Indians are ready to become another Ethiopia any day. But I don’t feel responsible, because for thirty years I have been talking to these people, talking to their leaders, talking to their religious leaders.Indira Gandhi was in touch with me and she was convinced of whatever I was saying. She told me, “You are right, but we cannot do anything – because if we do anything then the Hindu votes will be gone out of our hands, the Mohammedan votes will be gone out of hands, the Christian votes will be gone out of our hands. I will be finished.” She asked me, “Do you want me to be finished?”I said, “If I was in your place, either I would do something or I would simply resign, because there is no point: if I cannot do what is right, then what is the need for me to remain as prime minister of the country? Then let somebody else who can do something.”They're all criminals.Perhaps some criminal may be able to do it. Perhaps India needs an Adolf Hitler who can do it – the question is how to reduce the population.The problem is that there are too many people, not that the resources are…The resources are almost nil. And there is no way – they won’t allow the resources to be nourished again. Religious people have strange ideas. For example, in India they will not use manure in which bone powder is mixed – because bones, that is violence.You will be surprised to know that in the twentieth century, one of the Hindu leaders – the most respected Hindu leader, Swami Karpatri – was teaching…I was present in the meeting, and I had to contradict him. I created thousands of enemies because of that. A new dam was being made just a few miles away, and that place was going to be the most benefited because of the dam – because their lands were dry and the rains were not certain, and they would be getting as much water as they wanted. And the man was saying to them, “Don’t accept that water, because before giving you the water they take the electricity out of it.”Now to the people he was saying that that water is impotent – its whole potential has been taken out. “It is dangerous for you to take that water – refuse.” And the people looked convinced, because without an education they wouldn’t understand that electricity is not something you take out of the water. It is not something like sexual potentiality, that you can take out of a man and he becomes impotent. But this simile convinced them, and they were raising their hands in support.I had to stand up and I asked him, “Do you understand what you are saying? And what do you understand about electricity? What do you understand when electricity is produced by a hydroelectric plant?”I told the people, “The only argument against this man will be: this year accept the water and see your crops. Those crops will prove this man your enemy. There is no other way. If the crops don’t come, if you drink the water and the thirst does not go, then of course he is right.”He was very angry. He was so angry that he wrote a whole book about everything, against me.These people are responsible for poverty, for dying children. And all the religions of the world have been preaching poverty in some way or other in their history.I want to change this whole approach. I’m all for comfort, luxury, richness, wealth, technology, science. I’m not for renunciation; I’m for rejoicing. I want people to live as richly as possible in all dimensions. And my communes are going to be models, to prove to the world that it is possible. These are the same people; they just need the right attitude, and they can create wealth.When we came here this land had been lying useless for fifty years. Just see the stupid mind of the politicians: nobody ever bothers – so much land, one hundred and twenty-six square miles, just lying dead. It was for sale and nobody was ready to purchase it because it was a desert. We got it. There was only one house when we got it. Now there are houses for five thousand people, all fully air-conditioned. We made all the roads. We have made a beautiful hospital, a beautiful school. We grow our food, we are self-sufficient; we grow our vegetables, we are self-sufficient. We have our own cows, our own milk, our own butter. We are trying everything.And the Oregon government is creating every kind of hindrance, according to their land use laws. One simply thinks, “Is this a madhouse that we are living in?” We have used the land. For fifty years nobody bothered that the land was not used: it was according to the land use laws. We have used it, we have made it productive, and we have committed a crime – because it is not according to land use laws. It seems as if man exists for laws, not laws for man.I have invited the governor, the attorney general: “Come and see, and tell us that this is misuse of land. We don’t bother about laws. The question is that we have made a desert into an oasis, and rather than appreciating it, you are putting case upon case in the courts.” And none of them have come here. They don’t even have the guts, because they know that what we have done is right. And if they are at all reasonable they should change their laws. If their laws don’t fit, they have to be changed.But they want to change us, not their laws. And these people will say that we are responsible for poverty in the world. We can make the whole world an oasis. Wherever you want, give us land, and I will send my people. I have one million sannyasins around the world, and we will change any kind of place into a beautiful oasis.I told Indira, “Give me all the power. Simply retire. Within ten years I can change this whole country.” But who wants to give up power?Nobody, it seems like.Yes.Osho,Could I ask you another question: what do you think will happen when the time comes that you die? Will these people that are with you now continue your ideas and your thoughts? Is there anybody who's going to take over your position of the one that comes up with ideas? I mean, your books are useless because they're all contradicting each other!They are. That’s why I have been contradicting, so that they should not remain useful in any way – because if they are useful they will become Holy Bibles. They have to be contradictory. I’m making every arrangement that nobody can derive any theology, philosophy out of them. One can enjoy them, just the way one enjoys a flower, a cloud, a sunrise; one can enjoy them as a painting, but one cannot worship them.And as far as I’m concerned, I never think of tomorrow. So the question of what will happen after my death does not concern me at all. My concern is that this moment I can help my people to be as intelligent as possible, and their intelligence will take care.I’m not concerned and I’m not going to give them detailed ideas and plans. My approach is – for example, if a blind man asks me, “Where is the door? Then do I have to turn right or left to find the road? And where then have I to go to reach the post office?” My approach is not to give him all those details. My approach is to take him to the hospital. If it is possible to cure his eyes, then he will be able to find the post office or anything else that he wants.I’m not giving my people any detailed program or any idea what they have to do when I am not here. In fact, even when I am here, they are doing things on their own. I am not…so they will not miss me as far as work is concerned; they are already doing it without me.I have never entered their offices, either in India or here. I have never looked to see what they are doing. I simply trust in human intelligence. My effort is to sharpen it as much as possible. And that certainly I cannot do after my death, so I have to do it before my death.Can you call it intelligence to kill fifty percent of the population of India?Certainly: not fifty percent – fifty percent for India, seventy-five percent for the whole world.Only one-fourth of the population can live on this earth peacefully, comfortably, luxuriously. I don’t want that you should kill these people by throwing bombs. I don’t want to create Hiroshimas, Nagasakis – which you will have to if you don’t listen to me.I would like every government to help the starving people to die peacefully. Give them a sleeping dose so they go into a deep sleep, and the sleep turns into death. At least give them a beautiful death. You could not give them a beautiful life, but you can give them a beautiful death, with music and flowers, good food. At least once in their life give them the best that they always wanted. And let them depart.And once this population comes to a balance, then keep the balance; then don’t allow each and everybody to go on producing like animals. They have to take permission from the medical board, and unless the medical board supports that that child will be healthy, intelligent, they cannot have it. And no couple can be allowed to have more than two children, to replace themselves.Within ten years, we can make this world totally different. You will just have to drop your ideas about morality, religion, death, sin. If you carry all those old ideas, then wait for the nuclear weapons; they will do the work, and they will not ask about your morality, and they will not bother to give you a beautiful death either. They will give you the worst death possible. So why wait for that?I’m not being inhuman when I say it. It is out of absolute compassion that I am saying it. It is simply ugly to somehow keep hungry people alive, because they never come up to the survival level. At the most you can manage below the survival level.Excuse me, do you think it's better to have one-fourth of the earth's population living in luxury than having the total population living fairly well?Not fairly well – it is not possible. That is not the alternative. The alternative is twenty-five percent of humanity living in absolute comfort and luxury, or the whole world living in misery, poverty, war, death – and finally a global suicide. These are the alternatives.It seems that we accept things which we are not doing, whether they are moral or immoral. For example, if a world war starts, nobody will bother about morality or immorality. It will not kill seventy-five percent of the people, it will kill one hundred percent of life – trees, birds, animals, who have not done any wrong to you, who are not part of your politics, who are not Americans, and who are not Russians. Those poor people will be unnecessarily destroyed, and nobody will think whether it is moral or immoral.I’m suggesting a very compassionate idea. If a country cannot manage to live, then it is better for that country to silently die. Why cling to life? For what? Without Ethiopia, the world will not be losing anything – because what has come out of Ethiopia? Except hunger, poverty, continuous rape, murder, crime, what has come out of Ethiopia?I'm not sure about Ethiopia, but I'm sure that natural resources came out of lots of the countries that are now starving.That too came only when the population was balanced, not now. India has given so much to the whole world, but the population was so small. In Buddha’s time – and that was the peak of India’s glory – the whole population consisted of two hundred million people. And India included Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim. It was almost double what it is now, and the whole population was two hundred million. Now India’s population alone is eight hundred million. Pakistan is not included, Bangladesh is not included, Bhutan, Nepal are not included. If you include them too, then it will go beyond a billion.It was possible in Buddha’s time to contribute to the world, and India contributed much. It contributed philosophy, it contributed music, it contributed poetry, literature, sculpture – everything. But the population was small, and the resources so much that people had to do something creative. Life was comfortable. People could paint, people could make statues.It is so surprising to see an ancient temple like Khajuraho. In Khajuraho there were 120 temples: only 30 have survived, the others are ruins. But even to create one temple like that seems to be impossible. It is such a work; it must have taken thousands of first-rate artists and craftsmen, because each inch of the temple is carved. There are millions of statues in a single temple. All the walls are made of statues. And what statues! Nowhere else have such beautiful statues been created. Those people must have been very comfortable: no worry about food, no worry about anything else, and they could concentrate – and they made 120 temples. All over India, there are thousands of temples like that. But it happened when the country was in a situation where the resources were more, riches were more. Just by a little effort enough was produced.But what can India contribute now? It is a bankrupt country. It can only suck and exploit the sympathy of the whole world. That’s what it has been doing for forty years, since independence. Its bank loans go on increasing, and everybody knows they cannot be returned, there is no way to return them. It goes on begging from every country for support, knowing perfectly well there is no way to pay it back. For how long is this going to happen? The best way is to take some measures there.For example, for twenty years make it absolutely illegal to have children. Just for twenty years. If there are no children born in twenty years – and in twenty years, millions of old people will die – the situation will change. You will not necessarily have to kill them: just be a little more scientific, and a little less superstitious.I don’t see that there is any problem in the world which is insoluble. All the problems are made by us. And because we go on clinging to our old ideas, those problems go on standing there. And they go becoming bigger and bigger. There is every possibility that perhaps we will not be able to live at all by the end of the century. This is going to be a real calamity, because in the whole universe this is the only place where life has reached to consciousness.This is the only place. The whole universe is dead in a way. This small planet is something special: not only life, but consciousness; not only consciousness, but ultimate peaks of enlightenment have happened on this earth. And these idiots are going to destroy it. This is not only against the earth, it is against the whole of existence and the whole universe – because once life disappears from earth, the whole universe will be just a big graveyard, infinite; all those stars are dead.We are certainly privileged. And to miss this opportunity because of small, stupid things – communism, democracy, Christianity, Judaism, just small things… We can drop all those things. My solution is one world, one government, no political parties, and we would have solved everything without any difficulty.Osho,I'm not going to ask you how to put a government together without any political parties, because that would probably be a long answer.So I'll just go into something completely different: I've been told that you have made a lot of statements about people from different nationalities. It would be interesting to hear what you've said about Swedish people, and maybe especially about the Swedish sannyasins that you've met.I have to go there, because Sweden is one of the countries which is the most backward as far as sannyas is concerned.It's backward?As far as sannyas is concerned, it is the most backward. We have very few sannyasins there, so I’m thinking to come.I'm sure there are a lot of people that would like to meet you. In what sense is it backwards? As of being sannyasins?Yes, only in that sense – and I’m interested only in that.But what makes Sweden more backward than Germany, for instance, where you have a lot of…In Germany I have the biggest communes – and the reason is Adolf Hitler. Sweden has missed an Adolf Hitler. In Germany he made way for me – not knowing that he was making the way for a strange man.The German youth is fed up with the politicians because they have had to suffer two world wars. All those politicians were promising them that they are special people, that they are born to rule the world. And they got exploited by those promises.Adolf Hitler was not only a political leader, he was even trying to be a prophet. He was declaring himself a reincarnation of an Old Testament prophet, Elijah. The German youth is totally frustrated with prophets, messiahs, political leaders. And that’s how they immediately become interested in me – because I am against religions, against prophets, against messiahs, against the whole past. And Germany’s past in these wars has been of so much suffering that they are more open to receive me.Sweden has not suffered, is not yet frustrated, is still comfortably satisfied the way things are. That’s the problem, and that’s where they will remain backward. Countries like Sweden who are in a certain way comfortably well – not hungry and dying like Ethiopia, or rich, super-rich, like America, but just a middle class… The middle class is the least revolutionary class in the world. They cannot do anything rebellious, because the psychology of the middle class is that they can always hope to reach the higher rungs. They can become richer, and richer. There is hope for the middle class to become rich.Isn't that Karl Marx?No, Karl Marx never bothered about the middle class. That’s why he completely missed with everything in his philosophy. Otherwise he would have been the right person. But because he never bothered about the middle class, he thought of the poor – the proletariat; he thought of the capitalist – the bourgeois. His idea was that sooner or later, the middle class would disappear. A few would become rich, more would become poor. He never thought that the middle class was going to stay. It is a shifting class, so he never bothered about it. And that is where he missed completely.The middle class has not disappeared. On the contrary, the middle class is growing. A few poor people join it, a few rich people join it. Because a few rich people are falling down, a few poor people are rising up, the middle class is becoming bigger and bigger. In fact, the rich are just one pole. The poor are the other pole; that’s why revolution is not possible in America.Marx used to think that America would be the first to go through a revolution. He had never dreamed that a poor country like Russia would do the revolution. It was out of his imagination, because it was so poor and there was no rich class, so a class struggle was not possible. But he could not see this point: that if the middle class, instead of disappearing – a few become rich and the remaining become poor, and this creates a gap – he could not think that the opposite is also possible. A few from the poor become middle class, a few from the rich become middle class, and the middle class goes on becoming bigger and bigger. And the middle class never disturbs any status quo.Sweden is a middle-class country. It cannot be revolutionary.Do you consider your own movement a revolution?My movement is absolute revolution.So your movement could never turn Sweden around, so to speak?No, we will try. We will do our best, because it is only a question of creating a longing that life can be lived more intensely. And I’m not telling them that for the future, but now. My appeal is difficult for the poor. I cannot convert the poor person into a sannyasin – that’s very difficult because to tell him to live in the moment is to tell him to live in hunger. To him I can only say to die in the moment, because for living you have nothing.But I have tremendous possibilities for middle class people. Once they start understanding me they will see the point very easily.The super-rich are also out of my game. Marx’s whole ideology was dependent on the poor and the rich, and my whole approach is dependent on the middle class. The question is just of a different past in different countries. Germany proved good because Adolf Hitler has done so much harm, and has left such a space in the soul of the German youth. So it was easy. I have never been to Germany; Germany has been coming to me. But to Sweden I will come.Don't you think you scare some of the German young people here, when you're talking about how it would be good for the world – for India, for instance – to have an Adolf Hitler-type person to help the situation?I don’t care. My whole life has been disturbing people, shocking people – and these people particularly are immune. They have gone through so many shocks, that now they go on sleeping well, soundly, without any disturbance.Osho,This morning you said something about, “Believing is just carrying on knowledge from somebody else.” But isn't that exactly what these sannyasins are doing?No.They're taking your knowledge to themselves.No.No?They are not: they are experimenting, they are meditating – and unless they experience, they are not allowed to spread anything. It is none of their business. I am enough, alone. I have my ways. Just sitting here in this chair I can flood the whole world with my ideas. What is the need for them? They have to experience first. Unless it becomes their own, they are not to become missionaries. I hate the word missionary. Each sannyasin should speak on his own authority. Then, there is strength.I have seen very famous missionaries, but without any strength. In India, Stanley Jones – a world-famous man – was living. Perhaps he was the most cultured missionary, very philosophical, rational, compared to these idiots like Billy Graham. He was certainly a man worth considering. I used to go because he had an ashram in the Himalayas, so whenever I used to pass that way I would go there. He loved me, and he always wanted me to come and be there.One day I was sitting in the garden with him, taking breakfast. And I told him, “This is something that perhaps will disturb you, but whatever you teach and whatever you preach – I have gone through your books, I have listened to your talks, but it is not your experience. It is all accumulated knowledge, borrowed. You have done well, you are a great scholar – whatever you say is perfectly in tune with the scriptures, but you don’t have any experience of it.”The Bible was always sitting on the table by his side – always. So I took his hand and put it on the Bible, and I said, “Take an oath.”He was nervous, but he was an honest man. He said, “You are right. It is not my experience.”Now, if it is not your experience, from where are you going to have strength? Books, and knowledge derived from books, cannot be your strength. I want my people to be strong, so that if somebody does the same thing as I did to Stanley Jones, they need not say, “It is not our experience. We have believed in a master and we are repeating like parrots.”No, that would be ugly. I would not like these people to say that. It is better to say, “I don’t know.” Unless you know, don’t bother to say anything to anybody. When you know, you will have to say – because then you become just like a rain cloud which is so full of water that it has to rain somewhere or other.The moment you know, you become a rain cloud, and then it is something totally different. You are not a missionary: you are not changing anybody, and trying to convert him to your faith. You don’t have any faith, you have a certain experience. And out of sheer love you are sharing it. If that sharing transforms the man, that is a different thing. It is not conversion, it is transformation.Okay?Thank you.Come again.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Prem Isabel,Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United StatesOsho,Is it not aggressive to try and change the world to save it?It is aggressive. Even the effort to change a single individual is aggressive. Who are you to decide what is right for a certain person? Who are you to decide that the world, if changed according to you, will be a better world?It is taking upon yourself the role of a savior. It is a very unconscious way of dominating people – for their own sake, of course, so they cannot even rebel against you. Every parent is doing that to the children. For their own sake he is disciplining them, forcing them to do things that they don’t want to do, imposing a certain religion upon them without their consent. In every possible way their freedom is being cut. Less freedom, less individuality – and the moment the child becomes one hundred percent obedient, he has died.In his disobedience was his life. In his rebellion was his being. And you cannot say that the intentions of the parents are wrong. I never suspect anybody’s intentions, but that is not the question at all. The question is what is the result? The intention is something inside you. You can have all good or bad intentions – just keep them to yourself. The moment you start acting on them, the good intentions are far more dangerous than the bad intentions – because a bad intention can immediately be retaliated, condemned, not only by the person you are imposing it on, but even by those who are eyewitnesses to it. But a good intention is very dangerous.Both are doing the same work, destroying the freedom of the individual to be himself, so their nature is not in any way different. But against bad intentions rebellion is possible, and will be supported by everyone; but against good intentions rebellion becomes impossible. Everybody will be supporting the people of good intentions, who are destroying the individual. Nobody will come to his support.It is none of our business to save the world. In the first place, we never created it. It is none of our responsibility where it goes and what happens to it. Our only responsibility is that while we are here, we live a life of joy, love, blissfulness. While we are here, our responsibility is to know who we are and what this life is all about. And the miracle is, in doing that you are already changing the world – without being aggressive.There is no idea of changing anywhere, so the question of aggression does not arise. You don’t have even a vague conception of changing the world and making it according to yourself. You are simply living your life, of which you are the master. You are trying to live as intensely and as totally as possible, because life is so short and the next moment is so uncertain, that we have to take every moment as if it is the last moment.Just the very idea – as if it is the last moment – will transform you. Then there is no need to be jealous, no need to be angry. In the last moment of life, who wants to be angry and jealous, sad and miserable? In the last moment of life, naturally all grudges and all complaints about life disappear. If each moment is taken as the last – as it should be because the next is uncertain – you are changing yourself, and your change is going to be infectious. It may change the whole world, but you had never intended it to. That is my way of changing the world without being aggressive.Otherwise, up to now all reformers, revolutionaries, messiahs were violent, aggressive. They were bent upon saving you. They never even asked you whether you wanted to be saved or not; you were just something that they had to decide for. Who has given them the authority? They have not asked even your permission. And if you don’t change according to them, they are willing to throw you into dark, dismal hell forever.And, of course, if you are willing – willing to commit a spiritual suicide and become just a shadow to these people – they are giving you all the rewards that you can imagine in paradise. Hindus have tried to change the world, Christians have tried to change the world; all the religions have been doing it. Communism, socialism, fascism, all have been doing it.My sannyasins have to be totally different: a new phenomenon in the world, not interfering with anybody’s life, and yet transforming the whole world. This is real magic. You never intended, you never imposed, you never interfered, you never trespassed on anybody. You never made any judgment: “You are wrong and I am going to put you right.” You were never concerned. That is his business; that is his life. If somebody wants to destroy it, he has the right to destroy it. If somebody wants to live stupidly, then he is perfectly right to do that. It is his life. How he spends it, how he lives it, or if he remains almost dead, asleep from the cradle to the grave, that too is his life and he is the master of it. So my people have not to interfere into anybody’s life.I have found a totally different approach to changing the world: just change yourself. And when you are rejoicing and dancing, you will find that somebody by your side has started dancing with you, because we are all the same human consciousness with the same potential. Nobody is a foreigner. We may speak different languages, but we understand one language. So when you are happy, smiling, the other – who may not be smiling – suddenly feels a smile come to his face. You may be a stranger, but you smiled at the person, you waved at the person. You have changed the person without his knowing it, without your intending it.Great masters like Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, have called this “action without action.” You are not taking any action, yet something is happening. And when things happen on their own they have a beauty, because deep down there is freedom. If the person waved, if the person smiled – you were not asking him, he was totally free not to look at you, but there is a synchronicity between heart and heart.Knowing that secret of synchronicity, I am introducing a totally new kind of revolution. Change yourself, and in that very change you have changed a part of the world. You are a part of the world. If your change is something that makes you rich, makes you joyous, makes you blissful, makes you a song, then it is difficult for others to resist singing with you, dancing with you, blossoming with you. A single individual can transform the whole world without ever mentioning the word transformation.I started the journey alone. I have not knocked on anybody’s door to come with me, but strangely, people started coming, and the caravan started becoming bigger and bigger. They came on their own. If they have lived with me, that was their decision; if they want to leave there is no problem, they are as free as ever.We have already started the world going into a new phase of human history. We are not aggressive, we are not trying to change the world. We are not even interested in the world; we are just living our life, enjoying our life – we are utterly selfish. Still, what has not happened in thousands of years is possible through us. But it will be action without action, a transformation which has not been intended, which has not been imposed. A transformation that has spread on its own and people have understood what it is, because, deep down, every heart speaks the same language.Osho,It seems that politicians talk like priests, and priests act like politicians. Is there any separation between church and state?They are not different people. They are the same type of people, with the same desire, the same lust for power. But they have chosen different areas.The politician has chosen the mundane world. It has been an unspoken contract that they will not interfere in the religious realm, and they hope that religion will not interfere in their world. The contract has been good, and they are both trying to dominate humanity. One is concerned with the outside world, the other is concerned with the inside world. Their worlds don’t overlap, so there is no conflict. In fact, throughout history they have been supporting each other. The priest has been blessing the politicians, the politicians have been praising the priests.And sometimes the situation becomes so ridiculous, unbelievable. In the Second World War the German Christian archbishop was blessing Adolf Hitler, and praying to God that Germany win. And the same religion in England and the same kind of archbishop was praying for England, wanting victory for England and defeat for Germany. Their God is one, their religion is one, but the problem is that the German priest has a contract with the German politician, and the English priest has a contract with the English politicians. Who bothers about God?In fact, the priests are the most atheistic people in the world. They know perfectly well that there is no God. They know better than anybody, because that is their business. But they have to pretend that there is a God. Without God they lose authority. It is in the name of God that they are archbishops, popes and shankaracharyas. If there is no God, then who are they? – just ordinary people, suddenly reduced to nothing. So the lie has to be kept alive.You can see that in such situations both archbishops knew perfectly well that God was not the question. And nobody was bothered about God; the question was politics. Otherwise, they should have refused. Both should have asked, “How can we ask for the victory of Germany or England? Our God is one. How can our prayers be so contradictory? Our religion is one, our foundation is one, our churches are one, our master Jesus Christ is one. How can we do what you are asking us?”But nobody raised the question. They did it because neither God nor Jesus Christ means anything. What means something is your vested interest. The German archbishop has his vested interest in Germany, not in England. He has to support Adolf Hitler. The English archbishop has to support England and its politicians. And these people go on paying their tributes in return.The archbishop of England will crown the king; just a formality, but at least in the eyes of the mediocre crowds he is more powerful because he crowns the king – he is a kingmaker. He knows perfectly well that the king can throw him out any moment; he needs the king’s support. And the support is given, because the king needs the support of the priest. The masses believe in God, the masses believe in the bishop, the masses go to church. If the king wants to remain a king, then there has to be a mutual contract between the priest and the king.And this has been the same all along. Political ideologies have changed – kings and queens have disappeared, presidents, prime ministers have appeared – but the basic contract is still carried. The American president before taking the oath of the president, goes to the chief priest to be blessed. After his blessing he will take an oath in the name of God and become the president of the country. In this way he is politically powerful, and he has the support of the religious masses.The poor people don’t have any idea what kind of contract has been going on down the ages. And the contract was possible because both priest and politician are desirous of power. Lust for power is their common ground. It is easier to divide with a line so that they don’t conflict, since that conflict may destroy the possibility of being in power for both.For example, in India things have been very clear. For five thousand years the politician and the priest have been in the same business. In India Hinduism divided the society into four classes. The first class is of the brahmins, the priests. They are the highest people. They own nothing; brahmins are poor, but their ego is tremendously fulfilled – they are the highest people.Even the king is lower, because kings belong to the second category of people, the warriors, the kshatriyas. They have all the power, all the money, but they accept the priest as higher than themselves. They go and touch the feet of the priest, because this way the masses, who are following the priests and the religion, are for the king. What humility, what humbleness! And it is sheer politics.The third class is that of the businessman. The brahmin is poor because whatsoever he does cannot create wealth. He prays for people, arranges marriage. From birth to death, he does every kind of ritual; that is his profession, but out of that he cannot become rich. Poor people are all around. How much can you exploit them? They have been sucked for centuries, and the brahmin is only a parasite. But the poor masses don’t have blood anymore.So the third position in the society is given to the businessman, who is the richest – richer than the warriors, richer than the brahmins. Because of his richness he is accepted as just below the kings. In India kings have been borrowing money from businessmen. There were no banks in the past; the business people had all the money. They were providing kingdoms with all the money they needed, on loan, on rent, on interest. The king needs money for the army, for new invasions; the king needs money for all his glory and show, marble palaces, golden thrones. From where is he going to get it? The poor brahmin cannot give it to him; the poor brahmin is used as the support for the masses. Businessmen cannot be used for that purpose, because the masses are poor, and are always against the rich.Even ten thousand years before Karl Marx, the poor man was always a communist. He may not know the word, but he can see that he is being exploited. He works hard from morning till evening. He works the whole year, and then too he is hungry. He produces everything, but everything is taken away by the businessman, because the businessman has provided him with seeds. The businessman gave him money for his daughter’s marriage. So all the poor people are in debt to the businessman; they cannot revolt, but they cannot love the rich man either. They can see what is happening. They are not blind. The poor people are the fourth class, the lowest.There is a good arrangement: no movement is possible from one class into another. The lowest, the fourth class – the sudras, untouchables – is prohibited from education because with education he may start having ambitions. Then why should he go on cleaning people’s toilets when he can become a teacher in a school? If he is well qualified to be a professor in the university, then why he should go on making shoes for people? It is better to prohibit him from the very beginning, so sudras are prohibited from education.This fourth class is the biggest class, half of the whole population. They cannot marry into higher castes, they cannot sit on the same platform with higher class people. Even their shadows are dirty. If an untouchable passes by your side and his shadow touches you – just his shadow touches you, not him – you have to take a bath. He is reduced into an almost inhuman being. He supplies everything, he produces everything; he weaves the cloth, he makes the shoes, he cleans your streets. He does every kind of work that is needed by all three classes.The businessman is the mediator. He exploits, he accumulates money. He is happy, although he is third in position. He can purchase the king; he can purchase the brahmin; who bothers that he is third grade? He knows perfectly well that money is the highest power. The king is indebted to him and the priest has to depend on him, so deep down he is absolutely contented. He is really on the top, but let others enjoy the idea that they are on the top. What does it matter? What matters is reality.The poor brahmin is contented although he is poor; he is contented because he is the highest class. His ego is fulfilled. The king does not care about the priest because the sword is in his hand. He can make the priest do anything he wants. It is just a courtesy that he touches his feet; otherwise, he can cut off his head. The brahmin also knows it.The king is not worried that he is second class, even though he is king. He knows that it does not matter what class you put him in; he is the master. He can kill the priest. He can take all the money from the business people. It is just a courtesy that he takes it on interest, and never pays it – no king has ever paid back. There is no need. You cannot ask, he has all the power in his sword. For centuries he has been taking money and never paying it back, so whatever interest you want, he is willing to give. He is going to give neither the original money nor the interest. Nobody has ever done it; it is just not done.But the businessman can enjoy the idea that the king is indebted to him. Without him he cannot rule the empire. It is his money and his power, and naturally he takes advantage of it. Licenses will be given to him; he will have first chance in every opportunity, because the king depends on him for money. It is a beautiful and very psychological arrangement that all feel great, all feel on the top.The sudra, who is the fourth, also feels deep down that without him the society will die. He is the producer of food, of clothes, of everything. So let these idiots think that they are on the top, but they are all dependent on him. They eat the food he grows, they live in the houses he makes, they wear the clothes he weaves. Without him, the businessman, the king, the priest – all will have to commit suicide. So he may be poor, he may be dehumanized in every way, but he understands that this is all just formality; it makes no difference, he is the real power.So everybody is satisfied deep down, and that’s why revolution never happened in India, and cannot happen. In every country where revolution happens, it is the intelligentsia of the country which provokes it. They don’t do the revolution, but they give the ideology. But in India the brahmin is the intelligentsia. Every revolution will go against him; naturally, he cannot give the ideology of revolution. He will give ideologies that prevent any dream of revolution, of change. Of course the king, the warriors, cannot be in favor of revolution because it is going to be against them. They will be thrown out of their thrones. The businessmen cannot be for revolution, either, because all revolutions are against the rich.And the poor man cannot even imagine revolution, because he has not been allowed any kind of education. He has been prohibited from any contact with the society of the three higher classes. He lives outside the town: he cannot live inside the town. The poor people’s wells are not deep, they cannot put much money into making wells. The businessmen have big, deep wells and the king has his own; but even in times when rains have not come and his wells are dry, the sudra is not allowed to take water from any other well. He may have to go ten miles to fetch water from a river.He is so hungry that it is difficult to manage one meal a day, which has no nourishment in it – how can he think of revolution? He knows that this is his fate. He has been told and conditioned by the priest that this is his fate: “God has given you an opportunity to show your trust. This poverty is nothing, it is a question of a few years. If you can remain faithful, great is the reward.” So on the one hand the priest goes on preaching to them against any change, and on the other hand they cannot conceive of change because they are undernourished.And you have to understand one thing: that the undernourished person loses intelligence. Intelligence blossoms only when you have everything that your body needs, plus something more. That plus becomes your intelligence, because intelligence is a luxury. A person who has only one meal a day has nothing, no energy left for intelligence to grow. It is the intelligentsia that creates the ideas, new philosophies, new ways of life, new dreams for the future; but that intelligentsia is already on the top. In fact, India has done something of tremendous importance: no other country has been able to maintain the status quo in such a scientific way. And you will be surprised; the man who did it was Manu. After five thousand years, his sutras are still followed exactly.In this century, only two persons outside India have appreciated Manu. One is Friedrich Nietzsche, the other is Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler was a disciple of Friedrich Nietzsche. Friedrich Nietzsche was the philosopher of Nazism: Adolf Hitler was simply practicing what Nietzsche had preached. The relationship is exactly as between Marx and Lenin. Marx was the philosopher who gave the whole ideology of communism, and Lenin put it into reality. The same was the relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche and Adolf Hitler.It is not a coincidence that they should both appreciate a book written five thousand years before in India. Both appreciated it because they could see what a grand master-planner Manu must have been, to have made a system that is still alive. He prevented revolution for five thousand years, and perhaps he will prevent it forever. There may never be a revolution in India.The Communist Party is one of the oldest parties in India, but it has no power, because to the Indian mind it has no appeal. The brahmin is not going to listen, because the communists don’t believe in God; they are irreligious people, immoral people. The warriors are not going to listen because they have power of their own; anybody who has power is not going to listen to the communists because they want to distribute power and everything equally. Now, if you have power you would not like it to be distributed equally. The only joy in having power is that you are on the top and everybody else is below you, that you have succeeded in reaching the top of Everest and others are far below. You cannot accept the idea of distribution of power.The businessman cannot be for communists, because his money will be distributed equally. And the man who could have been interested in communism, the fourth class, is so unintelligent, is so much in the grip of the priest, that you cannot convince a poor man in India that he is poor because he has been exploited. I have tried, it is impossible. He will go on saying, “No. It is my fate, my karma, and please don’t say anything which disturbs me, because then I will have to suffer for it. It is only a question of a few years. If I can keep faith in God and in the priests and in the scriptures, I will be freed and I will have all the enjoyment.”He cannot make a revolution because revolution may destroy his paradise. Revolution is not appealing to him because it needs a certain intelligence. For centuries he and his forefathers have been only making shoes. They have never done anything else. They are not allowed to do anything else; the system is so strict that no movement is possible. A shoemaker’s son, whatsoever he wants, cannot move into another profession. He will not be accepted anywhere.The politicians and priests are ambitious for power. There is another ambition – the ambition for money, because that is also a power. So there are three power lines. One is that of the priest – that he has a direct relationship with God; that he knows and you don’t know; that he is wise and you are ignorant; that he is virtuous, and that is why he is born a brahmin – and you have committed sins in the past, that’s why you are not in the first class. Everybody according to his actions.The second line of power is the political power, which in the past in India – and everywhere else, too – was the power of the sword. And third is the power of money.These are the only three powers. And these three kinds of people, rather than fighting with each other, have divided their areas, which is simply intelligent. They have divided their areas and they don’t interfere in each other’s area. The great mass which is exploited by all the three in different ways remains enslaved: goes on working for others, lives poor, dies poor, never knows anything of beauty, of music, of poetry. These things are not for the poor masses.My effort is to make it absolutely clear to the intelligent people of the world that these three are criminals. Anybody who has a will to power is a criminal. That is my definition of a criminal: will to power. And why do I say the will to power is criminal? Because will to power simply means power over others. The others have to be enslaved and exploited. The others have to be reduced into subhuman species. The others had the same potential but they are not allowed to actualize their potential.Will to power means that you want to become the master and reduce others into slaves. This can be done in three ways. One is through knowledge, which the priest has. After the British Raj in India there was a great struggle, because the brahmins were not ready for their scriptures to be translated into any other language. They had to remain in ancient Sanskrit – which has never been a language of the people; it was the language only of the priests. But the country was under British rule and there was no way for the priests although they tried hard, saying that their scriptures should not be translated, that they would be destroyed. But Britain was intent – this was the oldest civilization; there may be secrets in their tremendous number of scriptures – so they started translating them.Those translations of Sanskrit literature destroyed the whole wisdom of the brahmins, because before nobody had ever understood what they were saying. Sanskrit is a beautiful language, almost poetry. It has a magical quality to it. You can sing it, and even the prose sounds like poetry. So brahmins were singing it, chanting it, and nobody knew the meaning. Whatever the priest wants is the meaning.Sanskrit is the language of God, and only the priests understand the language. So whatever transpires between God and man has to come through the priest, the brahmin. The same was the situation in other places. Rabbis never wanted their scriptures to be translated from Hebrew into the ordinary people’s language.It is the same with every religion, and the reason is that those scriptures are simply nonsense – there is nothing in them. You dig the whole mountain, and you don’t find even a rat! The knowledge was bogus, pretended, and the pretense could be carried for centuries only if the masses were prevented.You will be surprised to know that one of the Hindu gods, Rama, an incarnation of God, poured burning melted lead into a poor man’s ears, because the man heard the chanting of the Vedas while hiding behind the trees where a brahmin ritual was happening. There is no question of education; even hearing was not allowed, and this was the punishment. And Rama is worshipped as an incarnation of God.Gandhi prayed continuously to Rama. I am simply amazed that a man like Gandhi, who talked continuously of non-violence, was a worshipper of Rama, who is always carrying a bow and arrows – those are his symbols – the man who was so cruel.I don’t think that poor man was doing anything wrong. He was hiding behind the trees and listening, just out of curiosity about what happens in religious ceremonies. And of course there was nothing wrong in it; he could not understand what was happening. But because he did something against the social structure, Rama made that man deaf for his whole life.But still Gandhi went on chanting the name of Rama every morning and evening. It was his last word when he was assassinated: “Hey Rama. Oh Rama!” His last word was addressed to that man who was not non-violent – who was not even human, there is no question of his being divine.This is something that the movement of sannyas has to do: to expose that these three groups, lusty for power, have been conspiring against the whole of humanity. It is time that we should understand, and destroy their contract. And it can be easily done. You just have to create more and more communes where there is no lust for power, where we are not against money, we are not against clothes, we are not against anything; where we want our sannyasins to live luxuriously, comfortably – nobody is to exploit their labor and nobody is to dominate them – and where the plumber is as respected as the professor, there is no distinction at all.I am surprised that people who come to visit the commune cannot see the simple fact that a plumber is as respected as a professor. In fact, nobody knows who is a plumber and who is a professor, because one day the professor is a professor and another he is a plumber. And our plumbers are not uneducated, either: they can be professors any time.This is for the first time that so many people are living with human dignity, and without any effort to make them equal – because that effort is aggression. That is where I differ from communism. My difference is totally different from other people’s differences: they are against communism because their vested interests will be destroyed by communism; I am against communism because it is not communist enough. It is far behind.This can be easily experienced. In Russia, you can see that people’s individuality has been completely destroyed. Rather than giving them freedom they are completely enslaved; and the classes have not disappeared – just their names have changed. Now there are the people who are in power, the power elite, and the people who have no power. Russia has two classes, and movement between those two classes is as difficult as it is in India.For sixty or seventy years after the revolution, almost the same group has remained in power. People went on dying, new people went on taking their places, but those new people were not from the masses. For example when Stalin died, Khrushchev had been waiting just behind him for all those forty years, knowing that the moment Stalin died he would become the most powerful man in the world. Of course, he hated Stalin, but even to utter a single word against him… Everybody knew that Stalin simply killed all competitors.In the revolution there were many leaders; the most important was Lenin. Stalin poisoned him, but the poisoning was done so slowly that it took two years for him to die. He was sick for those two years, and Stalin functioned on his behalf. And in those two years he managed to put his own people in all the strategic positions – because once Lenin died then his second man, Trotsky, would take over. That’s why Lenin was kept alive; otherwise there was no need to give him small doses, just one dose would have been enough. He was kept alive so that Trotsky could not come into power. And Stalin was only a secretary; he functioned on behalf of Lenin. He saw the moment: that it was time – that he had changed all the strategic people and Lenin was finished. And Trotsky did not have any hope of staying alive. Seeing the situation, he escaped from Russia.And he did well to escape, because Stalin was such a revengeful man that he even killed his dog. And finally he killed Trotsky also, in Mexico. He had escaped as far away as possible, but a professional killer was sent and he was killed. The other people in line were Kamenev and Zinovyev; everybody was killed, imprisoned, sent to Siberia and nobody ever heard what happened to those people.Trotsky was the most important person, but he was so sure of his importance that he never bothered about what was happening behind his back. Because he had done all this, Stalin was perfectly aware that the same thing could be done to him that he had done to Lenin, to Trotsky, to Kamenev, to Zinovyev – to all the people who were important, more important than him. Stalin put in his own people, and the distance between him and those people was great. He always kept the distance the same; nobody could think that he was a friend. Friends are dangerous in power politics, because they are too intimate, too close, and dangerous.Khrushchev was a worshipper of Stalin. The day Stalin died and Khrushchev became the prime minister, in his cabinet he exposed his mind for the first time. He said, “For forty years I have been burning. I have seen Stalin do things which nobody has ever done in the whole of history.” He had killed almost ten million people after the revolution.Somebody from the back asked, “If this was the case and that man was a murderer, what were you doing? Why did you not say it before?”Khrushchev laughed and said, “Comrade, just stand up so that I can see your face, and please tell me what is your name.”Nobody stood. He asked twice, and then he said, “Do you now understand why I was silent? Have you got my answer? If you had stood up, you would have known what would have happened to me if I had spoken a single word against Stalin.” But the same did happen to him.There is a company of power elites who have been running the whole show, and they have all the power. They have the power of the priest because they have completely destroyed religion; there is no question of anybody being a priest. They have taken that role also. Every book is published only by the government. Every newspaper, every magazine, any information that is published is published by the government. The government is doing now what the priests had been doing before. The politician has taken over the area of the priest completely; now he is doubly powerful. He decides what is right and what is wrong, and he has taken the third power also in his hands, because everything is nationalized.And what does it actually mean? When things are nationalized, everything goes into the hands of the politicians: all the factories, all the fields, all the money, everything – people included, because people are no longer people, they are commodities. So in Russia something very special has happened: for the first time all three have become one. That’s why Russia – the whole country – has become a great prison, a great concentration camp.We have to create communes around the world as models, where people can come and see that power is not a need at all, that you can rejoice without being powerful, that you need not enslave anybody.What you try to do by enslaving somebody can be done more easily just by being friendly, just by being more loving. There is no need to make somebody higher and somebody lower. Everybody who is contributing to the commune in any way – cleaning the toilets – is as significant as being the vice-chancellor of the university, because both are doing something essential. In fact, the vice-chancellor can go on leave and there will be no trouble, but the toilet cleaner cannot go on leave; he is more essential, more fundamentally needed. He should be given more respect, too.But nobody feels any inferiority, any superiority. Nobody bothers about it. The day’s work is over and everybody is enjoying dancing, singing. Professors are there, therapists are there, cleaners are there. There is no class.To me this is true communism. We have not imposed any equality; everybody is unique, nobody is equal here. Yet there is a subtle current of equality which does not make you similar. It leaves you unique, and yet all inequality disappears. Here, nobody is a priest, or everybody is a priest. Here nobody is for power, or everybody has power. There is no problem. If somebody wants to hang a sign around his neck, “I am the president of this universe,” nobody is going to object. People will really enjoy.Nobody is going to say to him, “This is not possible, you don’t belong. You are claiming to be the lord of the whole universe, and you just clean the toilets.” Nobody is going to say that. He can go in the toilets, go on cleaning them with his sign board hanging around his neck – still there is no contradiction. People will take it as a joke. Anybody pretending to be powerful will be taken as a joke, an entertainment, that this man has gone a little crazy.Okay?Osho,You have called yourself a lazy man, but you frequently speak for nearly three hours in the morning, and then give a press conference at night. Are you lazy, or effortless? Is there a difference?I am really lazy. And to me, speaking is not an action. I can go on speaking twenty-four hours; just there is only one trouble – my bladder! I don’t stop because I have answered you, I have to stop because the bladder says, “Enough – just move, otherwise I am going to move.”But basically I am absolutely lazy. And to me speaking is just like birds singing, flowers blossoming. Yes, you can call it “effortless effort” but that is giving a very beautiful name to a simple thing. I would rather prefer just to be called lazy.Okay, any more?Osho,Why don't journalists ask direct questions? They try to trap you and you seem to escape easily.They cannot trap me, for the simple reason that I don’t care about contradicting myself. That is their trouble. You can trap a man easily if he tries to remain consistent. Then you can say, “Ten years ago, you said this.” In ten years, everything has changed. Either the man has to accept that he was wrong then – which goes against his ego – or he can say that he is wrong now. That goes even more against his ego and he is trapped.I am not trapped for the simple reason that I say whatever I am saying right now. Only for that am I responsible. What I will say the next moment has nothing to do with this moment’s statement.I believe in change because the whole of existence is changing. You cannot say to a rosebush, “This is not right. Yesterday there were no flowers and today, suddenly… Were you wrong yesterday, or are you wrong today?” No, we accept it. Life is changing; it is a flux, a movement.But in human society – in all the cultures – consistency has been praised, appreciated, made respectable. And only an idiot can remain consistent. The more intelligent you are, the less is the possibility of remaining consistent, because you will see the change. And with the changing life and the changing universe, how can you go on clinging to something which is no longer applicable?But people want respectability; they are trapped. I am very clear that I don’t care about respectability. You can go and call me self-contradictory, and I accept it as a compliment – because to me, only intelligence can be self-contradictory: the greater the intelligence, the more contradictions.Society insisted for consistency, and gave respect to it, because it kept people retarded. They could not change. It went against their egos, so even though they could see that something had changed, they would not accept it, they would go on repeating the old. And society would respect those people as reliable, responsible: “You can trust them, you can trust their word; if they give you their word, they will keep it.” The man of his word has been respected for centuries.I am not a man of my word. I am at ease with existence, and I don’t care about these idiots – and their respectability, and their rewards, and awards. I don’t care at all. I have a totally different approach. I am in tune with existence, and I am perfectly happy with it. If existence changes its tune, I change my tune. I keep step with existence, not with the culture, not with society, not even with my own past.The past is dead. I am only alive here and now. That’s why they are in trouble. They can trap politicians very easily, “You have said this, and now you are doing just the opposite.” Nobody can say that to me because I never promised that I would be saying the same thing tomorrow. I never promised that I would not go against my word. I have never given any word to anybody. I am absolutely free to be myself – that is the trouble.One thing – that they cannot trap me. Secondly, because they cannot trap me they start feeling nervous, because they don’t know, “What to do now?” They have never come face to face with such a man – who does not care for respectability, who does not care for honoring his own word, who does not care for all the rules that the societies have made. I live according to my own rules.When I was a student in the university, just beside my room some students were very interested in playing cards. And once in a while they needed a partner. There were three, they wanted one more, and I was just easily available. But they were afraid to approach me.One day one of them knocked, and he said, “We know that you are not interested in anything we are interested in. You don’t go to the movies, you don’t go to the matches, you don’t want to meet people and share gossip about professors, who is flirting with who’s wife. You are different we know, but we are in trouble. We want to play but one partner is missing.”I said, “I can come but the game will be according to my rules. I don’t follow anybody’s rules – why I should follow?”They said, “That is difficult. The rules are fixed. A particular game has its rules.”I said, “It may have, but who decided it? I am ready to come.”They said, “Wait, we will have to think about it.”They never came back. Once in a while, I used to walk in front of their room and I would ask, “Do you need a partner?”“We don’t want any partner because we cannot understand you. And if you make the rules, you are going to win because we will not know what to do. We know the old rules and we play the game according to them, but if you make the rules, you are going to win.”I said, “That’s clear. Whoever makes the rules, wins. That’s why I never accept anybody’s rules. I make my own rules.”That is the trouble with the poor journalists! They have a certain game which they go on playing with politicians and priests. And they can easily trap the president, the pope, or anybody. There is no problem in it, but they cannot trap me. I simply don’t play the game with the same accepted rules.I have my own rules, and they cannot even learn my rules because I go on changing. So, it is not that a journalist, encountering me a few times, will be able to trap me. Impossible. Each time he comes he will find another man. And he will come prepared for the old man, who exists no longer.Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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John McCarthy,Lewiston Tribune, Idaho, United StatesOsho,I'm pleased to be able to have a chance to talk with you.I have a bunch of questions and maybe we won't get to all of them. But some of them I'd like to try and get short, simple answers.Okay, just start.Osho,Are you pleased with the place your followers have created here? Is it the kind of home you wished to have when you came to America?I never think of the future. I never think of the next moment, hence nothing can disappoint me. Whatever happens is perfectly good. The problem of disappointment arises only if you have a certain expectation. I have never expected anything in my life. So, whatsoever has happened, I am thankful to existence. Everything is as it should be.Do you wish that the politics in Oregon would be different, in the treatment of you and your followers?I don’t wish anything, I simply live my life. If that changes somebody, it is his problem. If it changes the politics of Oregon, that is the Oregonian’s problem. I am not trying to change anything. I’m not interested in interfering in other people’s lives; neither do I want that they should interfere in my life. To me the individual, individuality, is the highest value. I respect the individual. I don’t want to be interfered with, nor am I interested in interfering in anybody’s life. And that’s what politics is – continuously interfering into everybody’s life.I am not a politician; my people have nothing to do with politics. In fact they have gathered around me to live their lives as joyously and peacefully as possible. They have not gathered around me to create a revolution in the world, change the world, make it a classless society or this and that. We are not interested in all that garbage at all. Tomorrow is always uncertain; even the next moment has no guarantee. We have only this moment to live.The politician is a fool. He is destroying his life and he is destroying other people’s lives. Everybody should live his life, should sing his song and let everybody else be himself. That will be a really human world. So I do not wish to do anything; I simply live, and my people want to live with me. They love me, they rejoice with me. For them, I am their whole world; for me, they are my whole world. Beyond the red clothes, nothing exists.Osho,I don't know a whole lot about Rajneeshism as a religion. Can you explain to me whether you consider yourself to be God, a prophet, a wise man, a teacher? How do you think of yourself or your followers?I am not a God – I am not that stupid. Only a stupid God can create this world, this mess, this madhouse. Certainly I am not that idiotic. And I don’t think God can be idiotic, so the only answer will be that there is no God. That’s why this world is in a mess. It is enough proof that there is no God. There is nobody creating, controlling, maintaining; it is all accidental. In a way it is good, because in this accidentalness of existence there is freedom. In fact, the very idea of God creating us is ugly. Then we are puppets; only puppets are created.To me, existence has always been here. It has no beginning, no end. It is a tremendous explosion of energy in all dimensions. But everything is accidental, nothing is planned. Planning is not the way of existence.So I am certainly not God. And without God there is no possibility of any prophet, any messiah. God is a basic necessity for a prophet to exist. Moses will be nobody if he does not create the illusion that he has encountered God, and God has given him the Ten Commandments; nobody will listen to his Ten Commandments. But he is using the authority of God, for which no evidence exists – because those Ten Commandments are so simple, ordinary, that any human person of average intelligence can make them. There is nothing special in them, nothing unique, nothing that can prove that they are coming from a divine source.But to be a prophet you need a God, to be a messiah you need a God. God is an absolute necessity for all those mad people who want to project their egos; without the backdrop of God it cannot be done. So they all insist, “Believe in God.” Once you believe in God, then naturally you have to believe in the messenger of God, in the messiah of God, in the only begotten son of God. Those are logical corollaries.The moment that I deny there is a God, I have denied all possibility of there being a prophet, a messiah, a messenger. All that is finished. I am simply a human being, just as you are. I don’t have any pretensions of being higher than anybody. Certainly I am different from you, but not higher, not lower – different only in the sense that you are fast asleep and I am awake. But that is not much of a difference. Just a little cold water has to be thrown into your eyes, and you will be awake.And that’s what I am doing with my people: throwing so much ice-cold water in their eyes.How can I get cold water thrown in my face? How do I go about it?I’m already doing it. And you know it. Just don’t start shivering, because the temperature is three degrees centigrade in this room. In fact, there is no need to throw ice-cold water: you are sitting in an ice-cold atmosphere where one has to become awake.How do you know at a glance, without me speaking but a few phrases and introducing myself, that I'm asleep?Only one who is awake can know who is asleep. The person who is asleep cannot know who is asleep and who is awake. I am awake, that’s why I know you are asleep. You cannot know – perhaps I may be talking in your sleep, perhaps you may be dreaming. You cannot be certain about me, but I am absolutely certain about you. Your eyes are open but you are asleep. You are trying hard to wake up a little, and look through your glasses and find out who is awake and who is asleep – and that’s a good sign. That means you will have to come here again and again, till finally you are awake.The moment one awakes, one is simply shocked, seeing that the whole world is asleep. And in sleep, people are walking, talking, going to the church, to the synagogue; in sleep, writing books, making films – doing all kinds of businesses, but their spiritual sleep continues.When I say spiritual sleep my meaning is that you don’t know who you are. You may know everything around you, but just one thing you are not aware of – your own center, your own being. The moment you know yourself, you are awake. So I am using awakening and sleep as metaphors.Osho,What does a man or a woman experience by following your religion? Do they become awake?There is no promise. I never promise anything to anybody. I am here, available; I am ready to explain how one becomes awake – and my work is finished there. Then it is up to you. If you fail, I will not be disappointed. If you succeed, you succeed. I don’t take the credit for it. So the success is yours, the failure is yours. My only work is to give you a clear-cut idea how you can become more conscious – I call it meditation – working, walking, sitting.I don’t believe in what others call meditation – that for ten or twenty minutes you do it, and then just be your ordinary self for twenty-four hours, then again meditate for twenty minutes. This is stupid. It is like saying to a person, “Every morning breathe for twenty minutes and then forget all about it, because you have to do many other things. Then the next morning you can breathe for twenty minutes again.”To me, meditation is exactly like breathing. So, whatsoever you are doing and wherever you are, do it more consciously. For example, I can raise this hand without any consciousness, just unconsciously, out of habit…I have heard about two Jews walking by the ocean. It was a cold morning and one Jew was keeping his hands in his pockets. It was really cold. And the other was continuously talking, and saying this and that. And he was puzzled that the other man was saying only, yes, no, but did not participate in the conversation. This is not Jewish.Finally he asked, “What has happened to you? Have you changed your religion?”The other said, “You can say whatever you want to say, but I am not going to take my hands out of the pockets.”But the first said, “What has that to do with it?”The other said, “A Jew cannot talk without his hands. I am not going to talk; it is too cold to take my hands out!”But you can also raise your hand with full awareness, and you can see the difference between the two. The act is the same: one is mechanical, the other is full of consciousness, and the quality is tremendously different.Try it, because it is a question of taste and experience. Walking, just try for a few minutes to walk consciously. With each step be alert, and you will be surprised that the quality of your walk is totally different, it is relaxed. There is no tension, and there is a subtle joy that is arising out of your relaxed walking. And the more you become aware of this joy, the more you would like to be awake. Eating, eat with awareness. People are simply throwing food into their mouths, not even chewing it, just swallowing it.Thirty million people in America are suffering from overeating. A strange world we are living in: one thousand people are dying every day in Ethiopia because they don’t have food; thirty million people are dying in America because they have too much food. These people are suffering from obesity, fatness, cannot resist eating more and more. No doctor is going to help them – unless they become aware while they are eating, if they become aware… A few things happen as a by-product of awareness. Their eating will be slowed down; they will start chewing – because unless you chew your food you are putting an unnecessary burden on your whole system. Your stomach has no teeth. One has to chew each bite exactly forty-two times, then anything that you are eating becomes liquid.A man of awareness only drinks, because before he swallows he has changed the solid food into liquid. And the strange thing is that when you chew forty-two times, you enjoy the taste so much. One bite of an unconscious man gives forty-two times more taste to the conscious man. It is simple arithmetic: the unconscious man will have to eat forty-two bites just to have the same taste. Then he becomes fat and still unsatisfied, and still he feels to eat more. The man of awareness eats only as much as his body needs. He immediately feels, “Now there is no need, the hunger is gone.” He is content doing anything.So my meditation is a totally different kind of approach. It has to be spread over the twenty-four hours of each day. Even falling asleep, remain alert to how sleep is descending on you, so slowly, so silently, but you can hear the steps. The darkness is growing, you are relaxing – you can feel the muscles, the body, the tense parts which are preventing sleep – and soon you will see the whole body has relaxed and sleep has come. But slowly, slowly a great revolution happens. Sleep comes to you, but something deep inside you goes on remaining awake, even in sleep.So the situation is that you are asleep even when you think you are awake, and I am awake even when you think I’m asleep. And unless a man becomes aware in his sleep he is not aware, not awake. That is the criterion.And there are so many by-products by which you can judge. Dreams disappear because dreams need you to be completely unconscious. They come from the unconscious mind, but if you are conscious they cannot come. Sigmund Freud would have been immensely enriched if he had come to a man like me, who has no dreams. He would have been puzzled also – and he would have had to change his whole idea of psychoanalysis. But he only came across people who were asleep. He himself was asleep – he had no idea of any spiritual awakening. Otherwise, he would certainly have realized that there is a space where man is conscious, just conscious, and there are no dreams at all.If dreams disappear in the night, the second thing will happen to you: thoughts will disappear in the daytime. That does not mean you will become incapable of thinking, it simply means you will not just go on thinking mechanically, unnecessarily. You will be capable of thinking if you want to think, otherwise you will be silent. And a man who can remain silent for hours is gathering energy – so whenever he wants to think, his thinking has some strength, some power, some tremendous energy. Ordinary people’s thinking is just impotent; their thoughts are just vagrant, clouds floating in their minds.A man of meditation will find that dreams disappear, and then the sleep is of incomparable beauty. Then sleep becomes spiritual. To transform sleep into spirituality is religion. Then your whole day becomes a day of silence. You will talk, but something deep down in you will remain a silent witness. So you will not say things which will unnecessarily create trouble for you and trouble for others. You will say only that which is absolutely needed. You will only say the truth, otherwise you will be able to say, “I do not know.”You will not believe in anything. Either you will know it or you will not know it. Belief is a deception – you don’t know, yet you pretend as if you know. All these people in temples, in churches, in synagogues, what are they doing? To whom are they praying? They don’t know God. Their priest does not know God. They don’t know that any prayer has ever been heard by anybody. They don’t know that any prayer has ever been answered by anybody. Still they are praying to a God.There is a beautiful story by Leo Tolstoy: Three uneducated, illiterate villagers, who used to live on a small island in a river, became famous all over the country as great saints. Now, this was too much for the archbishop, because in Christianity you can be a saint only if the church certifies you to be a saint. In fact, the word saint comes from sanction. If the church sanctions you – certifies you – you are a saint. And without the archbishop signing, who has made these fools saints?Their fame was far and wide; people even started coming from outside the country. Finally he decided to go and put these people right. He got into a boat and reached the small island. They were sitting under a beautiful tree, all three looking so happy. They were sitting naked, they had not even clothes. The archbishop went close to them.All three touched his feet and said, “Why did you trouble yourself? You could have sent a message and we ourselves would have come to the church.”Now the archbishop felt confident. Up to now he had been feeling a little nervous: three saints and he himself knows nothing, except that he has reached the top in a religious-political hierarchy. But now he was confident, and he asked the three people, “What is your religion?”They said, “We don’t know. Religion? Are there many religions?”Those simple fellows are asking a significant question. Only simple people can ask significant questions like, “Are there many religions?”They said, “We thought there is only one kind of religiousness. But you can teach us – if you feel just being religious is not enough, you can teach us. We are available. We are illiterate, ignorant people, so please don’t feel offended by our answers.”The archbishop asked, “Okay, whatever your religion, what is your prayer? Certainly you must be Christian” – because in Russia at that time, there was no other religion – “you must be Christian. What is your prayer?”They all looked at each other and they said, “You say it.”The second said to the third, “You say it.”And the third said to the first two, “Please, better you say it!”The archbishop was getting angry: “What is this nonsense? You cannot say your prayer?”They said, “The reality is, we don’t know how to pray and we don’t know what prayer is, but we have invented our own prayer. Hearing that God is a trinity and we are also a trinity, so we have made a simple prayer for ourselves. Please don’t feel offended. We pray whenever the moment makes us feel like praying. In the early morning sun, when it is so beautiful on the lake and the whole lake becomes gold, we feel like thanking existence. Our prayer is, ‘You are three, we are three, please have mercy on us.’ This is our prayer.”The archbishop said, “This is absolute nonsense. ‘You are three, we are three, have mercy on us.’ Who has ever heard of such a prayer?”Those poor people said, “We are ready to learn.” So he gave them the official prayer. But it was a long prayer, so by the time he ended it they said, “This is very difficult, because we have forgotten the beginning by the time you came to the end. You will have to repeat it. Please repeat it so we can remember the beginning.”He repeated it – just the beginning – but they said, “Please go on, because now we have forgotten the end.”Three times he repeated it, so that they could grasp the prayer. They thanked the archbishop. He was very happy that he had put them right and now he could tell people, “Those are idiots, and you were thinking of them as saints.”He went back into his boat, and just in the middle of the river he saw something unimaginable. Those three, naked, idiots were coming, running on the water! He could not believe his eyes. He had never even believed that Jesus had walked on water; he knew deep down that this was all nonsense. He had never told anybody, and as far as his sermons were concerned, he was trying to prove that Jesus could do anything.But those idiots were walking on water, running on water, and they caught hold of the boat and said, “Just a moment please. We have forgotten the prayer. Will you teach us again?”But this was enough for the archbishop. He touched the feet of those three idiots and said, “Your prayer is right, mine was wrong. Just go and say your prayer. I unnecessarily interfered in your life; just forgive me. Seeing you walking on the water, in fact, for the first time I have become a Christian. I had never believed that Jesus really walked on water.”Religion is a very simple phenomenon. Theology has nothing to with religion; it makes things unnecessarily complex. Religion is a simple awareness of whatever you are doing, wherever you are. And when this awareness surrounds you always, like a luminous aura, you become aware for the first time of the universe – its beauties, its music, its eternal song. To me that is the religious experience. In religious experience you don’t encounter a God. There is nobody there, just this pure existence. But it is all alive – these flowers, these birds on the wing, these stars – everything is alive, but because you are asleep you cannot experience the aliveness that surrounds you.And we are not islands. No man is an island. We are part of this whole living, infinite continent. Those flowers are part of us, just as we are part of them. Those faraway stars are within us, as we are within the universe. That experience of unity, of at-one-ment, is liberation.So my teaching is very simple. Meditation is the key, becoming totally aware is the result. Experiencing oneness with the whole is the reward.“You are three, we are three, have mercy on us.”This is my trinity: meditation, awareness, oneness.Osho,Do you think there are many people in the world who need that message or want that message, and who will come here to Rajneeshpuram? And because of that, will Rajneeshpuram grow?Everybody needs that message. Everybody has a birthright to experience existence, its ecstasy. But your question has many questions in it. The first part: I say everybody needs it. The second part of what you are asking, “Will all of them come to Rajneeshpuram?” no, only very few will come – because although everybody needs it, to know that you need it a certain intelligence is needed, a certain youthfulness is needed, a certain daring, courage, adventurousness is needed, which is missing.So only a very few people will arrive here, although it is everybody’s need. But I have my communes all over the world; I have my people in almost every country. There are nearabout one million sannyasins all around the earth. In every language, in every country, even in places where it is almost impossible, I have my people – even in Soviet Russia.Just the other day I received a Soviet communist magazine written against me. Everything was just rubbish and false. But I was happy; it shows that the communists and the government are now getting frightened, the same way as they are getting frightened here in Oregon. And in Russia I don’t have many sannyasins, but enough. In fact, I have even taken the monopoly of the red color from the communists! My people are underground, they meet in basements. They cannot publish my books: they write by hand, or type, or send messages, so that it can reach other people. Whatsoever books they have been able to smuggle in are mostly caught by the government. The KGB is against them, and many of my sannyasins have been persecuted, although they cannot prove that they are sannyasins. But still, in Russia just suspicion is enough. There is no need for any proof.They have published the names of twenty people in the newspaper: “These seem to be his contacts in the Soviet Union, beware of them.” That is enough for those people to be persecuted by the police, by the people. They may lose their jobs, they may lose their facilities, they may be sent to Siberia. But you will be surprised that they are more excited about me and my work than anywhere else – because for sixty years Russia has forgotten what youthfulness means. It has forgotten that being a revolutionary is a part of being young. Now you cannot be revolutionary in Russia.Osho,Will your religion become a major religion in the world, in terms of numbers?No, it will never, because we don’t convert anybody. Conversion is insulting the other person, his intelligence, his integrity. When you convert a person you are saying, “You are wrong and I am right. You don’t know, I know, so just follow me.” No, I cannot allow my people to say that to anybody. My people just have to live their lives, and if somebody becomes interested on his own, he is welcome.But we are not missionaries, so naturally our numbers cannot grow. And we don’t believe in the politics of numbers; that is a political game. But anybody who has a desire to explore into the reality of his own being is bound to move toward me, sooner or later. But the well remains in its own place; the thirsty come to it. The well does not go and propagate, “Come to me, because only I have the right kind of water. Don’t go to other wells.” Where they want to go is their problem. They will not be prevented from drinking the wine that I am offering here; they will be our respected guests.But I cannot humiliate anybody by saying to him that we have the only true message; that I am the only begotten son of God; that I am the only prophet of God; that the holy Koran is the last message; that you need not think of anything else, just read the Bible, everything is there; that the Vedas contain all knowledge, it is enough, more than that is dangerous – that’s what Hindus say.I don’t belong to these people and their company. I am a totally different person. I respect everybody. If somebody chooses to be wrong, it is his freedom. It may be wrong according to me, but if to him it looks to be right, let him go on his way. If it is right, good; he is blessed. If he is wrong, sooner or later he will have to come back.Osho,Why are you now giving interviews to people like myself?I enjoy talking.Why speak to a person like myself, who is not a believer in what many other people would like to hear from you?Just because you can send the message to many people. I am going to talk to every journalist around the world. I’m going to use every media, just to announce to people that if they are thirsty, we have the right drink for them. If they want to come, they are welcome. It is not to convert them, it is just to invite them. Truth only invites, truth never converts. But the invitation is enough.Why now? Why not two months ago, a year ago?I am a man of absolute spontaneity. When I feel to be silent, then nobody can force me to speak. When I want to speak, nobody can stop me from speaking. Whatever I want to say, I never make any compromise. Whether it is going to be liked, disliked, respected, disrespected; these are not my considerations at all. I felt to be silent. For three and half years I enjoyed silence. Then suddenly one day I felt the time had come to sing the song again, so I started speaking. But I cannot promise for tomorrow. I may be silent again.I am just a little crazy. I just go according to my whims, and the people who have to live with me have to live with my whims.Osho,Where do you live and what do you do?I don’t do anything. I am not a doer.How do you spend your time? How does the day pass for you?It passes so fast, but I enjoy it immensely. I must sleep about ten hours every day – eight hours in the night, two or three hours in the day – because to me, sleep is meditation. For three hours I enjoy my bathroom – one and a half hours in the morning, one and a half in the evening.I have loved water from my very childhood, because it is my understanding that life has arisen out of water. And now scientists are thinking on the same lines, that life must have arisen in water. Every child in the mother’s womb repeats the whole cycle of evolution. First he looks like a fish; only later on does he start looking like a monkey. And between these two he passes through almost all the phases that man has passed through. In his last stage he even has a tail that falls off before his birth, and everybody still has the place where the tail was attached. Those bones show that there was something attached to them, which is missing.But the beginning is as a fish, and for nine months the child lives continuously in sea water. In the mother’s womb, the water in which the child floats has exactly the same components as the water in the sea. That’s why when a woman is pregnant she starts eating more salt, starts enjoying more salty things – because that water needs more salt, that baby needs more salt. She is unaware of why she is doing it, but the child needs it exactly like sea water.So, I have enjoyed water from my very childhood. My birthplace had a beautiful river. I don’t think of anybody in that place, but once in a while, lying in my tub or in my swimming pool, I remember that beautiful river. That’s the only thing that I remember of my birthplace – no teacher, no family, no friends. My only friend, my only teacher, my only school was that river. And it has taught me immensely. Just to create the illusion, I have a swimming pool here of Olympic size.I have beautiful bathrooms. Nothing else matters to me much, but my sannyasins have made me two beautiful bathrooms – two, because any moment if something goes wrong with one bathroom, then I am not going to miss my bath. And they have made my bathrooms with such love that they look like temples, with beautiful Jacuzzis – with hot water, normal cold water, ice-cold water. And I enjoy. That to me is meditation. In every act, my meditation continues.And then I talk for five hours every day – two and a half hours in the morning, two and a half hours in the evening. One and a half hours goes to my food, one hour I go driving. That I have always enjoyed. I have my own road; my people love me so immensely, I don’t think anybody has ever been so loved, and has been so blessed. I don’t know – I wonder why they love me, because I don’t have anything to offer them. But it is a miracle, and miracles happen. They have created a special road just for me. It is used only for one hour every day; twenty-three hours it has to rest – no traffic.My people are so concerned about my life that they don’t want me to drive in traffic, because I am a terrific driver and I don’t believe in any rules – I may drive on the right, I may drive on the left, I may drive in the middle. So my poor people had to create a road just for me, so I can drive anywhere, any way, any speed I want.And this is how my day passes. It passes so fast, but I live every moment of it very intensely.Osho,Why haven't your people who live here shown more love, and cooperated with their neighbors in Oregon more?You have to ask them – and you have to ask the Oregonians. My people have not shown any hostility to anybody. My people are living in a place where the nearest neighbor is twenty miles away. We are so engrossed in our own life, who bothers about the Oregonians? Who has time for them? Nobody even talks about them. We don’t even know whether we are in Oregon or in Afghanistan! We are not interested in anything; they are just afraid. And that too, is simply animal psychology. Oregon must have the most primitive people in America, still much closer to animals than to man. Perhaps all the orangutans have come to Oregon!Strange – we are such a small minority, and the governor keeps the army on alert: any moment they are ordered, within three hours they have to be able to reach Rajneeshpuram. I cannot believe that you can choose such idiots as governors. What has the army to do here? If they want their army to learn meditation, we can invite them. There is no need to keep them on alert – we can make them alert twenty-four hours a day! They should ask us. And they can go on sending one battalion after another, and we will destroy their whole army by making them alert – because an alert person cannot kill, only sleeping people can destroy.We have no problem with the Oregonians – we have no contact even. We are so self-sufficient, we don’t need anything from them. We grow our food, we grow our vegetables, we have our milk products. We have everything that we need. Even if the whole of Oregon disappeared completely, we would not know about it unless somebody came and informed us. We are not interested at all.And why should a majority be afraid of a small commune? They seem to be real cowards, impotent. Such a big majority – what can we do to them? But there is a reason why they are hostile; it shows something about their psychology. They cannot believe that people can be so happy, and they cannot tolerate the laughter, the love, the rejoicing of my people.Jesus says in the Bible, “Blessed are those who mourn, because they shall be comforted, consoled in paradise.” I think Oregonians will have the first place. My people have no chance, they don’t mourn. They can even console God: “Please don’t cry, don’t weep, don’t feel guilty that you created the world. Forget it; whatsoever happened, happened. Don’t go on having nightmares that you created Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah – forget it all, it was a nightmare!”If my people reach paradise, the first thing we have to do is to console God. And we have good people here, who do the best massage possible – a beauty clinic. They will all do whatsoever they can for poor God. But we don’t want to be consoled, there is no need.This is the trouble: the basic trouble is that the rich man hates the super-rich and he is being hated by the poor. These unhappy people, miserable people all around – we are just like an island and they can hear the laughter in the valley.For fifty years this place was dead. It was for sale, and nobody would purchase it because it is simply a desert. But when our people saw it, we took the challenge of the desert. It is not a small place – it is 126 square miles, almost an independent country. We have taken the challenge, and we are defeating the desert every day. The day I came here there was only one dilapidated house; now there are beautiful houses for five thousand sannyasins, all centrally air-conditioned. No religious community has ever lived in an air-conditioned commune, monastery – this is the first commune in the whole history of religion. They think in paradise there will be cool air; we don’t bother about it, we create cool air. We don’t want to be a burden on God, or on paradise – what we can do ourselves, why should we pray for it?And we can do everything: we have our own hospital, we have our own school, we have our own legal experts, we have our own veterinary surgeons, we have our own university, our own psychologists. My people are not like Jesus’ twelve fools that he called his apostles. Any of my sannyasins would have defeated Jesus in discussion – an illiterate man, uneducated, a carpenter’s son – and that, too, is under suspicion. What does he know?These people are all graduates from universities; they have doctorates and DLitts. Don’t be deceived if they are working on the farm – they have master’s degrees. And it is very easy: a man you will find today teaching in the university as a professor, you will find tomorrow working as a plumber. There is no problem, there is no hierarchy. The plumber and the professor are both needed, and my people are so educated that plumbers can teach in the university and professors can do the plumbing.We are not concerned with Oregon at all. It is just one-sided hostility.You speak of the independence of your community, its self-sufficiency, its ability to grow the food and take care of other needs. Is not the community run by electricity from an outside source?We pay for it – we are not taking anything without paying. We pay for it and we have the right to have electricity on this land. This land is part of America; they cannot refuse. In fact, many of the businesses of the Oregonians have not gone bankrupt because of us. Many factories that make houses were on the verge of going bankrupt, but because we allowed them to make our houses, they survived.We have been a help to Oregon. Every year thousands of sannyasins are coming here, spending money in Portland, in Madras, while reaching here. We have made a place for visitors from all around the world; we have helped the economy of Oregon. Otherwise, have you ever heard of anybody going to Oregon? People go to Egypt to look, people go to India, people go to Japan, people go to Nepal, deep in the Himalayas, people go to Switzerland. But this is the first time that people are coming to Oregon from every country. Such big economic, financial gain for Oregonians, and they are being simply stupid. They should help us. We can make it the biggest place for visitors, and they will all be benefited by it.They should come and see – and they don’t even come. They should come and see that we have not destroyed their land, we have beautified it. We have made it an oasis. If they have any intelligence, their whole government should help us to make this big desert into a lush, green, beautiful place. And we are ready to put in any kind of intelligence, labor, planning, everything.But rather than helping us, they are creating every kind of legal hindrance – although in every court we are defeating them, but still, work is delayed. And four hundred sannyasins are working in our legal department. This is unnecessary – and we are certain to win because we are not wrong on any point, and in every court…A few days ago, the attorney general declared six hundred thousand dollars’ punishment because we had made a few tents without permission. Tents don’t need permission, but because we had made winterized tents – they were a unique, new thing. They should really have praised it, that we have made a new kind of tent which can be used in winter, in snow. But instead they put a case against us. And the attorney general fined us six hundred thousand dollars for making permanent structures without permission.I told my people, “Simply take a tent to the court. Unfold it in the court, fix it – it takes ten minutes to fix; then unfix it – it takes ten minutes to roll it down and put it in a bag, and ask the court, ‘Is this a permanent structure?’”That was enough argument, and the court simply dismissed the case. Now, this attorney general should jump in some lake and commit suicide. Idiots! At least you should have come and seen what we are doing. But Oregonians seem to be shameless. They don’t have any sense of feeling. Now they are in another litigation against the city, that it is illegal. This is a unique city in the world – an illegal city! There are cities or there are no cities, but have you ever heard of an illegal city? And particularly a city where no crime has happened in four years: no rape, no theft, no murder. And a city where no rape happens, no murder happens, no stealing happens, is illegal? And cities like New York, where every kind of crime is happening every moment, are legal cities.People should have a little more humanity and they should start trying to understand strangers. We are strangers, naturally they feel afraid – they don’t know us. That is one of the weaknesses of mankind. It is always afraid of the new, afraid of the strange. We are strangers, but we don’t want to remain strangers. That’s why I’m talking to you and to every journalist, so that you can see we are not coming in flying saucers from other planets.Our lifestyle may be different, but it is better than your lifestyle. You can come and see, and compare. You can invite us to see your lifestyle, we can invite you to see our lifestyle. And we are absolutely certain that anybody who comes to see our lifestyle is going to praise it, because not a single person is in misery, not a single beggar, not a single person is on the street – hungry, without clothes, without shelter – and everybody is living equally, without any communism being imposed on them. Everybody is respected equally; it does not matter what his work is.They should come and see these smiling, laughing, dancing people, and I don’t think that they will not change their minds. But they don’t come. And of course I cannot take my whole circus on the road; that is not possible because I cannot provide everywhere air-conditioned rooms for five thousand people. They should come. And we have all the facilities, hotels for them to stay in – they will not miss anything. Anything that they can get in a five-star hotel they will get here in our hotel, which is not even one star. We still have to make a five-star hotel. Once we make five-star hotels, then your five-star hotels will be just junk!They should come and see what our people are eating, how healthy our people are. Their water is pure, their food is pure, and as far as possible everything is being made by us – even things like my watches. You may be thinking it is a Piaget – you are wrong. The Piaget costs a quarter of a million dollars. This is made by my sannyasins, and the Piaget people should be ashamed. These are not diamonds; these are just real stones, authentic stones. But with stones we can create a quarter million-dollar watch and we have not spent anything on it, almost nothing. These are stones. Our people have made my watches; they love me, they want to do everything for me.Everything, from my shoes to my hat, is made by my own people. And I love it because it has a flavor, it contains their love. If somebody asks me to sell this watch for one billion dollars, I am going to say no – not even for ten billion dollars. It is not for sale, because love is never for sale. It has no price, although it is a very cheap watch.Osho,Do all the guns and the helicopters and the sentries, do they make you feel more secure?There is no reason for me to feel insecure. I have lived my life so totally that if I die this very moment, I will not be losing anything, because tomorrow is going to be simply the same story.So I don’t need tomorrows. If they are given by existence, good; if not, I don’t need them. I have fulfilled myself. For thirty-two years I have been living a posthumous life. In these thirty-two, thirty-three years, if I was killed – and many attempts have been made on my life, but I have never felt insecure. There is no insecurity for me.When I was a professor in the university, insurance people used to come to me saying that I should get insured.I said, “That is stupid, because I never feel any insecurity. Why should I get insured?”“No,” they would say, “for your children.”I would say, “I am unmarried. Do you want me to produce children the way Jesus was produced? Just for your insurance policy, I have to produce children?”I don’t feel any insecurity. I am secure in my own inner reality because I know that there is no death, that my innermost core is eternal, so no bullet can reach. As far as my body is concerned, it is going to die someday anyway, and as there are only seven days in a week, what is the choice? Monday is as good as Saturday. I don’t think that Saturday will be better – at the weekend – or Monday will not be good because it is an office day. I don’t have any office. I am always on the weekend, so there is no problem.And these people are living with me now. There was a time – for thirty years – when I was traveling alone around India, not even a single person with me, facing hostile crowds of thousands of people. But I have never felt insecure, for the simple reason that if I am saying the truth, how long can you remain hostile?Is the watchful eye of security here to keep outsiders out, or to keep insiders in?No, the purpose of the security is just that we don’t want any nuisance. Inside there is no problem. But just two days before, two people who have been coming for ten days continuously – and because the police force, which is part of the government police, suspected them, they did not allow them in, today somehow they simply ran their car… The traffic policeman had to get to the side, because they were not going to stop. They were going full speed, and he was trying to stop them, but they were not going to stop. Now, the policeman could have fired, but my people don’t want to harm anybody, so he simply stood by the side and informed. Because it was the morning meeting time, they rushed into the temple, and started screaming and shouting. We enjoyed it – there is no problem. But then the police took them away; they could not allow us to enjoy more.But they are Oregon’s police, we don’t have anything to do with it. We don’t have a jail here in the city; we don’t have even a police station where we can keep somebody for a few hours. They were delivered to Wasco County. That is their business; they should do whatsoever they want to do. But as far as we are concerned, we enjoyed the scene. These people think they are Christians and they had come to save my people – they were saviors!Jesus has given such rotten ideas to people, that if I get this man I’m not going to hit him on one cheek, because he will offer the other. Why waste time? I’m going to hit him on both his cheeks and ask him, “Where is your third cheek? Give it to me!” Jesus has given an ideology to people who have been for centuries behaving madly – neurotics, psychotics. They have murdered millions of people, burned thousands of women alive, and they cannot even allow us if we don’t want to be saved!Is it compulsory to be saved? And particularly as we are already saved, we have told them, “We are already saved, go and find people somewhere who are not yet saved.” But they had come to save us. And do you think shouting and screaming is going to convince anybody? Yes, it will convince people that you are simply nuts.So those guards are simply to keep the nuisance out. Inside there is no problem at all. And even then it rarely happens, because these Oregonians are such cowards that they don’t even come to create a nuisance. They just go on gossiping everywhere, from the streets to their assembly – they go on talking about us. Nobody knows exactly what we are, what we stand for.Just a few days ago, there was a professor from a California university on television. He is thought to be an expert on cults. What kind of expert is he? He has never been here – so close. And he is talking about me, condemning me. He knows nothing about me, he knows nothing about this commune. I have sent a challenge to him: that he can come, and I am ready to discuss with him. How much religion does he know, I would like to know. And what kind of expert is he? That too, I have to see. I know these experts, these professors, who just collect knowledge sitting in a library. That is not knowledge – that is all bullshit.Osho,One of the things that has gotten spectacular coverage from the press is the sexual activities of Rajneeshees. What kinds of sexual practices are people encouraged to participate in?Nobody is told to participate in any sexual practice. Sex is something natural, you need not learn about it. You don’t have to go to school to learn about sex. People know already what to do and they do it. In fact, only here are they naturally free to do whatsoever they feel like doing.Everywhere else they are repressed. And because they are repressed by Christianity, by Hinduism, by Buddhism, by all kinds of ideologies, their repression sooner or later expresses in some perverted way. They become homosexuals, lesbians, masturbators, even making love to animals – and this is the result of your religions. Because of all these perversions, a greater danger than nuclear weapons is now facing humanity, which is AIDS. It is a religious disease. All the religions have contributed to it by enforcing celibacy on people.Celibacy is unnatural. Forcing monks to live in one monastery and nuns to live in another, and with no way for men and women to meet each other – so what you expect? Homosexuality was absolutely predictable, and out of homosexuality, the ultimate is AIDS. Now it is spreading like wildfire, and nobody seems to know what to do to prevent it.Nothing is being done anywhere in the world, except in this commune. All our sannyasins went immediately for tests, because it is a question of the whole commune: if one person has it, he can infect the whole commune. And infection does not need actual sexual intercourse, just kissing. Saliva is a carrier. A woman is crying and weeping and you console her… Now, just think of Jesus’ sentence again: “Blessed are those who mourn.” But if God tries to wash their tears and console them, he may get AIDS, because tears carry the virus. Any liquid coming out of your body has the possibility of carrying the disease. It is a strange disease. Who is responsible for it? It is spreading and nobody knows what to do, and nobody wants to do anything.But we have done; we have taken all the precautions. All our sannyasins have been tested, and only two persons have been found positive. Those two people are living in the most beautiful house that we have, in the most scenic place, by the lake. All that is necessary to them is provided – the best we can do, better than we are doing for other sannyasins – because those people are not going to live much longer, at the most two years. That is the maximum. In fact, they are not going to live more than six or eight months, because there is no cure for it. But we have segregated them, put them separate, with all facilities and whatever they need, and with all respect because they are victims – victims of popes, victims of messiahs, victims of prophets. Those poor people are suffering because of Moses and Jesus and Abraham, Mohammed and Buddha. Anywhere else they would be condemned.So, a problem has arisen around the world: nobody wants to be tested because who knows, he may have the disease. And if the society comes to know, then even your own family will not accept you in the house: “Just pack your luggage and get lost!” All those people who had said they love you, all those people who had said they would sacrifice their life for you – your wife, your children, your parents – they will be unanimous, “Just get lost, don’t enter the house.” Your friends will turn into enemies. You will be thrown out of your job. You will become a sub-human person. You will lose all your dignity, all your respect, all your integrity, and you will feel condemned.So information is prevented. If somebody is found with AIDS, he bribes the physician to keep it to himself: “Don’t tell anybody. Otherwise, before AIDS kills me, the people will kill me.” There are millions of people with the disease already around the earth. But governments are also repressing the information, because they don’t want to be condemned around the world that their country has AIDS. That means their country has homosexuality, lesbianism, sadism; that their country is a perverted, sexual place. No government wants that to be known. No religion wants people to come to know how many AIDS sufferers are in the church or in the synagogue.But it is a very dangerous thing not to make everybody aware who is carrying the disease, because that is the only way to prevent it. The person who is already sick cannot be saved, so make his life as beautiful as possible for the few months he is going to live, and don’t condemn him.Those two sannyasins are here with no condemnation, with all the respect of the community, with all that we can provide for them. And they are resting, meditating. If they can die in deep meditation then perhaps AIDS has not done them any harm. Perhaps it has proved a blessing in disguise. For six or eight months they will be just meditating by the side of the lake, under the trees, under the moon. They may not ever have had that much time just for meditation, completely free of all responsibility.Our effort is to change every misfortune into a blessing, and we are grateful to those two people because they did not resist, did not protest that they did not want to be tested. In the outside world people are not willing to be tested; they are afraid of the test. If the test comes and proves them to have AIDS, they are gone. So in the outside world nothing is being said. The pope is silent about AIDS – and he is not a silent person.Right now he is visiting South Africa, which has the fastest rate of population growth, which is already over-populated and suffering, starving. The government is of white people, and the white people are only fifteen percent of the population. They are ruling over the eighty-five percent black people. They have encroached on every valuable thing that is in South Africa – all the gold mines, silver mines, diamond mines; everything that is valuable is in the hands of the fifteen percent. The eighty-five percent exist just like slaves. They don’t even have the right to vote: only the fifteen percent white people have the vote.The pope is visiting South Africa and is teaching those poor South Africans, “Don’t use birth control methods, don’t use abortion; it is against God, and is a great sin.” They are dying – overpopulated, hungry, starving – and this Polack comes there to teach them against birth control.And in South Africa AIDS is one of the major problems right now. More blacks have been found to suffer from AIDS than white people. Perhaps it has something to do with their different physiology – they have a little different physiology – or perhaps it has to do something with the climate.Even three monkeys in South Africa have been found to have AIDS. The scientists who have found these monkeys are all men, so naturally they concluded that AIDS has arisen from monkeys. I could not believe it. When I received the information I said that man is so chauvinistic, macho. The simple conclusion would have been that these three poor monkeys have received AIDS from man, because in Africa – or in forests or mountains where a woman is not available – men are known to make love to animals. And monkeys have the same physiology, so it is easier to make love to monkeys than to any other animal, they are your cousins. I say confidently that those monkeys have been given AIDS by man, not vice versa.No wild animal has been known up to now to be homosexual. But in zoos it happens: if females are not available, then monkeys start becoming homosexual, other animals start becoming homosexual. Our monasteries are zoos, our university hostels and colleges are zoos. Don’t allow man and woman together, and you are going to create perversions in their minds. Then those people will suffer because of your strange doctrines, strange ideas.Now, it is simply lunatic to teach people celibacy. It is almost like saying to people to control pissing. And if somebody starts that movement, you should not be amazed, he will find followers! But they will all be hypocrites – they will piss somewhere, in some way, but they will keep up the hypocrisy that they never piss.I have heard that two small children – one a little older, six years old, the other smaller, five years old… A few monks, Christian monks, were passing on the street. The smaller boy asked, “I am always puzzled. Do you know, can you tell me something? What is the difference between a man and a monk?”The other one said, “I don’t know exactly, but I have heard the older boys say that the difference between a man and a monk is very small.”The little boy said, “Please explain to me what little difference.”“The little difference is that the monks use their ding-dong only for pissing.”The little boy said, “I don’t understand.”The older one said, “I don’t understand either, but this is what I have heard from older boys. Boys who are old enough, perhaps they know. It is mysterious.”You cannot use your ding-dong only for pissing. No, the ding-dong is made for two things: ding and dong.Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Prem Prabhati,Munich, GermanyOsho,I'm grateful that I can ask you some questions about Osho Therapy because I'm going to write a book about it.I'd like to know how your approach differs from all the former therapies like the Freudian psychoanalytic approach, the humanistic and the growth groups.It is basically and totally different from any other therapy that has existed. The most fundamental difference is that all those therapies are for sick people, those who are not well mentally. Those therapies make an effort to put the people back into their normal life; the therapies serve the old rotten society. The society drives people mad, crazy, schizophrenic. The therapies put them back into their normal, average mind so they can function again in the old pattern – where they had become incapable of functioning.So, all the therapies – Freudian or Jungian or Adlerian – their function is the same as was the function of the priest in the past. These are the priests of a sophisticated twentieth century, but their function is the same. It is against revolution, against change.Rather than seeing why this society goes on creating sick people… No animal is sick in that way. Why does human society goes on making schizophrenic people? Why are there so many rapes? Why are there so many people burdened with guilt? Why are there so many murders, suicides? And even if a person somehow manages to live normally, deep down nobody is normal. They all have nightmares, they all have fear, they all have greed, they all feel insecure. Those therapies are in the service of the society that drives people nuts.My basic difference is that I am trying to help the people understand that they are not responsible for their mind sickness; they are victims. My function is not to make then normal so that they can go back to the church, and back to the office, and back to the same wife, and back to the same world. No, my function is to give them a fresh individuality, a rebellious intelligence, a perception in which they can see that the society has manipulated them, exploited them, almost killed them. This is the first part of my therapy: the person should be made aware that it is the society that is sick, and he is only a victim.Secondly, we have to make the person aware that he is a victim because he is more intelligent than other people. Idiots don’t go crazy, they have nothing to go crazy: to have a sick mind, first you need to have a mind. The normal, average people who are thought to be mentally healthy are really intellectually retarded. Even if they want to go mad they cannot. Madness needs some intelligence.It is not a coincidence that all the great painters, poets, scientists, musicians – people who have touched the highest peak of intelligence in some dimension – most of them go mad, most of them commit suicide. Strange! We have created really a strange world where idiots are normal and geniuses are abnormal; where idiots don’t go mad, where geniuses go mad, suffer all kinds of mental torture. And the old therapies try to put them back, to force them back into the ordinary retarded humanity.Of course they are a minority, so naturally they think something is wrong with them. Among millions of people who are retarded, to be intelligent is really unsafe. It is insecure, it is dangerous. Where people are living below the mental age of thirteen – that is the mental age of the masses – to have more intelligence than them is going to create trouble for you. They are the society, you are just an individual – helpless.My effort is to make these people aware that their sickness is significant. They need not feel embarrassed; they should really rejoice, because they have intelligence – enough intelligence, more intelligence than the ordinary, normal people. That’s why they are having trouble. They cannot adjust with the society; they feel misfitting everywhere. That’s what gives people the idea that something is wrong with them.The reality is just the opposite. They are the right people, but they are in a very small minority. The majority is stupid but it is the majority, and your so-called therapists are simply serving the vested interests.So, my effort is to give you confidence that your sickness is symbolic, that you don’t have a retarded mind, that you should not feel bad about it. In fact, you should feel grateful to existence because you have raised questions which ordinary people don’t raise. You have created problems in your life which ordinary people don’t create. And because you did not fit with the majority, the masses, the crowd, they denounced you as mad.The Freudians and the Jungians and the Adlerians all accept that idea that you are mad and you need treatment. And their whole treatment is bringing you down to the lowest common denominator in society.My effort is just the opposite: first to make you feel relaxed about your situation; to make you recognize that the society is sick, not you; that the society needs a change, a revolution, not you. If you do not fit with the society, the reason is not that you are mad. The reason is that you have enough intelligence that you cannot fit with all these retarded people.Secondly – which is even more important – my therapy helps you first to regain your confidence, your self-respect, the understanding that nothing is wrong with you; but this is only the groundwork. Then the real work starts. Once you are free from all the ideas that the masses have given to you, the psychologists have given to you – everybody around you has forced you to believe that something is wrong with you; first we have to clean all that nonsense and make you self-respectful. Then begins the real work: meditation. Therapy is only preparing the ground. It is not enough; it is just to undo what the society has done to you. Once it is undone, once you are unburdened, then the real work begins – the exploration into your own interiority.So, therapy, according to me is only a groundwork for creating the space and the urge to explore your reality. All those therapists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists have nothing to do with meditation. They are not there to help you to grow. In fact, they are there to cut as many branches from you as possible – your height, your growth – so you become similar to other pygmies. And because you accept the ideas of the common mass, you allow them to cut your intelligence, to destroy your questioning, to hinder any possibility of going deeper than the ordinary people.My work is first to unburden you, and then to give you the vision, the perception that this is not the end. Just not to be sick cannot be the end. Just not to be sick is not enough. You have to be psychologically healthy, whole. And unless you come to self-realization the work is unfinished.Therapy stops at the point where you have become normal again, you have been dragged back. My work respects your sickness because it reflects the whole of society. You became a victim of it because you were more vulnerable, more open, more available, so you have been wounded from every side. You were more innocent and you were intelligent enough not to participate in superstitions, in idiotic ideologies. All this has become your condemnation.Religions used to send you to hell. Now they have become outdated; nobody bothers much about hell. In fact, nobody believes in it. Now you are being sent to the couch of the psychoanalyst, which is a constant torture for years and years. In fact, there is not a single human being who has been totally psychoanalyzed. A strange kind of science you have! It takes seven years, nine years, ten years – still you are not fully analyzed, still the problems are there. Perhaps you have become more accepting of them, perhaps you have become aware not to express them in society, not to behave in such a way that people think you are strange. They have just taught you adjustment, and that takes years and thousands of dollars – just to be adjusted to idiots.My effort is to give you back your individuality. And it is your individuality which has rebelled against the social norms. It is your individuality – a part of it – which refused to be destroyed. My function is to discover your whole revolutionary individuality, your uniqueness. I am not here to make you a cog in the wheel of this big civilization and culture that we have been creating for millions of years. We have ended by making the whole earth a madhouse.There is a story by Kahlil Gibran: One of his friends went mad. He could not believe it, because that man was so intelligent, and he has been put into a madhouse. Gibran went to meet him; he was feeling very sad and sorry for him.The friend was sitting on a bench under a tree in the garden of the madhouse. Gibran approached him, wanted to show his sympathy. The man started laughing.Gibran said, “So it seems you have really gone mad. I am showing sympathy, compassion, my friendship, and you are laughing!”The friend said, “I have to laugh, because those people who are really mad cannot convince me just because they are in the majority, that I am mad. In fact, since I have been in the madhouse I am immensely happy, because I have left the madhouse outside and here I can live as sanely as I want. Nobody is going to interfere. You should not feel sorry for me; I feel sorry for you. What the hell are you doing outside there in that great madhouse? Why don’t you come here and live with me?”Kahlil Gibran was shocked, but a great question arose in his mind: “Perhaps the man is right?”To me there is no perhaps. That man is right.So, my therapy is a search to find your individuality, its uniqueness. And then once you are freed from the idea that you are sick, there opens a new dimension. You can grow into being more conscious, and ultimately enlightened.So, I use your sickness for your ultimate health, wholeness. About that your therapists are completely unaware. They are even unaware of what they are doing; they are simply serving the politicians, the religions, the vested interests. They are not helping you. They are part of the status quo.My therapists are not part of the status quo. My therapists are basically people who are helping you to get rid of all those ideas that people have forced into your mind that something is wrong with you. Once you are completely free of that garbage, meditation becomes simple, very spontaneous. Here, you drop out of the rotten society and you are available to the whole existence. Once you start getting roots and centered, meditations are very easy and they can lead you to the ultimate experience of life.Those normal people never attain to that experience. They don’t have even the intelligence to become sick. It is just like a dead man cannot fall sick – or do you think a dead man can fall sick? A dead man is always healthy; there is no way to make him sick. Even if you inject him and put poison into him, there is no way – he will remain perfectly healthy.It is life that is fragile and can be easily made sick, destroyed. Intelligence is even more fragile. If life is the tree, then intelligence is the flower – even more fragile; more colorful, more alive, more expressive, more poetic – but more fragile.And enlightenment is the ultimate in fragility. It is just like the fragrance, you cannot even catch hold of it. You can feel its presence, you can smell its existence, but there is no way to have it in your fist.So, my therapy is fundamentally different. Its purpose is different, its approach is different. The other therapies respect the society and condemn the poor individual. I respect the individual and I condemn the mob, because the mass of people has no soul in it. It is just a big crowd of almost-dead people who don’t know what life is, and who will never know what life is.One has to look into people like Vincent van Gogh. Why did a man who could produce such immensely significant paintings go mad? In my opinion he never went mad. But according to everybody who knew him, he was mad. He was mad because he never worked, he never got well educated. He was mad because his family persisted, “Get educated” – they wanted to make him a priest – and he refused. “That job is respectable, that job is financially the best, it is powerful.”But he refused, and he said, “I want to become a painter.”The family simply said, “If you want to become a painter you must be mad, because what are you going to gain out of your paintings? If you want to become a painter, then we will have nothing to do with you. Just leave us alone, don’t bother us anymore.”Hungry, without money – sometimes a few friends helped, but who was going to help him for long? And once a friend who had helped him saw his paintings, he stopped helping him because those paintings were not understandable. They were as mysterious as existence itself. But who was there to appreciate them?His younger brother was very sad for him because he had a certain understanding about paintings. He used to work as a salesman for a big firm which was selling all kinds of art pieces, including paintings. He could understand a little bit. He had known the best paintings in the shop, he had seen the best sculptures. He had some sense and sensitivity.So he used to send him just enough money so that he could eat two meals every day. And what would van Gogh do? – four days out of seven he would eat, and three days he would save the money to purchase canvases, colors. So he was eating only on alternate days.Naturally, anybody would think this man is mad; he is starving but he continues to paint. And he is certainly insane, because he could not sell a single painting his whole life. Nobody was ready to give a single cent.His brother – that younger brother who was supporting him – was very sad that he could not have even the consolation that somebody had purchased a painting; that at least somebody had come and appreciated. So he asked a friend, gave him money and told him, “Go to van Gogh and purchase a painting from him. I want to give my brother a little bit of consolation that at least there is one man who understands and is ready to pay.”The man went. He had no sense of art, but he said to van Gogh, “I would like to purchase a painting.” Van Gogh could not believe it. Tears came to his eyes.He said, “You are welcome, come inside and look. I have many paintings. Whichever you want you can take, and whatever you want to pay for it is more than enough. That you have come to purchase a painting is enough reward for me.”The man said, “I am not interested in paintings. You can give me any, and here is the money.”You can understand the shock of the man. His tears dried. He could not believe it. It was a simple, logical corollary. He said, “You must have been sent by my brother. Take this money back. And even if you bring millions of dollars, I am not going to sell any of the paintings to you. I will throw those paintings out and give them to beggars, but not to you. Just get out of the house.”The man could not believe it. He said, “I am giving you money.”Van Gogh said, “You are giving me money, but I can see that you don’t have any perception, any idea, any sensitivity for art. This must be my younger brother’s work.”The man said, “It is strange that you figured it out so quickly. Yes, your brother has sent me and he has given the money. He wanted to give you some consolation. But you are a strange man.”Now, that man must think van Gogh insane. He was not a very beautiful man, not even homely. He was a coal miner’s son; he had been brought up in poverty, in sickness, and he was almost starving. But his devotion to painting was religious. I call this quality religiousness. He never went to any church, he never bothered about any God, he never read any holy book, but he was a religious man. The way he painted, the way he sacrificed his life in colors, in canvases – it is something that can only be called religious. There is no other word to explain it.No woman ever loved him. Again, his brother tried a prostitute, gave her money and said, “Just once in his life he should have the satisfaction that some woman wanted him.”The prostitute was willing. There was no question: it was a simple business. She said, “You can send him. Give me the money in advance and you can send your brother.”He tried to explain to the prostitute, “My brother has never known any woman because no woman will love him. He is not beautiful. Please try to help him so that he forgets that he is ugly, so that he forgets that nobody loves him.”The woman said, “Don’t worry, this is our profession. There is no need to tell me – I know my profession perfectly well. Just send your brother.”Vincent van Gogh was told by his brother, “A woman has approached me. She is very shy – she loves you but she cannot say it to you. She sees you painting on the beach, in the forest. She loves your paintings, she loves you even more.”Van Gogh could not believe it. He said, “Is it another trick? Why are you after me? Because it hurts – you sent that man to purchase a painting. I understand your love for me, but you don’t see how wounded I felt. That man said, ‘Give me anything – anything will do. Just take this money, don’t waste my time.’”His brother said, “No, I have nothing to do with it. The woman approached me.”So Vincent van Gogh went to the prostitute, and of course as a professional she welcomed him. He could not believe it – all that welcome and warmth and love. He asked the woman, “Do you really love me? – because as far as I know, everybody says I am ugly. And I know it too, because I can see in the mirror, I am ugly. So what is impressive to you?”The woman said, just laughingly, playing with his earlobes, “I love your ears, they are unique. I have seen many men…” And it was true, he had very long ears.If he had been born in India the Jainas would have accepted him as their tirthankara, just because of his long ears. That is one of the qualifications of a tirthankara, a Jaina prophet: his earlobes should touch his shoulders. He would have been accepted by Buddhists as another Buddha; they have the same condition – earlobes. But he was born in a place where nobody would bother about his ears.The woman could not find anything else to appreciate so she said, “You have unique ears.” And it was true.He said, “You like them?”She said, “I like them very much.”He said, “Then wait, I will come back within half an hour.” And he cut off his ear, packed it in a box, rushed back with blood flowing all over him, and gave the ear to the woman.He said, “Nobody has ever appreciated anything in me, you are the only one. Now I present this ear to you.”The woman was shocked: certainly the man was insane. And immediately the neighborhood became aware that he was bleeding and he had cut off his ear. They reported it to the police and he was forced into a mental asylum.He lived there for one year, and in that year he painted his best paintings. To the whole world he was mad; to the psychiatrist, the psychoanalyst, the therapist who was treating him, he was mad. If they had succeeded in treating him he would have been just a coal miner – back to the society he belonged in. But they could not succeed. Fortunately, they could not succeed with van Gogh. He went on painting the way he wanted. All his paintings were thought to be insane, and now each of his painting is worth millions of dollars.If this man had come to my therapies, we would have made a Gautam Buddha out of him – not only because of his ears. He had the intelligence, the sensitivity; he just needed support, appreciation. He just he needed recognition, and immediately he would have become rooted, centered. And he had the capacity to grow as far as anybody can grow, but his whole life was tragic.He was thrown out of the mental asylum because they could not do anything. He remained the same. He was becoming unnecessarily a burden on them: they had to purchase canvases, colors, paints, brushes, and the man was not changing a single bit. All their therapeutic work was useless.Once out of the madhouse, he committed suicide. He wrote in his last letter to his brother, “I don’t see that there is any more that I can do. I have painted whatever I wanted to paint. Particularly this year in the madhouse has been of great significance. I always wanted to paint the sun as nobody has ever painted it, and I have succeeded. Now there is nothing else, so why unnecessarily suffer, starve, be condemned by everybody? I am a misfit. It is better to rest in death.”Now, this man was not mad; he was in a mad world. He did not belong to this world. And I talked about van Gogh because that is the case with all artists, all poets, all people of intelligence, creativity, art, dance, music, sculpture. That is the case all over the world. My therapies will help them immensely. Freud cannot do anything for them; at the most he can reduce them so that Vincent van Gogh becomes a coal miner, Picasso becomes a clerk in a station. That is sanity.These people who are thought to be insane – I have been to many insane asylums and the people who are thought to be mad are just different from the masses – that’s all. And they have more energy which needs expression. They cannot fit anywhere because they have a certain solid individuality. And they persist in remaining themselves; they have a certain rebelliousness in them. Even if they are condemned by the whole world they want to remain themselves.My therapies are to help the misfit people in society to recognize that they are welcome in my commune. Here, nobody can manage to be a misfit, because everybody is a misfit. This is a society of people who don’t fit, so to be a misfit is just normal.And everybody respects the other’s individuality. If it does not suit me, that is my problem, but I am not going to dump it on the other person. It is not his problem, it is my problem. If I cannot understand his painting, that does not make him insane, it simply means that I don’t have a sensitivity for painting. If I cannot understand his music, that means I don’t have an ear for music.Just the opposite is happening in society; if you cannot understand somebody’s music, he is mad. And because you are the majority, the poor fellow starts feeling that perhaps he is mad, because everybody else agrees on his madness. Once a man accepts the idea that he is mad, insane, below normal, he has almost committed suicide.So I have to drag these people back to life – and not only back to life but to a higher life, to a better life, to a more intense life. They are capable of it; that’s what has driven them mad in the first place.So, therapy is the groundwork, and then comes meditation. Once a deep acceptance has come to you, then you can grow; you are nourished. And that’s why I wanted to create communes around the world, because even if a person goes through therapies and then back to the society, it will disturb him. In fact, he needs a totally new society. He needs people around him who love him just for the sake of love; there is no other reason. They may not understand his paintings, but they respect his creativity. They are not going to condemn him.On the contrary, if they are interested they will learn how to appreciate painting, music, poetry. If I cannot understand your language, that does not mean you are mad. That simply means I don’t know that language. And if I am interested, I should learn the language. But just the opposite is happening all over the world: if people cannot understand your language, you are mad. You have to be forced to forget your language. You have to be forced to learn their language. And this is very destructive.I don’t accept your therapists; even Freud, Jung and Adler were not completely psychoanalyzed. Freud was afraid his whole life. Many times his disciples – whom he had analyzed – wanted to analyze him. He refused. He knew perfectly well that being analyzed would expose him, he would have to tell all his eccentric, stupid dreams. Then who is going to accept him as the greatest psychoanalyst? He was just an ordinary man like everybody else. He would have to accept that he is afraid of death – so much so that even the mention of the word death used to give him a fit; he would become unconscious. He was very much afraid of ghosts – and he is the founder of psychoanalysis.He needs to come here, wherever he is. He needs to go through the therapies available here. And he would have nothing to be afraid of because we do not condemn anything. If you have a nightmare it is perfectly good; human beings have nightmares. If you have a sexual dream it is just natural; you are only a victim of thousands of years of religious condemnation of sex.I have been to aboriginal societies in India: strange – rarely does a person say that he has dreams. In an aboriginal society they don’t have dreams. Sigmund Freud would have completely freaked out that there are people who don’t have dreams. They don’t repress anything, so there is nothing left to dream about. They do whatsoever is natural. For dreams to exist, repression is an absolute necessity.For example, if you want to have a dream about food, fast and you will have dreams about great, delicious plates, a Chinese restaurant. Your whole night will be just feast upon feast. But fasting is absolutely necessary. If you don’t fast, then you cannot dream of feasting. And the same is true about everything: if people have sexual freedom, nobody is going to dream about sex. For what? – he knows the experience, he is free to have it as much as he wants. There is nothing hanging over in his head.But all the religions have repressed sex and filled people’s dreams with sexuality. Then a man like Freud came who started analyzing the dreams. It is such a vicious circle. You create the whole thing, then there are victims; then you need doctors, therapists, psychoanalysts to interpret those dreams. And a dream is a thing that you can interpret in as many ways you want.To Freud, every dream ultimately becomes a sexual dream. Whatever you dream does not matter, he will find that it is sexual. If you go to Adler with the same dream, he is bound to find that it is will-to-power; it is ego, not sex. If you go to Jung, it is neither ego nor sex. He will find some esoteric explanation, perhaps in your past lives, in some mythologies. It is such a stupid situation that nobody bothers about these psychoanalysts. A single dream in the hands of different psychologists, psychotherapists, starts having different colors.My reading is that Freud is sexually repressed, that’s why he finds sex in every dream of a person. The man is a poor victim of analysis. Adler is a very egoistic person and wants to become as powerful as possible. He projects his mind upon some poor person. Jung is esoteric, mythological, believes in fictions; he projects his fictions upon you. These three have destroyed many people’s lives, and their disciples are still doing the same all over the world.My therapists are on a totally different trip. They have to clean your mind of all the unnecessary ideas that have been imposed by the society, its psychoanalysts, its doctors, its so-called wise men. They want you to become again a simple, innocent child, as you were born. A rebirth – that is the work of my therapy.Once I have got the innocent child, then the work of therapy is finished. Then the work of meditation starts. Then you are healthy, whole and ready to take any quantum leap; you are ready to go into the unknown.In the East meditation has existed, but without any therapy. It was half: if you don’t clean the ground and you start sowing the seeds, your roses will be lost in the grass that will be growing there. First you have to remove all the grass and any possibility for grass to grow. Therapy is missing in the Eastern approach, that’s why enlightenment has happened only rarely, very rarely. Among millions of people, perhaps one becomes enlightened. Just the opposite should be the case: among millions of people, perhaps one should miss, because enlightenment is just a natural phenomenon.Without therapy, the East has missed much. Without meditation, the West has missed much. I am bringing the East and West together, because separately neither is going to create the whole man. Both together, in an organic unity – therapy plus meditation – are equal to religion. That is my formula.Any other questions?Osho,Yes, we all seem to be stuck about when to express and when to witness.There should be no problem about expressing and witnessing. You can do both together and you should do both together.That's difficult.Just a little bit difficult in the beginning, but immensely paying. And it is only a question of a little effort. Otherwise, if you try only to be a witness, you will be repressing. What will happen to your expression? And that repression has been a problem for the whole of humanity. So now you will be using witnessing as a method to repress. The result will be the same as has been out of all repression. If you express and forget the witness, there is not going to be any growth of your consciousness. Everybody is doing that. No, you have to do both together. And they can be done both together.For example, I am speaking to you – this is expression – but deep within me there is my witness, watching me saying something to you, watching you, watching every expression on your face, in your eyes. And I don’t see that there is any contradiction.The idea of contradiction has been created by cunning people. So it just needs a little effort. Try with very small things. For example, you are cleaning the floor: now, it is not much of a great creative activity – why can you not witness too? You are walking, a morning walk in the hills – why can’t you watch yourself walking? What is the problem? Walking is such a simple exercise that the body is doing it, and you can remain centered inside and you can watch each step.If you ever go to India, go to the place where Buddha became enlightened. Now there stands a temple in his memory, the bo tree under which he became enlightened – it is not the same but it belongs to the same bo tree. Bo trees have one thing very special: their roots grow down from their branches. So there are bo trees which are thousands of years old. Perhaps the original has died, but its descendants…In India, the original bo tree was burned by Hindus. But before it was burned – long before that – Ashoka, one of the emperors of India, had sent branches of the bo tree to all the Buddhist countries. So when the bo tree was burned, a branch from Ceylon – where the original bo tree’s branch had become a big, huge tree – a branch was brought from there. So in a way it is the same tree, the same juice.Just by the side of the tree is a small path; small stones indicate where his feet must have touched. That was Buddha’s way of meditating: walking one hour, walking continuously for one hour with full awareness; then one hour sitting under the tree doing nothing, simply watching whatever is happening inside. A thought moves on the screen of the mind, a feeling comes, or a bird suddenly starts singing and the sound comes to you, or the wind blows and in the tree its music is created, its whisper – anything that is happening around you, outside or inside, you have just to be a witness.He had chosen both. Witnessing when you are not doing anything is simple, but once you know the taste of witnessing, then you can start doing small things like walking. There is no need to get lost into that activity. Then you can go to more complex activities: painting or playing on a guitar or dancing. Then any activity can be done, and you will be immensely surprised that all activities are the same. Whether you are washing the floor, walking or playing music, the basic methodology is the same, that you remain a witness at the same time.The witness need not be lost in the activity. And once you know that the witness is totally a watcher upon the hills, and every activity is there in the valley, far far away from you, then no activity touches you. Then your activities start changing their nature, their quality, because a witness brings a radical change in you. You cannot kill; your witness will not allow you to do that. You cannot be jealous; before the fire of your witnessing, all jealousies, greed, anger, hatred will simply be burned.According to me, whatsoever witnessing allows you to do is good. That is my criterion of good. And whatsoever your witness destroys and does not allow you, is bad.So basically, reduced to the simple formula, there is no need to create a great theology of what is right and what is wrong and what is moral and what is immoral. I give you a simple key, a master key: Just witness your activity. If it is not good, it will fall of its own accord. The witness will not allow it to happen. Not that it will interfere, not that it will stop it; no, just its presence is enough. Anything wrong is impossible. And whatever is possible is right.So I don’t give you detailed disciplines, “Do this, don’t do this,” because something may be moral in one situation and immoral in another situation. Something may be good today, may not be good tomorrow. Life is continuously changing, it is a flux. Who knows what turn the river of life will take tomorrow? So I don’t give you any detailed discipline, because every detailed discipline has made man a slave. He has to follow a certain doctrine, knowing perfectly well that it is against his consciousness, against his intelligence, against the situation – but what to do? – he has taken a vow to follow the doctrine.My sannyasins don’t have any discipline, no law to follow, nothing. They just have to be witnesses and then they are free. Their witnessing will decide what is right and what is wrong. And once you are a witness you cannot do wrong; it is just not in the nature of witnessing. So a simple formula of witnessing changes your whole life, your whole perspective. Your way of seeing things, doings, actions, everything will be changed without any effort to change it. And that is where beauty lies.If somebody tries, as Mahatma Gandhi was continuously trying, to be nonviolent – I wrote him a letter. I was very young, “Your very effort of continuously trying to be nonviolent shows one thing, that you are a violent man. Otherwise why are you making that effort?”If somebody is continuously making an effort not to steal, what will the conclusion be? That man is a thief. He is trying hard not to do it, but the desire to do it is there. And the more he is trying not to do it means that the desire is not weak, it is very strong. That’s why stronger effort is needed to repress it. All your saints have been doing that: forcing themselves to be celibate, making every effort, strenuously doing everything that other idiots have told them.For example, in India all the saints will tell you that if you want to remain a celibate, then take a cold bath before sunrise. Food – if you can live only on milk, then you will be more successful in your celibacy. Sleep as little as possible. Now, all these three things are dangerous.I was talking to one of the so-called saints. He had become world famous – Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh, India – he had followers around the world, and those were his teachings.I asked him, because he had been a medical doctor before he became a Hindu monk and renounced the world, I asked him, “Do you realize what you are teaching? Because a cold bath makes a man more sexual; have a good, ice-cold bath and after that you would like to make love.“Living just on milk you will be more sexual than ever, because in the whole kingdom of animals, it is only man who drinks milk his whole life. Other animals drink milk only in their childhood for a few months, maybe for a few years. But you will not find a bull milking a cow – there is no need.“So the first thing,” I told him, “you are teaching something unnatural. A child needs food – liquid, easily digestible. He is not doing anything, so he has to live on milk. And milk fulfills almost all his needs. It is wholesome food.“But the moment he starts getting a little bigger, and is capable of eating solid things and is able to digest them, then slowly milk should disappear out of his diet. It is dangerous because it is unnatural – one thing. It is also dangerous because a human child needs the milk of a human mother; because that is what he needs. Drinking the milk from a cow will give you the sexuality of a bull, because that cow was never made for you.”And I said to him, “You are a medical man, you can understand that it was not made for man, it was made for the bull – and it will make you a bull. And celibacy will become more difficult.“Then you suggest sleeping as little as possible. What is the fear of sleep? The fear is, because you are repressing sex, in sleep there will be dreams, and they will be sexual. So reduce sleep. But reducing the sleep means the man will be sleepy the whole day.”That’s what the saints – you will find it everywhere in India, the whole day. This is a strange kind of spirituality. But once you get caught in any idea which is unnatural, and if it has been traditionally there for thousands of years, you never inquire.Why are so many people sexually repressed? And what is their sexual repression doing to them? It is making them perverts, making them homosexuals, making them make love to animals. All kinds of perversions have ended in the disease AIDS.I call AIDS a religious disease: religions are responsible for it. Every government should make a law against celibacy, that anybody trying to be celibate should be imprisoned immediately – and imprisoned with women, otherwise the jail is also a monastery; women are separate, men are separate. So what the monastery does, the jail does also, the army does, and hostels, universities.When I became a teacher in the university, the first thing I did – because as I entered the class, I saw the girls sitting in this corner, four or five empty rows just in front of me, and the boys sitting in the other corner. I said, “Who am I going to teach – these tables and chairs? And what kind of nonsense is this? Who told you to sit like this? Just get mixed and be in front of me.”They hesitated. They had never heard a teacher telling them to mix. I said, “Get mixed immediately, otherwise I am going to report to the vice chancellor that something absolutely unnatural, unpsychological is happening.”Slowly, hesitantly… I said, “Don’t hesitate! Just move and get mixed. Every day in my class you cannot sit separately. And I don’t mind if you try to touch the girl, or the girl tries to pull your shirt. Whatever is natural is accepted by me, so I don’t want you to sit there frozen, shrunken. That is not going to happen in my class. Enjoy being together.“I know you have been throwing slips of paper, stones, letters. There is no need; just sit by her side, give the letter to the girl, or whatever you want to do – because in fact you are all sexually mature, you should do something. And you are just studying philosophy! You are absolutely insane. This is the time to study philosophy? This is the time to go out and make love. Philosophy is for old age, when you cannot do anything else – you can study philosophy then.”They were all so afraid. Slowly, slowly they relaxed, but other classes started feeling jealous of them. Other professors started reporting to the vice chancellor, “This man is dangerous. He is allowing boys and girls to do the things which we have all been prohibiting. Rather than stopping them getting into contact with each other, he is helping them. He says, ‘If you don’t know how to write a love letter, come to me. I will teach you. Philosophy is secondary – it is not much, we will finish the two years’ course in six months. The remaining one year and six months, enjoy, dance, sing – don’t be worried.’”The vice chancellor finally had to call me, and he said, “I have heard all these things. What do you say?”I said, “You must have been a student in the university.”He said, “Yes, I have been. Otherwise how could I be the vice chancellor?”I said, “Then just go back a little and remember those days when girls were sitting far away and you were sitting far away, what was going on in your mind?”He said, “You seem to be a strange fellow. I have asked you to come because I want to inquire about something.”I said, “That we’ll take later on. First answer my question, and be sincere. Otherwise I will give you an open challenge tomorrow before the whole university, all the professors, all the students. We can discuss it and let them vote.”He said, “Don’t get excited. Perhaps you are right. I remember – I am now an old man, and I hope that you will not say this to anybody – I was thinking of the girls. I was not listening to the professor; nobody was listening to the professor. The girls were throwing chits, we were throwing chits, letters were being exchanged.”Then I said, “Can I go?”He said, “Of course. Simply go and do whatsoever you want, but I don’t want a public encounter with you. I know you will win it. You are right, but I am a poor fellow, I have to look after my post. If I start doing such a thing, the government will throw me out of this vice chancellorship.”I said, “I am not interested in your vice chancellorship. Remain vice chancellor, but remember, never call me again – because many complaints will come, but I make it clear to you right now that every time I will be right.”He said, “I have understood.”Then students – boys and girls who were not students of my subject – started asking me, “Can we also come?”I said, “Philosophy has never been so juicy. Come! Everybody is welcome. I never take attendance: every month, when the attendance register has to go back, I just go…absent, present, absent, present. I just have to remember that everybody gets more than seventy-five percent present, so they can go to the examination. I don’t bother. So you can come.”My classes were overpopulated, people were sitting at the windows. But they were really expected to be in some other class.Then complaints came again, and the vice chancellor said, “Don’t bring any complaint about that man. It is your problem if people are not coming to your class. What can I do? What can he do if they prefer him? And they are not students of philosophy, but they don’t want to come to your history, your economics, your politics. What can I do? And that man has challenged me: ‘Never again call me in; otherwise you will have to face a public encounter.’”But so many complaints came from every department that finally he had to come. He knew that it was better not to call me; he had to come to my class. He could not believe it: in philosophy there are very few students, because philosophy is not a paying subject. But the class was overcrowded, there was not even space for him to enter. I saw him standing in the door behind the students. I told the students, “Let the vice chancellor come in. Let him also enjoy the whole scene that is happening here.”He came in. He could not believe his eyes: girls and boys were all sitting together and so joyously listening to me. Not a single disturbance, because I had prevented all the disturbances from the very root. Now, the boy was sitting by his girlfriend; there was no need to throw a stone, throw a letter. There was no need.He said, “I cannot believe that it is such a crowded class and there is pin-drop silence.”I said, “There is bound to be because there is no repression. I have told the students that when they want to go they need not ask my permission, they should simply go; when they want to come in they should simply come in, they need not ask my permission. It is none of my business whether they are here or not: ‘I enjoy teaching, I will go on teaching. If you want to sit here, sit. Otherwise get lost.’ But nobody goes away.”The vice chancellor said, “This should happen to every class. But I am not a strong man like you; I cannot say to the government that this is the way it should be.”The whole of society is trying to repress sexuality. And then perversion comes in; then perversion brings psychological problems.My therapies are just to clean. Whatever perversions have entered in, you have to be brought back to their natural source; they have to be changed into expressions, not repressions.And it is a miracle to see. When all your repressed energy becomes expressive you cannot believe that you have so much energy, and you can do so much that you can also be a creator. Right now society has played a very ugly game on human beings. It has turned them against themselves, as if there has been a teaching, “I have to put my right hand against the left hand, and I have to go on trying to win.” Who is going to win? It is my left hand, it is my right hand; they both belong to me.But one thing is certain: if I get involved in such a conflict, I will be split. That is what schizophrenia is. People’s energies have been split against themselves, so half of the person is against the other half, and they are fighting – their whole life is wasted in fighting. The same energy could have made this existence more beautiful, more creative, more relaxed, more enjoyable. There would have been more love, more laughter.My therapeutic work is to undo everything that society has done to you. The moment you are completely freed from society, that’s what I mean by sannyas: that you have dropped the prison that you have been carrying all around yourself, that you are no longer a caged bird. Although the cage was made of gold, and there was much investment in it, and it was so beautiful, a piece of art, it destroyed your freedom. It destroyed you.My work consists of bringing you out of your cages – Hindu, Christian, Jewish, communist, theist, atheist. There are so many cages of all sizes and shapes; you can choose any cage, there is no problem.Every shopkeeper who is selling cages is against me – every one, without exception – for the simple reason that I am teaching my people that cages are not the place to live. The whole sky is yours. Just open your wings and try to reach the stars.Other therapies are doing just the opposite. You are somehow trying to get out of the cage. Perhaps a part of you is already out of the cage – that’s what the society calls crazy, insane. And the work of the psychoanalyst is to force you back, to convince you with all his jargon, “This is not right, you should not try to get out of the cage. The cage is your safety, security, your sanity. In the cage you are normal; outside of the cage you will become abnormal.”I want everybody to come out of the cage and live a life of absolute freedom. This life of freedom will make him capable of one day knowing his ultimate reality. I am using therapy for the first time as the groundwork for meditation. Also I am using meditations on a base of therapy for the first time, because to me a person who starts meditating without going through therapy will have a tremendously hard time – and perhaps will never reach enlightenment. It is almost impossible; first he has to drop so many things, with all those things you cannot go on uphill, to Everest.When Edmund Hillary reached the top of Everest, he had to throw away everything. They had carried all kinds of facilities, but by the time he reached there, even to carry a flask was too much – because the air is so thin and the oxygen is so little, breathing becomes difficult. Carrying even a small load – just a flask of coffee or tea – even that he had to drop. When he reached the top he was standing there alone. He even had to drop his overcoat on the way; it was becoming too heavy.The same is the situation with enlightenment. It is an Everest of consciousness, and you will have to drop everything. You will have to unburden yourself.Therapies help you to unburden, and meditation teaches you how to go uphill. Both together make the whole equation.Okay.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Leslie Porter,Vogue, United StatesOsho,Hello. I have many questions to ask you about many different things and the first is: “How are you?”I am always the same, just fine.Just fine? Okay. How do you think the world sees you?To me everything is very simple; I never do anything that is not spontaneous. I just live in the moment: no attachment to the past moment, no projection for the future moment. I am always here now. These two words here now contain the whole of existence.And after Albert Einstein, they are not even two words. It is one reality – space and time are four dimensions of the same reality. Time has three dimensions, space has one dimension; here has one dimension, now has three dimensions. But within these two words, everything is included. Einstein had to make a new word, because to express it exactly it is not good to use two words – that gives a sense of duality. So he invented the technical word, spacio-time.I have also made my own word: nowhere – just one word, not even a hyphen between now and here.Osho,In a few words, could you comment on the word that I am going to give you? For example, what does love say to you?It means three things. Love can exist as just a physiological relationship – then we call it sex, and most people go on believing that that is love. It is only the beginning.The second thing that can be called love is something deeper, psychological – what poets talk about, what musicians sing about. It has nothing to do with sex, it is just a magnetic attraction between two persons. Something transpires between two persons – they suddenly feel as if they are made for each other. Something almost gives them the sense, “Without the other I am half, incomplete; with the other I’m complete.” A sense of completion is the second quality; a sense of being entire, the whole circle.The first is very momentary, very superficial; the second is very deep, but needs great sensitivity. It is not available to everybody. The first is available to everybody: it is available even to animals, birds, trees, so there is nothing special in it as far as man is concerned. A man who has known love only as sex has remained below human dignity.Humanity begins with the second. Only a few poets, a few musicians, dancers, a few sculptors have sensed it. In the whole of history, very few people around the world have lived it because it needs tremendous courage to dissolve yourself with somebody else – a moment when the other is no longer the other, a moment when you can feel a tremendous at-one-ment.It happened in Ramakrishna’s life: he was a man of immense sensitivity. They were crossing the river Ganges in a boat, and just in the middle of the river he started shouting, “Don’t beat me! Don’t beat me!” The people who were around him were all his disciples, and nobody was beating him.Tears were flowing from his eyes and they asked, “What are you saying? Nobody is beating you.”But he was in a convulsion, as if somebody was hitting him hard. The disciples could not understand it. He fell down almost unconscious in the boat. They reached the other shore, and there they saw a man who had been beaten to unconsciousness. A crowd had gathered. The most significant thing was that as the man’s clothes were torn – his back had blood marks – they uncovered Ramakrishna’s back and found the same marks, and in the same way blood was flowing.That is the height of the second quality of love, where you can feel such oneness that if the other is dying, you will feel like dying. Everybody hankers for the second quality, but it needs a certain training in sensitivity. For example, a person who is violent in his life – full of anger, jealousy, possessiveness – will not be able to experience the second quality. And he will remain frustrated his whole life because he could not get what he wanted. But nobody else is responsible for it; he never prepared to receive something higher, you have to deserve it.In the first love there is no question of deserving: it is biological. You are already gifted because nature wants to continue reproducing; it has not left it to you. Nature has not left many things to man. For example, breathing has not been left to you. You may forget, you may get involved in some work and forget to breathe – in sleep you are bound to forget, then there is going to be no morning for you. So nature has kept the breathing under its own control.Sex is the continuity of life, it cannot be left to you; it is in the hands of biology. But because it is in the hands of nature you feel a certain compulsion, a certain slavery, and that’s why sexual partners are continually fighting. They are not aware why they are fighting; why they fight the man they love, the woman they love. The reason is that each feels deep down, “The other is my trouble, my problem.” Jean-Paul Sartre has a very significant statement: “The other is hell.”But as far as sex is concerned, the other remains the other. The other disappears only in the second stage, and I don’t think even Jean-Paul Sartre reached the second stage. He was a man of tremendous intelligence, but not of great sensitivity. They are different things: intelligence is of the head, sensitivity is of the heart. And in fact our whole education is to sacrifice the heart for the head. So the people who get your Nobel Prizes, none of them gets the Nobel Prize for the heart, they get the Nobel Prize for the head.Your universities teach nothing about the heart, they only go on training and sharpening your head. For the head, the other is hell; for the heart, there is no other and that is heaven. Only very few poets and painters and that type of crazy people have known love. But that love also is psychological and your mind is not something stable; it is one thing today, it is something else tomorrow.So with the change of the mind, with the change of your psychology – which is continuously changing – your love has to change continuously. That is a great problem. It is not necessary that the person you love will also change in synchronicity with you. He may lag behind, he may go further, he may stop moving – all the possibilities are there. And with his changing psychology…A child may fall in love with another child: we call it childhood love. But as they grow older that love because a beautiful memory, it has no significance. A young person falls in love with another person: the child psychology is gone, its love is also gone. In fact, you will never get a more beautiful experience of friendship than you got in your childhood. Never again that joy of friendship – because as you become older, friendship is no longer your need: your need becomes more and more sexual.Only rarely does a person who is young have a poetic sensibility, but that sensibility also changes. In fact, the more delicate a phenomenon is, the more the possibility of change. Retarded people – who remain below the age of fourteen as far as their minds are concerned – can remain faithful to their wives, to their husbands, their whole life. They stopped growing when they were fourteen, and at that very time their love also stopped – came to a full stop, the terminus. Now they will go on repeating the same thing their whole life.But more intelligent people will find it difficult. Hence, as man becomes more civilized, more intelligent, one cannot live with one woman, with one man forever. If he tries to do that, both become sad, both become bored, both become frustrated with each other. That is the point when the other starts becoming hell.People are afraid of reaching the second stage because it is just like a breeze: it comes and goes. When it comes it fills you totally. It gives you so much contentment that you cannot think there is anything more, and you cannot think that it can ever change. That’s why lovers go on promising each other – but their promises are not going to be fulfilled. Then they will feel guilty. Of course when they had given the promise it was not a lie, they were really, authentically feeling it. But it was the feeling of that moment.After a time your psychology develops, your maturity develops; you start loving new things, new people. Your vision of beauty changes – your attitude in all its dimensions goes on changing. It is almost impossible for the other person to change exactly with you. Neither is it possible for you to change exactly with the other person. And that’s where the whole of society is living in tremendous suffering. We have forced people to live together because they had promised something. They don’t deny it, but what can they do? In that moment the promise was true, and then everything changed. Now they don’t feel anything for the other person – and it is not only that they don’t feel anything, they feel they are strangers.You can look at husbands and wives and inquire, “Do you know your wife? How long has is it that you have not looked into her eyes? How long has is it that you have not given a moment to look at her or to listen to her?” Perhaps years have passed.It is one of the strangest things that husbands cannot remember the face of the wife with whom they have lived for thirty years. Just ask them, “Close your eyes and try to remember your wife, her face,” and everything goes vague. For thirty years they have not looked at her. They have really tried not to look at her; they were afraid to look at her. There was a day when they wanted to look at her for the whole twenty-four hours.Psychological love is a changing phenomenon, and unless humanity accepts its changeability gracefully we will never allow human beings to rise to the second level – because those who rise to the second level suffer more. Poets suffer more, farmers don’t suffer that way, woodcutters don’t suffer that way, fishermen don’t suffer that way. Painters suffer, musicians suffer, because they go on changing. They continuously need something new. Now, the other person cannot make that available. And the other person has his own individuality, her own individuality. They start growing farther and farther and farther away from each other. And society goes on forcing them to live together because, “Marriages are made in heaven.”Osho,Do you do any art work?My whole work is art! I don’t do anything else except art work.Do you dream? And what kind of dreams do you have?No, I cannot dream.You don't dream?No.Osho,So you're enlightened, and I would like to know if there's another enlightenment after enlightenment.No.Just one, that's it, okay.And if you were to go on vacation where would you go and what would you do?I can just kiss from here! You may be on another planet, it makes no difference. What people call kissing is so unhygienic, so ugly: mixing saliva with each other, touching each other’s tongues, exploring each other’s mouth with the tongue – that is just not possible for me. There is no need. Just looking at a person with loving eyes is enough; you have touched.Physical touch is a lower phenomenon. Just looking at a person with love, with compassion, with friendship, with respect, is enough. Eyes can reach any distance. Silence can say much, which words cannot do.In India when we salute each other we don’t even shake hands. That is too physical. Unhygienic too – no medical person can support it. We salute each other with both hands folded. And it has a spiritual significance: we are giving you the same respect as we give to God. That’s the way people go into a temple, with folded hands. That’s the way they respect their elders. The same respect is shown to strangers. And two hands folded together represent what I was saying, the merger of two into one.In the first kind of love, which is sexual, kissing is part of it, but in the second love, which is psychological, kissing is not a part of it. It is more an energy phenomenon than a material one.Everybody has an aura of energy. Now it can even be photographed. In the East we have been talking about it for five thousand years, and perhaps the idea is even more ancient, but we had no way to prove it. Now there is a certain kind of photography – Kirlian photography – which has been developed in the Soviet Union by a photographer who has made such sensitive plates that when he takes a picture your energy aura also comes onto it. It differs from person to person. For example, a person who has never known anything more than sex, his energy aura is just two inches around his body. And the aura of a person who has known something of the second love is almost six inches around his body.And there is a third love of which I was just going to speak, which is spiritual, which is not even psychological, which is more like lovingness, rather than love. There is no passion in it; it is more like a fragrance than a flower. You can catch hold of the flower, but you cannot catch hold of the fragrance. It is not like the flame of a candle, but the light of the flame.In that third stage of love, the person has almost a twelve-inch aura around his whole body. People who know the third love can just sit silently together and their energies meet. You will think they are not even sitting close – as lovers sit very close to each other – they may be sitting with a gap between them. They can allow a gap of at least two feet when sitting together and yet their energies are touching, their energies are kissing. And that is a far bigger touch, not local; a kiss is a local touch. They can touch each other’s bodies totally, without touching the physical body at all.And that love does not change because it is not dependent on the beloved, on the object of love. It is not dependent on the changing mind; it is something concerned with your eternal being. You may change, your body will change, your mind will change, but your love cannot change. It remains the fragrance of your being. Only at that point have two persons truly met.It rarely happens between lovers – very rarely – but it happens between masters and disciples very often. That’s why I say that the relationship between a master and a disciple is a love affair of the highest category. And it is the goal that can fulfill. Those who have not known it have lived incompletely.In that state whatever you do is art: you cannot do otherwise. The way you walk, the way you sit, the way you talk – even just the gesture of your hand has something artistic to it, something creative in it. That’s why I say I don’t paint, I don’t compose music, I don’t write poetry, but if you look deeply at what I am doing with my disciples – they are my canvas. I’m painting living beings. They are my poetry, they are my sculpture. I’m working continuously so that they can be released from all bondage and they can taste freedom, love, beauty.I don’t paint on ordinary canvases and I don’t write poems on paper, but on living beings. And each of my sannyasins is my poetry. And each of my sannyasins will carry my gestures, my attitudes, my approaches. And he will make it even richer because he is a living person. He may give it more polish, he may give it more beauty; he has to do it. It will be his gratitude toward the master, it will be his thankfulness.So, from morning ‘til night I am continuously creating. But to see my creativity you need to be part of it. You cannot be just a spectator. You have to be an insider, not an outsider, because it is so subtle and so delicate, so invisible, that unless you enter it with an open mind, without any prejudice, you will not be able to experience it. Just a little experience will open the door.Osho,Is that why you started talking again?That’s true.And what happened when you weren't talking? Do you miss not talking?I was working in my silence.What were you working on?My people were sitting in silence with me.I wanted to see how many people could understand my silence. I wanted those people who were hanging around my words to go away, because they were wasting their time. They should be somewhere else; this is not their place. They had become enchanted with my words, my theories, but it was an intellectual approach. So when I became silent they went on hanging around for a few days, then slowly they thought, “Now he’s not going to speak again, what is the point?” They could not understand silence.The moment I saw that all those people had left, I started speaking again. Now these are the people who remained for three and a half years – not even asking, not even a single person asking me to speak. They were perfectly happy just with my presence.It was of my own accord that I started speaking. If I had remained in silence for the remainder of my life, these were not the people to leave me. That’s why I am speaking to them – because these are my people. Now my talking is heart-to-heart.And they don’t bother what I am saying, whether I am contradicting myself or not; it is none of their concern. They know me, they cannot be deceived by my words. They know me, and knowing me is such a deep relationship – who cares what I am saying?Osho,What do you think of Kahlil Gibran's saying, “When you have solved all the mysteries of life, you long for death, for it is but another mystery of life.”? “Three words one has to understand clearly. One is the known; another is the unknown; and the third is the unknowable. The known was one day unknown; the unknown will one day become known. But the unknowable was unknowable before, is unknowable now, will remain unknowable forever. Only the unknowable is the mystery.Science can deal with the known, with the unknown; science has no way even to conceive of the unknowable. And that is where religion becomes significant. That is religion’s area: the unknowable. And all the religions in the past have betrayed. They started trying to make the unknowable known – that was their betrayal. They all started trying to prove God. Once God is proved by arguments, he’s no longer God.Karl Marx used to say, “I will believe in God only if you can put him in a test tube in the lab, dissect him, find all the qualities, all the constituents. Only then will I believe in him.”One of his followers in India, Anand Roy – a very significant philosopher who had participated in the Russian revolution – was a friend of Lenin, a close friend. I asked him – because he was continuously writing about Karl Marx, his philosophy, and he was of tremendous reasoning, rationality, he could prove… I asked him just one thing: “In your book you write about Marx’s statement that he will believe in God only if God is in a test tube observed by scientists. I want to ask you, will that be God that scientists can dissect, can find out of what he is constituted? That will be something else: it won’t be God.”But all the religions in the past have been trying to prove that which is unprovable. They have been trying to demystify existence, and I call it a betrayal. Let science do its work – that is science’s work, to demystify existence. Anything that is not known has to be made known, that’s the whole scientific approach, and, “We will not leave anything unknown in existence.” And it is possible to conceive that perhaps one day we will have exhausted the unknown.But what about the unknowable? The scientist himself is unknowable. He knows everything, but he does not know who the knower is. In fact, he denies the knower – and that is so stupid.I asked one of the Indian scientists, Khorana, who got a Nobel Prize, “You are a Nobel prize-winning scientist. Have you ever bothered that you go on searching, discovering new areas, but who is the seeker? Who is the searcher? Have you ever thought about yourself?”He said, “I don’t have time for that.”I said, “But this is strange, because whatsoever you can find cannot be more valuable than you, the finder. Whatever you can know, howsoever valuable it is, cannot be more valuable than the knower. It remains an object of knowledge.“And you say you don’t have time for yourself? That is not a scientific answer. That is trying just to avoid the subject. You cannot avoid it. I, at least, will not allow you to avoid it. You have to say something definite. You have to say whether you exist or not. If you exist, then what are you – just matter, or something more?”He said, “You are putting me in trouble, because if I say I am just matter, it simply does not feel right. How can matter discover matter? How can matter know the mysteries of matter? Matter has no consciousness. I can understand, so I have to accept that there is something more than matter. But please don’t insist, because science is not willing to accept the knower. Science’s whole approach is: unless something is experimented through scientific methods in a scientific lab, it cannot be accepted.”I said, “Naturally, then the scientist will remain unknowable forever.”And that is the arena, the area, of religion. And this unknowability of consciousness, this mysterious phenomenon in you – in everybody – is the most precious thing. Nobody can know it, but everybody can taste it. Nobody can reduce it into a theorem, but everybody can dive deep into it, its bliss, its serenity, its silence, its tremendous ecstasy. Nobody can explain it, but everybody is capable of experiencing it.One of the great philosophers of Europe – perhaps the best of this century – was Ludwig Wittgenstein. He has a statement in his book, one of the rare books in the whole history of books: the name of the book is Tractatus Philosophicus. He never wrote treatises, he wrote only maxims. One of the maxims in that strange book is that one should not speak about something which cannot be spoken of.I wrote him a letter – he was alive, now he is dead – “The moment you say one should not speak about something which cannot be spoken of, you have already spoken. You have said something, you have described a certain quality – that nothing can be said about it. That, too, is an attribute, and if you have said this much, then try a little harder. You yourself have broken your rule. You accept that there are things which cannot be spoken of – your statement certainly proves that you accept that there are things which cannot be spoken of. Certainly there must be some way to know those things which cannot be spoken of, otherwise how have you come to that conclusion?”I say that there are things which cannot be explained, cannot be reduced into theories, theologies, philosophies – but which can become part of your experience, which can become the very light of your life, which can become the very center. It is not demystifying them, it is in fact entering into the mystery and becoming yourself a mystery.That’s why in the East we have called saints “mystics.” We have not called them saints. Saints is a Christian contribution to the world, a very ugly word. It comes from the original root sanction. A saint is one who has been sanctioned, given a certificate from the pope. This is stupid: the pope himself is not a saint and he is issuing certificates – posthumous certificates.Joan of Arc was made a saint three hundred years later. One infallible pope burned the poor woman – who was a rare woman in the whole history of man – burned her alive, declared that she was a witch. But people could see the ugliness of the whole thing. The woman was a genius – so young, so beautiful, yet so courageous. She alone was fighting for the freedom of the country – and she won. The whole country loved the woman, but that was the trouble. She became a competitor to the pope; she had to be destroyed.She was burned alive, but by and by over three hundred years, the pope became condemned by people who realized the qualities of the woman. Her diaries were discovered. And she was such a beautiful, authentic, sincere human being, that after three hundred years another pope became afraid that if she was not given the sanction and made a saint, she would create a division in Christianity. To avoid that division she was declared a saint.In the East we don’t use that word. We call these people “mystics,” and that exactly describes their world: the world of mystery. They are not demystifying it, they don’t give you any ideas about it. They hold your hand and take you on the journey. They do not give you any proof – they give you eyes to see.And that’s the function of the master: not to give you a philosophy – just dead words, what are you going to do with them? The authentic master will give you some taste of reality. He will hold your hand, he will take you into unknown territories where you may be afraid to go alone. But the trust in the man, the love for the man, will not allow you to escape.Osho,Have you talked to the pope lately?I have not talked to him but I have talked about him enough. And I don’t think he will be ready to talk with me, because I have been continuously condemning him and he knows about it. And I don’t see that anything that he is doing is right, so there is no meeting point either. Whatever I am doing is immoral in his eyes. What he is doing is criminal in my eyes.Right now he is in South Africa, where he is not even touching the real problems. Eighty-five percent of the people are black, it is their country. The fifteen percent of white people are ruling over them. The country is very rich: it has diamond mines, it has gold mines, it has silver mines – it is really one of the richest lands in the world. But the people are dying, starving. The people are the poorest because all those mines are captured by the fifteen percent of white people, so all the riches are under the white people’s power.You will be surprised to know that South Africa has one of the biggest armies in the world. That fifteen percent need it; otherwise, eighty-five percent of the people dying, and you are continuously exploiting their country… All of the fifteen percent – the white people – are immensely rich. And you will be surprised to know that even in the twentieth century, eighty-five percent of the people don’t have even the voting right; only the fifteen percent of white people vote. Naturally the question does not arise of any black people being in power. It is their country, it is their wealth, and they are continuously being shot dead, continuously being killed, burned. The pope is not touching the real problem.And those eighty-five percent have the highest birthrate in the whole world: three percent per year. They are already overpopulated, and they are continuously reproducing and becoming more and more poor – because what inheritance can they give to their children? They don’t have anything.The pope is preaching to them that birth control is sin, that abortion is a great sin. The government is trying to introduce birth control, abortion, and the pope is speaking against birth control, against abortion. He is going to be responsible for all the poverty that will happen. He will be responsible for all those starving, dying people. And he is not touching the real problems because that will disturb the vested interests, the white people.So, no question about freedom, no question about voting power, no question about the white people leaving the country and going back to their own countries. Or, even if they want to leave, their own countries – they belong to different nations from all over Europe: Spanish, English, British, Dutch – their own countries are not going to accept them because they have been there for three hundred years, and their own countries are also in trouble with overpopulation.My suggestion is that fifteen percent of the land of South Africa should be given to the white people, and fifteen percent of the wealth of the country should be given to the white people. And eighty-five percent of the land and eighty-five percent of the riches should go to the black people. The country should be divided. A simple solution – already they live separately, so there is not much problem; the black people are not allowed even to enter the areas where white people live. It is so simple.I can understand the difficulty of the white people, that they have no home. Three hundred years is a long time, they cannot leave this country. Absolutely right, I accept it. It seems to be perfectly human that they should be given a place there, but they cannot have more than fifteen percent. They cannot have one hundred percent of the land, one hundred percent of the riches, with eighty-five percent of the people starving and dying.And this idiot pope goes there and talks to those people. He’s not telling the white people – the white people are already practicing birth control, the pill, abortion, everything. He’s not talking to the white people.Have you sent someone there to talk to the people?No.No?Because I have tried for thirty years in India.The poor people have many problems. One of the problems is that they are uneducated, illiterate. They cannot understand anything beyond their tradition, the tradition they have inherited. And their tradition is all superstition, stupid – for example the idea that God gives you children. Now, it is very difficult to convince those people. For thirty years I was trying hard to tell them that God cannot be so stupid as to give you so many children that you cannot even give them food. God cannot be so unkind.If he is a compassionate God, as you call him, he should send each child with a piece of land, with some trees, some cows, something they can live on. He simply sends children naked, with not even any underwear! And he goes on seeing your children dying – in India, nine children out of ten used to die – and this is your God.And there are people like the pope and Mahatma Gandhi – who was against birth control, against abortion, against inoculation, because it is against nature. Without inoculation many small children were suffering from smallpox and dying, but they would not accept inoculation. Birth control is just beyond their ideas: it means you are talking immorality, you are talking anti-religiousness.In thirty years of talking to them, all the reward that I got were stones thrown at me, shoes thrown at me, knives thrown at me, poison given to me twice. That was the reward. And they will not go against their tradition.Osho,What happened to you when you physically died for seven hundred years, between your rebirths?No. I never think of the future.You never think of the future?No, I think only of the present.How's the present?And I want to make the present as intelligent, as beautiful, as comfortable for my people as possible. I want my people to be as meditative as possible in the present. The future will take care itself; intelligent people will find a way. Who am I even to think about the future? That is a subtle strategy of dominating, even when you are dead.Just the idea of creating a successor means I will continue to dominate you through my successor. That’s how the dead are dominating the living: Jesus, Moses, Buddha are still dominating people. This is ugly. The dead dominating the living is simply unacceptable to me.Buddha lived twenty-five centuries ago. He knew nothing of electricity, he knew nothing of railway trains, he knew nothing of population growth. He did not know that there would be a time when people would die if they didn’t stop reproducing. In Buddha’s time the whole world’s population was only two hundred million. I think Oregon’s population must be almost two hundred million now – that was the whole population of the world.Buddha had no idea that his country would be almost eight hundred million people, otherwise he would not have talked nonsense. But we cannot criticize him: whatever he did, whatever he said was relevant in his time. One thing that he did do wrong is that he made a tradition, created laws and regulations for the future. That to me is dictatorial, not democratic. Who am I for the future? Right now I am alive: you can argue against me, you can decide against me, you can doubt my ideas, but when I am dead…The whole emphasis of all the religions is to believe, to have faith; so people go on believing and having faith in ideas which are simply out of date, which are dangerous to believe in. For example, Buddha preached celibacy. Now, celibacy is absolutely unnatural. Perhaps at the age of eighty-two he may have been celibate – in fact, what else are you going to do at the age of eighty-two?Osho,Do you have a girlfriend?I have many. You are welcome, there is no trouble in it. I don’t think anybody has as many girlfriends as I have – thousands!Thousands!I am against celibacy. It may be good for an impotent person; it may do some good for him – at least a consolation that he is celibate. But impotence is rare, and impotence is a sickness. The impotent person has never done anything worthwhile. He has never created anything; he has not even been able to become a saint, which would have been the easiest thing for him to do.Buddha and others talking about celibacy have created sexual perversion throughout the world. Now there are homosexuals and there are lesbians and there are people who are making love to animals and there are all kinds of perversions. And for all these perversions, who is responsible? – those people who talked about celibacy.When I said to the Indian masses that celibacy should be condemned as a crime because it goes against nature… You can go to any medical college, you can go to any medical board and ask them, but such is the ignorance that even doctors try to be celibate – particularly in India, where celibacy seems to be a great spiritual thing.Even doctors – even they cannot understand that it is something natural to your physiology, your chemistry, your biology. Your body does not understand that you have taken a vow of celibacy. There is no way to convey the message to the body, the body will go on in the same way.You may be Hindu, you may be Christian, you may be Mohammedan; it doesn’t make any difference, you will all feel hunger. The body knows nothing about you being a Mohammedan and this is the month of Ramadan, the sacred month when one should not eat in the day. The body feels hungry. There is no way to communicate the idea that in the month of Ramadan, for the whole month a Mohammedan cannot eat in the day, he can eat only in the night.At least Mohammedanism allows eating in the night. So people eat as much as they can in the night. And they eat again early in the morning before sunrise, so that they don’t feel hungry the whole day. This is just unnecessarily disturbing people. The whole night they could not sleep, they were just eating and eating and eating, preparing for the whole day, because in the day they will not be able to eat.But there is a religion in India, Jainism. On its sacred days, ten days per year, you have to fast and you cannot eat in the night. According to Jainism you cannot eat in the night any day of the year: eating in the night is sin. When the sun sets, Jainas cannot eat. Not only that, but those who are very orthodox will not drink water.It was such a trouble in my childhood, because I was born in a Jaina family. In India it is so hot, and summer nights are so hot, and you cannot even drink water. I simply refused. I said, “I am willing to go to hell – that will happen after death. There is time – I will do something. But right now I am going to drink. I don’t want to suffer this night in hell.”In those ten days you cannot eat at all, for ten days continuously. And I know that in those ten days Jainas think only of food, nothing else. Day and night, their dreams are full of food.You were asking about dreams. Jainas’ dreams in those ten days are full of food. Christian monks, Hindu monks, their dreams are full of sex. Whatever you repress in the day becomes your dream in the night. I don’t repress anything, that’s why there is no possibility of having a dream. My night is a dreamless silence.You don't miss struggling or pain or anything?There is none.You don't miss it?No problem. As far as I am concerned, there is nothing that I miss and I never repress anything. For example, I don’t think anybody would have said to you that you are welcome to be my girlfriend. I don’t think… But I don’t repress anything. The idea came to me, rather than seeing you in my dreams, I said it. I am finished with it. Now you cannot come in my dreams. My life is simple and open. Dreams are possible only if you repress. If you don’t repress, dreams disappear. And the disappearance of dreams is such a beautiful experience – the whole night is such a joy, such bliss.In India, Mahatma Gandhi was doing exactly what the pope is doing now. He was telling people, “Go back.” In his ideology the spinning wheel is the ultimate invention of humanity, after that whatever has happened has to be dropped – in fact, everything has happened after it! The spinning wheel must have been invented two or three thousand years ago; everything of any value has happened afterwards. But in his ideology the spinning wheel is the full stop, and we have to go back to that stage.These people don’t understand at all. How can you manage eight hundred million people just with a spinning wheel? I have calculated: if a person spins eight hours a day, then he can cover his whole body for the whole year. He can have his bed sheet, his blanket, his pillow covers – but eight hours every day will be needed. What about his wife, what about his children, what about his old parents, what about his sick mother? He can manage only for himself. And what about food? What about the other necessities of life? Just clothes are not enough, you cannot eat them. And if he is just spinning for eight hours, when is he going to earn his bread? When is he going to earn enough money for his mother dying of tuberculosis?But Mahatma Gandhi has appeal because he is in tune with tradition. I am saying something which goes against their tradition. Gandhi says to people, “You need not worry; God takes care, he is compassionate,” and people are absolutely willing to accept the idea because that idea has been conditioned in their minds for thousands of years.And when I say, “There is no God and nobody is taking care of you. You have to take care yourself,” it hurts them in two ways. First, they are not willing to drop their traditional idea of God. Fear arises. Secondly, to accept responsibility for everything needs guts. It is very easy to transfer to a father figure in heaven, “He will take care.” Even if there is nobody it does not matter, but you are consoled for the moment.I am stirring your fear, your insecurity, your death. And there is nobody to take care. It is all empty, you have to find your own way. There are no super-highways made for you by others that you have simply to walk on.Truth is something like a bird flying in the sky, which leaves no footprints behind. So if one person reaches truth you cannot follow him. He has not left any footprints in the sky. You can try to understand the man, you can try to imbibe his vibe. You can sit in silence with the man and let something transpire in silence. You can love the man, you can be open to the man so his love can flow toward you. Perhaps in these mysterious ways he may be able to take you by the hand into the unknown. Otherwise there is no road. He cannot say, “Just go five miles right, then turn to the left and you have arrived.” It is not that easy.After trying with Indians for thirty years I decided that it was just futile. I dropped the whole idea. I started working only with those who are capable of understanding me. In 1970 I stopped traveling in India; for thirty years I had been traveling continuously. In 1970 I stopped traveling and began the movement of sannyas.Osho,And four years ago today you arrived on this ranch.Four years ago I arrived here. In four years we have made this desert an oasis.Yes.Just go on coming, and every time you will find great changes happening continuously. When we had come there was only one house here, and that too dilapidated. Now we have houses for five thousand sannyasins, fully equipped with air-conditioning, everything. And this is against the government, against the people of Oregon, against all kinds of allegations, cases.But we don’t bother: we go on fighting cases in the courts and we go on doing what we want to do. And we know that finally we are going to win and we are going to make these 126 square miles a lush, green place; a place that tourists from all over the world will be coming to see, because it will be so full of laughter and so full of love.Well you have eighty-one thousand acres, here.Yes.That's a lot.Eighty-four thousand acres – nobody else has that much land.Yes, it's a lot. So you're rich and famous.We are – and we are going to become richer and richer and more famous. Because of us, Oregon is now famous all over the world. This small commune, Rajneeshpuram, is the world capitol. We are going to make it a world capital. Every country is represented here, every race, every religion is represented here.Lawyers, doctors…Every profession, every kind of people – and all educated, all intelligent, so there is no need for me to think for their future. I just have to make their present as beautiful and as intense and total as possible, so that out of that totality and intensity their future will be born.Osho,Have you been to the university lately? – that place down the road?No, I never go anywhere. People listen to me, and if they find something is valuable they take it to the university, they take it to the fields – to the commune, its work. But I never direct anybody in any way. I never give any instructions. I am available with all my vision, if you feel that it triggers something in you, do it. But you are doing your thing, not my thing. You are doing it because it has triggered your heart. You are following your heart, I am just accidental.You are not to believe in me. You have to be just available to me, as I am available to you. And all these people here are not my followers. As far as I am concerned, they are all my friends, my lovers, my fellow travelers. So, whatsoever they can take and materialize, they go on doing. They are doing beautifully. I see the commune growing every day, becoming greener every day.I will go on sharing my vision to my last breath. And now it is up to them. That’s why I said my sannyasins are my poems, my sannyasins are my music, my sannyasins are my paintings. My sannyasins are my future.I need not bother about the future, it is already here. It is all around the world – one million sannyasins around the world, hundreds of communes around the world. And every commune trying to maintain exactly the same standards, the same comfort, the same food, the same luxury, the same medical facilities.I want my communes to become a model to the whole world. I don’t want to argue with them – this is my argument. My commune is my argument: “Man can live so beautifully, so relaxedly, so creatively – why can’t you live like that?” Just because you have not tried, just because you are clinging to old ideas which are no longer workable.You have to learn only one thing, and that is to be contemporary. Very few people are contemporary. Somebody is living two thousand years back, somebody three thousand years ago. A strange world, where you will not find contemporary people. And I can have appeal only to the contemporaries.So I stopped going to the graveyards and talking to the graves and disturbing the dead. What is the need? Let them rest in peace. I have found my people, and they are coming in hundreds every day. And my appeal is only for the intelligent: the unintelligent simply cannot have any communication with me, my thing goes over his head. But he has his popes and bishops and churches – he can go there.My whole effort is to make the intelligent people so tremendously significant that they cannot be ignored anymore; that the world has to take notice of them; that the world has to learn that there is something that they are missing and that these people have. So my argument is very existential – rather than talking philosophically to them, which I have done for thirty years. It does not make any sense.Now I am trying to produce an existential proof that whatever I am saying is realizable. You can come and see that it is not just an ideology, not just a utopia, that it can be a factual reality.Okay.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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James Conaway,Washington Post, Washington, DC, United StatesGlad to meet you.Osho,I'm interested in the public lands in the west, and would like to ask you some questions on that first. The United States government owns a vast amount of land in the west. Some of this land is within your domain here on the ranch. What do you think of the policies of the United States government with regard to land management?The philosophy of democracy is totally against the idea of governments owning anything: land, schools, libraries, universities. That idea – that the government should own everything, that no individual should be the owner – is basically communist. It is a very subtle psychology to destroy the individual: if an individual’s ownership is taken away he becomes a beggar.At least in America, the government should not own any land. That is part of a democratic approach. There should be no kind of nationalization on any level. All nationalization is communist. Every individual should be free in every possible way from government rule, government domination. The universities should not be owned, the schools, the colleges should not be owned. The government has no business interfering in people’s lives, their development, their intelligence. Each university should have its own individuality; each school should have its own individuality.In a democracy the question of ownership does not arise; individuals should be the owners of everything that exists. The government is simply a functioning body. It is not the master, it is the servant of the people. It should see that everything is going well – that no individual is being exploited in any way, that no individual is being enslaved, that no individual is being interfered with.The function of the government in a democracy is to protect the individual – his freedom, his ownership, his possibilities of growth – and to help him. The government should not become a partner, a competitor, in business, in land, in factories, in anything. The government is just a functional body like the post office. Now, should the post office start owning land and factories? Or the board that runs airplanes or railway lines? The government should not own anything, because that ownership makes the politician too powerful.In Oregon almost half of the land is owned by the federal government. This is simply ugly, undemocratic. They wanted – particularly the vice-president was interested – to own the whole of Oregon. And the federal government is angry with us because they were interested in this land, too. And this is a big area, 126 square miles. But they were trying to give just a little bit of compensation, and the owner was not ready to take it. It was for sale for decades, and because we purchased it and gave the right price for it, the state government is angry, the federal government is angry. This is strange – it seems we are not living in America, we are in the Soviet Union.Osho,Your sentiments are similar to some of the conservative ranchers who live around here, since they also feel that the government shouldn't own land and should stay out of the lives of individuals. Considering that, and the fact that you have made this land here very productive in the last four years, why is it that so many people dislike you?There are a thousand and one reasons. A man like me can only be disliked or liked but cannot be ignored. You either have to love me or you have to hate me, there is no third alternative.The people of Oregon, particularly the neighbors close to this property, have reasons to be against me. First, their animal nature – every animal has a territorial imperative; we are strangers, the ordinary human mind always feels afraid of anything that is strange, unknown, unpredictable. We are not Christians, we don’t believe in any religion. We don’t believe in any God, we don’t believe in any heaven and hell. Our basic approach is that this life itself can be paradise, why bother about anything else? If there is a heaven we will enjoy it, if there is a hell we will transform it too.This land was just a desert when we came here. Only one single house and that, too, dilapidated. We have made it an oasis – we have created dams, we have created lakes, we are creating a small river – we have made it green. Now there are fully scientifically equipped houses for five thousand sannyasins, all centrally air-conditioned. Never before in history has there been such a commune – creative, intelligent, independent. We have our own school, we have our own university, we have our own hospital. Naturally they are very jealous.This land was lying here for fifty years. Nobody cared about it – and suddenly we come from outer space and change the whole side! And we live comfortably, we live luxuriously – because I am the first religious man who respects luxury, who respects money. I am not in favor of poverty: I do not want a single individual to be poor. But I am not against capitalism. I want capitalism to spread so much and create so much wealth that there is no need for anybody to be poor. I don’t want to distribute poverty equally; I want so much abundance that there is no need for hoarding.They have been here for hundreds of years, for generations, and they have not been able to create anything. And within four years we have created a place which can compete with any city. In just four years we have created a place, against all hostility, against every hindrance from the government. We are fighting so many cases in the courts, but nothing is going to prevent us.They are jealous, and jealousy turns into anger, turns into hostility. If they were a little intelligent they would have come here – but they won’t come. They should come and see what we have done. They can also do it. We are available to help them: we will welcome them, whatever we are doing here. We are self-sufficient in our food, our vegetables, our fruits, our milk products. They can be also – they have better land than we have.This was completely a desert and we are bent on making it one of the most lush, green parts of the world. They can learn it too, but rather than coming here, rather than being friendly, they are trying in every way to destroy us. This is simply an animal attitude. It is nothing strange, it is expected. But they are being defeated in every court, and we are going to fight to the very end.A very strange situation: we are fighting for the American constitution against the Americans, because the Americans are doing things which are against the American constitution. And I have always had respect for the American constitution. It is the only constitution in the whole world which has some hope for humanity and the Americans are destroying it in every possible way.I had come here thinking that I was going to a country which is contemporary. It is not so. In India there was no problem: I knew it was an ancient, rotten, dead country. But America is so new, fresh, young. Has it gotten rotten within just three hundred years? Has it forgotten completely what it stands for?It is disgusting to see President Ronald Reagan trying to enforce prayer in schools. Then why are you against communism? Then why not hand over the whole country to the Soviet Union? Why take on unnecessary troubles? This is against the constitution of America. Religion should not interfere in the state; the state should not interfere in religion. Trying to introduce prayer in every school, every educational institution, in colleges, universities, is a tremendous interference with freedom.Just a few days ago I heard that a Boy Scout – who was one of the topmost, he had won many awards – was refused promotion because he said, “I do not believe in God.” Now, this is strange. What do Scouts have to do with God? And if an intelligent boy says, “I do not believe in God,” he is thrown out, he cannot be a member – it is something absolutely necessary that you believe in God. This is strange, absolutely strange!Nobody can prove what God is. Nobody has ever been able to give any proof, any argument that is logical, rational, about God. It is simply a fiction, the greatest lie that man has invented. And you are trying to indoctrinate your children into lies?Just now I heard that one of the most important Christian fundamentalists, Jerry Falwell, is trying to have the Bible recognized by the government, by the people, as infallible. And the Bible is such a rotten book! If the Supreme Court is fair, they will make the Bible x-rated. It is pornography, pure pornography. It is simply ugly. You can find everything that is ugly there: sodomy, people making love to animals, homosexuality, all kinds of perversions. And Jerry Falwell says every single word in the Bible is pure truth – even Adam and Eve are not fictions, not a story, but a historical fact.Now, in the twentieth century, in the most developed, educated, literate, democratic country, such idiots have influence – tremendous influence – over people, over government, over the president, over the senators in the parliament. It hurts. It really gives me great sadness.This man is saying that abortions should be illegal in a world which is already overpopulated, too overpopulated. Where one thousand people are dying every day in Ethiopia. Where fifty percent of Indians will soon be going into the same situation. Where the third world is all poor, undernourished. These people go on saying that abortion should be illegal. The pope is doing it in South Africa, where the birth rate is the highest in the world, and the people are so poor. He is propagating that birth control methods should not be used, they are against God.But these people have a strange kind of God. This man Falwell is saying that homosexuality should be prohibited, that AIDS is a punishment from God for homosexuals. I am amazed. For the first time God seems to be in favor of women! Lesbians are not suffering from AIDS. For the first time, God is no longer a male chauvinist.Why are you so concerned about AIDS?I am concerned because it is going to destroy the whole of humanity. It is far more dangerous than your nuclear weapons because nuclear weapons may never be used – for the simple reason that it means global suicide, and nobody wants global suicide. A war is significant only when you can be victorious and somebody can be defeated. If in a war there is nobody who is victorious and nobody who is defeated, war has lost all meaning.We are living in a postwar era. The Third World War will be continuously talked about, so that people can remain frightened and the politicians can go on doing whatever they want to do. But it is not going to happen. What is going to happen is AIDS, which is in fact a religious disease for which your God is responsible, your pope is responsible, Reverend Jerry Falwell is responsible, Billy Graham is responsible – because these are the people who have perverted the human mind.Homosexuality was born in monasteries, because you are forcing men to live together without any women. There are monasteries where not a single woman has entered for one thousand years. And women have to be kept away in their nunneries, where men cannot enter. Now, you cannot go against nature. Your body does not know that you are a Catholic, that you are a fundamentalist Christian, that you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan. Your body knows nothing. The body does not know that you have taken a vow of celibacy. The body goes on producing blood, bones, sex energy. It knows nothing about celibacy.God himself is not celibate. Not only that, he is a criminal: he made the poor Virgin Mary pregnant. And the whole company of God – God, the Holy Ghost, the Son – are all men. It is a gay company, a gay club. And if anybody should suffer from AIDS it is those three people. Or they may have died already, nobody has seen them for so long!This man Falwell is saying that AIDS is a punishment for homosexuality. And homosexuality is created by religions all over the world, they are responsible for AIDS. The idea of celibacy is something that should be made criminal, because only impotence can be celibate. So let impotent people be celibate. How can a man who is really alive be celibate? In graves you can be celibate – be celibate! Nobody is bothering you.But a living man, full of energy and life – sex is part of life. To cut off sex means to destroy life from the very roots. And to stop people from loving, to separate man and woman is against nature. AIDS is not a punishment from God, it is the responsibility of the religions and their priests. All those people should be immediately behind bars, because they are continuously trying to do the same. Still they are preaching celibacy and nobody can prove medically that celibacy is possible. There has never been anybody who was celibate; they were all hypocrites.You cannot go against nature. If you try, then there will be perversions, and AIDS is the ultimate outcome of all kinds of perversions.Wouldn't celibacy be one way of avoiding AIDS?Celibacy cannot avoid AIDS, it has brought it. What are you going to do with your sex? Then the churches should start propagating masturbation. That seems to be the only safe method to get rid of sex energy. If celibacy is going to be the safeguard, then you will turn the whole of humanity into perverted people.Then I would suggest to women to become lesbians: let men be celibate, let man be whatever he wants – homosexual, sodomist. Women, all women, should become lesbians. At least they should be protected from AIDS, one thing. And every hospital should start collecting semen from men who are still free of AIDS, so lesbians can be injected – artificial insemination for the future of humanity. These men who are celibate and perverts and Christian monks will all be going down the drain.Osho,This is ostensibly a Christian country. I am interested to know why you chose America and why you chose the American west.I have not chosen anything in my life. It is America that has chosen me; it is this Wild West that has chosen me. America needs me, I don’t need America. And I am going to fight against all these idiots. I challenge them publicly to discuss with me. They go on talking nonsense to idiots and retarded Christians. They cannot prove God, they cannot prove that homosexuality is not the product of their monasteries, they cannot prove that Jesus was the son of a virgin woman, they cannot prove…This man Falwell is saying that each single word, even the miracles described in the Bible – Jesus walking on water, raising the dead back to life – are historical facts. If this man was able to turn water into wine, why not turn the whole ocean? You know the secret – why turn only a bottle into wine? And in fact, a man who turns water into wine is a criminal. He is creating drugs. The real miracle will be that he should turn wine into water. That would be understandable. He is raising the dead, but in his life there must have been many dead people. He raised only one person, who was his personal friend. It all seems to be tricks, befooling people – that man was not dead, he was pretending to be dead.Just think of the fact that not a single contemporary Jewish scripture even mentions the name of Jesus Christ. Do you think that a man who walks on water, a man who cures all kinds of diseases just by touch – the blind start seeing, the lame start running, the dead man becomes alive – do you think such a man will remain without being reported? If he is not news, then what can be news? But there is not a single reference in any Jewish book.And he was a Jew, he was never a Christian. That you have to remember. He was born a Jew, he lived a Jew, he died a Jew. He had never heard the words Christ or Christian. Their boy was doing such great things and they crucified him! It does not make sense. They should have raised him up, they should have accepted him as their awaited messiah – that’s what he was trying to prove. But not a single rabbi became his disciple – strange.All those twelve fools who became his apostles were illiterate, uneducated, poor men: fishermen, woodcutters, carpenters. Not a single rabbi could he manage, the man who was doing such great things. Even in the twentieth century, if anybody walks on water and raises the dead, all the presidents and all the prime ministers and all the queens and kings will be falling at his feet. He would have proved that he belongs directly to God, that he is the only begotten son of God.But the Jews crucified him because he was just a pretender. And all these stories are invented. What has he said that seems to be so significant? It is all available in the Jewish scriptures. He was simply repeating them, not a single word is his own. And whatever he is saying is against humanity. Perhaps he himself was a homosexual. What was he doing with all those twelve fools hanging around him? Not a single woman! It is strange, really strange.And it was not that women were not interested in him. In fact, when he was crucified all the disciples had escaped; those great apostles had all escaped fearing that they may be caught. Only one was there, and he also denied Jesus. He said, “I don’t know him, who he is. I am from far away and I have just come to visit the city. I don’t know him.”When Jesus was brought down from the cross there were only three women there – not a single apostle. His mother was there; a prostitute, Mary Magdalene, was there; and another woman named Mary was there – all these three women whom he condemns badly. In the Christian trinity he could have made a place. What is the need for this Holy Ghost? What function, what purpose does he fulfill? It would have been perfectly right: father, mother, son. It would have looked more natural. But a woman could not be raised so high as to become part of the trinity.These people – Jerry Falwell, Pope the Polack, Mother Teresa the Terrible – are all against humanity. They want abortion to be illegal; they want birth control methods to be illegal; they want the pill to be illegal, and the pill is the greatest revolution that man has known. The pill is the only thing that can make woman free from man’s slavery. But Falwell is saying that women should follow the Bible, which says the husband is the master, and woman’s only function is to produce children.In twentieth century America, you tolerate these people! Can’t you make a cross for them? These people go on hanging golden crosses around their necks – why not give them a real cross? I am really surprised, because I had a tremendous respect for the democratic values of America, but I don’t see that they are being practiced.Osho,You have lived in the West now for several years. What does the American west mean to you?I have not even gone out, my paradise is enough. I don’t bother about anything else – it does not mean anything to me. I have my people. I don’t want to get mixed up with the sad, miserable, suffering. Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, because they shall be comforted.”I say to my people, “You will never be comforted – remember – because you are not the people who mourn. You are rejoicing. So forget one thing at least: you will never be comforted. But you don’t need it.”My people are rejoicing, dancing, singing, enjoying every moment to its fullest. And that is my approach: squeeze the juice from every moment, so that you never have to repent that that moment went away unlived. Don’t bother about the past and don’t bother about the future. The present is all there is, so live it totally. And they are living. I do not go out to see those long faces of the Oregonians. I love my people, I love their laughter. This is my world.Osho,How important do you think the use of the land is in terms of the development of human spirituality or society? Is it an important value?It has tremendous importance. It is our mother, the earth. We may not see it, but we also have roots in the earth. We are walking trees; the earth supplies everything to us. I am against a God who is far away in heaven, but I am not against mother earth. We should enrich it. We should not disturb the balance of nature, which we have been doing for centuries. I am absolutely in favor of nature, its balance. We should not do anything that goes against it, because finally that goes against us. We are part of this earth.So, land should be used respectfully, lovingly. Hence in my commune work is called “worship.” We have dropped the word work, we use the word worship. Working with the earth – farming, gardening – you are doing really religious work: enriching the earth, helping the earth to regain its lost resources. I am absolutely in favor of environmentalists, those who want to save the environment against the rape that man has done to his own mother. Everywhere the earth has been raped badly.Something has to be done urgently because the earth is dying, and your religious leaders never talk about the real problems of life. Mahatma Gandhi in India was against any scientific developments that could help the land to regain its youth. No, he was in favor of the traditional methods. I cannot think that an intelligent person will talk such sheer nonsense. But all these people are really not religious, they are political. They are saying what the masses want to hear.The masses want to hear that their tradition is right, that their past is golden. It is not so. Neither was the past golden nor their traditions are right. None of their ideas about land, manure, production, creativity – nothing is right. This whole humanity is a proof that all your conventions and all your traditions have failed. And man is suffering because of your stupidity, that you go on clinging to those ideas.You will be surprised to know that Gandhi was against simple things like the telephone, railway trains, motorcars. He was against anything that was invented after the spinning wheel. The spinning wheel must have been invented some two or three thousand years ago. In fact, everything that has any value has happened since. Only one thing can conceivably be put before the spinning wheel, and that is the bullock cart. For Mahatma Gandhi those two things are the greatest inventions.And it was perfectly okay when the whole population of the world – just twenty-five centuries back, in Buddha’s time – was only two hundred million people, the whole earth. Now just India, without Pakistan, without Bangladesh, is eight hundred thousand million. These people cannot live just on the spinning wheel. You will have to spin for eight hours just to provide enough clothes for yourself. What about your wife, what about your children, what about your old mother, what about your sick father? And can man live by clothes alone?Jesus says man cannot live by bread alone. Can he live without bread? – the other part is not bothered about at all! I accept the idea that man should have better values, higher values than just eating, drinking. It is good, “Man cannot live by bread alone,” but don’t forget that without bread man cannot live at all.Man can live without everything, but not without bread. He can live without music, without spirituality, without poetry, without painting, but he cannot live without bread. And if eight hours a day he is just spinning clothes for himself, when is he going to earn bread? When is he going to earn enough money for his old father, his medicine? When is he going to earn money to make a shelter to live in? He cannot live under the spinning wheel.But Gandhi had a tremendous appeal because he supported – he was against birth control, he was against abortion. Strangely, all the religions which differ in their ideologies, in their philosophies are in a subtle, unconscious conspiracy as far as humanity, its growth, its future, is concerned. Ayatollah Khomeini, Mahatma Gandhi, the pope, Falwell, they may differ in their theology – they do differ – but they don’t differ about fundamental things which can make human life rich, which can make human life comfortable, which can make humanity rich, affluent.We have the resources now. Science has discovered so much, but we are forcing the scientists into the service of death rather than the service of life. The same energy – and it is not a small part, almost seventy-five percent of the income of all the nations goes into creating more weapons, armies and other things necessary for war. People are living on only twenty-five percent of their productivity.There is no need for war. There is no need for nuclear weapons. You already have more – seven hundred times more – than are needed to destroy this earth. Now, this is sheer madness. You go on piling them up – for what? These people have to be stopped, and these religious people have to be brought to their senses.But are you in favor of advanced technology? You seem to be.I am. I am in favor of technology – but in a technology which does not go against life, does not go against humanity, does not go against the environment. Technology is in our hands: it can destroy, it can create. Technology itself has no value system; we provide the values. I am not against technology. It is like a sword: you can kill a person or you can save a woman from being raped – the same sword. It is neutral, all power is neutral.So the question is not of technology, the question is of the people who are going to decide the value system. Now, people like Ronald Reagan, who belong to the fundamentalist Christian stupidity, cannot be the right people to decide. Falwell cannot be the right person to decide. To decide exactly what technology should do should be not in the hands of the politicians, who are in turn in the hands of the priests because they have the power of the people, their votes. So it is simply a conspiracy between the politicians and the priests to keep humanity starved, hungry; to keep humanity in such a state that it cannot rebel against the vested interests.Osho,Do you worry about statements that you make about American politicians and about the local controversies regarding land use endangering the ranch here?We have invited those people who are talking about land use laws to come here: “For 50 years the land was lying dead. You never raised the question that 126 square miles of land is lying dead.” Not a single politician bothered about it. Those “One Thousand Enemies of Oregon” – they did not bother. We have made it productive. We have been inviting the governor, the United States attorney and these people seem such cowards, they won’t come here.“Just come and see how we have used the land. If it goes against your laws, then change the laws, because man is not made for laws, laws are made for man. Just see if we have misused the land in any way. And if we have, we are ready to correct it, we are willing in every way to change it.” But they don’t come.Just a few days ago – this incident will help you to understand the situation – we had a festival and we created a new kind of tent, winterized so that people don’t have to suffer in the cold. Immediately the United States attorney imposed a fine of six hundred thousand dollars because we had not taken permission, and, “Your tents are not tents but permanent structures.” We asked them to come and see if they are permanent structures. Nobody ever came to see. They had already decided that we had to pay that much money as punishment. We had to go to the court.I said to my people, “Take a tent and, there in the court, within ten minutes you can put up the tent. And in ten minutes you can unfold it again and put it back in the truck. And just tell the judge, ‘Is that not enough proof that it is not a permanent structure? We don’t want to argue anything; the tent itself is the argument.’” And the judge was certainly an intelligent man. He immediately dismissed the whole punishment and declared, “These are tents. You cannot create permanent structures in ten minutes!”And the attorney has no shame even – just a shameless fellow with no dignity. He should have resigned immediately. He cannot even understand what indignity he has suffered. He should just go and jump into the ocean, forget all about it. We were inviting him here, and he would have been saved from this indignity. Now he has put a case against the city, saying that it is illegal because religion and the government – the state – are mixed here. Strange people. They don’t come – they should come and show us where religion is mixing with state.Your president is trying to mix state and religion. Your courts are mixing state and religion: why are Bibles provided to take the oath on? Why has a Scout been thrown out because he does not believe in God? And now this man, Jerry Falwell, is saying that the Bible should become a national, government-approved scripture, each single word is true. And he has immense power over politicians: he is a friend of Ronald Reagan, he goes to see him. And they both belong to the same company.And this city is under litigation. This is a unique city in the whole world – an illegal city! Either there is a city or there is no city, but an illegal city is a rare phenomenon. And that, too, when in four years – the time we have been here – not a single crime has happened. No rape has happened, no theft has happened, no murder has happened, no suicide has happened. And we are the illegal city! You should declare New York, San Francisco, illegal cities, because everything illegal is happening there every moment.Such an innocent city, where nobody is doing any harm to anybody, is illegal. And the people who decide it don’t come here, because they know they cannot encounter and face the reality. But we are going to prove that the whole of America may be illegal, but this city is not.Osho,What would you eventually like to create here?We would like to create as big an oasis as possible – a model for the whole world. We would like people to know that crimes are not needed, rapes are not needed, prostitution is not needed, politicians are not needed. We are living with such psychological health. If somebody commits a mistake – which is human – it is not a sin, he should be encouraged to learn from his mistake. If he goes on committing the same mistake, then we have all kinds of therapies in the university. We send the person to the university; that now it is for the world of the psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, to change this man’s conditioning.No, we don’t have any jail here – our police we call “the Peace Force,” and they have no work. They must be getting bored holding their guns the whole day for four years. Nothing happens. Their guns are not needed, and I don’t think they will ever be needed. We would like to create a model. I don’t believe in arguments, I believe in existential proofs. Rather than convincing by arguing, I would like…And this is not the only commune, we have hundreds of communes around the world on the same pattern. We are trying in every way to prove that people can live so happily, so blissfully, so lovingly, that there is no need for anybody to murder, to commit suicide, to become homosexual, to suffer from this ugly disease AIDS.All my sannyasins around the world have gone through the test for AIDS. I said, “All immediately go for the test.” In this commune we have found two persons with AIDS. That does not mean they have lost our respect. They have gained more respect and more love, because they are victims of the whole past of the religions. We have made the best houses available to them, the most scenic place. And because they are not going to live more than two years at the most, we are providing them with everything we can: all our love, all our respect. They are not reduced the way they would be in the outside world.In the outside world a person does not want to go through the test, because if it is found that he has AIDS, even his family – his wife who was ready to die for him, his father, his mother, even his children – will close the door and tell him, “Get lost. You don’t belong to us.” His friends will become enemies. He will lose his job. He cannot live. If it is known that he has AIDS, the only way out for him will be suicide.But in my commune they are living more beautifully than any other sannyasin. And we have given them meditations. They can meditate, they can study, they can paint – whatever they want to do. Whatever they always wanted to do but could never get time. Now they have two years, two whole years.This is too much: do everything that you wanted to do. And meditate as deeply as possible, because if your death comes and you are able to meditate while death is coming, that is the greatest experience in the world. Death comes to the body, to the brain, but not to you. You can go on watching death, step by step. It has taken your body, it has taken your brain, it has taken your heart, but you are still the same. At the very center of your being is something which is eternal.And these two years – they are fortunate: good fortune has come disguised as AIDS. Otherwise, how to get two years time just to meditate and do nothing? I have every certainty they will die a beautiful death. The other religions have given them the disease, we are going to give them rejoicing, even in death. And nobody can spread it here because nobody can be part of the commune unless he goes through the test.The disease is really such that very drastic steps have to be taken. For example, kissing can give it to you, tears can give it to you. So I have told my people, “Stop kissing.” Anyway it is a very unhygienic procedure. I don’t see that it has anything to do with love. Just mixing your saliva, tongues playing in each other’s mouths – it is simply insane. And we can find better, more scientific, more hygienic methods.Eskimos have never kissed, so it is not anything unnatural. I know in India there are aboriginal tribes who have never kissed. In fact, when they first found Christian missionaries kissing, they could not believe it: “These idiots, what are they doing?” Even aboriginals who are five thousand years behind could not believe: “These idiots have come to teach us, and they don’t know what they are doing.” Rather than kissing, Eskimos rub their noses, which is far more hygienic. In India the most ancient book on sexology prescribes playing with each other’s earlobes; they are very erotic. So we can find ways, there is no problem. Just a little intelligence is needed.Never wipe anybody’s tears. In fact in my commune it doesn’t happen: nobody is crying and weeping and screaming – the whole scene that is happening in every family. It is not a family. But even if somebody is crying – perhaps tears may come out of joy – don’t allow those tears to be touched by anybody.Sex is also unhygienic.It is. But it can be made hygienic, and we have made it. I don’t believe in theories: if I see something is right, I tell my people to do it. While making love they should use condoms, while making love they should use gloves. And they are freely available to everybody.This is simple intelligence. Why do unnecessary harm to the person you love?You're a sensual man…Certainly.Rubber gloves and condoms detract from sensuality.No, they do not. If you are really sensuous, they also become sensuous. Otherwise your skin would destroy your sensuality. What is your skin? It is just a rubber glove! Do you want the woman to be really naked, all skin taken away? Then you will make love? If you can make love through the skin, what is wrong with plastic or rubber over your hand? It is just new, and in fact everything new is an adventure.I am a sensuous man and I appreciate sensuality. But my understanding is that a sensuous man can touch anything and make it sensuous. A non-sensuous man or anti-sensuous man…And you may have observed, sometimes you shake hands with a man and you feel as if you are shaking hands with a dead branch of a tree. That man is not there. He is simply fulfilling a mannerism. There is no warmth coming from him, in fact you will feel sucked. By being with this man you will feel tired. You will feel as if that man was somehow a parasite on your energy.So it is not a question, you can make anything sensuous. And when life is in danger you have to find a way – because what will you do if life disappears? Then where will your sensuality be? And where will your sexuality be? It is a simple matter of intelligence.Osho,What is going to happen to this community when you are gone?I never think about the future – because my idea is that anybody who tries to make arrangements for when he is gone is a criminal, because he wants to rule even when he is dead.Jesus says, “I am the only begotten son of God, so don’t listen to anybody else. Only I am the savior, nobody else can save you.” So even when he is dead he is dominating half of humanity. Dead people controlling, dominating living beings, intelligent beings!Manu wrote the moral code for the Hindus five thousand years ago. They are still following it. In five thousand years everything has changed. That code is absolutely rotten; it should be burned, but it is being followed. The older a scripture, the more valuable it becomes. So every religion tries to prove that their scripture is the oldest. The ancient-ness of the scripture should really be against the scripture; the more ancient it is, the more worthless it is. Is man evolving or falling down? We have evolved in every way and we should use every method.Of course, Manu cannot be aware of it, neither can Jesus be aware of it, nor can Buddha be aware of it. Still they have tried to dominate the future. I find it disgusting. I don’t want to dominate even now when I am alive. I simply express myself and leave it to my people to decide on their own. I never go to the commune’s office, I never go to the commune’s meetings; I am not even a member. It is up to them. I share heart-to-heart what I feel in a certain situation, then they are free. Then I never even ask whether they have done anything about it or not. That is not my business. Who am I? Why should I dominate anybody? That is degrading the other person, reducing his humanity.And you are asking me: “…after your death”? I am not going to have any successor, because popes have done so much harm in two thousand years. I am not going to create another line of popes, no. I am sharing my awareness with my people. That awareness will take care.My whole effort is to make them more alert, more intelligent, so that they live through their intelligence. They are functioning right now without me, so in the future they will be able. I don’t even know the roads of the commune, I have only my own road where I go for driving. Twenty-three hours it remains in meditation – only for one hour I disturb it, otherwise there is no traffic.My people are already living on their own. And my idea is that before I leave them I should become almost absent. So there will be no problem at all – my death will not create a problem for them. I was already absent for many years before death, and they were managing perfectly well. They will manage perfectly well after.For three and a half years I was silent, I was not speaking. They managed perfectly well, everything went absolutely right. It was tremendously joyful for me to see that while I was silent and they could not get any instruction from me, they had the whole responsibility. They could not dump responsibility on me, and they did so beautifully.It was just because they did beautifully during my silence that I started speaking again. Now there is no problem: they are not dependent on my speaking or not speaking, so they will not be dependent even on my presence. My absence or presence will not make any difference.The people who appoint their successors, who give instructions, who make Ten Commandments, are really not the right kind of people. They are trying to dominate humanity through their graves. I am not interested in dominating a single individual. My whole effort is to make every individual totally responsible for himself.Osho,Let me ask you a question about the present: why do you like Rolls Royces so much?I have tried all kinds of cars; and even Rolls Royce has many types and I have tried them too. Their best is the Corniche, but it doesn’t suit me. It is a question of my back. I need a certain kind of chair – I use only this chair. It has been made by my sannyasins exactly to give support to my back, because doctors have said that they cannot do anything more.Experts from England were called to India. They tried hard, but they said, “It is impossible. You will have to live with it.” It was just a coincidence that one of the models of Rolls Royce, Silver Spur, suited me. The driver’s seat in that car fits perfectly, gives me no trouble. Naturally, my people love…They don’t belong to me, those cars – nothing belongs to me. I am the poorest man in the whole world, living the richest life possible. My people love me, they want to do something for me. All those cars belong to the commune; they have made them available to me for one hour each day. I don’t know which car they are bringing, but one thing is certain, that I can be comfortable only in a Silver Spur. And they love me so much that they are trying to have 365 Rolls Royces, one for every day. And I say, why not, a great idea!They make everything for me: this chair, my shoes, my robes, my hats, even my watch – they make everything for me. And because they make everything with so much love, so much feeling, I can feel the robe is not just the cloth. That’s why I said I am certainly a sensuous man. Wearing this robe I can feel my sannyasins, their love for me. Wearing this watch I can feel the person who worked hard on it. He did not know how to make watches. He went to Switzerland to learn, and now two of my sannyasins can defeat any watchmaker in the world.The same watch from Piaget – exactly the same watch – is a quarter of a million dollars. My sannyasins have made it, not with diamonds but with real authentic stones. In that way it has no price, it is just the cheapest watch possible. In another way it is priceless. If somebody offers me one billion dollars for it, I am not going to give it to them. Love is never for sale.They have arranged 90 Rolls Royces, and I know they will be able to manage 365.Osho,If you sold two or three Rolls Royces, you could build another lake with the money.They will make the lake too – there is no need to sell the Rolls Royces. They will never sell them. Even when I am gone, those Rolls Royces are not going to be sold. I have used them; they will feel my presence in them. They will not want anybody else to sit in those cars. Those cars are not saleable. And as far as lakes are concerned, they are doing whatever is needed.We have made a great lake, and now we are thinking to double it. Two and a half million dollars worth of lake, and we are now planning to double it. Already it is great, but when it enters deeper into the mountains it will be more scenic for boats, for people to go deep into the mountains. We are making everything.As far as money is concerned, it is not a problem. We can create it. All my communes around the world are living richly. You can see it here: not only that I have ninety Rolls Royces, my other sannyasins have Rolls Royces, they have Mercedes Benzes. There are hundreds of cars. There are only fifteen hundred permanent residents here, and I don’t think any city in the whole world can compete as far as cars are concerned. Fifteen hundred people have one hundred busses. Fifteen hundred people have five airplanes and their own airport. And everybody can have any kind of vehicle he wants anytime, because we have made a pool of the vehicles.For example, in Jesus Grove where we are sitting, they have a pool of hundreds of cars. Anybody can take any car, everything belongs to all; just out of their love, they will not take my cars. Nobody has prohibited them – I have not prohibited them. Just out of love, out of gratitude, they will not take them. Otherwise, those ninety cars are always available, they can take them. What can I do with ninety Rolls Royces? I drive only for one hour; I cannot drive ninety cars in one hour. They also know it, but they feel how much love I have given to them.I have given my whole heart to them, so they want to do something. They try to do anything they can. And it is not a duty on them – nobody has asked them, nobody is forcing them. It is out of sheer joy that they go on doing things. And that’s the way it should be.I don’t even say that I am your leader or your master. I simply say I am just a friend. If my experience can be of any help to you, I am ready to share.Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Christian Sidel,Sonntagsblick, Zurich, SwitzerlandGlad 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!

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The Tennessean,Nashville, Tennessee, United StatesGlad to meet you.Osho,It's nice to meet you.I am perfect.Perfect?I am just perfect. Start your questions.Osho,Well I have a lot of questions, but the reason that I come is mainly a curiosity of my own to feel what it's like to be near you, and to ask a question of mine, that's a sort of apprehension of…It will be easy now that you are here. And it will be easier to understand because you have a personal curiosity. A journalist who just comes to do his job cannot get to the very roots of anything. His approach remains superficial. It is good that you feel personally involved, that you want to know things not only intellectually, but existentially too.It will be possible for me to communicate with you more easily. Your questions can be intellectual, my answers will not be. Questions don’t matter; what matters is the answer. And what matters even more than the answer is who is answering – whether he is simply answering the question or responding to a living human being. I don’t answer questions, I answer you.I have to reach to your heart, not to your mind. And I know your heart is already beating – so better you start. And don’t be worried; whatsoever the question is, I am open and available, for any kind of question, any curiosity. You cannot ask me a question that has not been asked thousands of times.I had sort of felt that.But I always answer differently. I don’t care much about the question; whatever I want to answer, I answer. I use the question only as a jumping board.Well, one thing I was curious about is that I had heard that you don't dream. And I'm wondering if that's true, and why. Why you don't dream?It is true. One has to understand why one dreams. One dreams because there are unfulfilled moments, repressed desires, things that you wanted to do but could not because of the society, because of the culture, because of the religion. Animals don’t dream. Primitive people don’t dream. I have come across aboriginal tribes in India which are still living five thousand years back, they don’t dream. The more a man becomes repressed, civilized, starts repressing his nature and projecting a certain personality which is respectable, then there are dreams.Dreams are simply to help you: what you could not do in your waking hours you can do in your sleep. They are a kind of substitute. That’s why Sigmund Freud and his school of psychoanalysis were so interested in your dreams. They were not at all interested in what you think in the day; that is all hypocrisy. What they were interested in was what you dream in the night, because that will give them a clue to the true person.But a Sigmund Freud would be absolutely amazed if he met me, because I never leave anything incomplete. I do only what I want to do, irrespective of any consequences. I don’t care about respectability, I don’t care about what others think of me. I simply live my life. And because I live so intensely and totally there is nothing residual that can create dreams. Dreams are your unlived life.You can try a simple experiment: fast for one day, and in the night you will have dreams of eating very good, delicious food. The fasting created a dream about food. Repress your sexual desire in the day, and in the night you will have a sexual dream.Freud’s interest was correct – to know about you, your dreams have to be known. Once your dreams are known, then you can be helped to become more natural, less repressive, and to see where the points in your life are where you have been denying yourself, sacrificing yourself, either in the name of the country or in the name of religion.I have never sacrificed anything. I have never done anything against myself. Whatever I want to say I say; whatever I want to do I do. I have never followed anybody, I have never taken anybody’s advice. I have lived a very innocent, primitive, simple life. That’s why there are no dreams.Osho,Well, another thing I was wondering is how parents could raise their children differently, or treat their children differently as they're growing up – to reduce all the conditioning and the oppression that we then struggle with as adults.A few guidelines can be given.One: they should not make any effort that their children become carbon copies of themselves. And every parent is doing just that, trying to make the child a carbon copy. If you love your children, that is the first thing to be stopped – completely stopped – for the single and simple reason that nature does not accept carbon copies. It accepts only the original.And they should ask themselves what have they gained in their life: what are their blessings, what are their songs and ecstasies? There is nothing – their lives are empty deserts, and still they are trying for their children to live according to them. One thing is certain, that their children should not live according to them. That should be their basic approach, because they have achieved only misery, anguish, anxiety, all kinds of suffering. But they are completely unaware that they are again preparing another generation for the same kind of experiences.When I came back home from the university, my parents were naturally concerned about my marriage. My mother asked me first, because my father was always very cautious about asking me anything – because once I have said anything then there was no way to change it. So first he tried through my mother, “You should find out what he feels about marriage, because once he has said no to me, we would have to drop the subject completely! So, just to feel out his mind…”When I was going to sleep, my mother came and sat on my bed and asked me, “Now you have finished your education, what do you think about marriage?”I said, “I would like to ask you, because I have never been married before so I don’t have any experience. You have been married, you have raised eleven children. You are an experienced person – I seek your advice. Has this life been a life of blessings? Have you not thought many times in your life, that if you had not married it would have been better? And I don’t ask you to answer right now; I give you fifteen days to think it over.”She said, “This is really strange. I was going to give you time to think about it, and you are telling me to think about it!”I said, “Yes, because I don’t know. I trust you. If after fifteen days you say that yes, your life has been a life of tremendous joy and ecstasy, of course I will get married. But remember, I am trusting you so much, I am giving my whole life into your hands, in trust.“And remember also that I know your life – there has never been any ecstasy, any blessing. It was a continuous fight, a struggle – with the father, with the children…” In India, it is a joint family. My family consisted of at least sixty people: my uncles, their wives, their children. “And you have been continuously miserable – that I know. Perhaps inside you may have experienced something that I am not aware of. Think it over for fifteen days. And I leave it to you. If you say ‘Get married,’ I will get married.”After fifteen days she said, “No. Don’t get married.” She said, “You tricked me. You trusted me so deeply that I cannot betray you, and I cannot cheat you and cannot lie to you. You are right; many times I have thought, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ – just giving birth to children, raising children. This has been my whole life. From early in the morning at four o’clock, to late, twelve o’clock in the night, I am continuously working. I have never known a single moment of my own.“These fifteen days,” she said, “have been a great turmoil in me. I have never thought about my whole life the way you forced me to think. I love you, and I take my question back. It was not really my question; your father was trying to find out the answer.”I said, “Tell him that he should ask me directly.”She told my father, “As far as I am concerned, it is finished. I have told him not to get married.”My father said, “My God! You have advised him not to get married?”She said, “Yes, because he trusted me so much, and he asked me to think it over for fifteen days. He was willing, but no, I cannot cheat and I cannot live with the guilt my whole life. You do whatever you want to do.”Now he was even more afraid – even my mother had gone out of his hands. But somehow the answer had to be found out, what I wanted to do. He asked one of his friends, a Supreme Court advocate – very famous, very logical and rational, and he thought that that man might be the right man to argue with me.And of course that man said, “Don’t be worried. I have been arguing in the Supreme Court my whole life. Do you think I cannot convince your boy, who has just come from university? What does he know? What is his experience? I will come tomorrow.”The next day was Sunday, the courts were closed. He came to my house, and I told him, “Before you start – because my father has told me you are coming to meet me about my marriage – before you start I would like to make a clear statement: that if you convince me, then I am ready to get married, but if you cannot convince me you will have to divorce your wife. Because you have to stake something.“And I trust you, so I don’t ask for a judge. I have loved and respected you, just as I have loved and respected my father. You have been such bosom friends, I have never thought of you as anything other than my father. So I don’t ask for a judge, because that would be distrusting you. I trust your abilities and I am ready for the arguments, but this condition should be remembered.”He said, “Then just give me a little time, because I had never thought about this alternative. The truth is that I have suffered my whole life because of my marriage, but I had never given a thought to it. And you are proposing that I divorce if I cannot convince you in favor of marriage. Let me think it over. I have children, I have a wife, I have all my respectability in the society. I cannot divorce so easily.”I said, “And you think that I don’t have anything? All that you have is past, and all that I have is future. The past is already dead and finished. I am risking the living, the coming, and you are risking only the gone, the finished. Do you think you are risking more than I am risking?”And the second day he informed me, “I don’t want to argue about it at all.”I used to go to his house every day, and he would tell his wife, “Just tell him that I am not in the house.”Finally the wife asked, “Why are you afraid of that boy? Why do you go into the bathroom and lock it from inside the moment you see him coming? Why are you afraid?”He said, “You don’t know. The problem is that either he has to get married or I have to get divorced. It is a question of life and death. Simply go on telling him that I am not at home!”Before I was going to leave the city and join the university as a lecturer, the last day I went and I told his wife, “I know he has always been in, and you also know why he is not coming to face me. Just tell him that he may be an advocate of long experience in the Supreme Court, but he has lost this case as far as I am concerned. Tell him he should stop bragging that he has never lost a case. He has lost an actual, existential case – and even without a judge. He was both. I had given him the chance to be both the client and the judge. He could have cheated me, he could have been insincere to me. But I know that that is very difficult when somebody trusts so deeply in you.”He came out while I was talking to his wife and he said, “Just forgive me. You are right. I have always been in, but I was afraid. I was never afraid of anybody but I was afraid of you, because I cannot tell a lie when I look at you, at your eyes, at your trust, your love toward me. I cannot tell a lie, and I cannot divorce my wife. There is so much involvement and there is so much investment – that I cannot do. My suggestion is that you talk to your father directly and tell him that there is no other way. He will have to talk directly to you.”My father never did that. I asked him many times, “Why don’t you ask about my marriage? You have been trying to inquire from other ways; why don’t you ask directly?”He said, “I know that your answer will create trouble for me. Your answer is not going to become a marriage for you, but it is going to become a nightmare for me. Simply forget the matter. Whatever you want to do, do. If you want to get married, get married; if you don’t want, just drop the subject. As far as I am concerned, I have dropped it.”Parents should be aware of the conditioning they are giving their children – because they have lived through that conditioning, and what was their achievement? One thing is absolutely certain: that they have failed, that their life has been just a long, long misery and suffering. So one thing is certain: that they should make the children aware, “Don’t copy us, we have failed. Do anything but don’t copy us. At least try something new. Don’t copy us.”But parents are doing just the opposite. That is a projection of their ego. The father wants the child to represent him to the world – to be more respectable, to be more honored, to be more rich, so that the world knows whose son he is. Even after death, the world will remember him through his son. He is not interested in the individuality of his son, he is interested in his own ego projection. That’s why he completely forgets that he has lived in hell and he is now preparing his son to also live in the same hell. Parents have just to be very alert and aware. This is the first thing.The second thing is that the children should be protected, watched so that they don’t go astray, that they don’t commit suicide or become addicted to drugs. They should be protected, but very delicately and very understandingly.I said to my father, “I want to start smoking.”I was only thirteen year of age, and he said, “What? Smoking? You have some guts – you are asking me? If people want to smoke, and particularly children, they hide somewhere and smoke – and you are asking my permission?”I said, “Yes, because I don’t do so many wrong things. First smoking, then lying, cheating, hiding – and if I am caught, then what face will I show to you? People are smoking all around, I want to know what is in it. And I don’t have money for it, and I want to have the best kind of cigars, cigarettes – you arrange it.”He said, “I have to arrange it too?”I said, “Certainly! Do you want me to steal? Do you want me to beg from the neighbors? You have to arrange it.”He waited for a moment, then he said, “Yes, perhaps that is the right way. Perhaps you are right.”He arranged it, and that was my first and last experience with smoking. It was simply stupid and silly to take dirty smoke in and out, when pure oxygen is available. And particularly in my place, it was so beautiful and so windy – polluting your own breathing and paying for it, destroying your own lungs and paying for it…I told my father, “It is finished forever. But if you had not allowed me, perhaps I may have got into the habit of it. It becomes a challenge. If you say no, then it becomes a challenge. Then I have to prove myself also.”Every child has to prove his individuality some way or other. And perhaps if I had gone on smoking for a few days I may have become accustomed to it, addicted to it.Children should be protected, but given all opportunities and freedom. That is my second thing. And children should be given every freedom to experience the good and the bad, so they can decide on their own. You need not say it to them; you need not force them to follow certain rules, regulations. Let them find their way. Simply watch carefully that they don’t fall in a ditch.And the third thing: never say anything to your children that is not your existential experience. Accept your ignorance. It will give more respect to you, more trust in you. But the parent’s egos want to pretend that they know everything: they know God, they know heaven, they know hell, they know everything – and they know nothing. Sooner or later the children are going to discover that their parents were lying about such ultimate things. That day, all their trust and all their love will disappear into their revenge, hatred.So the third thing is, just say to the children what you have experienced. And tell them that you don’t know anything about godliness; you want to know but you don’t know, you are a seeker. And tell the children, “You are also to be seekers. If I find it before you, I will tell you. If you find it before, you tell me. We can always be available to communicate.”This is one of the most difficult things in the world. Parents and children are living with such a gap that communication is almost impossible. Whatever the parents say to the children looks rubbish; whatever the children say to the parents looks childish.The third thing means that the parents should be friends to their children. It is their responsibility to bridge the gap. Be respectful to the child. Parents expect respect from the children, but they forget that it is something mutual. Respect the children and they will respect you. Trust the children and they will trust you. Then there is a possibility of communication. And a great communication is needed. But that is possible only if the parents are not lying.For example, when my father told me, “Now it is time that you should start coming to the temple with me and learn something about our religion,” I said, “I need not go there. Whatever you have learned, whatever you have experienced, you can teach me. I trust you more than the priest, a paid priest in the temple. I trust you more. I don’t trust those dead statues in the temple. And how am I going to know if what is written in the scriptures is true or not? You have been going to the temple your whole life. Tell me, have you really experienced anything, or was it just a dead ritual? Your parents have handed it over to you, and now you are handing it over to me?”He never asked me again to come to the temple. He said to me, “You are right. I have not got anything from all these prayers, no answer. I have not experienced anything that these religions go on teaching. And I have tried my best.”That much I was certain, that he was a man who would try his best in anything that he wanted to do. I had seen him praying for hours in the temple, morning, evening; I had seen him reading scriptures late in the night. I told him, “You have just to tell me, that if you have not got anything out of all this waste of time, then let me search in my own way. Don’t interfere.”And you will be surprised, he died as my disciple. He died as a sannyasin – because I found it before he could find it through his past, dead, twenty-five centuries-old religion. I told him, “I have found it, and I am ready to communicate with you. And I am grateful to you that you did not force me, because I was too helpless, too dependent. You could have forced me to go to the temple, to learn from the priest, to read the same scriptures that for generations you have been reading. But in twenty-five hundred years, has anyone of your family become enlightened?”In India many families have their family trees. My family had its family tree. It is a big map of twenty-five hundred years – how many people there had been who remained unmarried, who got married, how many children were born to him, the whole tree. I asked him, “The tree is hanging there” – we had a small temple in the house – “it is hanging there. Come with me and tell me who, out of all of these thousands of people, has become enlightened. And they have all been doing the same thing that you are doing. And I am grateful that you did not force me. With me there comes a discontinuity with your tree; I am no longer continuous with all these people.”Osho,Tell me about trust, how you speak of it. How did you develop then the kind of trust that you're talking about? And how does somebody develop that kind of trust? You seem to have more than your parents had for you.Trust is simply a very purified love. Love without sex, that is trust. They loved me. I was their eldest son, and in India it is traditional that the eldest son is going to inherit the whole family’s property, money, everything. So the eldest son has to be trained, prepared for all the responsibilities that will be his sooner or later. He will be the head of the family, a joint family, and he will have to manage it.Naturally they loved me. They tried their best to make me as capable, as intelligent as possible. I loved them because it was not only love from their side, but respect too – respect for my individuality. Soon they understood that nothing could be imposed on me. It took a little time for them to understand that they had a different kind of child; they could not impose anything on me. At the most they could persuade, they could argue, and if they could convince me about something, I would do it. But they could not just order, and say, “Do it because I am your father.”I had made it clear to them, “I am not going to accept anybody’s order. You may be my father, but that does not mean that you are going to be my intelligence, my individuality, my life. You have given birth to me, but that does not mean that you possess me. I am not a thing. So if you want me to do something, be prepared. Do your homework well; I am going to argue to the very end, till I feel convinced.”So on each small thing – soon they recognized the fact, “It is better to propose a thing and leave him to decide whether he wants to do it or not. Don’t waste unnecessary time and don’t unnecessarily harass him and be harassed by him.” And because they gave me every freedom, my love became trust.Love becomes trust when it is non-possessive. It does not reduce you into a thing. It accepts your individuality, your freedom, and it has every respect for you, although you are just a child. Their respect toward me became my trust toward them. I knew that they were people who could be trusted, who could not deceive me in anything.And because I trusted so much – this is just a circle – because I trusted so much, they could not do anything or say anything which would disturb my trust in them. They never took me to the temple, they never gave me any religion. I have grown up on my own, and they allowed it. They protected me in every possible way. They helped me in every possible way, but they never interfered with me. And that’s what every parent should do.If these three things are the guidelines, we will have a totally new world and a new man. We will have individuals, not crowds, not mobs. And every individual is so unique that to force him to become part of a crowd is to destroy him, his uniqueness. He could have contributed immensely to the world, but it was possible only if he was left alone – supported, helped, but not directed.Now everywhere there is a vast generation gap. The parents are responsible for it, because they have been trying to impose their ideologies, political, social, religious, philosophical – they are trying to impose all kinds of things on their children. And this is the first time that something strange has happened in the world, of which they are not aware.In the past, just five hundred years ago, the generation gap did not exist, for a simple reason – and it does not exist even now in very primitive societies. The child starts working with his father when he is seven years old, eight years old. If the father is a woodcutter, he becomes a woodcutter. Naturally the father knows more about woodcutting. And the child never becomes a youth, the way children today become youths. You send them to schools, to the university. By the time they come back home they are twenty-five years old, twenty-six years old. They are fully adult. They have intelligence of their own. They have their logic, their rationality. You cannot behave with them in the same way as in the past all parents have behaved with their children.A seven-year-old child is a totally different phenomenon. He grows with his father. By the time he is twenty-five he is already old. In fact “youth” is a contemporary phenomenon. In primitive societies there is childhood, there is maturity, but there is no gap where somebody is simply young – doing nothing, no responsibility, supported financially, being given all kinds of education. By the time he returns home, you cannot expect him to be a Jew or a Christian or a Mohammedan. But that is your expectation. You cannot expect him not to argue with you: “That is disrespectful; to answer your parents is disrespectful.” But things have changed immensely.A new phenomenon of “youth” has come into existence, and that is the gap. And the gap is going to become bigger and bigger, because in many fields your boy knows more than you. When he comes back home from the university, your child knows much more than you. You cannot expect the same old relationship, when the father always knew more – when older people always knew more because there was no school other than experience.Now there are schools, colleges, universities. They give the child so much of which no parent knows. Children cannot have the same respect toward those ignorant people as children used to have before. Something has to be done by the parents, so that even these children can again have the same trust. But they have to do something very new: they have to accept that they are ignorant about many things. “You know many things because you have been educated. We are ready and willing to learn from you.” It is against their egos, but there is no other way. They have to give respect to their children and their knowledge. That is the only way to bridge the gap.Then children will also feel gratitude toward their parents, because they supported, they educated them. Without them, they would have not been anywhere, and still they don’t have ego. Still, although they are older, they want to learn from their own children. That is the only possibility to bridge the gap.It was a constant problem for me in my university. I have been expelled from many colleges and many universities.Why?For the simple reason that I knew more than the professors. I was reading so much, and the professors had stopped reading thirty years before, when they passed their Ph.D.s and became professors. They were finished. But in those thirty years so much had grown. In those last thirty years man had grown in every dimension of knowledge, more than he had been able to in three thousand years.So when I entered the philosophical class, my professor had no idea of Jean-Paul Sartre, no idea of Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard. Those names were simply not part of his education, because when he was studying these people were not in existence. They were not part of the curriculum. And what he remembered was Bosanquet, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach. Now they are all outdated; they have been replaced by better minds, far more intelligent. I knew all about Kant and Hegel and Bosanquet, but I knew much more about Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Sartre, Marcel. They had no idea of these people.It was a strange situation, because on every point they were feeling defeated. I was expelled just for the simple reason that the professors continuously complained against me: “He is disturbance. He doesn’t allow us to move a single inch without days of argument. And when are we going to finish the course? This boy seems not to be interested in the course and he brings such names, of which we have never heard. And now, in our old age, we are not going to read all that he is reading. And it is very awkward in front of the other students to feel that you know nothing about the latest developments in philosophy.”My principals would call me and they would say, “We know perfectly well that you are not wrong. You are not being expelled for doing anything wrong. I feel sad and sorry for you, and I want you to forgive me, but we cannot lose the professor. He is an old, well-reputed professor, and he has threatened – that either you will be in the university or he will be. He’s given his resignation.”They showed me his resignation. It said, “Either you expel that boy or accept the resignation.”I said, “It is better you expel me, because what I am doing here I will do somewhere else. But your college, your university will miss a well-reputed professor. And I don’t want him to find another job somewhere else in his old age; no, that is not for me to do. That is ugly. Call the professor, give him his resignation back, and tell him that I am being expelled.”I have seen tears in my principals’, in my vice-chancellors’ eyes, that they are expelling somebody who has done no wrong. And I said to them, “You need not feel sorry about it. I have not done anything wrong, but I have done something far more dangerous, and that is make the professor feel continuously embarrassed every day.”Now, these professors could have bridged the gap. They could have simply said, “Perhaps you are right and we are wrong; but the reason is we studied thirty years ago, and we don’t know anything about what has happened within these years. Wittgenstein’s name we have heard for the first time from you. So naturally we cannot argue.”Just this much was needed, and they would have gained my respect, that they are capable men who can even accept ignorance. They are humble people who can say clearly, “I don’t know, so please don’t bring in these thirty years. What I know I can discuss with you with full confidence, but you bring people’s names, theories, ideas of which we know nothing. But we argue with you just to pretend that we know, and naturally we are defeated, because we are not really aware of what you are saying and we don’t understand the implications of it.”They had known of Aristotle and his logic, but they had no idea that modern physics had gone beyond Aristotle, and his whole logic had been proved wrong. Now, I was reading Albert Einstein whose whole life’s experiments, philosophy, simply cut Aristotle, who had been the dominant figure in the world of logic for two thousand years, at the roots. Aristotle was thought to be the father of logic in the West. They were not aware that Albert Einstein had already finished him; there was no Aristotle anymore of any significance. They had known Euclid and his geometry, but they were not aware that now his geometry is no longer applicable. Modern physics had developed non-Euclidian geometry, had to invent it. They were simply shocked because they had never thought that Euclid could be wrong.Euclid says that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Perfectly right. But Albert Einstein says there are no straight lines in existence. You cannot draw a straight line; that is an impossibility, existentially impossible. Euclid or no Euclid, you cannot draw a straight line.And when I said this to one of my professors, he said, “That is strange. I can draw one.”I said, “Draw it on the floor. The earth is round. If you go on drawing it, finally it will become a circle. So the small straight line was just illusory. It was an arc, it was not straight.”Euclid says two parallel lines can never meet. And Einstein says they meet – because, whatever you do, two parallel lines cannot be created in the first place. And according to Euclid, the definition of the line is that it has length but it has no breadth. How can you draw a line which has no breadth, only length? Only in imagination – you cannot draw it on the board. Howsoever small the breadth of it may be, still it is there.Euclid says the point has neither length nor breadth. But you cannot draw a point. Magnify it and you will see it has both. Even when it is so small, visibly the smallest possible, then too it has both the things which Euclid is denying.So it was difficult for them, but the difficulty was simply their ego. If they had accepted, “Perhaps you know better because you have been educated and you have been learning things about which we were never educated,” they would have had all my respect, all my trust, and there would have been no problem. I would have dropped the argument.I had told them, “If you simply accept your ignorance about the point, I will not raise it again, because I don’t want in any way to let you down. But you insist that you know – then I am going to fight to the very end and prove that your knowledge is wrong.”It is the same question with the generations, with professors, with students, with teachers and their students, with fathers and their sons. It is the same question: that the older party is not ready to accept its ignorance.In the past there was no need. The older party always knew more than the younger, so the question never arose. But now the younger generation knows more than the older generation, so we have to change our attitudes; otherwise the gap will go on increasing. It is already too big. Parents and children are no longer on talking terms. They meet only when there is some need, either on the child’s side or on the father’s side; otherwise there is no communication. They never sit together, they never chitchat, they never joke with each other, they never laugh with each other. There is no relationship.A tremendous revolution has to happen, and the responsibility certainly lies with the older generation. You cannot put such a great responsibility on the new young people; they are too young. But the older people can understand that the situation between the generations has changed. With the change of situation, your attitude should change. You should be more respectful to the younger people; then they will not become hippies. If you are respectful to your children they will not become drug addicts. This is simply the gap, that they don’t have any communication with you. They have communication only with people of their own age. All are inexperienced; so if one is taking a drug, the other starts taking a drug. If one is becoming a communist, the other starts becoming a communist. If one declares atheism, others start following atheistic ideas. Now they can communicate only with their own age group, which is very dangerous because they are all inexperienced. And you cannot dump the whole responsibility on those young people. They are so young.The older generation should take some steps, move closer to the new generation. And that can be done only if you are not trying to prove, “We are older than you, higher than you, more knowledgeable than you, holier than you” – then the gap is going to become bigger.Now, here you can see it: I don’t say to my people that you have to believe in me, or you have to accept whatever I say to you. My basic thing is, learn to doubt. I teach doubt, and strangely, they trust me. This is how life functions, in a very mysterious way. Their parents say, “Believe in us,” their priests say, “Believe in us,” and they don’t believe. They refuse. I say, “Doubt,” because doubt is my fundamental teaching, “be skeptical. Never believe anything unless you experience it.”Giving them so much respect, allowing them to doubt everything, allowing them to be skeptical – even about me – naturally creates a respect, a love, a trust for the man. This man cannot deceive you. This man cannot indoctrinate you. His whole approach is of doubt – how can he indoctrinate you?I don’t call them my followers, I call them my friends, my fellow travelers. The very idea of leader and follower is rotten, out of date. The new generation cannot communicate with a leader; the new generation needs friends. And it is the older generation’s responsibility to fulfill the need. If they need friends, why should you unnecessarily impose yourself as a leader? Friendship is far closer, far more beautiful – and in friendship there is communion.My people can listen to me with immense trust – and I am teaching them doubt. They can listen to me with immense silence – and I am teaching them to be skeptical.You mean skeptical of things around them, but not of themselves?About everything. Unless you find the truth – that you cannot doubt – you have to go on doubting. Doubt is the method of eliminating everything that is wrong. When everything wrong is eliminated, what is left is truth.Doubt is something like a candle: first the flame burns the wax, but ultimately it burns itself. The wax is gone, then the flame is also gone. Exactly the same is the situation with doubt. It is a beautiful phenomenon. It doubts and goes on doubting – eliminating the wax – but when all that can be doubted is finished, doubt itself has to commit suicide. There is nothing else to doubt. You have come face to face with something which is indubitable, and that is what I call the truth, about everything.And when you come to experience the truth in any dimension of life, you are so immensely enriched that whoever taught you to doubt you will feel grateful toward for your whole life, because without him you would never have reached to this experience, to this space, to this ecstasy. If you had believed, you would have remained with your dead belief.A Christian believes, because Jesus says, “Believe. Have faith.” So for two thousands years they are believing and having faith, and what have they gained? What is their achievement? Just two thousand years of bloodshed – murdering, killing, wars, burning people alive – and that all in the name of God, in the name of Jesus Christ.But the responsibility is on Jesus Christ himself. He was telling people to believe. That means he was telling people to be hypocrites. That’s what belief means – you don’t know and yet you pretend that you know. You worship a God you don’t know, and yet you are praying to something that you don’t know. Is this the way of intelligence? Is this the way to grow, mature? This is the way of remaining retarded.Jesus is responsible for millions of people who have remained retarded, because he taught belief. But this is true also of other religious leaders. The whole past is based on belief systems. And you can see the result: the whole mess in the world.My approach is based on doubt, on agnosticism, on skepticism, because these are the ways to eliminate anything that is not true.Osho,What's the major belief that you think needs to be eliminated to…?God is the major belief that has to be eliminated, because all other things hang on God. God eliminated means prophets, messiahs, saviors, messengers – all are eliminated. Heaven, hell – all are eliminated. With God eliminated, we can clean the whole mind of man. All rubbish will simply disappear. It can exist only with God. He is the center of the madness of man. He is the greatest block against human intelligence and its evolution.Just think, if there is no God, then there are no holy scriptures, then there are no popes, no prophets. Then you cannot depend on anybody, you have to depend on yourself. In the beginning it is a little scary but soon you will start finding strength in yourself, in your independence.How long has man been moving like a blind person, following somebody who himself is blind? The blind are leading the blind since millions of years. Jesus Christ has no experience of God. There is no God, so how can he have experience of God? He may have hallucinated, he may have imagined, he may have dreamed, but there is no God anywhere. Existence is all. And the very idea of God creates a split in existence: the creator and the creation. And that is the root cause of all other splits.All the people who are suffering from schizophrenia may never know that the basic schizophrenia comes from the split between God and existence. Then you are continuously split: your body wants to do one thing, your mind says that is wrong, because your religion teaches you celibacy and your body wants to make love. You are torn apart. If you listen to the body you will feel guilty; if you listen to the mind you will become a sexual pervert. In both case you are going to be a loser.So I say emphatically and absolutely: God is the greatest lie that has to be removed from human consciousness. And once man is free from God, hell and heaven, sin and virtue, his intelligence is free to grow. All the barriers have been removed. And it is his intelligence that will now be decisive about his actions, and he himself will be responsible. And each act brings its own punishment or its own reward, so there is no need to wait for the last judgment day – each act. If you are compassionate to someone you feel the joy of being compassionate – that is its reward. If you are angry at someone, you are first burning inside yourself. Even before you have acted on your anger you have suffered the punishment.In my vision, every action has its intrinsic reward or punishment. So a man of intelligence soon starts finding out what acts bring you happiness, joy, blissfulness, and what actions create misery, suffering. There is no need to wait for the last judgment day, there is no need to wait until after death when you will be thrown into hell or into heaven. Each moment completes itself.And if you are the person who is responsible, totally responsible, then certainly each of your actions will show that responsibility. Right now you can dump everything on God, everything on the past life, everything on the devil. But if God is removed, the devil is gone. The devil is God’s shadow. They cannot exist separate from each other. God needs the devil, the devil needs God.You will be surprised to know that the world devil and the word divine come from the same Sanskrit root. Divine and devil are from the same Sanskrit root, which is very significant. It means they are just two branches of one tree and they can only exist together, perhaps like two sides of a coin: you cannot separate them.Once man feels free from God and the devil and all nonsense, he is free from churches, free from temples, free from mosques, synagogues – a tremendous sense of freedom. And to act responsibly, because you are going to suffer from your act or to rejoice from your act – your act itself is decisive. Nobody else is going to decide for you. Then an intelligent person will easily sort out – perhaps he will fall once in a while into the wrong place, but he will not fall twice in the same place. And that is the way of learning: commit as many mistakes as you can, but don’t commit the same mistake again. That’s how one matures; one becomes more understanding, becomes more clear. And all this ultimately leads to enlightenment, because you cannot depend on praying, you have to find something else.Prayer is addressed to a God. If there is no God, all prayers are meaningless. Meditation is not addressed to anybody. It is an inner journey of being silent, of being more and more peaceful, of being more and more alert and aware. A moment comes when your consciousness is so clear, so luminous, that time stops, that thoughts stop. You simply are, in your utter purity. That experience I call religiousness. For it, you need not go to any church, you need not belong to any crowd, you need not have any holy scripture. For that, all that is needed is an inward journey. And that’s what I am teaching my people.Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Dieter Kronzucker,ZDF-TV, GermanyGlad to see you.Osho,Thank you very much that you gave us the opportunity to talk with you.Come again and again.And we need just a few minutes until he has his camera installed, after he has filmed your entrance here.Good.And I have a question. This is for a program of about twenty minutes. We have already done a ten-minute report about the activities in your city and now we want to do about ten minutes' interview. I can imagine that there are questions where you need long answers, but there might be questions where the answers could be relatively short.I will try my best, but I have to give you a full answer.Good.You can edit it, there is no problem. But I must do justice to your question.I can understand that. It is just that I had the opportunity to look at interviews you have done, and there were long interviews with beautiful answers, and then because of the necessity to shorten it, you then see edited versions that sometimes omit some parts that might be very essential. I hope that will not be the case in our interview.It will not be.Osho,You have been quite silent to the outside world for four years – in words, I mean. Why did you choose now to talk to the sannyasins again, and also to grant interviews like this?I have been silent as a device to get rid of all those people who were hanging around me because of my words. Their approach to me was intellectual, of the head, and my work is concerned with the heart. The moment I became silent, they slowly, slowly dropped out. When I found that only people remained who need not cling in any way to my words – they are absolutely contented just by my presence and silence – then I started speaking. These are my people with whom I want to speak.But you also speak to the press now.I am speaking to the press now because my people are around the world, and I am not going anywhere. And my words have to reach to everybody, not only to my sannyasins. There are millions of other people who would like to know what I think.In such a critical moment in the history of humanity, when things are really in a very dangerous state – a Third World War could happen and could destroy the whole human life; AIDS is spreading, and without a Third World War it could destroy almost two-thirds of human beings. It is not the moment for me to be silent. I should say something. There are many people who may not be sannyasins, but who would like to know my approach, what can be done to prevent this calamity that is just there on the horizon.Would you like all the people in the world to be sannyasins, or are they a chosen few?It depends on them. I don’t have any desire that anybody should be a sannyasin. It is enough for me if somebody is available to me, that he is ready to listen, ready to understand. I do not expect anybody to believe in me; just give consideration to what I say. That’s enough. If that gives you the urge to become a sannyasin, that is your decision.Your teaching is very philosophical for the uneducated mind. So do you think that your teaching is more fit for the best educated, and for the more affluent?Certainly, because according to me religion is the highest luxury in human existence. The poor cannot understand the music of Mozart; that does not mean that the music of Mozart should not exist. It only means that the poor man should be raised to a situation where he can understand Mozart. The poor cannot understand Picasso, but that is no fault of Picasso.I am trying my best, to my uttermost ability, to make things as simple as possible. I do not use any philosophical jargon, I simply use words that everybody uses, but still I know it is difficult for many people to understand. It is not only that they are poor, not only that they are uneducated – even for many who are not poor and not uneducated it is difficult, because they have such closed minds, so many prejudices. They only hear, they don’t listen. They don’t allow an opportunity for anything new that goes against their conditioning.So, many will not understand, but that does not disturb me. If only the most intelligent part of humanity understands me, it will be enough to save this world. Those who do not understand me, don’t count.So you don't think much of people that try to soften the poverty in the world without remedy?I do not. I think that they are criminals. And it is because of those people that poverty has existed up to now. We would have destroyed it long before, but they go on consoling the poor, they go on softening their suffering. They go on helping them somehow not to revolt.Can you give a few names of those people? Examples?All religions have done it, without exception. Jesus Christ, Moses, Mohammed, Gautam Buddha, Krishna, and their followers – their popes, their rabbis and their shankaracharyas, and their Ayatollah Khomeiniacs – they have all been doing that. They have been keeping the poor, poor, by giving him hope. That hope is nothing but opium.You don't believe in religions. After your lecture this morning, I understand that you also do not believe in God.You are called “the blessed one.” Who blessed you then?I do not believe in anything. It is not a question of God – I do not believe in believing. My approach is to know, and knowing is a totally different dimension. It starts from doubt, it does not start from believing. The moment you believe in something you have stopped inquiring. Belief is one of the most poisonous things to destroy human intelligence. All religions are based on belief; only science is based on doubt. And I would like the religious inquiry also to be scientific, based on doubt. So we need not believe, but we can come to know someday the truth of our being and the truth of the whole universe.We just finished with the first part.Good.[to the crew] Are we ready again? Okay.You have this beautiful and very efficient settlement here in Oregon. Could it be anywhere in the world, or do you like to have it in America?It could be anywhere in the world. I would like it everywhere; already we have communes around the world, and they are increasing every day. And I do not believe in countries – America or Germany or India. That is nonsense. Humanity is one, and it is time we should declare that all these maps are the creations of stupid politicians.The earth is undivided, and we are all one. I would like that everybody burns his passport, his green card, and everybody declares, “This whole earth is mine.”But here in Oregon you have some harassments with the officials in this respect.I am enjoying them.Do you mind having these harassments? Or are they just nuisances and you are aloof?No, I don’t mind, and they are not a nuisance. They are harassed, I am simply enjoying. They cannot harass me, nobody can harass me. By harassing me, they are unnecessarily harassed. I don’t even think about them; they are not worth giving any consideration.Osho,Is it that you play with words, that you like to use words just to make fun of other people? Or is it that you think that only with words, instead of in silent communication, your philosophy and your teaching can be transmitted to the people?Through silence it can be translated and transmitted only to people who know what silence is, who are meditative, who are in tune with me. Then there is a possibility of transferring. But people who don’t know anything of inner silence need words. And the problem is that no word is capable of translating the inner experience. All words become lies the moment you start saying something true. Truth is beyond words.So what I do with words is to demolish prejudices, and I am really hard in demolishing prejudices. I am not concerned with the people I attack; I am concerned with my people. When I attack Jesus Christ I am attacking the Christian who is hidden behind my people. I have nothing to do with Jesus Christ; he has done no harm to me, and we have never been in any communication – friendly or otherwise. But every one of my people is carrying something of Jesus Christ, something of Adolf Hitler, and something of Buddha. I have to shock these people, and only through shocking them can they be awakened.Do you mind sometimes when your teaching is misunderstood?No, I never mind, because I always expect that it will be misunderstood.Osho,If you decide to go into silent communication, or to go away from the sannyasins, would you mind if the movement of the neo-sannyasins would then be dissipated?I don’t mind. I am absolutely non-serious about everything. I take life just as a play. It is good…We have to repeat that, I'm sorry.[a brief conversation between the crew and the questioner]I'm sorry I interrupted you.Nothing to be – he had told you, you didn’t listen!That is because I tried to listen to you.I am answering you, and still listening to him! You can ask the question again, but my answer will be different.I was asking that, in case you were to leave the movement of the sannyasins for your own reasons, would you mind if this movement then dissipated? Or would you like it to grow by itself?I have no desires or anything as far as the future is concerned. I am a man of the moment. This moment is so groovy, who cares for tomorrow? If they decide to go on their way, they are independent people. If they decide to remain together here, they are completely free to do that.I have never imposed anything on them, and I have not made them a crowd. I have made every effort that every sannyasin remains an individual, independent, so whatsoever they feel like doing they will do. Who am I to decide about their future? I don’t even decide about my future, because the future is not yet.And the people who decide about the future always remain in misery, because the future has no obligation to fulfill your desires. The future goes in its own way. And we are such a tiny part in this immense universe, that to have a desire that things should follow according to me is simply idiotic. I am not interested at all in the next moment. Whatsoever happens in the next moment, if I am here I will enjoy, or if I am somewhere else, I will enjoy it there.You had asked that I don’t believe in God, yet my people call me “the blessed one.” It is not a question of somebody else blessing me; it is a question of the moment you realize your being, that very realization makes you the blessed one. Just as there are miserable ones – who makes them miserable? There are suffering ones, who makes them suffering? I am the blessed one, not because of somebody else’s blessing but because of my own realization.Osho,This morning in your lecture, I thought I understood that you were against politicians in the world. If you would compare a socialist state and a capitalist state, in which would you think the sannyasin movement could grow better?In a communist state, not even a socialist. It is growing better in the Soviet Union, for the simple reason – are you changing [the tape]? Change it.Osho,We are finished, because we…Hm? He cannot be finished. I know your cameraman. He cannot be finished. A German, and finishing so soon, does not look right!Well, it is true that if one tries to combine what you said, then you need more than ten minutes.I certainly need. But you can manage in two parts, in three parts. You can manage – and you have to manage, because Germany somehow is my country.Why?I have more sannyasins in Germany than anywhere else. And the German youth is more in tune with me than in any other country.Why is that, do you think?It is a little difficult, because I will not have any proof for it. I have been a German in a few lives, so I know the German spirit.Can you give the centuries of the lives you have spent there?I can give you a reference. You can ask Eva Renzi – she has once been my wife in the past, and she is still behaving like a wife towards me. Ask her.Okay?In another interview you were using the word circus. What does it mean for you, circus?It means to me that I do not want life to be taken seriously. Seriousness is a kind of psychological disease. Life has to be a fun. Life has to be a rejoicing, a dance, a song, a love affair. In such a small life, being serious is simply wasting the opportunity. That’s what I meant when I said it is a circus – it should be a circus everywhere, and we should turn everything into playfulness.But people are so heavy and long-faced, and so burdened and carrying loads on them; and life is so short, soon you will be reaching your grave. Before reaching the grave, have a little dance, a little drink. That’s what I mean by circus. My people are living in a circus twenty-four hours a day.Rejoicing is my religion. All the old religions were renouncing: renounce this, renounce that, go on renouncing till you are completely juiceless. Your saints are just bones, nothing else is in them. If your saints have gone to heaven, then I am not going to heaven at all, because what am I going to do with those bored people? Then the best people will be in hell. All the painters, all the poets, all the dancers, all the actors, all the story-writers, novelists, all creative people, all the lovers, all the drunkards, all the gamblers, they will be there – colorful people.I don’t think hell a bad place. If it exists, then it is the right place to go. It is worth visiting. Heaven will be simply boredom – saints sitting under the trees, doing nothing, because there is nothing to do for the whole eternity. They will get fed up. In hell we have everything – Chinese restaurants, Italian spaghetti, we have everything.If God has any sense I don’t think that he will be in heaven; he will be in hell. If he has any intelligence, then he will be meeting beautiful people there. Hell…Osho,What do you think of people who spend a lot of money to buy Picasso and Salvador Dali?Beautiful people, beautiful people.Do you like the paintings of those…?I like. I like everything that is beautiful, creative. It contributes to life, it makes life worth living. Only a few people have contributed to life’s beauty; others are simply a burden on the earth.I would like everybody to know something of painting, something of music, something of dancing. Every educational institution, rather than simply teaching mathematics and physics and chemistry and geography and history, should pay a little more attention to dancing, to singing, to painting, to music, to sculpture, because those are the things which will make life more beautiful.Salvador Dali or Picasso – they are our cherished geniuses. So whatsoever price one pays is not enough. It is never enough!You were talking of Mozart before…Yes.Do you listen to Mozart sometimes now?I listen. I only listen to music; whenever I have time, I listen to music.Osho,Can I put just two more questions, because I know…Okay.Is the whole world a stage for you? Like a theater? Or is it that you put a stage on the world?No, the world is a stage. Idiots have made it serious. I want it to become natural again – what it is, is a stage; it is a circus, and such a beautiful circus, with animals, birds, trees, flowers. I am not making it a circus, it is a circus. People have forgotten, I am simply reminding them.If your followers are the artists in this circus, would you mind leaving this place in Oregon and going to another place with them?I am a very spontaneous person. I can do anything. I am unpredictable. One day, suddenly, I left India. Nobody had ever thought… One day I can suddenly appear in Germany.Do you think I am afraid?No, you will be one of my hosts. Why should you be afraid of me?What is Germany for you and your movement?I respect the German guts. It is one of the countries in the world that has more guts than anybody else. If the German youth and German courage could make a madman like Adolf Hitler become almost victorious and defeat the whole world, the German courage can do anything possible.And it is not a coincidence that they are attracted to me. Once a German comes to me, he immediately becomes part of me, because he has the courage to take the risk.There are English people who will think a thousand times to be or not to be – wishy-washy. Germans are simple, straightforward, not phony. Americans are phony, plastic; you cannot depend on them. But you can depend on the German.But they take everything seriously.Once they come to me they simply change immediately. I have many Germans here, and once they have come to me they have never left me. Others have been coming and leaving, but Germans, once they have come to me, have simply forgotten everything. They are with me. And they are not serious – they have even started understanding jokes.Osho,Thank you very much.Great! Yes.Excuse the inconvenience…No, no, nothing……but we have to do a few pictures.No problem.Crew member: Well, we've got more material than…You have got more material? That’s good.I didn't realize that you would be thinking about the cuts we still have to do.I have to think about everything.I will ask three questions again, but they are only for the camera.Good.You used the word circus for the world. What does it mean?It means that the world is just a playground, there is nothing serious in it.I will just repeat the questions.Is the whole world a stage for you, or are you…Yes, the whole world is a stage to me, and I am enjoying it so immensely that I don’t think anybody has ever enjoyed the world so deeply and so totally. I don’t have any idea of guilt, so I can enjoy anything. I don’t have any idea of sin, so I can enjoy everything. And I am not following anybody so the whole world is available to me. I am not under any discipline; I am a totally free person.And that’s my teaching to my sannyasins – be free, enjoy as much as you can. Fill your life with so much joy that when death comes there is no problem to relax into it: you have enjoyed so much, now it is time to relax and go to eternal sleep. So, to my people, death is not a problem. Death is a problem only to those who cannot enjoy life. Then death comes and they are in trouble. They have not yet lived, and death has come.To us it is just the opposite. Any moment death is welcome, because we are living every moment so deeply that each moment is being turned into an eternity. If death comes the next moment, it is perfectly good. We have done everything, we have loved everybody. We have enjoyed every dance, we have sung every song; now what more is there? Now we will enjoy death too.Only my people die laughing, and only my people give a send-off to a dead sannyasin dancing. When they put him on the funeral pyre, all my sannyasins are dancing, rejoicing. What more can we do for a man who has lived fully? This is the best send-off.Thank you very much.Come again. And not just for ten minutes!

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Yoga Pratima,Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United StatesOsho,Can one be a dropout and still be responsible? Is there a difference between dropping out and escapism?There is tremendous difference between the two. Escaping is an act of cowardliness, because you could not face the situation. You could not find guts enough to encounter whatever was the situation. You escaped. You showed your back out of fear. The escapist will never be able to forgive himself – how can he forget that he has been cowardly?The dropout is a totally different phenomenon. He is not dropping out of a particular structure, society, religion, out of fear. In fact he had been preventing himself from dropping out, out of fear. His dropout is his declaration of freedom, individuality. His dropout signifies that he is no longer part of a crowd, that now he is going to seek and search on his own; that he is no longer a follower of Christ or Krishna, that he does not believe in any god or in any hell or heaven.Now he is becoming a seeker, a searcher. He is getting ready to risk everything he has, whatever the consequences, because unless one risks everything, one cannot find the truth. Truth is not a compromise. It is a total let-go, risking all. If you are saving even a little bit in case it is needed, you will not find the truth. You are still behaving in a cowardly way. Saving a little bit shows your fear.A dropout has to be total. It is not out of fear; it is out of awareness, a certain consciousness that we are living in a bondage of many kinds – social, cultural, racial, political, educational. All kinds of chains are around our being. A dropout simply drops out of all these chains. And the moment he decides to drop out, miraculously he finds those chains cannot prevent him. They are only cowbells.All that was needed was courage and a tremendous sense of freedom, an excitement of discovering, a grounding in one’s own self, a responsibility – felt for the first time – that, “I am alive and I have a responsibility to live with my totality. Otherwise how am I going to answer existence, that, ‘Life was given to you and you never lived it. You went on postponing till death destroyed everything.’”A dropout is a revolutionary. The escapist is not a revolutionary, he is a reactionary. That difference has to be remembered. My sannyasins are dropouts, not escapists.Osho,You have said that you don't care if there is any successor when you are gone. What do you see happening to your sannyasins, to Rajneeshism, the moment you die?I don’t at all think about it. Never does the thought occur to me, for the simple reason that the very idea goes against my approach. The people who are living with me are enjoying the moment. Do you want me alone not to enjoy the moment?I am teaching everybody to enjoy the moment and not be bothered by tomorrow. Living in the moment intelligently, consciously, meditatively, will take care of the future. There is no need for me to give you directives, guidelines for what you have to do when I am gone. That’s what all the old religions have done.Manu gave all the guidelines for Hindus five thousand years ago, and they are still following them. Everything has changed, nothing of Manu is applicable any more. In fact, it is a hindrance for Hindus to evolve, to become contemporaries. Now, Manu has committed a crime against humanity by giving these directives. He did not prove a blessing, he proved himself a curse.But the same was done by Moses, Mohammed, Mahavira, Jesus, Buddha. On one thing they are all certain: that when they are gone they have still to control the people who had come into contact with them, who had trusted them. But they don’t trust their people.I trust my people. I know that they are living fully, joyously. They know how to live joyously, how to live fully, and that’s enough. I have given them the experience; now that experience will be decisive. And they will have a freedom, because things will change, situations will change. I could give directives that will become hindrances to their growth, I cannot do that. That is criminal, very criminal.For example, Mahavira gave a directive to his disciples not to wear shoes. In his time it was perfectly right, because to use leather means you are in some way or other indirectly supporting the killing of animals. And the best leather comes out in a very torturous way: young calves have to be boiled, and their skin taken off. Then it is soft, very soft. The moment an animal dies his skin becomes hard, then you cannot make beautiful shoes out of it. You can make shoes, but they will not be so soft, so velvety. And the younger the kid, the better the leather you get, the softer the leather you get.Mahavira, seeing this whole scene happening in every town, every city – young animals being boiled alive – stopped his people. They were not eating meat, but they were using shoes and that leather came from torture. But Mahavira became decisive for the future too; he made it a rule that his sannyasins should never wear shoes.This is going too far. Now, I’m wearing shoes which are not made of leather. Mahavira had no idea of rubber; he had no idea of synthetic leather. He had no idea that shoes can be made of canvas, of cloth – of so many things. But we cannot condemn him for having no idea. There was no possibility of it; all he knew was that he had forbidden his people to use leather – but he should have left them open for the future.For example, Mohammed said to his disciples that they can marry four wives. But it became a guideline for the future, and now Mohammedans everywhere are insisting that this is a question of their religion, they have to marry four wives. In Mohammed’s time there was so much war, murder, arson, that the population of men and women had come to that proportion – one man, four women – because men were being killed in war. It was simply compassionate of Mohammed to say that one man should marry four wives; nothing was wrong in it. But to make it a guideline for the future, forever, is dangerous.Now the situation is different. If one man marries four wives, then three men will remain bachelors. The situation has completely reversed, but the mind of followers is such that they will not see the point. Why had Mohammed insisted on marrying four women? So that three are not left unmarried, because they will suffer unnecessary psychological repressions, they will become prostitutes, they will destroy the whole moral structure.But now the situation is just the opposite: if a Mohammedan marries four wives then he is driving three men to remain celibate. Those three people are not going to sit silently, they will have to do something. Then all kinds of perversions – the same perversions that Mohammed was trying to avoid – are all over Mohammedan countries. Because you are rich you can get as many wives as you want – and four is not the limit, it is the minimum. Mohammed himself married nine wives; that is enough example for rich emirs and sheiks and oil kings. They can marry hundreds of women – all the beautiful women of their country are brought to them – but what about all those hundreds of young people who are deprived of their wives and their rights? You are driving them to homosexuality. You are driving them into other perversions, sodomy.Men making love to animals… It is worse than rape, because the innocent animal is in your hands, whatever you want to do you can do. When you rape a woman, in some way or other she cooperates, otherwise it is not easy. Perhaps deep down she desires it, because whenever a woman is raped – the man is certainly criminal, I am not saving him from his crime – but the woman is not absolutely innocent. In the unconscious somewhere there is a desire that somebody should find her so beautiful, so irresistible, that he will even be ready to commit a crime. That is a kind of tremendous satisfaction, a confirmation of her beauty, of her charm.I know women who have been raped – and I have asked both parties – the man who was raping was also puzzled that the woman was cooperating, she was not screaming, shouting or doing something. Otherwise, if a woman is really against it, even her husband cannot make love to her – what to say about somebody else raping. She can bite, she can hit, she can throw stones, she can shout. She can do everything, but the poor animal cannot do anything. The poor animal cannot even understand what is happening. This is sheer abuse. Children are being sexually abused.And the amazing part of the story is that in all Mohammedan countries – where there are more bachelor men than anywhere else because so many women are taken away by the richer people – death is the only penalty for homosexuality. On the one hand you are driving people towards homosexuality and on the other hand you make it the greatest crime, to be punished by death. You are putting such a pressure on people that they cannot even be homosexuals, so they are bound to move towards animals.Nobody should try to make any guidelines for the future. The future is always open. I am not willing to be a participant in a crime which has been committed for thousands of years. I absolutely decline to stand with Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Mohammed, Jesus, Moses. No, that is not my company.I want to make a complete breakthrough about everything, and this is one of the most fundamental things. Hidden in it there is a deep desire to dominate people, even when you are gone. To put it in other words, it is that the dead should be dominating the living. That’s what has been happening all around the world. The living are not given freedom even to choose their own course, to choose their own moralities, to choose, according to the time, what is right and what is wrong.Those people were very much concerned, because they were writing, they were dictating rules and regulations in detail. In Buddhist scriptures there are 33,000 rules for a monk. People have come to seek freedom, they have come to seek truth. What they are getting is a strange psychological slavery in its place, and that too even for coming generations.So when I am asked whether I am going to make somebody my successor, I say absolutely no. I am giving my people clarity, understanding, awareness. That is going to be my successor.Every one of my sannyasins has to decide for himself. I have given him that much understanding. And I am making every effort to make him more and more conscious, so there is no need for him to be dictated to by people who are dead, about things which are absolutely new, which they had no idea about.For example, none of those prophets had any idea about AIDS. We don’t know what else is going to be in the future, but none of those people could have given any guidelines about AIDS. In fact, they have given guidelines which are very dangerous. For example, Mohammed says that when there are a few Mohammedans eating together, they should eat from one plate. Now that is against AIDS.Eating out of one plate is dangerous if any single one of them is carrying AIDS, if in some way his saliva gets into the food from his hands. In the East people eat with their hands; the fingers can carry the saliva to the food, and the food is being eaten by everybody. When Mohammed gave that idea it was to give them companionship, friendship – “And even if a stranger passes by he should be invited.” Now, this is absolutely dangerous. Jesus practiced this every day. He would drink from a cup, then he would pass the same cup to somebody else. He would drink from it and then it would go on being passed. It was thought to be a great blessing; wine touched by Jesus’ mouth has become somehow divine. And that practice is still being continued.Now, what are they going to do when all the information about AIDS is becoming more and more clear every day? This religious practice is no longer religious, it is illegal. It is immoral. It is sickening, nauseating. It should be stopped immediately. But Christians cannot stop it; their master did it, and their master told his disciples to do it. It would be going against their master. But AIDS is far more powerful than your dead master. And he had no idea about it, so I don’t condemn him; but I do condemn these idiots who will insist, “This is our practice and we will have to continue it.”I am not going to give a single instruction about anything. In fact, there is no need. Those people had to give instructions because they left people blind. They gave them only beliefs; they never gave them consciousness, awareness. They never gave them the capacity to decide on their own. They never made them responsible for their own lives.Yes, they gave them a blind man’s stick, and directions on how to move so you can get to the door. But the house is being continuously renovated, continuously remade. Doors are being changed, windows are being changed, and the old blind man goes on finding the way with the old instructions.No, I don’t want to give my people sticks. I want to give them eyes. And the people who ask me, “Who is going to be your successor,” are asking because that’s how it has always been: somebody should succeed, and I should give clear-cut instructions about what you have to do and what you have not to do when I am gone. The people who ask me the question think that I am very irresponsible, that I will simply die and leave the sannyasins without any instructions, without any moral code, without any ten commandments. They do not understand me.I love my people so much that I cannot create any hindrance in their lives in the future. I cannot give them any instructions. I am giving them eyes so they can see where the door is for themselves. Why should I give them a map of the house when the house is continuously changing? And it has been proved in these five thousand years that all codes, all religions, all ethical systems have failed for the simple reason that they were trying to decide the future, which was not in their hands. Their intention was good, but their understanding was not enough.I want my sannyasins to inherit my freedom, my awareness, my consciousness. And each sannyasin has to be my successor, has to be me. There is no need for anybody to dominate; there is nobody for anybody to dictate. On their own, if they want to be together they can be together. Out of their own freedom, it is their choice and their decision. If they want to move freely they have all the rights to move freely.So the thought never occurs to me. All that occurs to me is that the sooner I can make my people more clear about life and its complexities the better, because nobody knows when I may be gone. Before that my people have to be capable of blissfully and joyously giving me a send-off.And I will not be leaving any ethical code, any structure to be followed. They will have to make it. And they will have to remember that they make it only for themselves, not for the future. They will have to do the same as I am doing for them. They will have to keep alert, because the tendency is very easy to be tempted, so that the new generation does not get lost. It is better to get lost than to be imprisoned.So, not only am I not giving you any structure, any instructions, but only clarity, understanding, consciousness – remember, the same thing has to be done for the future generation of people. One day the same question will be before you. What are you going to decide for the younger generation of sannyasins for when you are gone? Nobody has the right to decide for anybody else. Help the person to grow, to mature. Help the person to stand on his own feet, this is real compassion.And my compassion does not allow me to say a single word about the future. I am absolutely concerned with the present. And if the present is golden, the future born out of it will be even more golden.Osho,You say that India is a dead country – mentally, physically and economically dead. How did this happen, and is there any way now to avoid a catastrophe?There is always a way. But the problem is the people, who are almost dead because their tradition is so old, so rotten, and it has molded their minds, their consciousness. It has given them their guidelines on how to live, what to do, what not to do, and the prejudices are so long programmed in their minds that they have almost reached to their bone marrow.So, the alternative is there, the catastrophe can be avoided – but who is going to listen? The trouble is not that there is no way. Everything can be changed but they are all against change. If the catastrophe were something from the outside, it would not be difficult to prevent it, to divert it. The catastrophe is within India’s own soul. The cancer is there, and they are not ready for surgery because they don’t believe it is cancer. They believe it is their great heritage. Otherwise, for thirty years I was continuously telling them how to get out of this stupidity – and in thirty years they have doubled the population, in thirty years they have become twice as poor, they have gone far deeper into darkness.I was telling them to drop this idea that God gives birth to children, that you cannot prevent God from doing it. If God is giving birth to children, don’t be afraid: use the pill, use all birth control methods. If God still wants to give you a child – he is powerful, omnipotent, what can the poor pill do against him? – he will manage in some way, he will have to find a way. Don’t be worried about him, he is not somebody who can be prevented just by a pill. If your God can be prevented by a pill, then it is better to worship the pill than the God; the pill is more powerful.But nobody seems to listen. People go on giving birth to children. Nobody is ready to change any old, dead idea. Even if you logically prove it to them and they don’t have any thing to argue against, still they will do the same.For example, amongst the Jainas in India, the oldest religion, vegetarianism has gone to stupid extremes – so much so that my grandmother did not allow tomatoes in the house because they are red and look like meat. Up to my eighteenth year I had not tasted the poor tomato. It was not possible to bring a tomato into the house.I have been trying to convince Jainas to start eating vegetarian eggs. But the very word egg was enough. They said, “You cannot deceive us. How can an egg be vegetarian?” I explained to them that it is unfertilized, there is no life in it because the male sperm has not reached the egg. But the very idea of eating eggs is impossible.They are missing many essential proteins, vitamins in their food – so essential that their intelligence cannot grow. They will remain retarded. It is an absolute necessity for Jainas to accept the vegetarian egg.Not a single Jaina has received a Nobel Prize and they are well-educated, more than anybody else in India. They are rich; you will not find a single Jaina beggar in that whole country of beggars. The whole country is full of beggars, but you will not find a single Jaina beggar. They are all middle class or super high class, well-educated, educated in the West in the great universities of the world, but something is missing. Their intelligence does not seem to shine.Their food is insufficient, it lacks some essential things. And I have told them, “You can go to the medical college, you can inquire what are the essentials for intelligence to grow, and you can show the food that you eat. Are those essential elements in it or not? You need not listen to me, just go to the scientist, to the doctor, to the chemist, and find out. You certainly need something like the vegetarian egg.” But the very word egg simply disturbs them. They have not accepted the idea.Now, Jews are not a big majority in the world; they are a small minority, but proportionately they get more Nobel Prizes than anybody else. Their food should be looked at. Why have they produced more intelligent people? This whole century has been going around three Jews: Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein. These three persons have made this whole century. And what is the contribution of all the others? It must be looked into.And it is not only with these three people; most of the Nobel prizes go to the Jews. They don’t have anything special, but their food should be accurately estimated, and it should be made known to everybody in the world.I have been telling Hindus and Jainas that they should start compulsory circumcision. They would simply say, “You are crazy. We are not Jews, we are not Mohammedans – and circumcision? You want us to become Jews and Mohammedans? And nobody in the whole history of India was ever as crazy as you, talking about circumcision.”But I told them that circumcision is going to become compulsory almost all over the world sooner or later. It is hygienic, it prevents many sicknesses, many diseases. And a few Jewish thinkers have even said – and there may be some truth in it – that when a child is circumcised, he is so small, so delicate, that on the one hand just cutting the foreskin does no harm to the child. But on the other hand, it gives a certain shock to his mind – and that is the reason they have been receiving so many Nobel prizes.This is a very strange kind of argument; but there is a possibility, because the genitals are joined with the head. The sex center is in the head, and the small child certainly gets a shock if he is circumcised – and that shock will vibrate to the very sex center in his brain. That may be doing something. It has to be studied; I am not saying it is true, but it is worth studying, it is worth inquiring into scientifically. But one thing is absolutely certain, that circumcision is healthy, is hygienic; and it does not mean that because Jews do it, you cannot do it.Now, I could not convince a single Hindu, a single Buddhist, a single Sikh, a single Jaina, in favor of circumcision. They simply said, “Don’t bring such strange ideas to us. You may convince a few young people…”I was staying in the palace of the Maharani of Gwalior, she had invited me. It is one of the most beautiful palaces in India and perhaps in the world, with miles and miles of beautiful gardens around it. It has everything: lakes, gardens, fountains, and many small cottages for guests. The main palace is all marble. She had chosen a very beautiful cottage for me to stay in, just half on the lake, half on the ground.Every day, for seven days, they were having religious discourses. There was a big congregation because it was a palatial function; near about twenty thousand people were there. She heard me, her son heard me and was immensely impressed. She was also impressed, and the next morning she came to see me, and she would not sit on the chair. I told her, “You are old.”She said, “No, I cannot do that. Please don’t stop me sitting at your feet. And first I have to confess one thing: that I have prevented my son from coming to you. Forgive me. I was afraid because he seemed so excited by last night, and he is continuously talking about you and what you said.“I became afraid he may get too impressed by you. And we are a traditional family, a royal family, and he is my successor. I cannot allow him to be impressed by you, although I myself am impressed. But I am mature enough that I can be intellectually convinced by you, yet I will go on doing whatever I was doing – it has been our tradition, and I cannot betray that tradition.”I said, “You can betray your intelligence, and you cannot betray some dead ancestor thousands of years old who has made rules and regulations for you? But you are ready to betray your intelligence. And you say you are impressed, and still you prevent your son from meeting me?”She said, “I am sorry, but I will not allow him. And he cannot go against my wishes because he knows I can deprive him of the inheritance and the inheritance can go to his younger brother.”With this threat he had been prevented. Later on, after five, six years, he met me in Delhi – he had become a member of parliament – and he said, “I have been trying hard since you stayed in my house, but my mother, if she comes to know that I met you in Delhi – she has threatened that she will deprive me, and it is too much a risk. She is one of the richest queens in India, and I will have to wait till I succeed her. Then my first thing will be to come to you and be with you. All kinds of nonsense has been told to me; all kinds of religious teachers and saints go on coming to the house. You were the first man I became interested in. They are all boring, but I have to listen to them because of the inheritance.”I said, “You are also a coward. If you had really the mind of a seeker you would have said to your mother, ‘Keep your inheritance yourself. I renounce it.’ “He said, “Yes, I don’t have that much guts, but it has left a wound in me that my mother is threatening me. And she is also impressed by you. She does not say that you are wrong, she says, ‘A young person should not come in contact with such a person, he can be dangerous. You are immature; first become mature.”I said, ‘So that you can become a hypocrite, in other words; so you can say , ‘Intellectually it is right, but I am going to do what I am expected to do.’”This is the problem in India.Indira was absolutely convinced by me, and was sincere and honest enough to say, “I cannot do anything, because if I follow what you are saying – which seems to be absolutely the right thing to do – then I will lose my power, because I will be going against my illiterate, uneducated voters. If I accept your suggestion, then my voters will desert me, my cabinet will be against me.“And you know perfectly well that my deputy prime minister is Morarji Desai, who is continuously talking against you. If he comes to know that I am trying to implement any idea of yours, I am gone. And that’s what he is waiting for, so he can become the prime minister if somehow I can be thrown out. And it would be the easiest thing to drive my voters against me.“So I cannot do anything. It is cowardly, I accept, but this is how politics is. We have to look for many things, watch for many things. I read your books, I want to come to see you in Pune, but my cabinet people prevent me. They say, ‘Even going to his ashram in Pune you will be creating trouble for yourself. Immediately Hindu priests will be against you, Vinoba Bhave, who controls all the Gandhians, will be against you, Mohammedans will be against you. Everybody will be against you, so you can choose.’”She could never come. For seven years she was trying, almost deciding a date and then postponing it again. So I say there is a way, but it is not going to be followed. India is going to die; it is just on the verge of death. Its leaders are impotent, its people are retarded. Its religious leaders are in favor of the past.You will be surprised to know that in India the theory of evolution is not accepted. They have just the opposite theory, the theory of involution. They say man was made perfect by God – and in a way it looks logical. If God makes man, then certainly he will make a perfect man. Why should he make a monkey, and then the monkey become a man? So Indian mythology says God created man as perfect, and then man started falling down.So they have four stages, four ages; they compare these four ages to the four legs of a stool. The first they call the age of truth, when man was perfect and truth was his life. When man fell from the first stage, the stool became a tripod with three legs, one leg missing. The first age is called satyuga, the age of truth.The second age is called simply treta, three legs. Man has lost something very essential, he is unbalanced. And in the next fall he loses one more leg; now he has only two, and that is called dwapar, a very unbalanced state. A stool standing on two feet is ready to fall any moment; how it is managing to keep on standing is a miracle. Now man has lost all balance, and this is involution. Man is going down and down and down.And the fourth, in which we are living according to the Indian mind, has only one leg left – a crippled man who has lost three-fourths of his being. This age they call kaliyuga, the age of darkness.So according to the ideology, their philosophy, what is happening is expected. That is also a difficulty. They say it was bound to happen; after the fourth age there is nothing but death. Just a little fall more and civilization disappears. So they have some intellectual, traditional background also for the coming death – and to accept it. Their leaders are cowards because they have to depend on the votes of the people. They cannot do anything against the people and their opinion and their tradition.So although I say there is a way – I am the way – but there is no possibility that the way should ever be realized. India has come to a point of old age when one has to accept death as natural. Perhaps if this idea is made available to all Indians – that they are on the verge of death, either you change or you die – there may be a possibility, because seeing death clearly in front, nobody wants to die.So my sannyasins who are in India have to make it clear to the country, “You are facing death. Your whole civilization is on the verge of falling apart, and we provide a way to get out of this calamity.” I don’t think they will listen, but the effort should be made. It is the responsibility of all Indian sannyasins to make the effort. At least we will not feel that we never did anything.For thirty years I was doing everything that was in my power. I wasted my health, my body. I was never sick, but in those thirty years continuous traveling I unnecessarily accumulated all kinds of sicknesses. And it is so difficult to change the traditional mind.But now that I am outside India, their negativity towards me is less. It was a miracle that in this festival, 250 Indians came. People who had never come to see me in India write letters that they want to come here; if I can give them a little time, they want to meet me. They never came in India, and I was available. Perhaps it is good that I am far away and they cannot take me for granted.And the situation has become even worse. When Indira was assassinated, the government was on shaky ground. Rajiv has nothing to contribute. He cannot solve the problem of Punjab; he tried to bribe the leader of the revolutionary Sikhs who want Punjab to be an independent nation. It is very easy in India to bribe, so he bribed the leader of the revolutionaries. He must have promised him privately that he would be made the chief minister or governor: “The whole government will be yours, you will choose all the Sikhs in the government. We will give you the capital of Chandigarh for Punjab.”Chandigarh is the only new city in India. Made by a very famous architect from France, the whole city is absolutely new, the only city that is really clean, and it has beauty, art. But up to now it has been the capital of two provinces, Haryana and Punjab, which were one province before. Then Sikhs said they want to be separate from Hindus; they don’t want to live with Hindus, they want a separate province, a separate state. It was granted after much struggle.It is a strange thing in politics – you know you will have to grant something, then why waste time with unnecessary killing, murdering, riots, army, curfew, martial law, and then finally accept? They finally accepted that Punjab should be an independent state and the Hindu majority would make another state, Haryana. But then trouble arose because Punjab had Chandigarh as the capital. Then both provinces were fighting for Chandigarh. It is worth fighting for; it is the best city now in India, everything made new, and with tremendous contemporary art.Rajiv conceded, “We will give Chandigarh completely to Punjab and Haryana will make another capital.” An underground agreement must have been made with the leader: “You will be the chief minister, you will have the cabinet, all the Sikhs you have, but don’t ask for an independent country.” And of course he was much gratified. He agreed and signed.The day Savita brought the news to me, I told her immediately that that leader would be assassinated within a few days; and yesterday she brought the news that he has been assassinated. Now the problem is again back where it was.Osho,Is man capable of being civilized, of creating a true civilization a true democracy?Man is capable, and only man is capable; just no effort has yet been made. If we can create in this small commune a certain atmosphere of love, this is enough proof that the same can happen all around the world. They just have to do what we have done.Families should disperse into bigger communes. Rather than creating a demarcation – a small group of family – make the children available to bigger communes. Their experience will be rich, their loving qualities will be higher, their intelligence will be sharper.And the whole world need not have big cities. All big cities should become many small communes, and much of the crime will disappear. Crime exists because people don’t receive dignity, respect, love, and their necessities. Each commune should take care of its people – their necessities, their education, their dignity, respect.In a big city like New York or Mumbai or Tokyo or London you are lost in a crowd, you don’t have any identity. You are always in the crowd, but you are always alone. You shake hands with people, but you are strangers. For hours you are standing in the same commuter train; nobody is talking with anybody else, everybody is looking at the newspaper. We have to create smaller groups where everybody is acquainted with everybody else, where people mix with each other, not as separate families – they have dropped that separation – but as part of one commune.And the commune can pool everything. For example, if we can manage food for five thousand people, what is the need of having five thousand kitchens? Sheer wastage, stupidity. When the world is hungry, undernourished, you have so many kitchens in every city, and so many people are involved in working in those kitchens – so much labor! – millions of hours in every city are simply wasted.We can see in our commune that very few people can manage, and can manage far better than individual homes. Because the commune will always be richer – if five hundred families pool their resources into the commune, the commune is going to be really rich. Everybody need not have a car, you can just have a pool of five hundred cars. Anybody who wants the car can take it, so five hundred cars can serve five thousand people without any trouble – and everybody has a car.Now, this is not possible in a world which is family-divided. The commune is the way to make man civilized. The commune should decide how many children it needs this year, and the commune will be responsible for the children. Parents can be loving to them, but they cannot claim them as their possessions; they belong to the whole commune.Naturally, they cannot be taught to be Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans; no – the commune has no religion. It will teach the children everything that has been found truthful, and it will teach the children, “There are many things you will have to seek and find yourself. We cannot give you the answers for those things: God, soul… We cannot give you any answers, but we will give you a curiosity, we will give you an inquiry, we will give you a doubting mind. We will give you a sharp intelligence. We will give you the art of meditation so you can be utterly still.”Archimedes used to say, “If I can find a single still point, I can change the whole universe.” He was right, but he was looking in the wrong direction. That single still point exists within you. Archimedes could not find it, so he could not turn the whole universe. I have found it, and I find that the universe is turning perfectly well. There is no trouble.The commune will teach the children to be meditative, to find their own still being, the still small voice, which always directs rightly, which is the only guide. All other guides are just hypocrites.We can create a world without poverty, a world without crime, a world without war, and it will be a civilized world. Man is capable of it, and we have to show it with existential proof. We have to make communes all around the world in every place, so people can see that what I am saying is not just a philosophy – it can be done, it can be made into reality.In the beginning they will be hostile, in the beginning they will hate, in the beginning they will try to destroy you. But soon all that will disappear, because how long can they deceive themselves? Seeing the fact that you are more joyous, more intelligent, more creative, richer in every possible way, they will have to learn your art.My communes one day will become schools for teaching man how to be civilized.Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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KGW-TV,Portland, Oregon, United StatesOsho,I've come to ask you a series of questions about AIDS.We saw your forecast a year and a half a go, when you said that two-thirds of the world's population would eventually die of the disease. I'm curious where that number came from, and why you believe this is true.I am not an astrologer or a prophet; it is just simple arithmetic, the way AIDS is spreading and no adequate efforts are being made to prevent it. On the contrary, governments are repressing the information, patients are repressing the information. Governments are making homosexuality illegal – that means they are making it go underground. In Texas alone, one million homosexuals have suddenly become criminals.Laws have never changed anybody. It is just sheer stupidity – that just by making a law against homosexuality you have done a great preventive act. In fact, you have made it more dangerous. Known, diagnosed, there was a way at least to prevent the disease spreading. Now it will not be known, it will not be diagnosed; it will be underground. Nobody will be ready to go for a test.And the disease is no ordinary disease. It cannot be cured; there seems to be no possibility to cure it. Secondly, its way of spreading is very strange. Sexual intercourse, of course, is one of the ways, but even if that is prevented, kissing can be enough to spread it. Somebody’s tears are enough to spread it – perhaps any liquid coming out of the body carries the virus. This is the first time a disease is being spread in so many ways.Nobody is going to say if he has it, because the moment he says it, his own family will condemn him. His wife will leave him, his children will close the doors to him, his parents will deny him. His society will condemn him, his friends will turn into enemies; nobody would like even his shadow to be close by. Naturally, people will suppress it, they will not inform anybody. And that is the most dangerous part of it.The disease originates in homosexuality, and all the religions are preaching, in disguise, homosexuality, all kinds of sexual perversions, because they are teaching people to remain celibate – which is unnatural, which cannot be supported by medical science. Nobody can be celibate who is not impotent; he has to find some outlet for his sexual energy which goes on accumulating.Your monks eat food, they drink milk, they do everything that the body needs. Then the body produces everything that it has been producing for millennia. And the body has no way of knowing that you have taken a vow of celibacy. The body is neither Christian, nor Hindu, nor Mohammedan, and the body does not know whether you are a householder or a monk.Secondly, all the religions have put their monks in one monastery, their nuns in another, and there is no way of meeting for man and woman. In the armies you are doing the same; in hostels, in schools, in colleges, in universities, it has been the routine. Now, all these are the places from where AIDS has arisen. Homosexuality is the source.And the strangest thing is that now people like Falwell are saying that it is God’s punishment for homosexuals. If God is there, and if he has any sense of justice, then the punishment should be given to the popes, to the prophets, to the messiahs who have created this idea – a lunatic idea – of celibacy. And because of that idea, homosexuality came into being, sodomy came into being – and just now they have found three apes in Africa who have AIDS. The scientists thought that it is the apes who are spreading it. This is simple stupidity. It is not the apes who are spreading it; it must be man who has had intercourse with the apes. It is well known in remote corners of the world – in jungles, in mountains – that when people cannot get anybody else they make love to animals.And it is not something new, it is coming from the Old Testament. A whole city called Sodom became interested in animals; that’s why the name sodomy…Osho,Excuse me, can I change tapes?If I may, I'd like to turn my question around perhaps. You said that two-thirds of the population will die of AIDS. Who will be the survivors? Who will be left?People who want to survive will have to live like we are living, in a commune. Only in a commune is it possible to prevent the disease from spreading, to take every precaution. And only in a commune is it possible not to be afraid of being known to be suffering from the disease, because you are only a victim.In my commune there are a few people who are suffering from AIDS, but they are getting more respect than they have ever got, and more love than they have ever got. And we are making every facility available to them: better houses, a more scenic place for them to live, because they are going to live only for a few months, or at the most two years – which is rarely possible, six months may be the most possible for them. For six months we can make their life as pleasant as possible. We can teach them meditations, we can help them to be silent – to prepare for death.In fact, I am telling these sannyasins, “Take it as an opportunity: perhaps in your whole life you may not have had an opportunity to remain in silence for two years. And death comes unknown to others; to you it is coming with a notice. It is perfectly useful, because you can prepare. Nobody else is ready for death, everybody is caught unprepared; you can prepare. And the preparation is to go deeper into meditation. Reach the point where death can never reach, and then let death come. You don’t die, you simply go on moving into new forms.”So only in an intelligent, loving, understanding commune – every sannyasin has gone through the tests. In the cities people are resisting; even if they have symptoms they don’t want to be tested. The fear of condemnation will kill them. Two years of living in such a condemnation, there will be only one way: to commit suicide rather than be condemned by your own family, by your own people, friends, and live like a ghost, welcome nowhere. These people can only commit suicide. That will be the only respectable thing left for them.But in a commune it is a totally different situation. All over the world we have communes, and we are making the commune the model for everything. Any city can follow the same ground rules. The basic thing is that the AIDS patient should not be condemned, that there should be special shelters, nursing homes – better than any other – for these people who are living under the shadow of death. And the best music, the best paintings, the best films, the best literature, anything that they want should be provided.And the whole responsibility should be thrown onto the religious people. They should be charged for all the expenses, because it is they who have done it. And they are still doing crimes, and nobody is preventing them. They still go on telling people – in South Africa the pope is talking to people against birth control, against abortion, against the pill, because, “These are all against God’s will.” As if he knows God. As if he knows God’s will. And he is saying it to people whose birthrate is the highest in the world, who are already over-populated, starving, in utter degradation, in slavery – he is teaching them this nonsense. He should be immediately shot.And the same is being done by all the other religions. Mohammedans still insist to marry four wives. That means they can create a four-times greater population than anybody else. And they say it is a religious question, and you cannot interfere in anybody’s religion.The population is growing, starvation is growing, sicknesses like AIDS are spreading, nuclear weapons are piling up – it is enough for any man of intelligence to understand that we are very close to a global death. Some way or other this beautiful earth is going to be destroyed, unless something very drastic is done.Do you see any possibility that that drastic change will come?I don’t see any possibility, but I will make every effort. It is hoping against hope, but I still hope. I don’t see that anything can be done because all these people are divided into religious groups; their minds are so conditioned that they can’t see the reality.In India I was teaching about birth control for thirty years, and the only reward that I got was stones thrown at me, shoes thrown at me, knives thrown, attempts to kill me were made. The last attempt before I left India was made before ten thousand sannyasins in a morning discourse. Ten thousand eyewitnesses – it is a rare case to find! And twenty topmost police officers were there, because they got the news from some anonymous source that something was going to happen, so, “Go there immediately.”So twenty police officers were there. They caught the man who threw the knife at me and they presented the case. We were out of it; we said, “It is a police case. The police have caught the man red handed. They have the knife, they have the person.” But still the court released him. Ten thousand witnesses don’t mean anything; twenty police officers unanimously saying it, the proof is there… The man belongs to the same Hindu fanatic group that killed Mahatma Gandhi. Still, he was honorably released, with no charge.But the magistrate must have started feeling guilty. It was such an injustice that through a common friend he asked my forgiveness. I said, “There is no need to ask for forgiveness. This way he will not get rid of his guilt; he has done something far more dangerous than murder.”The friend said, “But the magistrate’s situation is that he belongs to the same religious group, he believes in the same religion. The religious leaders are pressing him, the politicians are pressing him that that man should not be punished. And his promotion is due. If he punishes that man, of course, they will release him in the higher court, but his promotion will be gone.”I said to the magistrate’s friend, “Tell him, ‘Don’t feel guilty, just enjoy your promotion. As far as I am concerned, now there is no longer any promotion for me. I have reached the very end of my consciousness, now there is nothing more. So if anybody kills me it should not be considered a murder, because he is not preventing me from anything.’”The last time I heard you talk was at the news conference, and at that time there was talk of a gun in the audience. And the question of your being killed came up at that time too. Is this something that you can think about a lot? Is this something that…I don’t think.…is in the minds of your people?I don’t think of it at all. But every day we go on receiving phone calls, letters, every day we receive threats. So it is not on our part. We don’t care about those letters, we simply give them to the police. We don’t bother about those telephone calls – we are not at all worried. We are doing our thing so totally that nobody has any time for any nonsense.I simply mentioned it because the world is divided into fanatic religious groups. The world is divided also into political groups. They all have their vested interests, and their vested interest is in this kind of society where AIDS is absolutely bound to happen.So I don’t see that anything can succeed against so many vested interests and so many powerful people – religious, political. But I am doing my best. I am creating communes in every place, in every country. They are trying that these communes should not be created, and they are doing the same here.We have not done any harm to anybody. In four years we have changed a desert into a beautiful oasis. There was only one house when we had come here, now there are houses for five thousand people with all the latest facilities – a fully air-conditioned city. No illegality has happened in four years: nobody has been fighting, nobody has been killed, nobody has committed suicide, nobody has raped anybody, there is not a single prostitute – and your government is declaring this city illegal. If this city is illegal, then no city can be legal.The city that you built, is it complete now, or what is the next step or stage of its development?We don’t plan ahead, we go spontaneously. Right now it is under litigation, so nothing can happen. Once the litigation is over – and it has to be over; we are going to win, because we still believe in the constitution of America. We don’t believe in Americans but we believe in the constitution.What does that mean?That means the constitution is certainly going to protect us. We have done nothing against the constitution, and your politicians have done everything against the constitution. So we have every certainly of winning in the Supreme Court, and we will fight to the very end. Our defeat will be the defeat of the American constitution, American democracy, the American idea of freedom, individuality. So if that is going to be the case, then it is okay.Could you explain to me: clearly your goal in winning this litigation is far more than air-conditioned houses, and what you've achieved here now. There is more inside. Your goal is beyond this, and that's what I would…There is no goal.[some talking between the interviewer and the crew]Forgive me…Change it. Just don’t change sex, you can go on changing the tape!Okay!I don’t have any goal. We live moment to moment, and when tomorrow comes, we will live tomorrow. Naturally we will be expanding – that is the nature of life. Death is shrinking, life is expanding. So if we are free to expand we will expand. Nobody knows the limits, and nobody can determine the limits. And we have enough land – 126 square miles. It is three times bigger than New York.So we can make a beautiful place, a hill station, with people living on all the mountains. We can create many lakes; we can make it lush green. Nobody will ever remember that it was a desert, and that for fifty years it remained for sale and nobody purchased it because it was worthless.But we are already self-sufficient as far as our food is concerned, our vegetables are concerned, our milk products are concerned. We are trying in every way to grow and be self-sufficient. And we will invite more and more people to share and be part of us. One thing is certain: the moment the barriers are removed – and they will have to be removed; they can be postponed, that does not matter – we are going to expand. And we are going to make the first city in the world without crime, without homosexuality, without prostitution, without priests – who are worse than prostitutes. And we are going to create as luxurious and comfortable a life for the people in the commune as possible; they will not think at all of any heaven.Heaven is the projection of people who are living in hell. If you are already living in paradise, who cares about heaven and hell? My people are perhaps the only small community in the world which has no need of a God figure, because deep down they are growing, maturing, and that need of a child for a father figure has disappeared. God has nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with philosophy; it is something to do with a retarded child, a child who has not been able to grow and still needs a father figure to protect him.Nobody prays here, there is no need. There is nobody to pray to and there is nothing to pray for. Whatever we need we will produce. What we ourselves can do, why go on dumping on somebody else’s head? Yes, everybody is meditating. Meditation needs no system of beliefs; it does not require you to be a theist or atheist, democrat or communist. You may be whatever you are. Meditation is a scientific methodology: you need not believe in it, you have just to hypothetically experiment with it.And it has never been, in the whole history of man, that a single man who has meditated has ever said anything against the innermost supreme consciousness – not a single man. Those who have spoken against it have never meditated. Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Mao – none of them has ever meditated for a single moment. They know nothing of their own interiority. Their denial is just stupid; their denial is as idiotic as the acceptance of God of all other religions. They have not meditated, they have not searched within themselves. They have not looked at who they are.So, these people are searching within themselves and finding peace, silence, joy, arising. We don’t have much, but we are living as richly as even the rich people in the world cannot afford. They are miserly, they are suffering, they are in misery. They may have riches but they don’t have the consciousness to use those riches. Whatever we have, we share, we enjoy, and we are perfectly contented, not a single complaint.And we now have dozens of communes exactly the same around the world, growing on the same lines. They are going to be models for people to see, to understand. And if they feel, “This is right,” then my communes will become the schools for future cities. Then send your people to be here, to live here for three to six months – it will be a training period for them so that they can go back and create a commune of your city. Or, if it is a big city, then four communes, five communes, but divided into communes, no longer families.We have one kitchen for five thousand people. It is so cheap, so simple, and so many women are freed for other work. For the first time they can paint, they can sculpt, they can compose music, they can write poetry. They need not waste their lives, only rearing children and taking care of the kitchen, and then their whole life is finished – from the cradle to the grave, the same routine.In four years not a single child has been born in the commune. And nobody is prohibited; it is just a simple understanding of the situation, that the world is overpopulated and this is a crime to give birth to a child. A crime against the world, a crime against the child, because the child will be a beggar, the child will create another Ethiopia, the child will be hungry, starving, and you are not being human to your own child.No child has been born in four years. There is no need. The family is a dangerous thing now, it should not exist.Should not exist today and for the next twenty years? Or should not exist from now on?From now on, because its function is finished. It has done its job. The future belongs to communes. That does not mean that people cannot live together, it simply means that children are no longer their possessions. They can love their children, they can meet their children, but the children will be the responsibility of the commune.The commune will decide how many children we need, what kind of children we need. The medical board will decide who is going to be the mother and who is going to be the father. It cannot be decided by priests and the church, or the astrologers or the palmists; this is idiotic. Who can be the father and who can be the mother, has to be decided by a medical board.Do you think anyone would accept that, even here?They already accept it here, there is no question about it.Is there any effort to establish a medical board with that direction?We have a medical center, we have enough medical people. You cannot find, in such a small commune anywhere else, all the professions – and the topmost people of the professions. We have four hundred legal experts, the biggest law firm in the whole world. And those four hundred people are going to fight for every single inch. We have doctors, all qualified – highly qualified. We have surgeons – one of the best plastic surgeons in the world, one of the best heart surgeons in the United States. We have nurses, we have everything that is needed. And in our other communes we have more people if we need any help.We have one million sannyasins around the world, in every profession. And because only very intelligent people become interested in me, this is bound to be so. None of my people are uneducated, almost all are graduates from the universities; most of them have masters degrees, many are PhDs. We are perfectly balanced in every way, and that’s why I say the commune is the way for the future, because nobody needs to be paid, but all his needs are taken care of.I don’t believe in austerity. I am against it – it is masochistic, a psychological disease. All your saints have suffered from it. Everything that my people need is made available; they themselves make it available. They have pooled all their energies into one pool, and things have become so simple.For example, five thousand cars are not needed, just one thousand cars will do. Anybody can take a car, there is no problem, there is no question. So everybody has the facility of a car. We have one hundred buses; if you don’t want to go in a car and drive and unnecessarily take a risk, you go in an air-conditioned bus. We have five airplanes, which is perfectly sufficient for our people. Anybody can use the airplanes in any emergency. We have our own pilots, we have our own engineers. We have our own garages, we have our own mechanics.Everybody that we need is here, and we have pooled all the energies. So one kitchen is sufficient for five thousand people, and gives better food than you can ever get from a nagging wife!Osho,If I put all this together…I'm trying to describe a goal to you, and you can stop me after I say this – but you're striving for self-sufficiency, you try to demonstrate it here at the commune. You talk of pestilence, you talk of war. It sounds like what you're establishing here is an attempt for an oasis that will survive all the dire things that you predict within the next decade, the next twenty years. The goal then, it might be guessed, would be for Osho and the sannyasins to lead humanity out of all of this through the communes.No, it is not the goal. The goal is to become a new type of school of training, a model for the future, for the whole of humanity. But it depends on them. If they don’t want to come, we are not going to send missionaries to convince them. If they want to die, they are perfectly free; that is their choice. If they want AIDS to spread all over the world, it is their freedom. But we will not allow them to destroy our communes.We are ready to help, but they will have to come to us; we are not going to them. The thirsty has to come to the well, the well is not going anywhere.We have not left the world. I was arguing for thirty years, traveling and arguing and talking, and then I realized, “This will not do. I have to give proofs of what I am saying – not just arguments but existential proofs.” That’s why in 1970 I started the movement of sannyas, and started creating small centers, making them bigger and bigger. Now they have flowered, they have blossomed into communes. Now we are ready to accept anybody who wants to learn anything.They can see our children, they can see how they are being taught, how they are being treated – with what respect and love. They can see our teachers – that they are not just teachers, they are mothers and fathers too. They can come and see that every child is moving freely within the whole commune. All the sannyasins are aunts and uncles. It is a beautiful and rich experience for the child.There was one small child, Siddhartha, I used to ask his mother where he is. She would say, “It is very difficult to find him. Sometimes he is with this uncle, sometimes he is with that aunt; many days he disappears, sleeps in other houses. But he is so happy; there is no problem. Once in a while he comes, and each time we can see that he is growing fast, knowing things that we never knew at his age, becoming more mature and understanding.”Being with so many people is a tremendous training. And getting so much love from so many people is a great fulfillment. Why keep the child poor by just giving him a mother and a father? And in fact, because the child has to be disciplined by the father he will never forgive the father. He will always hate him, deep down. And also because, if the child is a boy he was in love with his mother and the father was the enemy; if the child is a girl she was in love with her father and the mother was the enemy. No woman is without that hate in her unconscious for her own mother.Psychologists say that ninety percent of diseases are because of the family. If we can free the child from this addiction to two people and make him free and available to many impressions, he will not be angry with his father, and the girl will not be hateful towards the mother. On the contrary, they will be grateful that their parents helped them to grow in such a big human energy field.It has been found that no man is ever satisfied with any woman, nor is any woman ever satisfied with any man. Something is always missing. And the reason, psychologists say, is that the girl first fell in love with her father. Now she will seek and search her whole life for the same type of man, her father, exactly. That is impossible, she cannot find it anywhere. Nature never produces two people alike. So she has to compromise and be in love with a man who in some partial way resembles her father. But once they get married she will have to become acquainted with his whole personality. Just a part resembles, but the whole is a stranger. And the same is true for the man: only a part resembles his mother, the whole is different. This creates continuous conflict with every couple, and it drives them nuts.In a commune this will not happen, because children will not be carrying a single clear-cut picture of a woman or a man. They will have a vague sensation, which can adjust to any woman or to any man very easily. They have only a vague sense of thousands of qualities, because every woman has different qualities, different ways; every man has different qualities, different ways. And if a child becomes aware of five thousand people, then he has a richness which will make him capable of adjusting to someone. If he can adjust to five thousand strangers, there is no question of his adjusting to one wife, one husband. And we can create a better, more loving world.What you're saying is all reasonable, but it sounds like it's from the head and not the heart that people want families, people want children. They want the comfort, they want the love that these provide. They want the tradition of these things. I think that's from the heart, what you're saying is from the head.What I am saying is of the heart, but the heart cannot say it. It has to use the head to say it. Just try saying from the heart – anything, just a single word. So, whatever I am saying is from the heart, but the heart has no tongue; it has to go via the head. So you will be hearing via my mouth, not through my heart – that I can understand.Everything that I am saying is from the heart, and if I am supporting it from the head, that is the function of the head. The head has to speak for the heart, the head has to rationalize for the heart, the head has to be a servant to the heart. The heart is the master. I am against the head being the master. As a master, the head is the worst master; as a servant, it is a perfect servant.But whatever I am saying is absolutely my heart. But there is no other way: I have to use the head, its language, its reasoning to reach you. Certainly it will reach your head first. If you don’t block it there, perhaps it may enter into your heart. But you can block it, you can keep it in the head, you can listen to me just intellectually. That is not my fault, that is your fault. As far as I am concerned, I am speaking my heart.Osho,Let me ask you a totally different subject. Tomorrow there was a news conference scheduled, where you and Sheela were to appear. As we understood, it was going to be something about AIDS. What happened?I don’t know, because I don’t get involved in the details of things that the commune is doing. They inform me, they bring the car, and they tell me that you are waiting here. Seven o’clock I have to be here, so I am here. If there is a press conference tomorrow, I will certainly be there.You realize you could tell these people what to do…I don’t know.…if you wanted.No, I don’t impose anything on the commune. It is the commune’s work. I never go into the commune office; I never inquire what is happening. Whatsoever they feel that they want to inform me about, they inform me. And I have told them, “Be as minimum as possible.”So, every night, half an hour before – at the most one hour – they inform me; if there is a press conference, I will know about it tonight. If there is not…There was an effort called “To the Heart of America” that we heard about, which was an effort to send sannyasins out to cities in what reporters saw might be a missionary effort by the religion. Will you approve of an effort of that sort?What are you are saying?About six, eight months ago, there was a program sponsored by the church, called “To the Heart of America,” which sent sannyasins out to…Where?…four cities.For what?Can you help me with this, Isabel?Vidya answers: Part of the university developed some programs in different cities in America. The program was called “To the Heart of America.”We were told that it was an experiment at that time, and there was a possibility that the next – judging on the success of this effort – that the next efforts would be in Washington, DC and New York, which looked as I say, very much like a missionary effort. Would you approve of such a thing?I have not even heard about it. These people must have done something, but I have not heard about it; that’s why I could not understand your question. The people from the university may have gone to other universities, or other cities where people were asking to understand what is going on here and what is my basic philosophy. So a few people had gone on invitation.We are not missionaries. We will never go anywhere uninvited. If a university invites us, then we can send somebody from our university to talk to them, to answer their questions, their curiosities. But there is no question of any missionary effort.And you can see that I am not even aware of it. I have never heard of the program called “Heart of America.” I am just hearing it now. That’s great.Osho,A question of personal curiosity: it strikes me, and I may be wrong here, but you are teaching people how to live, how to get by in this world – and to get by on their own, find their strength within themselves ultimately, which to me, means to find their way without Osho.If these people are paying attention to the lesson, why are they still here?It is not wrong on your part to ask the question, it is significant.The people who have come to understand themselves, their silence, their peace, their joy, certainly no longer need me. And if they were going to decide from their heads – as the question is arising from your head – they would have left. But just because they have experienced their ultimate joy and ecstasy in my presence, in my love field, they feel a tremendous gratitude that is of their heart. Nobody is preventing them from going away, but they would not like to go. They simply love the place where their greatest experience happened. They love the man with whom their greatest experience happened.I am reminded of a story in Gautam Buddha’s life.Sariputta, one of his chief disciples, became enlightened. And Buddha said, “Sariputta, now you have to go to spread the word. You don’t need me anymore, you yourself are in the same space as I am.”Sariputta said, “I was worried about this. I was postponing my enlightenment up to now just to be near you. And be kind to me: although I am enlightened, you are old – who knows how long we will be able to sit in your fragrance, in your presence? And how are we going to pay the debt? It is impossible. But at least let me be here, so that every day I can touch your feet.”This happened many times, because slowly many other disciples became enlightened. Buddha would ask them to go, and the same was the situation: they would cry – enlightened people crying and asking not to be sent away.There is something of tremendous gratitude that happens when side by side. And a disciple – although he is no longer a disciple, he himself is a master. Just the fact that this miraculous thing has happened to him which he had never dreamed about, creates great gratitude; he wants to be near me for as long as possible.I cannot send them away. That would be too heartless. I am not preventing them; that would be against my teachings. So it is up to them. If they want to go into the world to spread the word they are welcome. But if they want to remain here, and just being here is such a joy for them, then I should not disturb them. Then they can be here. But many people are going out.There is an exchange program now, because we have so many communes and everybody wants to be here with me. So we have found this way: twenty persons, thirty persons, will voluntarily offer themselves that they would like to give a chance for thirty people from Germany to be here for three months – or from Italy or from Holland or from India or from Japan. And this way those people will be here, and my people will be there.In both the cases it will be good. Those people will enjoy and relish the feeling of energy that is here, and my thirty people will spread in Germany or in Japan all that they have gained, learned, experienced in the commune,. And this is going to be continuous; all the year round people will be moving. And anybody will be ready to go voluntarily for three months, because it is not going to be a lifelong thing – only for three months. And in fact it is compassionate to go and give thirty other people a chance to be with me. So, that is our exchange program around the world for other sannyasins.But whoever wants to be near me, I am available. Whether he has achieved or not does not matter; it is his decision.Osho,As a religious leader, how would you define what your obligation, in turn, is then? You say you're available to the people who want to learn. Beyond that, is there is an obligation you feel to those people?No, there is no obligation on anyone’s part – neither on my part nor on the sannyasins’ part. I am available out of my own joy; I am not obliging anybody. Nobody even gives me a simple thank you – there is no need. I am so full that I would like to share. In fact, that’s what I mean by availability – the opening of a flower and the fragrance spreads. It is not obliging anybody.Anybody who is available and close to the flower, who is sensitive enough, will be able to get something out of it. So it is not a commandment, that you have to follow me, that you have to receive what I give, that you have to accept it. There is no question of any commandment, no order. I am not a leader. I am simply a human being who has blossomed to full humanity, of which everyone has the potential. So there is no question of holier-than-thou, higher-than-thou. There is no problem and no question. The difference is, you are just a little late in getting up, that’s all. I got up a little early.That difference does not make any difference. So they are not obliged to me. If they open their hearts and receive whatever I have to offer, they are doing it out of their own choice. They are not doing a duty, they are not following a discipline; they are simply experimenting out of their own freedom.I call it an experiment of inner exploration. If somebody has already reached, just sitting silently by his side something transpires. It is infectious. You can easily go in. And if there are thousands of people who are doing the same in-going, a new person can simply be caught in the current of in-going.But nobody is forcing anybody, nobody is directing anybody. Nobody is even asking whether you attained it or not, at what stage you are. All these are business things, and this is a commune, absolutely non-serious, playful – even about meditation we are playful.So I am happy if somebody attains, but it is not that he is obliged to me.Osho,Is work still a meditation here?My whole work is meditation.I'm thinking of the sannyasins. Does that definition still hold true, that work is meditation?The work is just meditation. A sannyasin simply means one who has agreed to meditate, nothing more – who is willing to go as far as possible. It is his declaration, his dedication, his commitment – to himself, not to anybody functioning as an authority. He is declaring to himself, “I am deciding to go in.” And his sannyas is only a remembrance. His change of clothes is nothing but to remind him continuously, twenty-four hours a day, that now he has chosen meditation as his path. The day he has achieved, there is no need for his red clothes, but again the same question…People who have attained are still using red clothes. They feel a certain gratitude even to the clothes, because for years, twenty-four hours a day, they were reminding them. They have become something of tremendous value to them; they have helped them on the path.So sannyas is only a declaration. The work is meditation. In one single word my religion is complete, and that is meditation.We were told that the people who are working here at the commune, driving a bulldozer, for example, that is their meditation. Do you agree with that?You will have to understand what I mean by meditation. Meditation means alertness, awareness, mindfulness. So whatever you are doing, just do it consciously, don’t do it mechanically.I can move my hand mechanically; I can move it very consciously, fully alert. And there is a difference of quality. When you move it with consciousness there is grace; when you move it just like machine there is no grace, no beauty. When you are doing any kind of work…All the old religions have been telling you that your religion is a Sunday religion. Every Sunday you have to go to church, and for six days you are free. This is very strange. For six days God was creating this world. He was tremendously creative: in six days he created this whole universe – and on the seventh day there is no mention that he went to church!In fact, after those six days he has gone for a long weekend – and it has been really long! According to Christians, six thousand years have passed. According to Hindus, ninety thousand years have passed. The weekend seems to be unending! For six days you do everything, and the seventh day you go to church, pray – and your religion is finished. Other religions give you twenty minutes meditation – sit in the morning and meditate for twenty minutes. These are not meditations. Meditation has to be something like breathing; you cannot go on holiday, even in sleep you have to continue breathing.So, whatever you are doing – even just breathing, then breathe consciously in. As you take the breath in, remain alert. As the breath starts moving out, remain alert. You are meditating. Walking, just go consciously and you are meditating.My meditation is not something separate from life; it is something that has to be spread all over life. Your whole life has to be colored by it. So whatever you do – you make love, but meditation remains. You cannot drop it even while making love. It is not like your glasses; you cannot take it off. It is like eyes; they are always there. You cannot just take them off and put them on again.My meditation is a method of being aware of whatever you are doing, thinking, feeling. On all three layers you have to become aware. A time comes when even when you are going to sleep, even then, while you are sitting on the bed, sit in awareness, lie down in awareness. Wait for sleep, fully watchful: when it comes, how it comes, how slowly it descends on you, how your body starts relaxing, in which points there was tension, and now the tension is gone.A day will come, certainly comes, when the body will have gone to sleep and your meditation will still be there like a flame inside you, burning, fully aware. This is the moment that I say your meditation is complete. Now you can meditate even in sleep. So there is no question: while you are awake you will be able to meditate, there is no problem.And the man who can meditate in sleep will be able to meditate while dying, because the process is the same. Just as in sleep you slowly, slowly go deeper inside you – the body is left far away, relaxed, the mind slows down, the thoughts go on disappearing – exactly the same happens in death. A man who knows meditation never dies. He remains alive, aware. Death is happening, he is there.When Socrates was given poison, he had gathered all his disciples. One of the disciples asked, “Before you leave us, please tell us whether the soul survives or not.”Socrates said, “Again you are asking the same stupid question. Let me die and see! I will die fully aware. There are only two possibilities: either I am gone, finished with the body finishing, and there is nobody left to be aware; or the body will be dying and I will be moving into some other form. But before death, how can I say? I am so excited.”The man who was preparing the poison was delaying because he loved Socrates. Everybody loved the man – even the man who was going to give him poison was delaying. Socrates said, “This is not right. It is the time for you to come.”The man who was preparing the poison said, “You must be crazy Socrates. I am simply delaying the process so you can live a little longer.”Socrates said, “I have lived long enough, and I have lived so totally that I don’t think I have left anything unlived. My life is complete, so don’t waste time. I am excited to experience death; I want to see death.”And that is exactly the situation of every meditator, he wants to see death too. Seeing it means you are separate from it, you are something eternal. And this experience of eternity, immortality, is authentic religion – not worshipping a God, not a Holy Bible, not a Gita. Those are just for retarded people.Osho,The man taking the pictures is Michael Hawkins. He would very much like to ask you a question as well. Would that be permitted?[to the cameraman] You wanted to ask a question? Ask it.Osho,There are several. The AIDS precautions that are being set up here would seem to me to attract two types of people. One, who possibly already have AIDS and want a peaceful place to live out the rest of life. But the other person will be somebody that is so paranoid about getting the disease, that this would be a place that they could ultimately avoid it completely. Are there problems with either of those people coming here?No problem, but we had not thought about it. You are giving a good idea. [aside] Note it down. Thank you. We will manage…[back to the interviewer]Osho,One thing I would like to ask you about. Has there been a change in the mood of the commune in the four years? As someone who visits occasionally…it was a younger group, maybe a little more dynamic, four years ago. These people, they've matured is one way of saying it. Are you aware of a change here in the way that people behave, and the way they perceive the effort of the commune?They are certainly more mature, more meditative, more joyous, more at ease, for many reasons. The four years have given them many challenges. So, in the beginning they were finding themselves harassed by the government, by the Oregonians.Slowly, I have had to explain to them, “Enjoy it, there is nothing to be harassed about. Nobody can harass you unless you are ready to be harassed. The person who harasses you – if you don’t get harassed, he is harassing himself.” Slowly, slowly they have understood. Now everything is calm and quiet. They go to the courts, they fight the cases, and take it easily. There is no problem about it. We have accepted that we will have to fight, so why not fight joyously? We have accepted that the government of Oregon is one of the most primitive governments, illegal, unconstitutional, so now there is no problem.Firstly there was a problem, because we were thinking it was a democratic government and would follow the law and the constitution. And when they did not do that my people were a little puzzled, disappointed. Now they have accepted the fact that we have to depend on the constitution and not on the politicians. We have to depend on the Supreme Court and not on the parliamentarians, senators, assembly members, governors, president – we are not to depend on those people. So they have figured it out, and now everything is clear. We are going to be here, that much is settled. Nobody can throw us out of here; we are at home. That has given a certain calmness.And secondly, we have become aware of all their tricks and strategies, their loopholes, and we are fighting well and we are winning. And we are going to win every single case against us because they are illegal and unconstitutional. So there is no problem; just the legal department has to work – and it is good to sharpen your intelligence.The commune as a whole has settled. It is no longer a campus, it is an illegal city. And it is more of a joy to be an illegal city than to be just an ordinary legal city. We are unique in the world. There is no other illegal city anywhere. Either a city is a city or there is no city; but an illegal city is really hilarious.And we are enjoying it now. We are not at all disturbed by anything. We are enjoying it, and we will give them a tough fight, because we are not Christians, we are not going to give them the other cheek. And we are not even allowing them to give us the other cheek. We will hit both their cheeks simultaneously. So we are just rejoicing in the whole game. Now it is a game for us – a football game. And in four years, people have been meditating, and people have been creative, and people have changed.At first they were a little afraid, facing this vast desert. How are we going to manage to make streets? We have never made streets. How are we going to grow our food, our vegetables in this desert? But intelligent people can always find ways, and we have managed to do everything. People who had never made roads have made better roads than your roads. People who have never cooked have proved tremendously inventive in cooking.And we have sorted things out. Things have settled, and everybody is enjoying his work. And we change people from one work to another, so everybody is capable of many things in any emergency. The plumber can teach in the university, and the professor can be the plumber. We are shifting people. They are all educated, so there is no problem. The plumber can be the electrician, the electrician can be the plumber. Doctors are cooking, cooks are doctors – it is beautiful.Come sometimes and remain here for a few days and you will find it groovy!Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Yoga Pratima,Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United StatesOsho,You have said that sometimes you say things to shock and disturb people's sleep, and that there are millions of people in the world who need just a little bit of shaking and they will awake. Are these people who are being shocked by you now also listening to you? Are they starting to become contemporaries? Are they starting to wake up?They are certainly tossing and turning in their sleep. But there is great hope. They are trying hard to remain asleep. I shock them, they turn, pull the blanket over, but I am not to be defeated by their stupidity. I am determined to wake them up by each and every means possible. I will say things which are not true, I will do things which I am not supposed to do, but I will wake them up. And a few are certainly waking up, coming closer, feeling more, understanding more. My efforts have not gone in vain.Perhaps nobody has been rewarded as much as I am rewarded. For the first time so many people are so interested in a man, just for his mere love and his presence. I do not walk on water, I do not do any miracles – because those are methods to attract people and their attention. But then the person does not come to you because of you, he comes to you because you are doing miracles. It is the miracles that are pulling him toward you. A few people gathered around Jesus – it was not of any worth. He was raising the dead, walking on water, turning water into wine, doing every kind of thing in which people are interested, but even then not many came.And I am consistently avoiding anything that can be a distraction to you. I am making it absolutely clear that you have to be here just for me, not for any other motive. If there is any other motive you are not with me. If there is no motive then there is a possibility of your being awakened.So I have not given any excuse for my people to be around me. In fact, I have given them every excuse to escape from me, to avoid me. Being with me does not bring you respectability. That was well-considered by me from the very beginning – that with me you would have to lose your respect, your honor, your morality, because they will be the tests of whether you are going to risk anything to be with me. And if thousands of people have decided to be with me at any cost, it is a determination, a commitment of tremendous import. That means they have tasted something of my presence.The people who are around me now are not here just for my words. By now they are perfectly aware that you can play with words, there is nothing in it. They are perfectly aware that they are not to cling to my words, because tomorrow I am going to change. Why cling unnecessarily? I am absolutely unreliable. And to trust in a man who is so unreliable is authentic trust. It goes beyond thinking of consequences. It goes beyond fear. It goes beyond all words. I may contradict myself, I may say anything, it does not matter to my people. What matters is my presence, my love toward them, their love toward me.And that is going to create a whirlwind of awakening around the whole world. It is just the beginning; the wildfire can take wings any moment. And fortunately we are at the right time, when people are already fed up with their sleep, fed up with all their sleeping pills, fed up with all the dreams they have been seeing, and fed up with all those people who have been simply providing drugs to console them.This is the right moment, when we can fetch people very easily because they themselves are trying to get out of the bed – but they have been asleep so long, it has become almost their second nature. Hence, a little effort is needed to separate them from their second nature and make them aware of their original face. Everybody has within him the eternal flame of awareness. Howsoever hidden behind walls, it is always there. Nothing can destroy it. All that we have to do is to destroy the walls – and the walls are only of words, scriptures, beliefs.I am training my people – without calling it a training – how to play with words, how to play with arguments, and how to destroy any argument without much effort. These are the ways those walls have to be broken. I am speaking against every prejudice, against every religion. I am speaking against every ideology; I am speaking, and giving you basic insight into how you can destroy all those hindrances. And the moment they are removed – awareness is not something that comes out of the blue. You suddenly have a great surprise, that it has always been there – you were just keeping your back toward it.Many are waking up. They have slept for millions of years, so we need not be in a hurry. And whatever time they take is not much, because the sleep is so long that if they take a few years to wake up, they are waking up quite early.It is happening, and it is a kind of happening that once it starts it is infectious, contagious. Then it goes on and on from one person to another.We have to make this whole earth fully awake, and we are capable now. I can say with confidence that I have the right people with me, the intelligent people who can do every kind of work to help humanity to become conscious.So I am not worried at all about their unconsciousness, neither am I worried about our capacity to wake them up. Our capacity to wake them is far bigger and greater than their capacity to remain asleep. And this will be some miracle – walking on water is silly; you can cross the lake in a boat, there is no need…In Ramakrishna’s life there is a story. A man called Totapuri, a very famous saint of those days, came to Ramakrishna’s ashram near Calcutta in Dakshineshwar. It was known that Totapuri walked on water. And it must be true because it is not a two-thousand-year-old history, it was just at the end of the past century. There are still people who have seen Ramakrishna and Totapuri alive. I have met those people, and they say that Totapuri was a man of miracles, but that Ramakrishna reduced him to nothing.They were sitting on the bank of the Ganges and Totapuri just challenged Ramakrishna, “Come on, why not have a little walk on the Ganges?”Now, poor Ramakrishna was not a man of miracles. He said, “That’s a good idea, but I have disciples who have better ideas. Just look up.” They both looked up. On the cloud, one of Ramakrishna’s disciples was sitting. Ramakrishna said, “My people travel on clouds, they don’t walk on water.”Totapuri was amazed, but he was more amazed when Ramakrishna said, “That was just a projection. There was nobody on the cloud. It was just my deep projection, the way a film is projected onto the screen. I can project any idea through my eyes, forcibly, onto any screen. That cloud, that white cloud, functioned as a screen. There was nobody, and we don’t do stupid things like that. And I would like to ask how many years it took to learn the art of walking on water?”Totapuri said, “It was an arduous discipline. I had to go to Tibet to learn it. For thirty years I was under arduous training, and then finally I succeeded.Ramakrishna laughed madly. He said, “You are crazy. When I want to go to the other side of the Ganges, I just tell the boatman.” Anyway, in those days, just one paise – one rupee consists of one hundred paise – just one paise was enough. And even that was not taken from Ramakrishna; no boatman would take from such a beautiful man, so pure, so innocent. So he said, “At the most, what you have learned in thirty years is worth one paise, and thirty years is a long time.“And what is the point of it all? Even if you walk on water or sit on a cloud, how does it make you more peaceful, more silent, more aware, more meditative? In what way do you achieve godliness by walking on water? It is sheer stupidity. You wasted your thirty years. And you wanted to brag about it. Forget all that you have learned and start from scratch, because I can see you are just as fast asleep and ignorant as anybody else. You have just learned a few tricks. Those tricks don’t bring any transformation, but they bring millions of people to worship you.”Many saints in India have confessed to me that they do certain kinds of tricks just to attract people, so that those people can be made religious. I used to tell them, “From the very beginning, you are cheating them. You yourself are becoming irreligious.“And they are not coming there to become religious in the first place, they are just coming to see the tricks. Any magician in the street is doing those things that you are doing. Magicians are doing even better things on the street corners. In the whole day perhaps they may gather five rupees. How can you think that you have attained to some spirituality just by attracting a crowd? And the crowd is going to be of wrong people.”So from the very beginning my effort has been not to attract wrong people, not to attract people with motivations which have nothing to do with awakening. And I can say to you that I have succeeded in attracting only the right people. Even if once in a while a wrong person came in accidentally, I have managed to get rid of him. Not by telling him to leave – because that is insulting somebody – but by his having the idea to leave, that out of his freedom he is going into the world. And I have accepted it: “That’s perfectly good. People should come with their freedom, should go with their freedom.”But this is not true. The people who have left had to leave because somehow I had already disconnected myself from them. They were no longer nourished, they were hanging around, but starving. Of that they could not be aware in their sleep. But I wanted them to go away for the simple reason that they were wasting their time in the wrong place. It was the wrong place for those people because it could not fulfill their desires. They were wasting their time and they were wasting the time of my people. My people are working in some way to create an energy field where people can become awakened, and they were not here for that purpose. So they were an unnecessary load.So I gave them the idea to go to Santa Fe. All the camels are gathering there in Santa Fe. They are known as the dirty dozen – because only one dozen camels are there, they have become famous as the dirty dozen. A great achievement! And now they are hankering to come back; they are writing letters to people that they are dreaming of me, that they are dreaming of meeting me, that they are continuously missing the commune. Those letters are indications of their state but their egos are coming in the way. How long? Sooner or later they will have to recognize the fact that they missed an opportunity.And what are they doing in Santa Fe? What can they do? They are all asleep. They will have to come back, but this time they will be coming with the right motive. So this gap of losing contact with the commune, with sannyas, was absolutely essential for their growth. Now they will be coming, not accidentally, but very consideredly. And this coming will be significant. They have to be welcomed with great joy.Osho,There is a lot of opposition to what is happening here. Your advice to people is to be intelligent in the fight against the politicians, to use legal methods, to use the democracy. If these legal methods work and the cases are won, won't the politicians be even more frustrated, even more angry at this community? Or do you see a possibility of a change happening in the attitude toward Rajneeshees?Both things will happen. We are not going to use any illegal means in the fight with the politicians, because in their sleep they have written a constitution, not knowing that somebody can use it against them. And because they were writing in their sleep, they have tried hard to make it as beautiful, as democratic, as freedom loving, as respectful of the individual as possible. They were not aware that there would come a time, three hundred years later, when a few fully awake people would use their constitution against them.So my effort is of multidimensional interest. One: I want to prove to the whole world that we are saving the Constitution of America against the Americans; that the Constitution of America has to be saved, not only from the Soviet Union, but from Americans too. And they are the most dangerous enemies, because the Constitution is in their hands. They had not been challenged up to now because nobody had ever thought that they were against the Constitution. Others were as asleep as they were. Now they are fighting a battle which is unique in history.So, when we can use their own Constitution, their own laws to defeat them, why should we lose that opportunity? We will win, and we will make the whole world aware that Americans are not doing what they say, that they are doing just the opposite. We are going to expose them to the whole world – that this is a hypocrisy, not democracy. And we want it to become a democracy.Our victory is absolutely certain unless they burn their Constitution and declare America a fascist state. In that way also we will be the winners: we will have exposed the greatest hypocrisy in the whole history of man.Secondly, the moment we win many of the politicians who are intelligent enough will immediately have a change of heart. They will see that now it is not a question of the red people winning, it is a question that the red people have proved they are for the Constitution, “And we have fallen into the opposite camp. It is good to be back with the Constitution,” because the American masses will not forgive anybody who is destroying their Constitution. While winning in the courts on the basis of democratic ideals and values, we will be able to convince the masses, too, that we are not enemies, that we are their friends, and that the people they used to think of as their friends are their enemies. So the politicians who are intelligent enough will be immediately on our side. Only the idiots will not change, but they don’t matter; they will lose their respectability on each standpoint.For example, the attorney general of Oregon imposed a six hundred thousand dollar fine for making tents without permission. He never came here. He simply assumed from rumors that those tents were permanent structures – only permanent structures need permission, tents don’t. Of course, they were a new kind of tent. We had used material which is used in permanent structures, but nowhere in the American Constitution does it say that the material which is used in permanent structures cannot be used in tents. The definition of a tent is that you can put it up within ten minutes and you can fold it away within ten minutes. More than that, there is no constitutional way to define a tent. Of what it is made does not matter. It may be made of steel, that does not matter. The question is that it can be folded up within ten minutes.So, I told my people, “Don’t argue, simply take a tent to the court. There is no need for any argument. Just ask permission to put up the tent which is in question, and the judges and the jury can decide whether it is a tent or a permanent structure. If it is a permanent structure then we are punishable, but if it is not, then to put such a big fine – six hundred thousand dollars – without any inquiry, without any inspection, without anything, is absolutely undemocratic.And that’s what they did. The magistrate could see that it was a temporary structure. Within ten minutes they could put it up, within ten minutes they could fold it away and put it into a bag. Who says this is a permanent structure? White Houses are not made in ten minutes and folded in ten minutes. He simply dismissed the case: “There was no case at all, these are tents.” Now, this is a great slap on the face of the attorney general, that he does not even know how to apply law, how to apply the Constitution. A simple demonstration proved him wrong. No argumentation was needed, no legal fight was needed. And we had invited him, “First come and see, and then whatever you want to do, do.”Now we will be slapping these people in every case, and the higher the cases go, the more those politicians will be crushed. Soon it has to be understood by them. In fact, understanding has started arising that to fight with these people they are going to be great losers, not only of the cases, but of their respectability, of their political status: “It is better not to create any fight with these people. On the contrary, whatever you can do legally, help them.”This is going to happen. And there is nothing that we have done wrong. We have not gone against any democratic value, we have not gone against any law. We have functioned very carefully. And it is a good opportunity for us that now within America itself they have found an enemy who is invincible; now they cannot go on pretending to the world. We are here to expose them. We are going to take over the whole world media to expose America.My reason is that I would like America to be a real democracy. And that is our stand. They are thinking that these are small matters of land use laws, and this and that. We are not bothered about those small things. Soon we will drag them into the open, and they will have to decide whether they stand for democracy or they stand for a fascist regime.And it is going to be the most difficult situation they have ever faced. They are frightened of a small commune of five thousand people. The world’s biggest military power is frightened of five thousand people. This should give you some insight that if you are right, and if you are courageous enough to fight for it, then no might is bigger than right. It just needs courage, and we have enough courage because we have nothing to lose.We have everything to gain and nothing to lose. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain. What can they gain? Even if they destroy this whole commune by dropping bombs on it, what are they going to gain? Just the Big Muddy Ranch. But they would spoil their whole reputation around the world, and the Soviet Union would say, “That’s what we have been saying for sixty years, that America is a hypocritical country. It is not democracy. Innocent people who were not doing any harm to anybody…”You will have the support of the whole world. That’s why they cannot do any harm, and that’s why I have started talking to the world media. Before they can do any harm, I want the whole world to know about the situation, about our commune, and about American hypocrisy. Before they take any step to destroy it, I have already taken the step to make the whole world aware of the situation. That is creating fear in them. We don’t have any power to fight, but there is no need for any power. Intelligence is enough. It is far more powerful than any nuclear weapons. And if five thousand people stand together intelligently, meditatively, they will create such a tremendous energy that no power can stand against them.So don’t be worried about anything. Just rejoice – and fight!Osho,You say you are condemned by society because they are miserable and you and those around you are happy. Does society see it in those terms? Are people conscious that this is the reason they are against you?The society will have to see it. Right now it is blind, but we will not leave it to remain blind. We are going to use every means to make the society aware of why they are against me, why there is a condemnation of a commune which is in no way doing any harm to anybody. We are just minding our own business. We don’t have time to harass anybody.It may take a little time for them to understand why they are condemning us, but they will have to come to that conclusion. It is so clear, how long can they deny it? It is not a fiction, it is a reality that the miserable person is always jealous of the person who is living joyously. The poor are jealous of the rich, the ugly are jealous of the beautiful, the sick are jealous of the healthy. This is a simple psychological phenomenon.By this condemnation they try to hide their inferiority complex. But the inferiority complex is there; in fact, by their condemnation they have made it known to everybody. Otherwise, why not ignore these five thousand people? In the world population of four billion, we are not even a drop in the ocean. Why bother about us? Ignore us. But nobody is capable of ignoring us.I am here, and they are talking about me in the German parliament, in the Dutch parliament, in the English parliament. Strange – a man who never goes anywhere, who has nothing to do with anybody’s country or politics – why should they be so much concerned?Sooner or later they will have to recognize the fact of their getting disturbed – because their condemnation makes no difference to us. We go on living the way we are living. Nothing makes any difference, neither in our laughter nor in our dance. Whatever happens is absolutely unrelated to our beings and our lives and our existence and our way of life. How long can it be ignored? Our laughter is going to resound around the earth. And when they see that it is happening not only here but that it is happening in every commune around the world, they will have to think again – perhaps something is wrong with them. And we will be insisting that something is wrong with their psychology.Now we are using every means – newspapers, magazines, radio, television. We are going to continuously cover the whole world with what we think and what is our analysis of the situation. And the media has understood one thing, that we cannot be ignored. Otherwise, who cares about a small commune of five thousand people here? Why should the world’s media be interested?They are interested because they know that these people are making a significant contribution. They are bringing into the light something which society has been hiding for centuries: its ugliness, its repressiveness, its sadness. We are uncovering their wounds. Naturally, when you uncover somebody’s wound he gets angry, he tries to fight you – but how can he ignore the wound that you have uncovered? And we are not doing only one thing, uncovering the wound. I could have done that alone, no movement, no communes were needed for that. But that would have been just the negative work, they would have covered it again.Now we are opening their wounds and we are supplying every help so that those wounds can be removed, healed, and they can be as healthy and whole as our people. We are here not only to transform ourselves, but to bring in light the technique of transformation to everybody, because they are all poor victims, they need all compassion. They may be against me, that does not make any difference. My compassion to them is the same. It becomes even deeper because they are so much against me that they don’t know whom they are opposing. A surgeon is trying to remove a cancer from them, and they are fighting with the surgeon. The situation is hilarious but it is not going to be for long.And it does not matter whether it is long or not. We are living each moment; we are not sacrificing any moment to any other idea, to any future. And we are becoming a more and more prominent reality in the whole world.This situation is going to change at least the intelligent and young people very quickly, and if young people change, the old people start shaking in their determinations, in their conclusions. And in fact, we are not directly interested in the old people. Our interest is directed toward the young and the fresh, because they will understand us immediately. And their understanding us is going to change their old fathers, their old mothers. We are putting a time bomb in every house in the world with every young man, which is going to explode. Of course, our time bombs are not ordinary, made with gunpowder, so nobody can detect them. Our weapons are very subtle. They are invisible to the eyes.I can see the work growing, maturing. More and more intelligent people are becoming sympathetic. I don’t need everybody to become a sannyasin; I need only a small group in every country to be totally devoted to sannyas and turn the whole intelligentsia sympathetic. That’s enough.The coming revolution in the world is not going to be of the poor against the rich, the proletariat against the bourgeois. The coming revolution in the world is going to be between the stupidity of humanity and the intelligentsia. Nobody has yet proposed the whole program, but that’s where I am leading you all: toward a new kind of revolution by human intelligence against human stupidity.So we need not have everybody become a sannyasin. We need small groups of sannyasins everywhere who can radiate and make people aware of our reality. All that is needed is the sympathy of the intelligentsia, the creative people in the world, the musicians, the poets, the Nobel Prize winning scientists, the sculptors, the dancers, the engineers, the doctors – all the people who are contributing something to human wisdom, life, beauty, health.We want those people’s sympathy; that’s enough, and the revolution will be on its way. Without any effort to create a revolution, the revolution has already started. This is what old Lao Tzu called effortless effort. We are not making any effort for the revolution, our whole work is meditation. But the outcome is going to be a tremendous revolution, the only revolution which can change this earth into a paradise.Osho,You have spoken of the need for courage. Where does courage come from? Is there any way to stimulate people's courage?Everything that is valuable comes from your own innermost being. It may be love, it may be intelligence, it may be creativity, it may be courage, it does not matter what. Anything of value comes from your own innermost being. Many dimensions open up with your experience of yourself.Yes, courage is needed, and for that you will have to go to the same source. It is in a way a very simple phenomenon. There is nothing complex in it because there is only one source for every great value. So by achieving one thing, you achieve all great values simultaneously.You ask me, “Is there some way to stimulate courage?” That’s what the commune is for. Everything in human life is contagious, because no man is an island. We are all part of one infinite continent. So anything that is happening in me, if you are available, immediately starts happening in you. Something is triggered. Carl Gustav Jung has coined a new word for it, synchronicity. It is a beautiful word. And everybody experiences it. For example, here, silence is your synchronicity. Everybody is so silent that you are surrounded from everywhere by a pool of silence.The same is true about love, about sadness, about blissfulness. Just sit with a few people who are sad, miserable, and soon you will find that something in you becomes sad, something in you becomes miserable. And when you leave this company of miserables, you will feel sucked, tired, as if your energy has been exploited.Everybody in the world has once in a while experienced the other polarity, too. You may be sad, but you meet a few friends who are laughing, joking, enjoying, dancing – and you forget all about your sadness, all about your worries. Something overpowers you. Their energy is much bigger than your misery. Your misery simply slips out of you. You start dancing, singing, your face changes, and afterwards you will find yourself so nourished, so much stronger that even though those people have left, the misery cannot enter you again. Now you are far stronger and far more nourished. Misery needs a certain weakness, certain loopholes, a certain readiness on your part to be miserable.But we are living in a kind of human ocean which we cannot see – just like the air which we cannot see, but which surrounds us all. What is my breath this moment may become your breath in the next moment. It is changing its place every moment. You are inhaling, exhaling; everybody is inhaling, exhaling. Everybody is inhaling from somebody else; everybody is exhaling into somebody else. In the same way you are continuously inhaling and exhaling all the inner values, which are even more subtle than the air. There is a constant exchange, uninterrupted even in your sleep.I have made thousands of experiments about everything before I have said anything about it. For example, I have tried to make a sleeping man miserable or happy in his sleep. He does not know what is happening, he is fast asleep. But in the darkness, twelve meditators are sitting, projecting sadness, misery. Soon the person starts moaning, may have nightmares that somebody is killing him; something really terrible is happening to him. He starts grinding his teeth. He really wants to get out of it. We have observed his hands, holding his blanket as a last resort. Perhaps he is drowning, or who knows what.And we have changed the same person by changing our projection. We have projected love, joy, rejoicing, dancing, laughter. Just a thought being projected toward the man by twelve people who have a certain capacity of meditation, and the moaning stops. His hands relax on the blanket. His face is no longer distorted. Soon he starts giggling. You cannot believe it when you see a sleeping person behaving in this way. He is smiling. You have never seen his face so beautiful as he is looking at this moment.This is the function of the commune, where so many people are just happy for no reason at all, where life is just fun, every moment of it. We can radiate from this commune for miles around.New people coming from countries outside America have reported to me that the moment they enter Rancho Rajneesh something in the air changes. Suddenly they feel as if they have come home, and they have never been here before. Perhaps never in their millions of lives – I don’t think they have been born in the Big Muddy Ranch, but suddenly they feel at home, as they have never felt even in their own home. And as they come closer to the commune, a great joy starts arising in them, for no visible reason.We have not only created an oasis in the desert, we have created an oasis of consciousness too, which is far deeper, far more powerful, far more significant. And soon, as our other communes in the world become more mature – my idea is to make a belt of energy around the world, so in fact we become one commune as far as the energy belt is concerned.So all the communes may be far away from each other in space, but in the inner world they are all together. So you don’t have only the strength of five thousand people, you have the strength of one million sannyasins, wherever they may be. And each commune has the support of one million sannyasins. So if we have two hundred communes, the inner logic and arithmetic is that we have already two hundred million sannyasins – that much energy, the quality, the quantity. And that is going to transform the world.Never before has any experiment of this kind been made, so ordinarily nothing is known about it. But I have been experimenting on a small scale. I had not tried to make any effort for expansion until I was absolutely certain of something. We are in perfectly good shape – it could not be better – to do the job that we have chosen.We can be so full of bliss that we can fill the whole universe with our bliss, our rejoicing our dance, our laughter. And to me this is revolution, an absolute psychological change in the atmosphere of the world.Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Yoga Pratima,Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United StatesOsho,When asked whether Rajneeshees and their neighbors in Oregon could ever coexist peacefully, your reply was, “Never.”What do you mean by never? What do you mean by coexistence?The word coexistence has a very bad political connotation. Coexistence simply means that the two parties remain hostile, that there is no other way for reconciliation, for meeting, for merging. Coexistence is the least that can be done.For example, the Soviet Union and America are in coexistence. Coexistence actually means a cold war: full of hostility, ready to fight, waiting for the right moment when you are more powerful, yet on the surface playing the game, “We are human beings, peace-loving people, we can coexist.”I hate the word coexistence. The journalist who asked the question did not wait even to inquire why I simply denied it in a single word, never. She thought that she had understood it.I want one existence, not coexistence. Truth knows no compromise. Lies are always ready to compromise because they have nothing to lose; they have nothing in them. But truth cannot compromise. By compromising, it becomes untrue. If we are true, then those who are wrong should merge with us. If they are true, we are ready to merge with them. The question of coexistence does not arise.I believe in one existence, but I don’t think the journalist would have come to this conclusion from a single word when I said, “Never.” I am open; my commune is open. We are ready to discuss intellectually, humanly, everything that the neighbors may have against us. If they are right, we will change ourselves; but if we are right, they have to change themselves. The question of coexistence does not arise.Truth has to be victorious. From which side it comes does not matter. If they have the truth, then we will naturally become part of them. And that is something to be understood because it means dropping all hostility, dropping all anger, hatred, fear.In coexistence you don’t drop anything, you simply accept the fact, there is no way – they are here, we are here – and somehow we have to manage to exist together.” But what kind of existence will that be – somehow? There is no joy, there is no friendship, there is no love. In the sentence it was asked, “Is there any possibility of a peaceful coexistence?” For that, too, my answer is, “Never.”People don’t know what peace is. How can you be peaceful with anybody? First you have to be peaceful with yourself. And if you are not peaceful with yourself, how can you be peaceful with me or anybody else?We are already peaceful; we are not creating any trouble for anybody. We are not in any way unkind to anybody. The neighbors have to learn how to be peaceful with themselves. The question of being peaceful with your neighbors arises only because you are not peaceful, your neighbor is not peaceful – or perhaps one is peaceful, the other is not peaceful – so it is not a question of agreement, that “We will live peacefully together.” If I am peaceful and you are peaceful, we live peacefully, without any declaration about peace.If you see the history of man, you can divide it into periods of war and periods of peace. But when you see a period of peace, it simply means a preparation for a new war. It is not peace; it is just on the surface. The enemies were exhausted in one war, now they are preparing peacefully for the second war. Now the world is at peace, there is no war, but you can’t see any peace anywhere. Everywhere there is fear of war looming on the horizon. Any moment it can explode.Do you call this peace? Peace cannot exist between two wars; it is not the gap between two wars. Any gap between two wars is simply cold war – simply preparation for another war, and time is needed so the fighting stops. There will be peace only when after a war there is no other war. Not between two wars, but after one war, and the next war never comes – that is peace.And my understanding about peacefulness is that it is not a question of being peaceful with anybody. The basic question is being at peace with yourself. Out of that, peace arises for everybody. So whosoever is ready to receive it, whosoever is ready to synchronize with your peace, there is immediately a meeting point, a merging and the fragrance of friendship.I don’t want the peace of a cemetery. Of course, there is a peace in a cemetery, too. All the graves are silent – no fight, no struggle, no quarrel. I want the peace of a garden in the early morning when birds are singing, flowers are opening, the sun is rising. There is music in it; it is not without sound. There are sounds, but the sounds and the silences together create peace.I love peace, but it is not a political strategy. The question was political; hence, I immediately replied, “Never.” We are peaceful, the neighbors should be peaceful. And two parties who are peaceful in themselves cannot create any hostility. There is no question of being peaceful with somebody. The basic question is about being peaceful, and we are peaceful. Our peace is not addressed to somebody, is not related to somebody. Our peace is our own experience. Our peace is our life.We are peaceful – not to anyone in particular, unaddressed; it is our state, not a relationship. And there is only one living peace possible, that you are peaceful as a state, not as a relationship. The moment you are peaceful in a relationship, it simply means cold war. It simply means a cease fire for the time being,.I don’t like that kind of peace at all. Then it is better to fight and be alive and be hot. Those people who think they are neighbors to us have not even the courage and humanity to come and see what kind of people are living here. We are their guests; they are our hosts. There is no question of any neighbor-hood. And if the host has no acquaintance with the guest, then only a dead kind of peace can exist. I am against it. Then it is better to have a hot war. At least there is some excitement, some life.So we will fight till either we prove that we are right, or it is proved that we are wrong. Either way, we are available. If we are right, then we are ready to accept our neighbors totally, but they will have to drop their hostility. If they are right, we don’t have any hostility at all – we will simply merge with them. That I call one existence.In coexistence, two remain two; they just decide diplomatically that war is unnecessary wastage. And the strange phenomenon is that we have not started it. We came here just to be in this desert, left alone. The nearest neighbor is twenty miles away – what kind of neighbor-ship? We don’t meet. We are so absorbed with our own life and its experiences, its experiments, its adventures, that we are not interested in any kind of stupid relationship with the neighbors. We want to be left alone; that would be enough compassion towards us, just forget us.We are not creating any problem for you. But the whole of Oregon is full of fear, hatred, hostility – not even bothering to think that a small commune of five thousand people cannot do any harm to such a big majority as the whole state. What harm can we do to them? They can destroy us within seconds; there is no problem, they can make another Hiroshima.But the most hilarious part is that we are not frightened and they are frightened. One journalist was asking me, “If you and your commune were the majority in Oregon, and Oregonians were a small minority, would not you be frightened?”I said, “You are stupid. We are not frightened when we are in the minority, why should we be frightened when we are in a majority?” We would love the minority. We would come to the minority. If they have something to share, some experience, we would be available. And we would be in total support for everything because they are a minority; they are strangers to the place, they need all kinds of support. And if they had shown just a little kindness and a little support, there would have been no quarrel, no problem. We have not raised any problem.We are simply living here, but I know that although we have not raised any problem, we have become a problem for them psychologically. The problem is our joy, our dance, our song, our way of living – and our turning into an oasis a desert which was there for sale for fifty years. Nobody purchased it because nobody could see any possibility in the land. We purchased it as a challenge: deserts can also be changed, just a little intelligence is needed.In the beginning they were laughing. Then by and by they became hostile; they saw that what we have said, we have done. And they have never been as happy as our people are. They have never lived life so totally and so freely as we are living. They have missed the train and that’s why they are angry. Now, what coexistence? We are in the train and they have missed the train. And what neighborhood? – we are living and they are dead.It is good that you don’t ask us to live with the graves in a peaceful coexistence. Of course, with graves what else can you do? To us, the people around us are nothing but a big graveyard. And their problem is that they are jealous of our freedom, of our love, of our joy. They could have all this, too, but they were not intelligent enough. What can we do about it?We feel sorry for them. We are ready to help them. But our help means we will turn them into our selves, that’s the only way to help them. They want to be happy, but they don’t want to come here, to see, because even seeing everybody happy – and you have never been so happy… Our laughter is reaching to the neighbors miles away. Our dances, our music is heard all over Oregon and soon will be heard all over America. And that is freaking them out.Now, it is their birthright to freak out, but we are not going to compromise in any way as far as our laughter is concerned, as far as our rejoicing is concerned, as far as our creativity is concerned, as far as our freedom is concerned, respect for the individual is concerned. We are not going to compromise on any point. In fact, for the first time the American Constitution is really being applied. Otherwise it was just a talk.And once these small matters are solved, we are going to raise bigger matters. We are going to fight for the American Constitution against the Americans. We are going to expose them to the whole world – that they don’t follow the Constitution, that in fact they have been sabotaging the Constitution.They are hypocrites. At least the Soviet Union is not a hypocrite – whatever they are, they accept it. Not only accept it, they declare that that’s what they want to be. We may not agree with what they are, but we have to appreciate their sincerity. They don’t call themselves a democracy. They could have, but they call it the dictatorship of the proletariat. They could have called it the democracy of the proletariat, there is no problem, but they have chosen a more straightforward word, dictatorship. It is a word condemned all over the world, but they have accepted it because that is what they are doing.America talks about democracy, but it is simply talk. Underground, everything is dictatorial. We may never have known about it if we had not come here. With us, they are being so cunning, so diplomatic, so dictatorial, so undemocratic that soon they will realize their mistakes. The sooner they realize it the better, because this small commune is enough to expose them to the whole world.They can’t do any harm to us, but we can make it clear to the whole world that the whole of American politics is a deception, a hypocrisy. And it is our experience. We are not speaking from the outside, we are speaking from inside. We are going to become the voice of America.There is no question of any peaceful coexistence. Either they have to change us to their color, or we are going to change them to red. It is simple arithmetic: just prove your truth and we are ready and happily willing to be with you. But you are miserable, and certainly how can you absorb our laughter and our rejoicing? You will have to raise your consciousness to the same point as we are. Only then is the meeting possible. And to raise your consciousness, you will have to understand ways of raising it – who is going to teach you?We could have done everything to help America to raise its consciousness, to become more meditative, to become an authentic democracy. And there is their fear – that this small group of people is dangerous, far more dangerous than all their nuclear weapons. This small group is going to be exposing their misery to them, their utter degradation, their inhumanity, their hypocrisy. Even without saying a word – our very existence and presence here, and they are trembling.In a secret meeting the governor and the high officials of the state have decided to keep the army on alert: to reach Rajneeshpuram in, at the most, just three hours. You want us to live peacefully in coexistence with these people? They want to destroy us. They want to bring their army, their national guard. They want to kill us, and you want us to be peaceful and in coexistence with them?We are not fools. If they can put their army on alert, we can manage many nations’ armies to be on alert, because this is simply inhuman. You are keeping your army on alert for people who have nothing? Then you don’t know us yet. Just a little bit and you are trembling; the moment you know us completely, you will simply die of shock. We can raise the whole world and its intelligentsia against the American government. We can raise all the American intellectuals, fair and democratic American people, American justice, judges, Supreme Court – and your Constitution happens to be on our side.So be careful. If you want peace, then learn how to be peaceful. We are ready to teach; my whole commune consists of teachers. Any meditator who meditates becomes automatically a teacher, he can teach it to millions of people.They should approach us. They should invite our people to their universities, to their parliaments, where they can teach meditation. We can be of immense spiritual help to America, and America needs it. And the world needs America to be really democratic, because this is the only hope. Otherwise countries are turning by and by towards dictatorship. They have to turn; there seems to be no other way for them.America is rich enough that it need not become a dictatorship. It can become really a flowering democracy. Around the world, America is hated. This is strange, that a democratic country is hated everywhere – because however clever and cunning you may be, you cannot hide your real face for long. Once in a while, your mask slips and people can see your real face. And your real face is not of democracy.I said, “Never,” because I do not appreciate any compromise. Either this way, or that way. My approach is this: if I am right, then you have to accept us; if we are wrong, we are willing to accept you. This is an open challenge.I challenge the American president. I challenge the American leaders of religion. I challenge the American educationists. Whoever wants to confront us, we are ready. And whatever the question, we are ready to discuss it. And if they can prove us wrong on any point, we will appreciate it very much; but they should remember that if we can prove them wrong, then they have to show some guts for a change.Osho,You have said you have never paid any taxes because your work is concerned with outcome, not with income. What do you mean by this outcome?Just the opposite of income.Osho,Many times you have stressed that you are not a Rajneeshee, often pointing out that one can tell by your clothes. Why do you insist on the distinction? Is there a great difference between you and the people who call themselves Rajneeshees? Or is it just a matter of clothes?It is just a matter of clothes.Osho,Because of the way your hosts look after you – your beautiful clothes, the jewelry, the cars – do some of your sannyasins put you on a pedestal and feel that you are higher than them? How can they avoid this trap while still giving you all the love and care that they do?Nobody is putting me on a higher pedestal. There is no need to avoid it, because I am alert enough not to sit on any higher pedestal. I sit on such a low chair – I have always avoided any place from where you can fall. So nobody can do that to me, there is no need to avoid it. And nobody is doing it.When you love someone, you cannot be so nasty. To put someone up higher has tremendous implications. Putting someone higher, you are putting yourself lower – and whoever makes you feel lower or inferior you are never going to forgive. So, all the higher ones are hated by the same people who worship them. It is not a coincidence that Judas betrayed Jesus. The same happened in Buddha’s life: his own cousin-brother betrayed him and made many attempts to kill him. The same happened in Mahavira’s life: his own son-in-law betrayed him. You cannot betray me.Why is there this pattern? It is not an exception, it is the rule. Whoever you put higher than yourself, deep down you feel hurt. On the surface you go on adoring the person, but in the unconscious you go on collecting all kinds of antagonism – because of him you are inferior. How can you forgive a man who makes you feel inferior? And if sometime your inferiority becomes too heavy on you, then a Judas is born.It is something psychological. Judas is simply a victim; he was the only follower of Jesus who was literate, a little intelligent. All the others were uneducated, illiterate, poor people. Judas was an exception; naturally he felt the wound of being inferior more deeply than anybody else. All the others had lived the life of being always inferior, it was not something new. But Judas was an educated man with aspirations to become higher. And as long as Jesus was alive, he could never become higher than him. Jesus had to be removed from the way. He paid respect to Jesus, he adored Jesus; but deep down there was a wound which was becoming bigger and bigger. And one day it exploded.Christians have been very unfair to Judas. They have not understood his psychology. Otherwise, it would have given a great insight into many things. After Jesus was crucified, within twenty-four hours Judas committed suicide. He was split. He loved the man, he adored the man, and he hated the man.His hatred betrayed Jesus and then when he was killed, instead of inferiority a great feeling of guilt arose: “What have I done?” The feeling of guilt was so much that he had to destroy himself. It was the only way to get rid of that guilt. What did he gain? Just suicide.And the same has happened around the world with all the masters – their own disciples have betrayed them. And the disciples who betrayed were their best disciples, perhaps hoping to be the successors. But the ego is always in a hurry. It wants things immediately, it cannot wait – and in fact, how long can one wait?When Mahavira’s son-in-law betrayed him, Mahavira was eighty. His son-in-law was sixty; he had waited enough, and the old man went on living. At sixty, he simply felt that it was never going to happen. “Perhaps I may die before him – and he seems to be strong enough, he may outlive me and others. There is no time, we have to revolt against him.”This may not have been a conscious, deliberate thinking, but an unconscious current; and when he betrayed Mahavira, he was not alone. That is also significant. Five hundred other sannyasins of Mahavira also went with him. That means they were also feeling the same thing. Just the other day they were touching his feet and today they have become his enemies. Nothing has happened to create this enmity; from where has this enmity suddenly risen to the surface? It has not come from the outside because Mahavira has not done anything to provoke it.But Mahavira, Jesus or Buddha are also in a way responsible. They should have known the very day they accepted the adoration that this was going to happen. I don’t accept any adoration, hence there is no possibility of having any antagonism about me. I know the psychology of adoration far better than Jesus and Buddha and Mahavira. There is always a hurt heart behind it, because the other person is continuously feeling inferior. To adore you he has to become lower. But if you deny adoration, you are destroying his inferiority.I can dance with you. You cannot conceive Gautam Buddha dancing with you – impossible. Even in your imagination you cannot conceive of Gautam Buddha dancing with you. He is superhuman, you are ordinary mortals. My whole effort is to destroy your inferiority, to give you dignity, to give you self-respect. And because I give you dignity and self-respect, that’s why you love me. Your love is not adoration. It is natural. Adoration is something unnatural, it is an ego game.Your love towards me is a totally different phenomenon. It has never happened around a master before because no master has been capable of putting himself with his followers as a friend, calling his followers his fellow travelers. They were all high up and their whole work was condemning you, pointing out what was wrong with you. They condemned people their whole lives, reduced them lower and lower – and those people were giving them adoration. That adoration was superficial.I have never condemned anything in you. On the contrary, I have been telling you to accept yourself in totality. There is nothing wrong; there is nothing like sin. There are mistakes, which are human. I commit mistakes – perhaps more than you commit – because that is the only way to learn, to grow. There is no other way to learn. That’s why you see me contradicting myself a thousand times. I have no fear of contradiction. All your great leaders of religions, politics, society, culture – whatever their field, all your leaders have pretended that they are infallible. And it is so clear that nobody is infallible.Mahavira and Buddha were contemporaries, both great masters of thousands of people and both in the same state, Bihar, in India. Many times they stayed in the same city, and one time in the same caravanserai. Half was occupied by Mahavira and his followers, and half by Buddha and his followers. But both were criticizing each other: Buddha criticized Mahavira, saying that he was not infallible. Mahavira and his followers believed that he was omniscient, all-knowing, past, present, future – all the qualities of God. Jainism and Buddhism do not believe in God, so all God’s qualities have to be put somewhere else because people need them. So Mahavira is exactly what God is to other religions, the father figure; if he commits mistakes, then certainly he will lose his following. And Buddha was continuously criticizing him.Buddha was younger than Mahavira, and naturally, the younger generation is critical of the older. Mahavira was already established; Buddha was trying to find converts – he had to criticize those who were established, but he forgot that in turn he started doing the same. Mahavira was gone and he started doing the same, allowing his people to believe in his infallibility.Buddha was criticizing, saying, “If Mahavira knows everything – even the future, the eternal future is known to him – then why was he standing before a house begging one day when there was no one in the house? What kind of omniscience is this? He does not know even a small thing – that the house was empty, the people who used to live there had gone on a religious pilgrimage.” The last time Mahavira was in that place they were there, but this time they were not. And he was standing before the house with his begging bowl, and the neighbors informed him that there was nobody in the house: “Your followers have gone for a religious pilgrimage.”Now, Buddha is making a laughingstock of Mahavira. He said that once in the early morning when it was still dark, Mahavira walked on the tail of a dog who was sleeping. When the dog jumped up and barked, then he came to know there was a dog. And this man thinks he is omniscient? He knows all and he cannot know about the dog?But to me, the same happened with Buddha. They made a small change – they had to make a little change, otherwise people would have said, “This is what you have been criticizing in Mahavira.”You can see the strategy. Buddha said, “I am omniscient, but only when I want to be; omnipotent, but only when I want to be; omnipresent, only when I want to be. And I have dropped wanting. I have dropped desiring.” But he was putting himself on the same pedestal.I simply walk amongst you. Many of you may be in many ways more talented than me. Naturally, if my body is sick, then my doctor knows more than I know. I don’t interfere with my doctor. I am really a good patient; you can ask Devaraj, you can ask Shunyo. When something is wrong with my teeth – you can ask my dental surgeon – I am quite patient.In fact he must be wondering – because nobody loves the dentist’s chair, but I love it. I really enjoy it. I find a small excuse and I immediately tell my dentist, “Make arrangements, I am coming.” Just a slight excuse, which does not need any dentistry – but I love the chair. And I never interfere in whatever they are doing; messing with my teeth, or whatever they are doing I allow them. That is their work and their responsibility, and I don’t know anything about it so I simply keep myself out of it.There are people amongst you who are better in many ways. There is no question of adoring me; it is more than enough that you love me, and with a love which arises in you for no reason at all, just for the experience that happens to you in close proximity with me. And I am absolutely certain that no disciple of mine can have any grudge against me, because I respect you so much. Not for a single moment have I put myself above you.In fact, many times I think that I don’t deserve that much love. Existence is simply much too kind towards me. I am simply thankful and grateful to all of you. So there is no question of stopping my people; my very way of working is such that you cannot put me on a pedestal. From the very roots, cut the possibilities. If I see you doing it, I am going to come to the disco every day!I know a little bit of playing cards, too; and drinking is vegetarian, so there is no problem. Once in a while I can get drunk and you will not even see the difference, because ordinarily I am also the same. I cannot walk in a straight line, so whether I am drunk or not, it is very difficult to make the distinction. Perhaps I am already drunk. Ask Avirbhava, she knows a little bit.Okay.Osho,There are many deprogrammers in America who deprogram people who have left cults. What would happen if one of these deprogrammers kidnapped a Rajneeshee and tried to deprogram him?The Rajneeshee would deprogram him. There is no fear about it because it is not a cult and we don’t have any program. Our whole work is deprogramming.It will be good. Get abducted and deprogram the deprogrammer; soon they will become afraid. The moment they see the red color, they will say, “These people are not…they are already deprogrammed. And to talk with them – they confuse you and they deprogram you.”Nobody can do that. Our whole religion is basically deprogramming. Those deprogrammers know just a little technique. My sannyasins are living it. It is not just knowledge, an expertise, a degree that they have got from a university; it is their very life. They are living a life without any program, without any plan, spontaneously.Any deprogrammer will be in immediate difficulty with my sannyasins. He will feel that his expertise is of no use, that he himself needs to be deprogrammed. His clarity is not enough. My people’s clarity is not an expertise, that is the difference. You are not simply learning a course in a school, you are living life in a commune.Your whole being is being transformed, it is not just a small part of your mind that collects information. The deprogrammer has information, but you are passing through a transformation. It will be very good – in fact, once in a while we should send our sannyasins to deprogrammers, just to make them afraid. Just to make them aware that expertise is nothing, knowledge is nothing. There is no fear about that.Osho,Did you choose to come at this time in history, even though you say that you have come at the wrong time? Is there something about this time that makes it the “right” wrong time for you?No, I have not chosen anything. Whenever and wherever I would have been, it would have been both the wrong time and the right time. It will be a little difficult to understand: wrong, because wherever, whenever, in whatever century I would have been, I would have had to face the same hostility, the same antagonism, the same anger of the masses. That way it would be the wrong time.But it depends on me to change the wrong time into the right time. The hostility of the people, the anger of the people, the enmity of the people are symbolic. I am unable to do anything only if people remain absolutely inattentive towards me. If they can ignore me, then I cannot do anything. That will be simply the wrong time; then it cannot be changed into the right time.But if people are angry, they have given an indication that they are already emotionally attracted towards me. Their anger is because of their fear. They are angry because they are afraid: “This man is dangerous. Coming close to him, perhaps you will not have any way to escape.” They are creating the hostility and anger and enmity just to protect themselves.But when somebody has started protecting himself, it simply means he is already influenced. He already smells the truth, and he is not capable of facing it. That’s why he is creating walls of hostility – so that he does not need to face it. But he has already become interested in me, he has already shown some kind of emotion towards me. It does not matter that the emotions of anger and hate and hostility are not favorable. It is very simple to change them. Once a person is emotionally attracted towards me, his hate can be changed into love very easily, because hate and love are not very different things, just two sides of the same coin.The only person who is difficult to change is one who has no emotional idea about you – neither of love nor of hate – who simply passes by your side as if you are not there. But that is difficult as far as I am concerned. It is difficult to ignore me. I will not allow anybody to ignore me. They will have to take notice, and they will have to take a certain stand, for or against. That is the beginning of my work.Those who are for are already with me. Those who are against are getting ready, sooner or later, to be with me. Their very hatred is symbolic.It is symbolic that they cannot ignore me. It is symbolic because their hate simply shows that they are afraid that if they don’t hate, they will fall in love. But how long they can do this to themselves? Hate is not a very good space. They are not harming me, they are poisoning themselves. How long can they remain in this poisoning state? Seeing others with me dancing, singing joyously, living a life in its intensity and totality, they are burning with hate and creating poison in themselves.Just a little intelligence is enough to see, “What is the point?” I am not harmed by your hate. You are harming yourself Those who love me are immensely helped by their love. Once this becomes clear to people, they start moving from one camp to another. It takes just a little patience.I have not chosen this time to be, because I don’t choose anything. I happen to be here, but it is true that it is one of the most critical times in the history of man. Perhaps never before has man come to such a point – where something of an ultimate decision has to be made, a decision whether life is to continue on the earth or not. Single individuals have committed suicide; for the first time, the whole of humanity is going to commit suicide, totally – and not only humanity, but all living animals, trees, everything that has life. It is a tremendous decision, and I don’t think that people would like to destroy all life.That is where we can make a space for transformation, because if they don’t want to die, if they don’t want life to disappear, then the only way is that mankind has to change its ways, its lifestyle, its thinking patterns – because these are the things, the thinking patterns, the ideologies, the religions, which have brought man to this point.The point is not unconnected with your history; it is the climax of your history. If you want this point never to happen again, then you have to start living in a totally different way. Otherwise, history repeats itself. You will have to begin from scratch – a new history and a new man.That’s why I say it is a very wrong time – moments of global suicide – but it is a very right time also because man could prefer to be transformed rather than to die. They have written against me on the walls: “It is better to be dead than to be red” – but they have not thought about it. If it really comes to a choice to be dead or to be red, I don’t think even Oregonian idiots will choose to be dead.If it really comes to a decision, they will say, “Okay, so we would like to be red too. Red is at least alive! Dead we don’t want to be.” Nobody wants to be dead.So the time is good too, because the choice is such that we cannot be defeated, we can only be victorious. We just have to correctly put the alternative. Make the alternative as loud as possible. Shout it from every rooftops, that there is an alternative which can avoid this catastrophe and which can avoid any other catastrophe in the future. The very possibility of such a thing can simply be dropped if man changes his ways of thinking. And when death confronts you – just to think about it is one thing, but when death is directly in front of you, you may choose anything rather than to die.It happened to one of my friends when I was a student in the university. I very rarely had friends because my interests were such that I would not go to the movies, I would not go to concerts, I would not go to parties. My interest was only one – the library of the university. My only companions were books and nothing else. My teachers, my friends all thought, “He is a bookworm, he has no human heart.”But this one young man was very friendly towards me. The reason was that he was in love with a girl who lived in front of my house. The girl was a Bengali, a very beautiful girl. And just to make friends with her – because she used to come to my family, to my house, and once in a while she used to sit in my study and discuss things. She was a very intellectual type. It was the girl who brought him to be my friend, but she was not interested in him at all. And he was becoming more and more mad after her, so mad that he started learning Bengali, speaking Bengali, wearing Bengali clothes. He went to Calcutta for six months to learn to speak exactly the way Bengalis speak.Bengali is a very sweet language. Each word is very rounded, no corners. Even if two persons are fighting, it will seem as if they are in a friendly conversation, the language is so sweet and low. It is just the opposite of Marathi: if two persons are in conversation, it will seem that a fight is going to start any moment. The language is very primitive, rude. The sounds are not musical, care has not been taken that the sounds of the words should be musical, too. A real language will not think only of meaning, it will also think of music, so that even a person who does not understand the language can at least experience the music of it.He became a perfect Bengali – but the more he pursued the girl, the more she became adamant. She told me, “Whatever happens, I am not going to have any relationship with this man. He seems to be crazy, utterly mad. I want a sane man to live with, but he is not a sane man. Now he is walking in Bengali dress, always keeping an umbrella” – because Bengalis always keep an umbrella, “Now that looks odd. Even in the university he is always with his umbrella and everybody is laughing.”He even started speaking his own mother tongue, Hindi, the way Bengalis speak Hindi. They distort it, because the same word in both languages will be pronounced differently. For example, the name of the wife of one of my brothers was Rama, and whenever the Bengali family came to meet our family, they always called her, “Roma.” Rama is straight – Hindi is a simple and straight language – but Rama becomes very rounded, “Roma.” It does not sound at all like Rama. It seems perhaps it is connected with the city Rome, Roma.I told him, “Everybody is laughing at you. Stop this nuisance. At least you should speak Hindi. You look like an idiot; if a Bengali speaks Hindi in a Bengali tone it is understandable, but your mother tongue is Hindi.” But there was no way. He was determined to be Bengali in every possible way.He would ate Bengali food. His father was a doctor. He told me, “I have only one son and that too, insane. Now that idiot has started bringing fish into the house because, he says, ‘Bengalis eat fish and rice’” – that is their main diet, rice and fish. And the father said, “The fish…I never in my life imagined that in my house my own son – and he is my only son, my wife is dead. I have given him the love of a mother, of a father, and everything – and he turned out to be an idiot. Now I can smell the fish – even when he leaves the room I can smell it. Because he is such an idiot: if Bengalis are eating fish once a day, then he will be eating at least twice a day to be absolutely a Bengali.”But finally the girl got so fed up that she called him to her house, and before her father she said, “Tell this young man that I don’t want to have any relationship, any friendship with him. I don’t want even to know that we know each other. Marriage is out of the question.”Her father said, “It is your marriage. If you don’t want it, you could have told him.”She said, “No, it has to be absolutely decided. Otherwise, he will start pestering you. You don’t know him; he has been pestering me, and because of him I have also become a laughingstock in the whole university.”He did his last act. He went home, he closed the door, and announced from inside the room, “I am going to kill myself. Nobody should try to open the doors or do anything, otherwise I will immediately shoot myself.” His father used to have a gun, he was a hunter. So the gun was inside and everybody was afraid. They persuaded, they tried everything, but he said, “No. Unless that girl comes and says that she is going to marry me…otherwise there is no way. I am going to finish myself. I cannot imagine myself without her.”The father went to the girl’s father. He said, “I can understand that this is simply forcing you, violent, but you should see my situation. He is my only son. All that I have done and earned and collected is for him, and now he is sitting with a gun and he says that unless the girl comes and says that she is going to marry him…”The girl’s father said, “I can understand your difficulty. I will call the girl. I have no objection; in fact, I like your boy, there is nothing wrong in it. He has learned Bengali and he talks with me, and even I cannot detect that he is not a Bengali. He has a certain strength, a certain individuality. I have no objection. But my girl – without her I cannot say yes. If she is willing, you can take her.”They both explained to her that this was the situation. She said, “That is up to him. It is my life. I cannot live with that madman. This is madness, and if he can force me to marry him, he can force me to do anything. Any day he can sit with the gun: ‘Do this, otherwise I am going to kill myself.’ I am not going to get into such a situation. No, if he wants to kill himself, it is his business. What have I to do with it?”Then the father remembered me – because I was his only friend, and was just in front of his house – so he came to see me. I said, “Don’t be worried, I am coming. And simply drop the idea…there is no problem.” I went there and I told him, “If you want to die, then why are you making such a fuss? Do you really want to die?”He said, “Yes!”Then I said, “Please come out; I have brought the car. Come with me and we will go home. This is a full moon night and we will go to the marble rocks, which is the best place in the world to die. You jump and I will say good-bye, and I will return. This is a beautiful night and you cannot find a better place.”He said, “This is something! I am dying and you are thinking of the place and the beauty and the full moon.”But I said, “Don’t make so much fuss. I am showing you the best way. If you cannot live beautifully, at least you can die beautifully. And who knows, because we will be sleeping and we will go in the middle of night, and you will be in my home, perhaps the girl, seeing you – and I will inform her that this is the procedure how we are going to dispose of you completely. And perhaps she may change her mind.”He said, “That seems to be logical, so I am coming.”He came with me. I informed the girl and the family, and I told them, “Don’t be worried.” I told him that the best time would be between two and four in the night. “You are going to die, I am still going to live, so why waste the whole night? We will go at four o’clock. You will take the jump and I can see you off and have a good morning bath back home.” He looked at me with suspicion.He said, “I used to think you were my friend.”I said, “That’s what I am doing – a friend in need is a friend indeed. You want to die, I am trying to make it as beautiful as possible. What else do you want? Anything else, you just say.”He said, “I am not saying that. All the people – the neighbors, my father’s friends, and others-came and they all persuaded me not to kill myself: ‘Wait. You can find a better woman, or perhaps she may change her mind. Don’t be in a hurry. This is stupid. If this girl does not want…the world is full of so many beautiful girls, we will find a better girl for you.’ They all tried so that I should not die. You are the only person who is making every arrangement for my death.”I said, “This is my approach: if I am your friend, I will do whatever you feel like doing. If you want to die, I will not interfere in your freedom. I will help as far as I can. So we will go to sleep and we will put the alarm for four o’clock.”And at four o’clock when the alarm went off, I reached to the clock and his hand was already putting it off. I asked, “What are you doing? You are putting the alarm off.”He said, “Yes, I am putting the alarm off, and I don’t want to die. The whole night I could not sleep – and you are so insistent. I used to think that I am crazy; it seems you are crazy. A friend? – you took the car to the garage, filled the whole tank, checked the tires so that nothing would go wrong. You seem to be strange.”I said, ‘But according to the decision…now it is four o’clock. I don’t want to be caught by the police, so just get up and we go. And we have to finish the whole thing before the sun rises and anybody comes to know. I have to be out of the place and far away, because I don’t want to be caught. I have still to live.”He said, “Forgive me, I don’t want to die at all.”I asked, “What changed your mind?”He said, “Changed my mind? There are millions of women that I can find.”I said, “But you were going to die. What happened to that?”He said, “You understand perfectly well. And you knew that this was going to happen, because when death is really actually in front of you, then one is willing to do anything. I don’t want to die, and I will forget that girl forever.”And he got married the same year. Now he has five, six children. The last time I saw him, in 1970, I asked him how things were going. He said, “Perhaps if I had followed your idea and died, that would have been far better. Life is so ugly. I have got a woman who is continuously a pain in the neck; half-a-dozen children – no peace, no silence. My father is dead, so I have to take care of all his properties and lands, and I am too burdened. And I think many times of that night. Perhaps you were right.”I said, “I am still ready, although I don’t live here. I will have to borrow somebody’s car, and… But a friend in need is a friend indeed. I will do it”He said, “You are something. I have six children to look after!” As death again became a reality, and seeing that I was absolutely serious and I would arrange everything, he said, “No, no need to arrange.”And I asked, “Then why are you saying that you are miserable, and the wife…?”He said, “No, I will not talk to you again. Forgive me again. That time you forgave me; once more – I am perfectly happy. I don’t want to die.”Death is something that you may enjoy the idea of. You may sometimes enjoy the idea of committing suicide. Everybody – almost everybody – once in a while enjoys the idea. But that is only an idea. If it actually becomes a reality, you will change your mind immediately.For the first time death has become a reality for the whole of humanity, so it is a wrong time in that sense. It is a very critical, tragic phase; but because death has become so real, so close, so tangible, man may be persuaded to change his ways, his thinking, his ideologies; to drop his nations and religions if he wants to survive.That’s why I say it is a right time. We can put the alternative: either be ready for global suicide, or be ready for global transformation. And I don’t think anybody is going to choose death. The alternative just has to be made clear.And that is going to be the effort of all the sannyasins around the world. Make the alternative clear to everybody, that sannyas is not just a question of personal whim, it is a question of saving the whole of humanity and life on this beautiful earth.Are there more questions?No more questions, Osho, thank you.Good.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Prem Isabel,Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United StatesOsho,Do you see any possibility that the people who can really change the course of events in the world today will ever listen to what you're saying, understand it, and try to implement it?They will have to. There is no other alternative. It is a very strange situation: if they don’t choose me, if they don’t choose the transformation I am talking about, then they are choosing death for all humanity and all life. It is not a question of choosing between two ideologies. It is not a question of choosing between my philosophy and Karl Marx’s philosophy or Bertrand Russell’s philosophy. It is not a philosophical question. The question is existential.And on the other side, if man decides not to listen to me, not to change, then he is deciding to commit suicide. That’s why I say they will have to listen, they will have to understand – and they will have to go through a transformation because nobody is ready to choose an ultimate death for all life.If it was a question of choosing between two ideologies, it would be just intellectual gymnastics. That’s why they are so much afraid of me: slowly, slowly, the intelligent people around the world are becoming aware that it is necessary to do something so that man is saved, or be ready to die. And what I am proposing is the only alternative. No other alternative has been proposed anywhere; there is no possibility.Man has looked into all the alternatives, has exhausted all the possibilities, and has tried to remain just the way he is, changing only ideologies, religions, scriptures, but he himself remains the same. What is the difficulty? If you choose the holy Koran instead of the Holy Bible; you are the same person, only the book has changed. The question was not a change of book, the question was a change of your total being. They have done everything up to now that was possible.I am not giving you any ideology, not another holy book. I am giving you a simple alternative: you have to drop your whole past – your hatred, your distinctions of color and nation, your fights amongst religions, political ideologies – you have to drop it in toto. There is no question of choosing something from the past; you have to drop it completely. You have to become discontinuous with the past, and that discontinuity with the past will bring the transformation. You have not to do anything else.Just as the snake slips out of his old skin, leaving it aside completely – he does not even look back – man has to slip out of his past, not even looking back. It is difficult, but not as difficult as death for all of life. The past is heavy, the past is deep rooted, but life and desire to live is far stronger.On the other hand there is the whole range of alternatives, but all life-denying. If you choose them, then you are choosing death. I am the only person here who is life-affirmative, who does not want to reject anything from life, who accepts life as it is, with no grudge, no complaint, with no desire that it should have been better – who relishes in it as it is. And there are no other life-affirmative ideologies around. So, on the one hand there are many ideologies which are life-denying, life-negative. All those ideologies have led man to this point, where he is facing a total death of the planet.I am against all those ideologies for the simple reason that I affirm life and I say that if you go deeper into your desire for life, you will find the eternal source of life. And if you choose life instead of death, then you will have to change all your other ideologies – political, social, religious – because they are all life-denying. They are complementary to each other.Choosing me you have to drop your whole past; that is the fear. But there is no other way. It has never happened before that you had to choose a certain way of life or the total destruction of all life from the planet.That’s why I emphasize that they will have to listen. They will try not to listen, but the situation is such that ultimately they will have to listen to me, and they have to understand it also. In fact they will listen only when they are ready to understand. And when they are ready to understand they will know perfectly well that it is not a question of changing your idea, it is a question of changing your whole life, its attitudes, approaches, everything. But they will have to, because on the other side if they don’t choose what I am saying, then they have to choose a global suicide.So in a way, the nuclear weapons, diseases like AIDS, are all helping me. They will force humanity to understand me, otherwise it was not possible for them to listen to me or to understand or to transform. But the alternative is such that there is no way out. I am the only way out of this mess that their religions and their political philosophies have created in the world.Osho,A journalist asked you recently about your warning that once a religion becomes organized, violence enters into it. You said that that was absolutely true and that the evidence was the organization and the guns around you. You said that you were fighting even with Rajneeshees to stop institutionalization. Please comment.I am fighting against any kind of institutionalization, organization. I want a totally different thing. I call it organism, not organization.Organization is something outward; organism is something inward. Organization has no center, it has only periphery. A machine is organized. You put different parts together in a certain order, but the machine has no soul, no center. It functions, it works, but there is nobody inside it. A machine is an organization of parts assembled in a certain order to function in a certain way.All the organizations up to now have done that: they changed human beings into mechanical parts, cogs in the wheel. They destroyed individuality because individuality was troublesome. They destroyed intelligence, they destroyed all kinds of disobedience, so that you may be able to become a perfect part in the machine. And they respected those who became perfect parts in the machine, who simply moved according to the mechanism, who had no will of their own, no intelligence of their own, no individuality of their own. These are the people who are given Nobel Prizes, gold medals.An organism is something like your body. It functions together, but each organ of your body has its own individuality. There is nobody who is ruling over it; it is not a part that you can replace.Just the other day there was a question, “If brains can be transplanted, then we can transplant Albert Einstein’s brain into somebody else’s head. What will happen to Albert Einstein’s soul?”Nothing will happen to Albert Einstein’s soul because the brain is not the soul, and nothing will happen to the mind because the mind only needs life energy – it doesn’t matter from where it comes, from whom it comes. It is a machine. To whomsoever – even in an idiot’s head – if you change it and put in Albert Einstein’s mind, the idiot will function like Albert Einstein. Not that the soul has changed, but now he has all the information, the brain, the whole accumulation of Albert Einstein’s life, research, experiments. They are all part of the memory in the brain. They are like a computer.And this man’s life energy was being wasted by an idiotic mind because the idiotic mind could not do anything with life’s energy. Life energy is the same: you just give it a right mechanism and it starts functioning. The idiot will function exactly as Albert Einstein.He may not have known the language, the mathematics, the physics, anything before, but now he will speak the language of Albert Einstein, his mathematical flights, his tremendous insight into physics, just as easily as Albert Einstein – perhaps more easily, because Albert Einstein was exhausted, spent and the idiot is absolutely fresh. The idiot has never bothered to think, never bothered to inquire. His whole energy is fresh, young, available, unused. He may function better than Albert Einstein.Organism functions in a unity, without anybody forcing the unity. And there is an innermost core – the soul – which simply supplies the energy to the whole.I am against organization. It has a hierarchy, it moves from the lowest to the highest in a vertical line. Organism is a circle, not a vertical line; no hierarchy, a circle. Nobody is higher than anybody else. And the circle has a center and that center is the source of energy for all, for all the organs which make the circle.Every living thing is an organism. Every dead thing is an organization. I would like my people to be an organism. And they are turning, slowly, slowly. It is natural, because they have come from a world – they have carried with them thousands of years of conditioning. It takes time for them to drop it, but they are dropping it.There was a question, two, three days before. The questioner was asking me, “Before you started speaking, there was continuous hammering from the higher-ups in the commune to be positive, to be this, to be that. Since you started speaking, those hammerings have stopped. Nobody is telling us to be positive, but strangely enough, everybody is more positive than he was ever before, more loving, more in tune.”The difference is that I am not higher up, I am not in a vertical line from where I order you. I am amongst you, just in the middle, at the very center of the commune. I need not order. I can just be there and that will be enough for everybody else to function positively. They can take the energy, they can take the insight.Of course they are not yet capable of understanding it in silence, but they have become capable of understanding words. Soon they will be capable of understanding the wordless presence too.So, since I started speaking, they suddenly became a totally different group. They were an organization because I was silent, and the people who were responsible for running the commune had no other way than to say to you, “Do this. Don’t do that.” They cannot be condemned for that; there was no other way. They are just people like you.With me things are different. The moment I started speaking again, came back into the center – became the center of your existence, of your thinking, of your being, of your dancing, of everything – naturally you started functioning the way you should function. There is no need to say it. You love me and out of that love arises your action. How can it be negative?I love you. You know it, you feel it – how can you act in any negative way? Then to be positive needs no effort. You simply are positive; nobody has told you to be.So when I say I am against organization, my meaning is that humanity has lived in the form of organization – the hierarchy, the bureaucracy – and all those efforts have led nowhere except into more and more misery.I am giving an alternative for everything. Organization has to be replaced by organism. The commune has to be an organism. I am working on that way, and is happening. It will take a little time for people to start feeling themselves that something strange is happening: they are functioning in tune, they are feeling responsible. Nobody is holding them responsible, nobody will condemn them for not being responsible, but suddenly they feel that’s how life is more joyful, that’s how life is more loving, that’s how all misery, sadness, darkness, disappears.And that’s how you become respectable, not in others’ eyes, but even in your own eyes. A tremendous self-respect arises – and you are not higher and nobody is lower than you. Your self-respect makes it possible for you to respect everyone as he is.I have told the journalists that whatever I have said is as much applicable to my own people as to anybody else, because what I say is simply a universal law. So you can see here that it is still an organization. An organization will need violence or will be afraid of violence from outside. But I am still here and I would like the organization to completely disappear, not only from this place, but from everywhere in the world. Organization is not needed, just small communes which can function as an organic whole. And if people are joyous, if they feel life as a blessing, they will not commit violence because that is simply a disturbance of their own joy and of the joy of the other person.But if only your commune becomes an organism and you are surrounded by organizations around you, then certainly you will need weapons, not for violence, but simply for self-defense.Organizations are always trying to invade, trying to conquer – conquer each and every thing. Even a man as intelligent as Bertrand Russell wrote about “the conquest of nature.” Now, that is ugly. We are part of nature, how can we conquer nature? That is creating a split. It is like one of my hands becomes the conqueror of my whole being. That is simply not possible, but because nature is silent and non-argumentative, you can go on saying anything. What have you conquered in nature?All that you have done is you have learned the laws of nature, and you are following the laws of nature. Hence you have become more productive, more creative, more powerful. But this is not conquest of nature; this is simply an inquiry – and nature is compassionate enough that it goes on opening its secrets to you. And you are such ungrateful creatures that on the one hand nature is opening its secrets to you, and on the other hand you are declaring that you have conquered nature. But that is the language of the organizational man: violence, conquest, victory.But if a commune is there, an organism surrounded by organizations, there is every possibility those organizations will try to invade you, conquer you, destroy you, be violent with you.To me, to be violent is something ugly; but to allow violence to be done to you is also ugly. In both cases you are partners. Violence can be done only with two partners. Either you can be the doer or you can be the receiver.I do not teach any kind of non-violence like Mahatma Gandhi, which failed tremendously. And it is such a strange world that nobody looks at Mahatma Gandhi and the failure of his non-violence, utter failure. His revolution in 1942 died within nine days, and with no effect.The revolution of a country like India against the British kingdom simply withered away in nine days. Just a few people were thrown into jail and it was finished. And without any effect, because India did not become independent in 1942.The fact is that after 1942, Gandhi and his close colleagues all lost hope that India could become independent in their own lifetime – because their greatest effort had withered away in just nine days, and they had been preparing for fifty years. Now to have another revolution…they wouldn’t be alive, they were all getting old.But in 1947, five years after the revolution – in any revolution, things happen immediately. It is not that in 1917 the communist revolution happens and the czar goes on ruling for five years and then he says, “Okay. You win. Your revolution has succeeded.” If a revolution succeeds then the slavery is finished.But 1942 did not bring any victory, any freedom to India. In fact it brought a tremendous hopelessness, despair, and an almost certainty that it was impossible to be free.In ‘47 Britain gave India freedom. Not because of Gandhi and his non-violent revolution; it gave India freedom because India became a burden.You want to rule people if you can exploit them. Britain had exploited for three hundred years – everything that was valuable, everything that Britain wanted was transferred to Britain. They sucked all the blood from India. And then there were four hundred million people, hungry, starving. Then it was the responsibility of the government to feed those people, to take care of those people, and that would have been economically very heavy on Britain.When you have sucked the blood of the country and there are only bones, it is better to make them free. Then whatsoever they go through – suffering, poverty, starvation – is their responsibility.In fact, Lord Mountbatten was sent to India with orders that he somehow had to manage to withdraw from India before 1948. But when he went to India and saw the situation he informed the British government, “That may be too late. Escaping in a situation when India is starving will expose your whole policy to the world: ‘This is not giving freedom, this is simply being irresponsible. While India could give you so much, you cannot even manage enough food for them.’”Mountbatten said, “We will be finished in ‘47. Don’t wait for ‘48. A year could prove dangerous – the earlier the better.”And it was better for Britain – not for India – because if Britain was really being helpful it should have trained India how to rule, how to manage. It should have transferred Mohammedans to Pakistan, Hindus to India under military control – because it was an absolute certainty that if India and Pakistan were made free and the people had not been transferred, then there was going to be immense violence. And that violence happened.More than one million people died as independence was declared, because to transfer millions of people from India to Pakistan and from Pakistan to India was not an easy job. Who was going to do it?And when people have no time, and when they are leaving their country and moving to another country, who is going to allow them to take all their money? Of course they cannot take their houses, their lands, and they cannot sell them. Who is going to purchase them? – because everybody knows they have to leave them: “Without any question, they are ours.” And money, women – anybody they wanted – they would not allow to leave. Women were transferred into Mohammedanism.The people who came to India from Pakistan were utterly desolated. They had lost all their lives’ earnings, their houses, their friends. They had lost their families. And the same was the situation in India with Mohammedans – on a little smaller scale, because Hindus are not so violent. Just because they were vegetarians, to kill was an impossibility for them. But it happened on a lesser scale; thousands of Mohammedans were killed.And Mountbatten, with his government, slipped out of the country. The whole responsibility fell on India’s and Pakistan’s governments, that they were unable to manage. But how you can manage a country within a day?On the fifteenth of August the country became free, and on the fifteenth of August, thousands of people were being killed, thousands of houses were on fire. The government had not even figured out whose department belonged to whom, they had not yet been able to divide the cabinets, the ministers, who was the chief of the army and who was the person responsible for orders. They had to immediately face such great violence. And after that they have gone continuously down and down.I am not in favor of the philosophy of Gandhian non-violence. I love non-violence, but that does not mean that I will allow my people to be killed. At least they should die with dignity; they should not be just killed like dumb animals.So, while the whole world remains organizational, the commune will be an organism inside, but for the outside world it will certainly maintain a tough face. We are not going to harm anybody on our own, but we are not going to allow anybody to harm us either. And that is natural to every organism. What I am saying is not philosophy. Your body will protect itself in any case: if the house is on fire, everybody will start getting out of the house as quickly as possible. It is natural. Life wants to save itself, and there is nothing wrong in it.But the very quality of the people with weapons in their hands changes the moment they are not serving an organization, but are part of an organism. That is very difficult for people to understand. That’s why I did not go into detail on that day, it would have been absolutely impossible for them. For them a gun is a gun. To them it does not matter who is holding it. To me it matters much. It is more important than the gun.If Gautam Buddha is holding the gun, the quality of the gun is no more the same as when Adolf Hitler is holding the same gun. With Gautam Buddha, the gun is not going to be used to harm anybody, but in the hands of Adolf Hitler it is certainly going to be used to harm people, kill people. The gun is neutral. The gun has no values of its own. The values come from the person who holds it.With my sannyasins holding guns, I have not for a single moment felt that they could do any harm to anybody. But to outside people, it is certainly difficult. Just a few days ago a Swedish magazine published a big article against me, the commune, and almost tried to prove that this is a military organization. In the editorial note it says that nothing like this has been seen since Adolf Hitler. And all that they have done – they have taken pictures of sannyasins holding guns, enlarged those pictures, filled the whole article with guns. Looking at the magazine one would think that there must be thousands of soldiers marching with guns.The journalist was here but he did not ask for an interview. Now, I call this immensely cowardly. He just took photographs, and only of what he wanted: people holding guns – that is his main theme – and just spread them, double page spreads of guns, and small notes like, “This is the most dangerous place that is growing here. Sooner or later it will become a problem to the whole world.”And I was giving interviews to journalists. He was here, he could have asked, he should have asked for an interview. Before he published anything he should have inquired of me, but in fact he completely avoided inquiring of anybody. He simply had come with a prejudice, and with that prejudice he took the pictures, and he had made a full article.Now, anybody reading that article cannot imagine that all this is false. And in a way it is true, because those pictures are not wrong, just the presentation is cunning. The presentation is prejudicial.This commune and other communes are not going to be organizations. They are going to be almost like one body. But every organism naturally, instinctively faces any danger.Our communes will face any danger; we will find ways and means to face it. But we cannot allow anybody to do harm without a response to it, because that means you are helping the invader, you are helping the violent man, you are helping violence. You have become part of the violence and its games.We are not going to become a part of violence and its games. If we can prevent through weapons, we will prevent through weapons. If we see that we are a small commune and weapons cannot prevent it, then we will prevent with our open chests, singing and dancing. We will leave those people guilty for their whole lives, that they killed innocent, dancing people who were not doing any harm to anybody. If we can protect life, we will protect it. If we cannot protect life, then we will rejoice in death – but we will do something.And I’m not against doing something, just the quality has to be totally different.Osho,Are you no guru at all or are you the rich man's guru?From my side, I am no guru at all.The word guru has become almost condemnatory. The root meaning of the word is beautiful. The word originally means one who is more consolidated, crystallized, one who has more weight.In Hindi, gravitation is called gurutvakarshan. Just as the earth gravitates, the guru gravitates people towards himself – without doing anything. The earth is not doing anything while gravitating you; it is just the nature of the earth that anything that is within its area of two hundred miles will start being pulled towards it.Guru means one who is weight-full, centered, rooted, and has the quality of gravitation. But that original meaning has been lost. And particularly since Indian gurus started appearing in the West, it has become almost a dirty word.And it has to become so because the people who came to the West were not gurus at all. They came to the West to exploit people. They knew – at least they were knowledgeable – about many things of which the West was unaware. They were more philosophical, more theological, more argumentative. That has been a professional thing in India for centuries. So when they came to the West they immediately had a great impact. The Christian minister looked very poor. Even the best scholarly rabbi was no competition.And those who had come were not very great men. They had come here to have a following, to collect money, and finally, to take that money to India to make temples in India and places for their own living and for their disciples. But it was all a materialistic thing; there was nothing of the spirit at all.Naturally, the word guru became a condemned word. That’s why I say I am no guru at all, in the sense the word is used today. But in the original sense, I cannot deny it. You are the proof, enough proof, so how I can deny it? People have fallen in love with me, have completely devoted their lives to me. I have never asked; it was their feeling.There was something of tremendous gravitation, and people from faraway countries started coming to me. I would never have left India if I had not felt that if people from all over the world had to go there, and suffer unnecessary sicknesses…The water is polluted, the air is polluted, almost every sannyasin was suffering from amoebas, had disturbed stomachs, and still, with all this suffering, they were not going to leave me. They were ready to suffer, to remain sick, to have all the bodily pains, but they were not going to leave there.It was not only my disease, that was just an excuse – because I never wanted to say that I moved from there because of you, so I simply said I was moving from India because of my own body, its sickness. But in a way, it implied you too, because you are my body and your sickness is my sickness and your health will be my health.But this was the basic reason I wanted to get out of India: because so many thousands of people were coming; at least I should give them a place where they have pure water, pure air, open air, and no unnecessary harassment. In India it was impossible.This commune and all the sannyasins around the world know perfectly well that they have a certain strong heart-to-heart connection with me. You can give it any name, but I would like to call it simply a friendship – a friendship because you are my fellow travelers.I have avoided the word guru because of its derogatory connotations. I have avoided the term religious leader because the word leader means, “I know and you do not know, so follow me, believe in me.” That I cannot say to anybody; that is simply humiliating the person.Whatever I know, I put before you. If you feel like choosing, you choose. Wherever I am going, I make it clear to you. I don’t say, “Come and follow me.” That is up to you. That is your freedom.I am in a strange position – what word to use? Guru has become an ugly word. Its translation in English as master has also lost its meaning. So I am saying to you that I am your friend. On the path, I am ready to be your light, I am ready to be your guide, because the guide is not holier than you or higher than you. He just knows the way. The way is there, he can help you to move on the way, he can help you to avoid pitfalls.But this is my side, that I am only a friendly guide. From your side, you are free to think what you want, because I cannot decide that.Osho,Beautiful, rare beings, such as Lao Tzu, Lieh Tzu, and Chuang Tzu, have evolved out of China. That was thousands of years ago. China today has changed its face into a robot like country. In your vision, do you see any possibility of spirituality rising again in China?Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, were certainly some of the great masters that have walked on the earth – rare human beings – but they have not made a clear-cut way for others to also follow. No religion came into being because of these three great masters. It remained a philosophy. They attracted people, but the attraction never went beyond intellect. And there is a reason for it.China has lived under the influence of Confucius, and Confucius was exactly an ancient Karl Marx, a sociologist of great insight, but he was not a religious master. He gave China its social structure, he gave China the principles of behavior and etiquette, but he never gave anything that leads to interiority. And Confucius’ influence is the greatest in China.It is because of Confucius that communism became important. They fitted with each other very intimately, with no contradiction.Communism cannot fit with Hinduism, communism cannot fit with Jainism, but it can fit with Confucianism, because Confucianism is not a religion; it is only a sociology, and there is no conflict between Confucius and Karl Marx. Now, Confucius is twenty-five centuries older than Karl Marx, but he has said everything essential that Karl Marx repeats twenty-five centuries later. And the moment China discovered communism it felt that it was just what they had always been thinking about.So communism is not just accidental, and not imported. Although it looks like it is imported, it is not imported; it is Confucius and his teaching, turning and taking a new phase, a new color.This is the reason China and Russia could not stay together. Both are communist countries, both believe in Karl Marx and Das Kapital, but Russia does not have the background of Confucius, while China has a long tradition of Confucianism. So Russian communism is pure Marxian. Chinese communism is just communism for name’s sake, it is basically ninety percent Confucianism.And these three great masters remained individuals. Once in a while somebody was impressed by their writings, but it remained intellectual, so there is no hope in the near future of Lieh Tzu, Chuang Tzu or Lao Tzu being born again in China, or their influence in any way changing the course of China’s history – because in fact they have never been of any great importance in China’s mind.Confucius and Lao Tzu were contemporaries. Confucius had even gone to meet Lao Tzu, because Lao Tzu was certainly a man of tremendous qualities. Confucius was a great thinker, but only a thinker. He had nothing as far as his own inner consciousness was concerned, no experience, no idea who he was, but he had planned for the society perfectly well, a very mannered, cultured society.Hearing that Lao Tzu was nearby, living in a cave beyond the lake, he went to see him. A few of his disciples also went, but he told them, “Wait outside the cave.”They asked, “Why? It will be good, we can listen.”He said, “You don’t understand; I will tell you the reason later on. Let me go first. If I feel it right I will call you in.”They stayed outside, Confucius went in.Lao Tzu was sitting silently. He did not even ask Confucius to sit down, and Confucius was a man of manners, etiquette. He had not expected that a great sage, Lao Tzu, would not even ask him to sit. Lao Tzu did not say hello or even hi – even that short form, hi. He simply sat, looking at Confucius, and Confucius asked, “Sir, don’t you believe in manners?”Lao Tzu laughed. He said, ‘I thought you knew all the manners – what is the need for me to tell you? If you feel like sitting, you will sit down. You are not a man who does not know manners. If you would like to stand up, it is my etiquette not to disturb you. You can stand up!”Confucius said, “But you did not even say hello.”Lao Tzu said, “I said it; you could not hear it. It was a test: I said it silently. I wanted to know whether the famous philosopher Confucius understands silence or not. So you understand only words – that much is decided. And you have expectations. You cannot sit down on your own, you have to be told.“This cave does not belong to me. When I came here, nobody said, ‘Sit down,’ because nobody was here. Why should I say it? It is not my cave, nothing belongs to me. Just the way I am sitting, you can sit down. You are not a child to be told.”Confucius had never met such a man. And on each point he was rebuffed badly. Then Lao Tzu said, “If you really want to learn anything, first go and renounce all the idiots you have collected as your disciples. You don’t know anything and you have thousands of disciples. It is hilarious! Just go and tell them the truth, that you don’t know anything, and then come, because I teach only if somebody does not know. If he knows it already, why should he bother me? An old man – leave me alone!”Confucius came out, and he had not the courage to say to his disciples that he did not know. He had thousands of disciples, he was the most famous man at that time. Very few people knew about Lao Tzu. Confucius has remained a shadow over the whole of Chinese history. It is only somewhere in the footnotes you can find the name of Lao Tzu.Confucius was not courageous enough to say “I do not know.”His disciples said “You didn’t ask us to come in.”He said, “It was good that I didn’t ask you to come in. And please don’t ask the reason, because that man is not a man; he is a dragon. He is dangerous, avoid him as far as possible. This is my first and last meeting with that old guy!”And he was perspiring. It was a cold morning and the cave was very cool, but he was perspiring.The disciples asked, “But why are you perspiring?”He said, “I am alive – that’s enough! Just take me away from here.”Lao Tzu has never been a great influence. He was a silent man. Once in a while somebody would come who was courageous enough to be with him He was not ready to come down to meet you, to be with you and to be amongst you. It simply was not his characteristic. He would remain on top of the hill. You would have to go to the hilltop, he was not going to come into the valley. He was not a man as I am.I can come to any depth where you are hiding and catch hold of your head and pull you out. He was not that kind of man; he would simply sit on top of the hill. Anybody who wants – but who wants to go that far?He never wrote a single word, he never gave a single speech – just a few conversations here and there, and those too only if somebody asked something. And then too, he was not nice, as is expected of masters. Confucius was right that he was a dragon. He would kill you.Chuang Tzu is a very important person in the history of the whole world, not only China. There is not a single person in all of history who can be compared with Chuang Tzu.He wrote the most absurd parables. To understand his parables you have to be close to his consciousness, otherwise you will understand those parables as jokes. Those parables are the most significant religious stories, but they are absurd. They contradict – the same story goes into so many contradictions, you are at a loss to figure out what he wants or where is the conclusion, or what is the meaning of it all.But if you can meditate and look with meditative eyes at his stories, you will be surprised: he is saying things which cannot be said through words, and just to say them he has created all those contradictions. Figuring out those contradictions, you will suddenly come to understand a truth which was not said in the story at all – but if you try to figure out the contradiction meditatively, that truth is bound to be revealed to you. It is just there, but he has not said it.He was certainly the strangest creator of parables. There are parables of Aesop, in India there are parables of Panchtantra, beautiful stories, but all have simple mottoes, simple teachings. There is nothing great about them. They explain to you a certain truth. But Chuang Tzu looks mad to anyone who reads him, hence he was never an influence. How could he be an influence? People were even afraid to go to him because he would say things that, if they got into your head, you would become crazy. What to do about those things?For example, he would say, “Last night I slept and dreamed that I had become a butterfly. I have been wondering since I woke up in the morning: perhaps the butterfly has gone to sleep and is dreaming that she has become Chuang Tzu. What is your opinion? Which is true? Chuang Tzu dreaming himself as a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming herself as Chuang Tzu – what is the truth?”Now, if this gets into your mind, you are going to be puzzled, and you had not come to get puzzled. You are already confused and this man is confusing you more.So only very rarely a person would be able – when he used to tell this story to anybody, that was enough, and the man would escape. “Nobody knows. Even I don’t know whether I am dreaming you are here or you are dreaming I am here. This is beyond me. And I am not such a philosopher. You meditate over it. If you come to any conclusion, I live just nearby, and you can inform me. This is my name, but please don’t harass me.”Just one young man, when he told this story, said, “Wait. I have the answer.”Chuang Tzu said, “Really?”He said, “Yeah.” He went out. He had brought a bucket of ice-cold water and he poured it on Chuang Tzu and said, “Wake up!”Chuang Tzu said, “Really great! I was waiting for something like this answer. You are accepted as my disciple. You are the right man.”That’s what has to be done: if somebody is talking about dream and he became a butterfly or a butterfly became a dream, all that he needs is to have a bucket of ice-cold water thrown on him so he wakes up, whoever he is. If he is Chuang Tzu, he will be Chuang Tzu. If he is a butterfly, he will be a butterfly. Things will be cleared. Anyway, the sleep has to be broken.He said, “This answer was so close to the story but it never happened to anybody. Thousands have heard the story, and they laugh and they talk about it and they tell it to each other, and it has spread all over the country; but not a single man thought of a single solution. All that is needed is to wake up the man, whoever he is. Waking up will be decisive. Only that can be decisive.”So the young man said, “Have I to do anything more or are you satisfied?”Chuang Tzu said, “I am perfectly satisfied, because more will be too much. Just sit down, you are accepted.”He said, “I had come to be accepted. I have listened to great masters, but I have not found anything great. I have been to many monasteries, but all is ordinary. Then I heard about your story and then I thought, ‘Here is something extraordinary. Now I have to find this man.’”And all his stories are like that. Now, how many people can you influence?So these people remained peaks, reaching to the stars, but beyond human intelligence. They were never influential in China. In fact, listening to me you have become aware of their names. Otherwise, ordinarily nobody bothers about Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu or Lao Tzu. Nobody has written commentaries on these people. I am the only man who has spoken, for years continuously.I spoke for one year continuously on Lao Tzu, every day. His book is very small, he wrote it in three days. I spoke on it one year in Hindi, and then when people from outside started coming, I spoke again on a few chosen parts. And you know me – my memory is not good, so I forgot what I said in Hindi – I had to interpret it again.The Hindi books are being translated and you will be puzzled, because what I have said in Hindi I have not said in English, and what I have said in English I have not said in Hindi. In fact, there was a gap of four, five years between the two series, and I never look back to what I said yesterday, and I don’t feel any obligation to remain consistent with it.Certainly, what I said in English is more up to date, because it is five years afterward. And this gives me an immense freedom. Any day if it happens to me, I can start speaking on Lao Tzu again, because I don’t know now what I have spoken on him – whether in Hindi or English. Both are forgotten. I can give you a third commentary.Otherwise, these people’s names are not known – what to say about their influence.So in China it seems very difficult. The meeting of Confucius and Karl Marx is very dangerous. They are both materialists, they both believe only in certain moral rules, and they don’t say that there is anything beyond this life.In Russia there is more possibility that we may have many more sannyasins. China seems to be far away; it is more difficult to penetrate the Chinese skull. It is made hard, first by Confucius and now it has got a new coating – more modern, more contemporary – of Marxism.But nobody can deny the fact that perhaps, if China becomes richer, more affluent, more educated, more open to the outside world – as is happening, it is opening its doors to the outside world – then there is a possibility sometime in the future that the Chinese youth can be approached. But China is the most difficult country out of all the countries for the transformation of man.Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Hugh Schmidt,The Western Australian, AustraliaOsho,Good evening.Thank you.Osho,Is your retinue of sannyasins throughout the world growing in number or is it declining?It is growing fast.Can you estimate how many you might have worldwide?More than one million.How many, say, ten years ago? Or when you left India how many do you think you had?It is difficult for me to remember – what is left, is left.And what do you think brings people to places like Rajneeshpuram? Do you think it's for the good life or do you think to find themselves, to find their inner selves, or is it a combination of reasons that brings people here to live?They are inseparable; they are not two things. Unless you find yourself you cannot live a good life. Finding yourself is fundamental. Everything else follows it.Osho,In Western Australia, as you know, there is quite a strong and healthy commune in Fremantle, and as you also know they were trying to get established in Pemberton, which caused quite a lot of concern amongst the local population. I heard when I phoned home two weeks ago that the Pemberton council has refused to issue them a permit. Does that worry you at all?No, there is no question of worry. We will be fighting.You'll be fighting?We really enjoy fighting.So you'll be fighting it legally in…Legally.You said some time ago that you'd like to visit Australia, particularly West…Certainly.Do you think you'll still go down there?Still.Osho,Do you think the local townspeople in the small town of Pemberton should be worried about the Rajneeshees?They are unnecessarily worried. They should be happy, because we do no harm to anybody. We mean no harm to anybody. We are so absorbed in our own life and joy that we don’t at all have any time for others. They should be happy that a joyous group has joined them. They can learn much from my people; they can learn how to laugh, how to dance, how to sing, and how to make life a paradise.Do you think you have a paradise on earth here?Yes, we have, and you can go around this paradise and you will find only joy and love.Everyone seems to be smiling and happy.Everybody is happy.Have you ever had to ask anyone to leave Rajneeshpuram?No, never. People join on their own; if they want to leave, they have to leave on their own. Freedom is the rule.Osho,You have a fairly active police force here – do they get much work to do?They have nothing to do, no work. If you can give them some work in Australia, I can bring them with me when I come! They are really fed up with their guns: four years carrying guns and nothing to shoot.Well, I'm not going to give them a target!How is your health these days?It is better.Do you have to take medication?Yes.Are you a vegetarian?Everybody here is vegetarian. To be non-vegetarian is inhuman. The non-vegetarian is exactly equal to being a cannibal. There is no difference, except that cannibals eat better meat than the non-vegetarians.Osho,Why did you break your silence? I think your silence lasted nearly three years.I am a man of the moment: I look neither backward, nor do I look forward. This moment herenow is enough unto itself. If I feel like speaking I speak – whether there is anybody to hear it or not does not matter. If I don’t want to speak, even if the whole world is ready to listen, I will not speak. I simply live according to my feelings.I see. Well, your words tonight are going to be read by at least four million people.That’s good.Osho,Getting onto another subject which I know is not taboo here…No, nothing is tabooed here, so you can discuss any subject without any inhibition.I believe for at least a year you have been aware of the danger of the AIDS problem, and you have instilled careful precautions amongst your sannyasins – is that correct?That’s right.For how long have you been aware of this danger?Just for the last year.Do you think it could destroy mankind or…?It can. It has every possibility. It is not a normal disease, because it has no cure. In fact, to call it a disease is not right; it is death itself. Only death has no cure. And the ways it spreads are so many, that’s why it is almost going to kill two-thirds of humanity. You can catch it just by kissing somebody, you can catch it by wiping somebody’s tears, you can catch it by somebody sneezing at you.It used to be a joke that sex is nothing but a sneeze. For the first time it has become a reality. Any liquid coming out of the body of the person who is suffering from AIDS can infect you. And once you are infected you become a carrier; you will infect your wife, your children, everybody – unconsciously, unknowingly.Just now I received a message that in New York City alone, ninety-five percent of homosexuals are positive, confirmed AIDS sufferers; thirty-five percent of the prostitutes of New York are confirmed AIDS sufferers. Every city is at a loss what to do, because this thirty-five percent of the prostitutes will be spreading it every day and they must have spread it to thousands of people already, And those people alone… So it is just like a wildfire, and so invisible that you cannot prevent it.Governments are repressing the information, because no nation wants to be condemned that it has so much perverted sexuality. Religions are repressing – no monastery has declared yet what percentage of the monks are suffering from AIDS. They must be suffering more than anyone else, because to me, AIDS is a religious contribution to the world. Insisting on celibacy, insisting that monks should live separate from nuns, insisting that sex is sin, are the causes, the basic causes which have led ultimately to AIDS. The whole responsibility lies with your popes, Ayatollah Khomeini, Hindu shankaracharyas, and the religious leaders. They all are doing the same thing for centuries. They have created homosexuality.In the wild, animals never turn homosexual, but in a zoo where females are not available, even animals become homosexuals. Your monasteries are nothing but zoos. And man is more intelligent than the animals, so he is going to find some way for his sexual energy. And what can he do? It is beyond his powers. Just by taking a vow of celibacy, he cannot make his biology understand, “I am celibate.” The biology goes on functioning in its own way; it doesn’t care about you at all – your philosophy, ideology, religion. It will create blood, it will create semen, it will function on its own. It is not in your control in any way.So what does the monk have to do with his sexual energy? It is a well-known fact that all the monks of all the religions have to find some way or other. They have made love to animals – sodomy is as old as the Old Testament. The very word sodomy comes from the Old Testament. They have been homosexuals, nuns have been lesbians…So no religion wants to declare how many homosexuals are in their monasteries. No city wants to take note and inform the world, and no individual wants even to go through the test, because once you are confirmed that you are a homosexual and you are AIDS-positive, you are a condemned individual. You will not have any other exit except suicide, because even your parents, your wife, your children, your brothers, sisters, friends, will all deny you.That's right. I have a clipping here from a newspaper I saw in Vancouver two days ago, which says, “AIDS has struck the Rajneeshees: two followers of Osho have contracted the usually fatal disease.” Is it true?It is true. This commune is the only place in the whole world where everybody has gone through the test, and we have found two persons suffering from AIDS. These two persons are not condemned by the commune; on the contrary, they are receiving more love, more respect, for the simple reason that they are victims of religion.We have given them our best houses in the most scenic places to live in, to read, to see films, whatever they want to do, and whatever we can, we supply to them. They can come to the commune, they can come to the lectures, they can come to the meditations, but they have to be careful not to physically contact anybody in any way. They understand and they are tremendously grateful that they are here in this commune. In any other city they would have been thrown out.Hospitals are not taking in AIDS patients, they are refusing them.Are these two people related? Or are they living together now?No. They are together now, living in one place, but they are not related.So, the sannyasins who live here are taught and encouraged to take every precaution. They don't allow kissing or…They take every precaution. They have been told what can be dangerous to others. And they are intelligent people: once they understand a thing, they simply do it. In four years, not a single baby has been born in the commune, because they understand that the world is so overpopulated that now to go on populating it more is simply making it more miserable, more starving. You are creating a burden for the world and you are giving your child an ugly world which is going to die either through AIDS or through nuclear weapons. What is the point of giving such a world to the child?And nobody has prevented them. I just explain things to them and then leave it up to their intelligence.So you practice zero birth growth?Zero birth growth. And that is unique. Nowhere in the whole world will you find five thousand people living together with zero birth rate.But surely if the outside world adopted the same policy, it wouldn't take long for the third world countries to…they would never practice zero birth control and they'd take over the world, maybe.They can – they can practice it if they drop this stupid idea that they have to be democracies. My approach is that to afford democracy you have to be at a certain standard of living; below it you cannot afford democracy. Democracy is not so cheap. It is better that those poor countries understand that what they need is a very dictatorial regime, that enforces laws against anything that is going against humanity, against the nation.Poor countries cannot afford democracy. What to say about poor countries – even a country like America can only talk about democracy, it cannot afford it. Democracy is yet to happen.Osho,Are you politically-minded?No.What do you think of President Reagan?Just a third-class fellow. But that is a necessary qualification for becoming a president or a prime minister: only third-class people aspire to those places. All politicians suffer from an inferiority complex, so they want to become superior just to convince themselves that they are not inferior.Superior people need not convince themselves – they know they are. So they may be painters, poets, they may be beggars, it does not matter. If they don’t suffer from an inferiority complex and politics does not enter in.You're a leader of a big group of people, people look up to you – what have you got that President Reagan hasn't got?I am not a leader, and I have not tried to convert anybody to my way of life or my way of thinking. People have come on their own, feeling some synchronicity between me and themselves. That’s what I have and Reagan does not have. You can see it: where is Jimmy Carter now? Tomorrow the same will be the situation of Ronald Reagan. But I am going to be here throughout the whole upcoming history because I am not a leader.A leader is something like a daily newspaper: by the evening it is useless, just like your newspaper!Good for wrapping up fish and french fries. Yes.Yes. Give him some water.You're having a birthday soon aren't you? Are you having a big celebration for your birthday?I do not have a celebration. Every moment is a celebration to me. Talking to you, I am enjoying it so much.Are you really enjoying it?Really. My people celebrate – I remain the same. I am celebrating all the year round.Yes… Wish I had something to celebrate all the year round too.Celebrate!Osho,Do you spend much time of your day reading or writing?No. I have never written anything.Do you read newspapers?I don’t read anything.Do you rise early in the morning or do you just get up when you feel like it?No, if I leave it to that I may not get up. So I leave it to my people to wake me up at six o’clock. On my own I will not get up again – just a bone-lazy fellow!Osho,Do you meditate for many hours a day?It is my twenty-four-hour thing, because…I will have to explain a little bit about it. Other religions have prescribed people a few minutes, half an hour, to meditate, concentrate, contemplate, pray. But to me the whole idea is idiotic that you can meditate for half an hour and for the remaining twenty-three and a half hours you can remain non-meditative. That is impossible. It is just like saying, “Breathe half an hour and for the remaining time, forget all about it. And tomorrow morning breathe again.”Meditation is something that has to become your constant companion. So my method is such that it disturbs nothing. For example, I am talking to you: my method is that while I am talking to you I am fully aware of what I am saying, to whom I am saying it. Every gesture of my hand is with full awareness.So, do whatsoever you are doing, walking on the street or swimming in the lake, remain conscious of your activity. Then you can be in meditation twenty-four hours a day. And unless you can be twenty-four hours in meditation, all your half-hour meditations are toys; you are just befooling yourself.Osho,Hm… Do you ever visit the public entertainment in Rajneeshpuram?No.I believe you did make a quick visit to the disco one night.Yes. one night I went, just to shock my people. But it was not much of a disco, because as I went there everything stopped and the whole commune gathered in the disco and around the disco, so I had to just go in and come out. I did not see anything there except the people, the same people I see everywhere.I wanted to know what the hell this disco is, but they did not allow me. I don’t go anywhere. And entertainment is needed because you are not blissful with yourself. Something is missing in you. There is some worry, some tension that you want to forget. Entertainment helps you for the time being.To me there is no point at all in going to any entertainment. I am not against it – I can go. If people feel happy by my going there, I can go anywhere, hell included! But as far as I am concerned, I don’t need any entertainment. I am so full of blissfulness in myself.But you don't mind your sannyasins enjoying themselves at these…I don’t mind, because they have yet to come to the space where I am. I tell them, “Enjoy, and entertain yourself as much as you can, because soon you will be sitting like me. So before that happens, the calamity of enlightenment, just do every nonsense that you want to do, because later on there is nothing left to be done.Yes. Live life for today.Yes. Live life for today, because tomorrow is entertainment within yourself. Tomorrow is enlightenment. Today, enjoy and do all kinds of foolish things – go to the disco, go to the restaurant, and go playing cards. Do everything that a fool is expected to do, because after enlightenment…now I know I missed so many things – and missed them forever.Osho,Do you deny yourself pleasures of the flesh?I don’t deny anything. I don’t deny anything. I am available to everything, but it is not my need. I enjoy everything.Do you enjoy a drink of alcohol? – beer or wine?No, I don’t like the taste. Otherwise, they are vegetarian and there is no problem for me. I have tasted everything, but I did not like the taste. I am not against alcohol; I am against the taste of it.I see. But you like your sannyasins to be moderate in…There is no question. I never give my sannyasins any shoulds and should nots. I just tell them, be alert and aware and do whatsoever you want to do. And don’t wait for tomorrow, because who knows – tomorrow you may become enlightened! That is the difficulty here.Osho,What happens – I know it's a long way off, or I hope it's a long way off – but what happens when Osho shuffles off this mortal coil? Will the Rajneeshees just fade away or do you think the movement will stay forever?That is for them to decide, not for me even to discuss, because that may give some hint, and I don’t want to give even a hint what they have to do. Even while I am alive I don’t give them any directions. I am simply making them more and more alert and intelligent, and I depend on their intelligence. And I know whatever they do, they will do right. Only retarded people need to be guided; immature people need ten commandments.I have intelligent people around me. Almost all are university graduates, with all kinds of degrees – Masters and PhDs, in all subjects. We are an absolutely self-sufficient, organic commune. We have our doctors, we have our dentists, we have our nurses, we have our surgeons, we have our professors, we have our psychoanalysts – we have everybody that we need.You need a psychoanalyst here?We need, because sometimes people who come from outside have repressed themselves so much that, finding so much freedom without any discipline, enjoying freedom they go nuts. For them we have therapists, all kinds of therapies.But for my own people there is no question. In fact, every sannyasin is a therapist unto himself. Just listening to me for years has made them as capable as any Sigmund Freud or Adler or Jung or Assagioli. In fact, they understand more than Sigmund Freud, because Sigmund Freud was not aware of any meditation techniques. And psychology is incomplete without meditation, because then it is only superficial. Analysis of your dreams is not going to lead you to the realization of your being. But the vice versa is totally different: if you realize your being, your dreams disappear.So every sannyasin understands more. I have not written a single book, but there are at least three hundred and fifty – that’s what my people say. I have never counted.Those books are written from your talks?Yes, from my talks, just verbatim.Just like this might be used?This will be.That's good. Yes. So, do you ever play back what you have said or do you just forget about it?I go on contradicting myself. Anybody who is growing, every moment, expanding is bound to contradict things of the past. Only people who are stuck at a point in their psychological development remain consistent. Consistency is a disqualification; it simply shows a retarded person.I love Walt Whitman’s saying, “I am vast enough to contain all contradictions.” And I can quote this not only intellectually – it is my own experience: I can contain all contradictions without any trouble. In fact, the moment they are within me they become complementaries.I see. You are uh…what do you think of material things? I mean, I've read various reports about you having seventy Rolls Royces and I notice you have a beautiful diamond watch on your hand. Do material things worry you at all or do they concern you?I don’t make any distinction between the material and the spiritual, that is one of my most basic approaches. All the religions of the world have created a schizophrenic humanity by dividing matter and spirit, this world and that world, God and creation, body and mind – everywhere they have created duality. And in fact you are not a duality.When you drink alcohol, it does not go into your mind; it goes into your physiology but it affects your mind. Your mind is not separate from it. When you are hungry, starving, and the necessary proteins for your brain are not available to you, you start losing your intelligence.So to me, life is one organic whole. Matter is visible existence, the soul is invisible existence, but both are one and together. To me, to meditate and be in a beautiful space, and to be in the best car in the world, are not two separate things. And I love every beautiful thing, whether it is diamonds or emeralds or rubies, or just ordinary stones!Look at my watch again. These are not diamonds, they are ordinary stones. But they are so beautiful, they can defeat any diamonds. And this watch is made by one of my sannyasins; that’s why I said we are absolutely self-sufficient. Everything that I am using, from my shoes to my hat, is made by my sannyasins. This watch must be the cheapest watch in the world and the best.Does it keep good time?The best – it will lose only one second per year. And it has no value in the sense of price, because these stones cost nothing, and my sannyasins have worked simply out of love. But in other words it is also invaluable. If somebody is going to give me one billion dollars for this watch, it is not for sale. Love is never for sale.I have half million-dollar watches too – and not one but dozens, because I believe in abundance. But most often I use my sannyasins’ watches. They have made five or six, and they are continuously making them. Soon I will be using only their watches. Those million-dollar watches will be just rotting. I don’t care anymore about them, because diamonds are not the question; the question is the beauty, the love poured into it.So I am absolutely in tune with the material world and I am not losing anything spiritual. In fact, the more I am grounded in the material existence, the more I can rise higher into the spiritual world. A man is almost like a tree: the roots go deeper into the ground, in the darkness, under the earth, and the tree grows higher and higher above, aspiring to touch the stars. The deeper the roots, the higher the tree. Don’t forget the roots, otherwise the tree will be dead. That’s what has happened in religious countries; they denied matter.For example, India was the first to discover mathematics, five thousand years before Albert Einstein. China was the first to invent gunpowder, three thousand years before Hiroshima. China was the first to invent printing machines, four thousand years before Europe. China started printing currency notes two thousand years before any other country in the world. But what happened to those people who were so inventive and so ahead of everybody? Religion destroyed those people.Religion condemned materialism, condemned richness, praised poverty, and naturally the geniuses of the country started becoming monks and in search of God, and nobody cared. Otherwise, the West is just a child, the whole scientific development is three hundred years old.If the East was not disturbed by people like Gautam Buddha, Confucius, Mahavira, Krishna, then the East would have been a thousand times more powerful than America. But the reason they are suffering and dying and starving – the whole credit goes to their religious founders. Those idiots disturbed millions of peoples’ lives. As far as I am concerned, I consider them criminals. And not ordinary criminals – extraordinary criminals.My effort here is to make man whole, to drop the split, the division, the schizophrenia, so he can have all that matter can give and he can have all that spirit can give. Why not have both worlds? I don’t see the point – why choose? If I can go to paradise in a Rolls Royce, I don’t see the point – why should I go carrying a cross?I am going in a Rolls Royce. If Mohammed can go directly to paradise on his horse, why can I not go in a Rolls Royce? There is no problem. And he had only one horse and I have ninety Rolls Royces, which have ten times more horse power.Did you say nineteen or ninety?Ninety.That's a thousand times more horse power.They are not yet complete; my garage is still waiting for more. And my sannyasins are preparing for 365. One for every day seems to be exactly right.Osho,In these days of fear about AIDS, do you think your philosophy of free love is a viable philosophy? Surely the precautions that sannyasins have to take must take a lot of the enjoyment out of love.No, not at all. They have to take those precautions because of you – because of the world, because of society. Those precautions are not only against AIDS. AIDS is only symbolic of your whole world. And only in the beginning does it seem to be unnatural.It is as if you had gone to an aboriginal tribe where people lived naked; your clothes would seem very unnatural. They don’t seem unnatural to you, but the people who were living naked, and enjoying the sun and the sand and the wind wouldn’t be able to figure out what had happened to you and why you had a tie around your neck – are you thinking to commit suicide? They would not be able to figure out what had happened to the man.This situation is the same. The precautions in the beginning will look like precautions; within a few days they will become part of you. If it is cold you wear woolen clothes and you don’t think, “I have to wear this heavy cloth and…” You are not grumpy about it. But what to do – if the world is suffering from AIDS, and if I want to keep my sannyasins alive, then they have to get accustomed to it. It is only a question of getting accustomed.And remember, man has a tremendous capacity for adjustment to anything. He can live in Siberia, he can live in the hottest places in Africa. Only two creatures are so immensely adjustable: man and the cockroach. Wherever you find man, you will find the cockroach, except Rajneeshpuram.Yes?Yes!They don't have them here?You will not find a cockroach. And wherever you find a cockroach, it is almost certain you will find a man nearby. They have always coexisted and they are both capable of living in strange situations. The cockroach manages, perhaps it is more intelligent in many ways. There are a few species of cockroach which make love…before making love – and these are the real precautions that these people have been taking for centuries, from all diseases, from any kind of trouble. The man makes a new hole in the woman’s belly every time he makes love!Pretty drafty!Yes, and you can count those healed holes, to see how many times this woman has loved. He never goes in the same hole again, so he is always making love to a virgin. This I call intelligence.So there is no problem. My people have not complained – not a single person out of five thousand – that they are having any difficulty. They have understood the situation and they have to rise to the situation, to face it.And what we have done, every city and every country will have to do. We are the pioneers, and they will have to follow exactly the same procedures. If they don’t follow them they are going to be in a rotten state. And they had better do it soon, because the disease is really spreading fast in many areas of Europe, in America, in California, where thousands and millions of homosexuals are living.Something has to be done very quickly. But it seems all the leaders are simply trying not to pay attention to it – that is also a tendency of the human mind. If you are facing something which you cannot solve, then you try to avoid it, as if it is not there. But we are not in that category. If there is any problem, we take it as a challenge and we want to face it.Yes, I think a lot of world leaders are doing the ostrich and putting their head in the sand and pretending it will go away, or hoping it will go away, but it won't go away.It cannot go away. In fact, what they are doing may make the situation worse. For example, in Texas they have made a law that homosexuality is a crime. The homosexuals protested, went to the Texas supreme court and refused, saying that the law would stand against them. Because of their protest the world has come to know for the first time that there are one million homosexuals in Texas. And Texas must be the most backward state in America. What about California?Now, driving one million homosexuals underground – because you have turned them into criminals. Driving them underground is far more dangerous. They will continue and they will not come in any way for testing, checking, and they will go on spreading the whole thing around.I think the Supreme Court has done something wrong, the Texan leaders have done something wrong. Just by making it criminal, a disease does not disappear.That's right.It is not something that you just have to make a law against, and finished. And they are feeling very good that they have done something.They have done something dangerous.Yes, it does sound a bit stupid. Do you condone homosexuality in Rajneeshpuram?I don’t condemn. I tell them, you are victims and you don’t need any condemnation or punishment; you simply need therapy. And we have therapy groups here where you can be made natural again, heterosexual. As far as lesbians are concerned there is no danger, because they don’t create AIDS. So about lesbians I am not saying anything – if somebody wants to be a lesbian, that is perfectly good. Perhaps lesbianism will be the reason for humanity’s being saved one day.If all the males by and by become infected, then lesbianism seems to be one of the best ways to prevent humanity from dying. All women should stop making love to any man – husband or no husband. Lesbianism should spread through the whole human society; all women should become lesbians. That will be the best solution.And for the poor men…they should get tested. If they are still healthy and do not have AIDS, then they should start donating their semen to the hospitals. That semen can be inseminated in the women for new children.That's not living for today, though. That's not enjoying life, is it?It is not a question just of enjoying life, it is a question of enjoying everything. This is a great experiment – at least my people will enjoy. It would be really great to see all the women becoming lesbians, and all the male dodos and machos standing in a queue before the hospital – that’s what they need, they deserve!A rather…rather mind-boggling philosophy. Getting back to…some more mundane matters.Okay.Osho,The people in my home state are very worried about the Rajneeshee group. Have you any message for them? Can you allay their fears? Can you tell them something that might make them feel happier?I cannot. I can only say things that will make them more worried, because to me, to be truthful is more important than their worries. Their worries are their problem, and they are out of their ignorance. They should become acquainted with my approach and they would not see any cause for worry.Four years ago, when we came here, the whole of Oregon became agitated and frightened and hostile, and they started so many cases against us. We are defeating them in every case. In fact, a situation has come up where we are defending the constitution and they are going against it. And I have made it clear that we will stand for the American constitution, because it is one of the most beautiful constitutions in the world. Even if we have to fight against the whole of America…the constitution is more valuable than the whole of America because it has beautiful values, the hopes of the whole of humanity.They are unnecessarily worried. But somehow it seems to be human nature; with strangers you feel afraid. I am certainly, in every way, a stranger on every count. We cannot agree on any point. And I am ready, I have given them a challenge – to the governor or to the president, an open challenge to discuss anything they think we are wrong about: “We are ready to listen to you, and if we are wrong we are ready to change ourselves. But if we convince you that you are wrong, then be ready to be changed.” That takes the ground away from their feet. They know they are not right.For example, a commune of five thousand people has transformed a desert into an oasis in four years. Rather than coming here and seeing that we have changed the desert, which was for sale for fifty years and nobody was ready to purchase it – because what will you do with a desert? We changed the desert, and they are putting cases against us for the misuse of land. I used to think that idiots are spread all over the world, but finally I found they are all in Oregon!I've had a look at your farming community here and the way…Yes, just look.…you recycle things, and it's very, very good.We have been doing everything that… There was nothing here, just one dilapidated house, and we have created houses for five thousand people and we have created farms, greenhouses for vegetables, fruits. You will have a taste of our fruits. We have our own milk products.And without coming here they are… We have been inviting them, “At least you should come and see! If it goes against your law, then change your law, because man is not made for the law, laws are for man. We change the desert and we are criminals, because somehow it goes against your law. And before you were never talking about that law – for fifty years the land was not used, and it was perfectly lawful.”Five thousand people are living here, but they don’t want to accept it as a city. And they had accepted it, they incorporated it. For two years the state and the federal government were funding it as a city, and seeing my vision of life and my approach to life, they became so agitated and afraid that they declared the city illegal.So this is the only illegal city in the world. There are cities or there are no-cities, but an illegal city is unique. And we are going to win, because the city exists and they are denying it. And the amazing part is, in these four years not a single crime, not a single rape, not a single murder, not a single theft, not a single suicide, and this city is illegal. And New York and San Francisco are legal, where every moment there are crimes.So it seems that not to commit crime is illegal. If they force us, we should start committing crimes – what else to do?Osho,I was told that I would see armed guards patrolling the streets – I haven't seen any since I've been here. Do you still have armed guards?I have, because every day we receive phone calls that they are going to bring a crowd, to create a disturbance; they are going to burn our houses, they are going to create fire, and every day threats that they are going to kill me. We go on sending those reports to the government saying, “You should inquire and see who the illegal people are. We have not threatened anybody.”Those guards are police; they are part of the state of Oregon. And they are just there so nobody can create any nuisance.Preventive rather than…?Absolutely preventive, because for four years they have not done any harm to anybody.But they are sannyasins – the policemen are sannyasins?They are sannyasins; they have taken the police training. And the sannyasins topped in every training, in every field, and they proved their guts there too, and made it clear, “It is not going to be a easy thing, to do anything, if you are planning to do something against us.”We are harmless, we don’t want to do harm to anybody; but we will not let anybody harm us either, because that too is supporting violence.So you take all necessary steps to…?We will take every necessary step.Do you think one day it might lead to bloodshed?It is all in their hands, because the governor is keeping the army on the alert. It looks so stupid! We have invited him saying, “You should come and see these peaceful people, they don’t go out… The nearest neighbor is twenty miles away; we have nothing to do with anybody. We are living like a separate island and we don’t have to depend on anybody else. We have everything that we need – just come and see. And if you see that this is a place where you have to bring an army, you just tell us why, what is the reason.”But no, they don’t have the guts to come and see. And the day they had this secret meeting of all the government agencies’ chiefs, where they decided that the army should be kept on the alert so that within three hours they should be able to reach Rajneeshpuram – he did not allow any of our representatives. “You were discussing us, you wanted to take some decision about us – at least you should listen to our story too!” He did not allow it. He did not allow the press either.Press weren't allowed in?The press were not allowed, and he said, “I will talk to the press after the meeting.” And whatever he said was an absolute lie. He did not mention a single thing to the press of what had happened in the meeting, and whatsoever he mentioned to the press was not discussed inside the meeting. Just by chance a journalist managed to get the secret file, and it was shown on the television. Now we have got a copy from that journalist of a document in which they are preparing for a war.It seems so idiotic.Has the state governor visited here at all?No, none of those people who had been deciding in the meeting, none of them had been here. And every day we are in the news, every day on the television, in every magazine, every newspaper – it is not that anything here is hidden. They can come, and we invited them as our guests. But, no, they don’t want to come.You welcome visitors, don't you?I welcome visitors, because that’s the only way for the world to become acquainted with us.I was very impressed by your press organization here and your public relations and your chamber of commerce – they're very helpful and…Anything you see – we have tried the best we can within our circumstances.Osho,Sorry to go back to my home state, but would you like to establish a Rajneeshee community in West…?Certainly, we are establishing them everywhere around the world, how can we leave out Australia? That would be insulting to Australia!So you'll be fighting the legal moves that are being made?We are going to be there soon. Our people are already there, they just have to go to one place and make a commune. I have many Australian sannyasins. The question is just of having a good place so that they can have an independent commune. And it will be good for Australia to see the commune and to see how those people live and see, “Why are they so happy and why are we so miserable?”And in fact, intelligent Australians should help my people. Anything new should be helped, because perhaps this may be the alternative to the rotten society, to a civilization which is dying. So a chance must be given to any new thing. Rather than being hostile, be friendly. My people are very friendly, very loving.That's very good.Good.Osho,Thank you very much for answering my questions quite frankly.I enjoyed it.I really enjoyed it.Come back again whenever you feel like it.I must admit I felt a little bit nervous, but then…No, no, that happens to every journalist.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 21 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Ma Prem Isabel,Rajneeshpuram, OregonOsho,You have been interviewed on a daily basis by the world media for over a month. What role does the media have in your vision? Can somebody's life be changed by seeing you once on a television screen?It is possible. Life functions very mysteriously. Just seeing a picture, reading a certain statement, seeing my face on the television, may prove the triggering point. There are millions of people in the world who are just on the borderline. A little push or a little pull and they will have crossed the line.It is simply a matter of your heart being touched. It can be touched by anything, just my voice or just the gesture of my hand. It is unpredictable because what is going to happen to an individual’s heart, what is going to touch it, is difficult to say. Perhaps my silence – the pause that always happens between two sentences, or sometimes even in the middle of a sentence – may stir something which is already there. Just a little push, a little pull, and the person will never be the same again.And whatever he has tasted in that moment will grow, becoming a deep longing to come closer to me, to know more about me, to know more about the work that is happening, to know more about people who are around me. And these are the ways a person slowly enters into the energy field I am creating.Talking to the world media is not just publicity. I have had enough of it. It is in fact using new methods of reaching people’s hearts. So it does not matter what they ask, it does not matter what I answer. What matters is that people will be seeing my hands, my eyes, and they are bound to be affected – this way or that. Either they may fall into a certain love or they may start from that very moment to hate me. But whatever happens, hate or love, I have touched their heart.To change their hate into love is not difficult. The most difficult thing was to reach to their heart, which has happened. Those who are in love will be looking for books, tapes, videos, and those who are in hate, they will also be looking for the same things.And once a man becomes emotionally connected with me – as a friend, as an enemy – he is part of my people. The enemies also are part of me and my work. Sometimes they do more work than the friends, because they are continuously talking against me.Listening to them, many people start thinking, “Why are you so disturbed? If you are against, forget about the man.” But they cannot forget me either.And the people to whom they are talking about me will become interested, just as a curiosity in the beginning, but to change curiosity into a longing, a desire, a search, is not difficult. It happens almost automatically.Osho,You talk of changing the world by creating Rajneeshee oases all over, but sometimes even your own people misunderstand you or don't have the courage to live out your vision. Is it really possible?It is not only possible, it is going to happen. It is absolutely certain.It is not a question of people understanding me or not – even my own people may not understand me. There may be things which their old conditionings are still hindering them to understand. But it doesn’t matter. What makes me so certain that this transformation of man is going to happen, whether people understand me or not, is the very situation in which humanity has suddenly landed.It could have been predicted, but if they cannot understand now, it is impossible that they would have understood five thousand years ago. The seeds were in Moses, the seeds were in Manu, in Mahavira, in Jesus, in Zarathustra, in Krishna, in Gautam Buddha. What has happened was bound to happen. We are reaping the crop that humanity has been sowing for generations: stupid ideas, but once they become accepted, and for generations remain accepted and respectable, nobody inquires about them. For example, the idea of celibacy. For five thousand years in India it has existed as something spiritual that without celibacy there is no possibility of spiritual growth. And I am simply amazed that not a single person in five thousand years raised the question whether celibacy is possible – because it is not under your control. It is not your mind which can manage it. The mind has no connection with it.Life is far more intelligent. It has not left essential things for you to decide. For example your breathing: if it was left for you to decide, nobody would be alive. Sometimes you may hesitate whether to breathe or not, whether it is right or wrong, and sometimes you may simply forget. And what will happen when you will go to sleep?So it is absolutely wrong to say, “I breathe.” Breathing is not within your ego’s power. It happens on its own. Life breathes in you, and you have no control over it. Man has tried. In yoga, and in other methods in different religions, man has tried, but nobody has succeeded. You cannot succeed against life.The same is the question of celibacy, exactly the same. Just as breathing is needed for your life, sex is needed for humanity. Sex is as deeply concerned with humanity as breathing is concerned with you. It cannot be left in the hands of the individuals. There is no choice about it.And for five thousand years around the world the idea became permanently settled, so whoever was not celibate – and nobody has ever been celibate – started feeling guilty. He thought, “Others are able to manage, and only I am not able to manage it. I have a very weak personality, subhuman.” But he was not aware that that was the situation of all. They were all hypocrites. And just to keep that hypocrisy nobody was asking the simple question that if sex is a biological phenomenon, in the hands of life, how can you prevent it?It is possible for a woman to be celibate because her role in sex is that of a receiver. She does not give anything in it. She gets something.Man cannot be celibate, just the way no woman can avoid the period, the monthly menstrual course, there is no way. And you will be surprised to know that one of the oldest religions of the world, Jainism, has not allowed women directly, from women’s bodies, to enter into their paradise. So whatever the woman does – all her fasts, austerities, she can become a nun, she can renounce everything – all this will give her only a man’s body in the next birth, because only through a man’s body will she be able to enter into enlightenment. There is no way from a woman’s body.And what was the reason? The monthly period – because in the monthly period something comes out of the woman, and the woman cannot hide it. It is difficult for so many years to keep it a secret and pretend that it doesn’t happen, that you have controlled it completely. It is impossible. The blood is coming out of the body. How are you going to prevent it? And the pain and the misery?It was the monthly period that was given as the reason that women are not capable of controlling their bodies. They cannot rise above their bodies, so they cannot attain spirituality. But man…nobody asks what happens to his semen which is being created continuously by his food, exercise, breathing, whatever he is doing. It is a natural process, the same as the monthly period of the woman. But there is a possibility to keep it a secret. That’s how homosexuality entered into religions. That’s how masturbation entered into religions.It is strange that all the religions condemn masturbation, so much so that in India it is said by the religious leaders that the people who go mad, go mad because of masturbation. The reality may be otherwise. The people who go mad are the people who are not masturbating. The people who have been masturbating are simply releasing a certain force that goes on accumulating, and if it remains repressed inside you, it can drive you crazy.I said to one saint, “This seems to be absurd that masturbation leads people to madness, because the man who is masturbating, he is masturbating because of you. You have separated men and women so cunningly, particularly in India, that it is impossible to have any contact. And if a man is a bachelor – and he has to be a bachelor at least from fourteen to twenty-four, twenty-five years of age, and those are the most potential times. Near about eighteen he is at the highest peak of sexual energy, he will never again be so potent. Now what do you want him to do?”In the hostels he is bound to become a homosexual. If he is a poor man, he may start making love to animals. Or if nothing else is possible, he may masturbate. If he is afraid – because that can lead to madness – he may not masturbate, but his semen will be released in sleep. It cannot remain inside.Even Mahatma Gandhi at the age of seventy was having wet dreams, so what to say of others? And he was certainly a sincere man. Wrong about everything, but sincere. I never suspect his intentions. I criticize him totally on every single point, but he was a sincere man, honest; whatever he was doing he did it with totality.Forty years he struggled to remain celibate, and the only result was that he was having wet dreams. Certainly he would not become a homosexual, he would not make love to animals, he would not masturbate, because he believed that unless sexual energy is controlled your spirituality remains imperfect.That was the ancient idea that he was following blindly, without asking a relevant question: if you cannot control urination, how can you control your semen, which is being produced by you, by your body? And the body knows nothing about celibacy, there is no way to give the idea of celibacy to the body…so now there is no need to produce any sexual energy. There is no communication between the mind and the body in that way. These people have dominated humanity and given them idiotic ideas. One may ask why all these people gave the same idiotic ideas. There is a reason.The reason is to make spirituality a great challenge. The only way was to make man repress something which he cannot repress.Naturally he cannot deny God. He knows he cannot even manage celibacy, what right does he have to deny God, heaven, and hell? Those who are celibate are talking about experiencing God, realizing God, seeing God, even bringing messages from God. Give some idea which is impossible for humanity to do, so only hypocrites, cunning people will be able to pretend…That’s why there is a similarity in all the religions. Of one thing everybody was aware: life depends on reproduction. And life will not allow the power of reproduction to be given into the hands of individuals, because it is the most important thing. Individuals come and go, the river of life should continue. Hence sex is not within human power.Once this was known – and it was simple to know – then all the religions exploited humanity with it. And it gave such good returns. Tell people that celibacy is spiritual, then these are the results that will follow: one, everybody becomes guilty. And the guilty person is gullible, the guilty person wants to get rid of his guilt. He does not bother whether God exists or not, what he wants is to be freed from guilt. Then use God as the compassionate one, the ultimate forgiver; you just have to confess to his priest. Open your heart and confess your guilt, and you will be forgiven. They have created a very fictitious circle.A false principle of celibacy creates guilt. The guilty person feels burdened, he needs to be unburdened, and if God can help, if the Holy Bible can help, if the priest can help… He is willing to accept all of them because the feeling of guilt is tremendously painful. You fall down in your own eyes. You lose all respect for yourself.So it was easy for them to impose any fictitious ideas, and the guilty person cannot ask a question, because he is afraid if he asks questions and does not have faith, what is going to happen to his guilt, which he is accumulating every day, which is becoming bigger and bigger, a Himalayan load on his soul? He is ready to accept anything to get rid of this burden.So it was easy for the priests, for the religious leaders, to impose ideas of God, heaven, and hell, or anything. Different religions have used different things, but the basic secret is the same.Because he cannot follow celibacy he will become perverted. And to make man perverted means you have made him destroy his own individuality, freedom, his basic right to be proud of himself as a living, conscious being. Perverted, you have driven him into dark holes which lead nowhere. Every perversion leads to another perversion, because no perversion can be satisfying.Natural sex can be satisfying, but perverted sex is unable to satisfy because nature has no provision for it. You can eat through your mouth – nature has made that provision – but if you start eating through your nose, then of course there will be difficulties. Nature has not made your teeth in your nose. Nature has no idea what kind of pervert you are going to be.So no perversion is ever able to satisfy. Each perversion leads into another perversion; perhaps if this is not satisfying, the other one may be. And you go on farther and farther away from your natural instinct, which is the only place where you can get satisfaction, where you can relax and you can lose the tenseness of your being. But that is prohibited by your religion as sin.This is a very cunning strategy. That’s why when I say all these people have committed crimes against humanity, people get shocked because they don’t understand what I mean about what these people have done. They have sown the seeds of all kinds of psychological diseases.They have sown the seeds for poverty to remain in the world. They have consoled the poor. They have not allowed humanity to explore the material resources which are made available by life. Naturally, people have remained poor. For centuries how many million people have died, just because there was no food, no water? It is really a shame upon us all that it has been allowed, and it is being allowed still. Still nobody is raising his hand against these criminals who go on preaching against birth control, abortion…They are respected people, they are doing great service to life. That’s how they present the case. “Abortion is killing life” – but for abortion they are responsible because they prevented the pill. You did not allow people to use the birth control methods. Now the child is there, and the only possibility is either to abort the child or to have the child.One has to look into the strategies. First you condemn birth control – it is against God. If God wants to send more people to the earth, you should not prevent it. Now any intelligent person can say, “If God wants to send more people to the earth, then he should have a look at the earth.”It is already overpopulated; people are dying in thousands per day. Soon it will be more than five thousand per day. Can’t God see? Is he blind? He cannot understand a simple thing, that so many people are dying of starvation now, there is no need to send more people to the earth.And there are so many planets, millions of planets, millions of solar systems which are empty, lifeless, dead. Any sensible person would like to make other planets living, alive. And if your God can create the world, he can do anything. If the planet does not have water, he can send water, create water. If the planet does not have the right conditions for life, he can create them. He has created them. What is the point of having millions and millions of dead planets, and sending people here? Finally, these people will be the cause of the death of the whole planet.The pope is concerned about one person’s life, and he is responsible for abortion, all the abortions. Religious people are responsible for it because they are not allowing birth control methods. If birth control methods are applied, the question of abortion will not arise at all.And why should you be worried? If the pill can manage, and your God cannot do anything against the pill, certainly the pill should be worshipped from now on. God is impotent against the pill. In every church and temple and mosque you should keep bottles of pills to worship. That seems to be reasonable, because this pill is so powerful that the omnipotent God cannot do anything about it.So rather than doing the rational thing – worshipping the pill – these people are still roaming around telling people to give birth. Not to give birth is against God. They don’t know anything about God. Nobody has known anything about God ever.It is such a foolish notion, but we are reaping the crop of thousands of years of stupid religious leaders. Poverty is there, sickness is there, perversion is there, which has culminated in AIDS. And it is strange that the pope is not proposing anything to prevent AIDS.On the contrary, he is saying, and his followers are saying that it is a punishment against the homosexuals, as if the homosexuals have suddenly existed only in this last part of the twentieth century. Homosexuals have been here since the very beginning. And for thousands of years God never bothered about homosexuals, never punished them. In fact, most of the homosexuals were in the monasteries, spiritual leaders, spiritual guides to people. It took so many thousand years for God to make the decision that now homosexuals should be punished. This God seems to have a great bureaucracy. The file has been moving for thousands of years, and now comes the judgment.And in the first place you create the homosexual, you create the perversion. If AIDS is going to be the punishment, then all the priests and the bishops and the cardinals and the rabbis and the Hindu monks and the Buddhist monks, these should be the people to suffer from AIDS, because they are the causes of it. This is very unfair. There is no justice behind it: victims are being punished, and the people who created the whole phenomenon will be rewarded in paradise.From many directions these things have gathered to a point where either people have to listen to me or they have to accept global suicide. So it is not just a theoretical question anymore, it is something existential. That’s why I think whether anybody understands or not, the world situation itself is forcing the intelligentsia to understand it clearly. They will have to understand it!And there is nobody else who is giving any alternative, because nobody has the guts to accept all the condemnation that will come. But I am immune to condemnation, because except condemnation nothing has ever come to me. So it does not bother me at all. I have not lost a single moment’s sleep for it. I have never thought about it.I have gone on saying whatsoever feels right to me. Nobody has answered me in these thirty years, but everybody from every religion, from every political ideology, has condemned me. They have given no argument against my argument, nor have been able to propose another alternative.If they propose a better alternative I will be the first one to accept it, because it is not a question of me or you; it is a question of the whole life of the planet: centuries of painting and poetry, centuries of music, of literature, of philosophy, of high flights of intelligence, logic, and reason.Everything would be simply erased. Life was doing such a tremendously important experiment here, and the whole universe around dead. This small earth may be very small in size, but in significance this is the most significant planet in the whole universe, because this is the only planet which has not only life, but has consciousness. Not only consciousness, but it has reached in a few people to the ultimate flowering of consciousness I call enlightenment.It should not be destroyed. It took millions of years for life to grow to such a point where a few people at least can become enlightened. We can hope that if life survives, a day will come when we have many, many people enlightened, and perhaps one day the whole humanity. That day will be the greatest day in the history of the universe, when the whole planet is enlightened.That’s why I am so certain that they will have to accept it. They will have to understand it, even against their will. Otherwise they have to choose a global suicide.So I am in a very fine position, because the alternative is such that nobody is going to choose it. We just have to make it clear to the world what the alternatives are, that these are the two alternatives. Your old world, your old ideologies have brought you to the climax where life cannot continue any more. We are not at all rooted in the past. We have only future, no past. You have only past and no future.We have to make it clear to them that what we are doing is creating a new man, because the old man has failed, utterly failed. All his efforts have led nowhere. And at least when you are dying, let us, give us a chance. At the most we may also be failures, that’s the worst that can happen. But you will not be a loser anyway-you were going to die. So we have to make the whole world aware that we are proposing an alternative to the old rotten structure which is dying, every day dying and coming closer to final death. Before it dies we can save the intelligent group of young people from this dying structure. If the old people are too old and cannot change, nothing to be worried about – they were going to die anyway – but the whole humanity should not die with them.If we can save only the youth around the world, that’s enough. Just Adam and Eve created the whole world. If we can save the youth, we can repopulate the world with new beings, higher in every possible way, better in every possible way. And we will not commit the same mistakes that have been committed in the past.Osho,How can people turn the human phenomenon of falling in love into a meditation?It is the easiest way. In human life, love is the closest phenomenon to meditation. The moment you fall in love with someone, what actually happens? What transpires between those two who have fallen in love with each other? They drop their egos – at least for each other. They drop their hypocrisies, their masks. They want to be together, almost one soul within two bodies. That’s the desire of love.And this is a beautiful moment to change it into a meditation. Just nobody has ever told them. In fact, just the opposite has been told to them: that love is against meditation, so people who are falling in love can never become meditators.The same people who make celibacy spiritual make love unspiritual, something dirty, condemned. But to me things are totally different. Love helps you to relax, which is part of meditation. Love helps you to be joyous, which is part of meditation. Love helps you, for a few moments at least, to be silent, which is the essential part of meditation. And finally, making love, if you attain to an orgasmic experience, gives you a glimpse of what meditation is, but it is millions of times more than this.So to me love is a basic experience which can help you to become meditators. The old religions have been preventing it, and they have been preventing it for a certain reason. If people can transform their love into meditation, then the priests and the churches and the synagogues are no more needed, then people are totally free. No spiritual leadership is needed. And there are millions of priests around the world, like parasites on humanity. And naturally they will give you wrong ideas, against love, and they will give you ideas for meditation, but because you don’t have the basic experience…Love is just like when you enter into a swimming pool, step by step you are going into deeper water. Then the floor of the swimming pool is divided in two parts, one for those who cannot swim, so the water is up to your neck, and then the second part for those who can swim.But those who want to learn swimming have to learn in the first part, which is not for swimmers. They have to learn it there. Once they have learned, then slowly they will gather courage and enter into deeper water, because for a swimmer it does not matter how deep the water is; the swimmer is always on the surface. The water may be a hundred feet deep, five hundred feet deep, or five miles deep, it makes no difference to the swimmer. It makes a difference only to the non-swimmer. Beyond five feet, everything is death. But the swimming pool is one – shallow, deep – it is one. And the boundary line is only a line until you learn to swim.To me, love and meditation are just like that. Love is the shallow space in a swimming pool, for those who cannot meditate. But that is the place to learn meditation. And it is the same pool, it is the same water, it is the same kind of phenomenon. You are just unable to go deeper because you have been made afraid even to enter into it. The shallow part has been condemned, and you have been told to jump into the deeper part without knowing how to swim.So they disturbed your love life by condemnation and they disturbed your meditative life by sheer strategy: because you don’t know swimming, you cannot go so deep. And you don’t have any experience of silence, peace, sheer joy, a little bit of ecstasy, something orgasmic – these will give you the hints how meditation is not a myth. You have tasted it a little bit. It is the same energy field, just you have to go deeper into it.What actually happens when one couple moves into the realm of orgasmic experience? What actually happens? Every point has to be understood. Time stops. For a moment the pendulum does not move, and that single moment seems to be almost eternity. The two persons are no more two – for a moment. They have melted into each other. There is no thought in the mind, for a moment. It is all empty and silent, and these are the things which have to be deepened in meditation.And once you have tasted them, you will be surprised that it does not depend on the other person. Something happens within you. Something happens within the other person. But it is not dependent. If you can sit silently, if you can manage, by watching your thoughts, to bring a gap, a stop, you will suddenly see time has stopped again. And now it is in your hands, not in the hands of biology. You can keep this time stopped as long as you want. And once you know the secret key…The key is: no thoughts, no ego, no time – you just are.That’s why I have never been against love. I have been much condemned for it, naturally, because I was cutting the very roots of the business of all the religions.Every religion is against me. Their profession depends on condemning love and praising meditation. They know you cannot attain to meditation, and they know now your love is condemned, it is a sin. You will never experience any orgasmic phenomenon, so meditation will remain just a philosophy, and your life will remain loveless, angry, full of rage, ready to explode at any excuse. Because where will your energy go?It could have become peace, silence, joy, blissfulness. You did not allow it to become that. That repressed energy turns into poison. That’s why everybody is irritable, annoyed, worried, tense. The simple reason is that they have lost the natural source of relaxation.No animal looks irritated, annoyed, angry, because they don’t understand the language the priests speak. They have never heard that celibacy is spiritual. Of course they cannot attain to meditation, but they are far better than those human beings who could have attained meditative heights, but have lost even the simple biological experience of orgasm.Those are simply indications of your possibilities, potentialities. And it is easier to experiment with something natural in the beginning and then to try something which is supernatural, which belongs to higher nature.And once you know how to be silent, how to be thoughtless, how to be in a state of no time, no mind, you experience such orgasmic joy, which has nothing to do with sex, it has such purity and such innocence. A man who has attained to that purity and innocence has no need of sex. It is no more a psychological problem for him, but there is no prohibition either. He can enjoy sex too, and he will enjoy it more than anybody else, because his orgasm will immediately become meditative.Having experienced the meditative orgasm – such a bigger phenomenon – his sexual orgasm will immediately trigger the bigger orgasm. He can play with sex. There is no harm in it. There is no need, but there is no prohibition either. It is up to him.The meditative orgasm absorbs your sexual energy, because you don’t have any other energy. Your whole energy is sexual energy, and that vast explosion of joy simply absorbs all your energy. Hence, you need not become a pervert, you need not make an effort to remain celibate. It is just your choice.If you want to play old games once in a while, it is perfectly good. In fact, perhaps it should be a part of every enlightened man’s life to have sex once in a while, because that will change the attitude of the whole world about sex.Without that, it is very difficult to change. Then they can see that even an enlightened person can enjoy sex. There is nothing sin – like in it. And it will join the enlightened man and unenlightened man in a bridge. At least on one point, both experience the same thing. And the enlightened one can guide the unenlightened to bigger orgasms. Start with this small one, but don’t stop here.Love is a natural kind of meditation. And meditation is a supernatural kind of love.Osho,The press in communist countries seems to make the same accusations about you as the press in capitalist countries does. Would you comment on that?They are not basically different. The capitalists and the communists are in the same relationship as father and son. Capitalism is the father, communism is the angry son, a son who has turned hippie. It is a by-product of capitalism.So first, they are not as antagonistic as it appears. Communism is a state capitalism, that’s the only difference. Capitalism allows people to have capital separately, individually. In fact, that too is more of a show than a reality.For example, half of Oregon’s land belongs to the federal government of America. Now what kind of capitalism is this? And they are making efforts to have the federal government own all the land in Oregon. The politicians’ fear of our being here is basically rooted in this point.Other things are not real. The real idea before we came here was: half the land they already own, and the other half they wanted to purchase from individuals, so they could make Oregon into a nuclear shelter. That’s why they are so much against us, because we are just in the middle of their nuclear shelter. They don’t want any stranger here, and we are stranger than strangers can be. In everything we are stranger.So they want to throw us out of Oregon. They cannot do it because of their hypocrisy. Otherwise their mask will slip down and they will be exposed to the whole world. So they want to do it in such a way that it appears legal, but that is where they are wrong. Legally they cannot do anything against us, because whatever we are doing, we are doing absolutely in accordance with the American Constitution.It is a strange situation: we are foreigners to them but we are going to fight for their Constitution against them, because they are prostituting it. And their fear is certainly real. They cannot face us in the Supreme Court, and they cannot face us before the world.And now they have become even more frightened because in four years they have not been able to do anything, and they are losing every case because all their cases are bogus, meaningless, stupid. And they are all against the democratic values of respecting individuals, individual property, respecting freedom, freedom of expression, respecting the minority – not only respecting, but protecting the minority.We are the smallest group in America. They cannot find a group which is smaller than us, a commune of just five thousand people. If this is not a minority, then what is? And if the Constitution exists to protect the minority against the majority then the Constitution is in our favor.If the Constitution stands for individual property, then they should forget completely that Rajneeshpuram can ever be federal government land. If it respects individuals, does not make any discrimination between religions, then their discriminatory behavior against us – which we can prove with evidence – is enough to expose their whole conspiracy.The very approach of our commune is neither communist nor capitalist. Our approach is beyond both, both are out of date. If we have to choose between the two, between communism and capitalism, I will choose capitalism because at least it gives freedom to the individual, freedom of expression, freedom to own things.It is something tremendously significant to understand, that if all your belongings are taken away from you by the government and they belong to the state, and you are left alone, naked, they have destroyed a major part of your individuality. Your belongings are, in a subtle way, extensions of your individuality: your clothes, your style of wearing those clothes, your house, your furniture, your way of keeping your house clean or unclean, your garden. If everything belongs to the state and nothing belongs to you, you are just a naked animal who has been robbed completely. That is what they do in Soviet Russia.For example, when Sakharov received the Nobel prize and accepted it against the government’s will… He was the director of the Soviet academy of sciences and is thought to be the most brilliant physicist today, who has gone higher and deeper than Albert Einstein, the best mind alive as far as physics is concerned. They immediately removed him from his directorship, his car was taken away, his salary was reduced from one thousand rubles to five hundred rubles. His chief called him and told him, “Listen, you are one person in millions of people who has a personal car. To have a personal car in the Soviet Union is a dignity, but you will have to lose it, and you will have to lose the house. You cannot live in this big, beautiful mansion anymore. Your directorship is gone.”And within fifteen days he was sent to Siberia. He is still alive. The best mind in the world is doing nothing. He does not even know that you can change your doing nothing into meditation. He is not aware of it. He will die there, nobody will know when he lived and when he died.But the first thing they did was take away the car to make him go in the buses. They reduced his individuality, made him a member of the common mass. Then they took away the beautiful old czarist mansion and sent him into an ordinary quarter where other laborers live.Communism is anti-individual. It is basically state capitalism. Everything is owned by the state, but this is only theory, because the state does not exist. State means the clique, the gang, the mafia that is in power. And for sixty years the same gang has remained in power. People have changed, but the gang has remained the same. If there are twenty people who are powerful in the Soviet Union, those twenty people have remained the same. One dies, and another is replaced by the other nineteen unanimously. That’s why the circle remains the same. And anybody who comes to replace someone is chosen by the older group unanimously – otherwise not.So for sixty years a small group of people has owned everything in the country. There is no freedom for the press; only the government publishes books, newspapers, magazines. The people cannot even know whether what is printed is true or false. There is no way to compare it. People cannot even listen to radio stations from outside. If they are caught it is a great crime. They can be thrown into jail for five years, ten years. Nobody can even listen to foreign countries. Mostly it is impossible because no foreign country releases information in Russian, and in Russia – except for a few other small language groups – only Russian is understood. They cannot understand anything from the outside world. The language is the barrier.Secondly, if they are caught red-handed they are unnecessarily risking their life for a little information. Who wants to do that? They cannot read books of their own choice. For example, my books are banned. And the KGB has been against my sannyasins there, taking all their books, newspapers, photographs, and everything concerning me, and torturing and persecuting and interrogating them continuously to inform about other members, to inform who are the other people connected with this movement who have any other literature.Now this kind of a society is inhuman. In Russia it is impossible even for Karl Marx to be born again, because he was a free thinker. England allowed him to publish his books against England, against capitalism. Russia would not allow him to publish a book against Russia and against communism. So in these sixty years Russia has not given any geniuses; and this is important to remember, because before the revolution Russia was one of the countries with the most potential for producing geniuses.The best novelists were Russians. If you make a list of the ten greatest novelists in the whole history of the world, the first five have to be the Russian ones. There is no other way, because they produced the best novels, poetry, painting. All that creativity has been destroyed. In sixty years not a single Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky. Not a single person comparable to these has been able to assert himself.The only way for genius to move is towards science, and that too has to remain unknown to the whole world. Sakharov was not known before the Nobel prize was declared. Nobody knew that a man existed who had gone deeper into the physical world than Albert Einstein. Now this man belongs to the whole world. He is not a property of Russia. Genius cannot be a property of any nation, and a genius of such caliber is simply rotting in Siberia. And he is not alone there, there are three other Nobel prize winning scientists. Nobody had ever heard their names till they received the Nobel prize.Russia does not want anybody outside to know who are the important people in the country, for fear that they may be contacted or bribed, and they think of the Nobel prize as a bribe. So the man becomes world famous, the man goes to Sweden to take the Nobel prize, comes in contact with world media, world scientists, comes to see the outside world and find out that Russia is thousands of years backwards. In Russia he was told that they are living the latest philosophy, communism, and outside they see what is happening, how people are free.So they don’t want anybody to go out of Russia. This Nobel prize becomes an excuse for him to go out. They refuse, but their refusal makes the man famous around the world. And if he disobeys, he is thrown into jail, thrown into a mental hospital, thrown into Siberia, and then nobody hears anything about him. This is a criminal society.So if I have to choose between communism and capitalism, I will certainly choose capitalism. Howsoever hypocritical, howsoever politically dishonest a system it is, it still gives loopholes so individuals can assert themselves, so people can show their minds, can connect with other people around the world. And even though the politicians may be corrupted, they can be dragged to the courts, which are quite fair – particularly the Supreme Court, because no politician can do any damage to any judge of the Supreme Court.The Constitution provides every protection to the Supreme Court. Once a person is made a judge in the Supreme Court, he is made one for his whole life, so you cannot retire him, you cannot demote him, you cannot punish him, you cannot do anything against him. So he has no fear. He need not be unfair. The Supreme Court of America perhaps is the fairest court in the whole world. It can give judgments against the president without any fear.But this is if I am given the choice only between the two. Otherwise I have my own idea of a different society. I call it meritocracy. It should not be state ownership, communism. It should not be a cunning, criminal, political system behind the masks of democracy.Otherwise how do you explain that in a democratic country like America, Nixon is possible? And Nixon reminds me of Mao Zedong’s remark. When Nixon resigned, Mao Zedong could not believe it. He said, “This is strange. Every politician is doing the same everywhere. I am doing it here. Why are these people so much against it? And why do the courts and the newspapers have so much power?” But Nixon happened. Perhaps every politician is doing it, Mao is right, but Nixon was caught. Others are not caught.So I don’t want a system in which it is possible for a person like Nixon to reach to the highest post in the country. I do not want a system like in America where twenty percent of the presidents have been murdered, where Kennedy was murdered, where his brother, who was running for the presidency was murdered, and his other brother – and there are only three brothers – is threatened that if he runs for the presidency, he will be assassinated.The poor woman, the mother of these three Kennedys, is ninety years old. She has seen the death of two sons-young, immensely intelligent. She knows the third has the capacity to become president, but she has taken a promise from the third: “While I am alive, you should not run, because it will be too much. I have suffered too much: the two deaths of my two sons. You are my last son, I would not like you dead before my eyes. Let me first die, then you are free, you can run for president.”Now this kind of country, where criminals are ruling and people who can do immense good for the country are prevented… Who is preventing them? Who killed the two Kennedys? Who is threatening the third one? And why are they not killing Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan? Nobody bothers. But it is simple: anybody, any group, any gang, who has killed the Kennedys is somehow connected with Ronald Reagan, with Nixon.Nixon did everything wrong and he was not shot, and Kennedy was not doing anything wrong. In fact, because he was trying to do something good, he was shot. This is a very corrupted state of affairs.My political system is totally different. I call it meritocracy, because it will depend on merit. It will not be a political system, it will not have any political parties. People will be running for posts on their own merit. And each individual will decide on his own, because no political party will be pressurizing him. There will be no political party at all – individual to individual – no gang will be allowed.And anybody who is chosen is chosen because of his merit. If you choose a secretary for finance, then you will choose the best economist in your country.This does not happen at all. People who don’t know anything of economics become finance secretaries, ministers. People who don’t know anything about education become education ministers. In India I knew a man who was just an idiot. He knew nothing about medicine and he became the health minister. In a meritocracy this type of man can never become a health minister, because there will be more qualified people running for the post. Vice-chancellors who have an experience of the whole of life will be standing for the post of the education minister.No political parties, because they pressurize. They accumulate money, they gather people into a certain group, make them faithful to a certain ideology, almost like religion. Political parties are dangerous just as religions are dangerous. I want religion to be individual. It is an individual search for truth, and politics is an individual search for a better society, better culture.In meritocracy, my idea is to have communes rather than cities, communes rather than families. Families should dissolve, pour all their energies into one pool. Big cities should become divided into small communes, running their affairs on their own. The whole country becomes a country of communes, not of cities.These communes will not enforce any kind of equality, which is being done in communist countries. But on the contrary, these communes will try to become as wealthy as possible, so the wealth is more than enough, more than needed. And everybody can have according to his need. I believe in abundance, I don’t believe in poverty.And I believe that man is capable of creating immense wealth. He has just to be given the right opportunity. Wealthy communes – still no enforcement of equality, although without enforcement, out of love and compassion and friendship there will arise a different kind of equality. Nobody will think about it.Now here everybody is eating the same food, equal. But we are not bragging that this is communism. This is simply human, that everybody who is here is part, an essential part of the commune, and should receive the same food, should receive, as far as possible, everything that he needs: medical care, recreation, entertainment.But this is not forced. It has to come by itself Just as there is enough air – nobody keeps it locked inside the house because sometimes air may be scarce and he may die of the scarcity of oxygen, so he should keep something stored. There is enough air. In the same way, there should be more than enough of everything available to everybody, without any discrimination: no political party, no religious party. Communes – living out of love, no families, no equality imposed, but an equality coming on its own, just out of sheer love and brotherhood.And finally, no crime should be punished. Every crime should be treated as a disease, a sickness of the mind.And if meritocracy spreads all over the world, there is no need for nations. If you can have the best mind to be the education minister of the whole world, then why have a third-class mind just because he happens to be an Oregonian or American?All that is essential – academic institutions, scientific academies, art, everything that is useful – should be international. Its branches can be all over the world, but it should be in the hands of the best people, the geniuses.It is really amazing that an art school will exist, but Picasso will not be accepted as the director of it. They will accept his painting for millions of dollars, and somebody who is not known by anybody, not a single painting of his has been sold or exhibited in any exhibition, remains the director of the art institute, just because he has a degree, knowledgeability. But painting does not depend on knowledgeability. Otherwise, Mozart cannot be a director of a music institute, Nijinsky cannot be a director a dance institute, because these people have no knowledge, no degrees. But they have merit. They have experience, they have the magic, the charisma.All the institutions of the world should be in the hands of charismatic people. There are always enough charismatic people, but they are not allowed in the competition, for many reasons. These charismatic people are rebellious, so they rarely manage to get a university degree. Long before, they are expelled.These charismatic people know too much, no institution can teach them any more, so there is no point in joining those institutions and wasting time. But then they cannot become directors. It is an ugly world, because we should like people like Mozart to be music directors. They will encourage their students to imbibe the spirit of music. Their third-rate students will be thrown out, and one who is accepted by Mozart has already got the degree, by his acceptance, by his entrance.So my vision is the whole world finally becoming a meritocracy, but before the world becomes a meritocracy, nations should begin. Meritocracy will have all that is beautiful in democracy and all that is beautiful in communism. And it will not have all that is ugly in communism and all that is ugly and phony in democracy.And it is time to give a chance to something new.Okay, Isabel.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 22 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Bunte,Offenburg, West GermanyBoy, would my one-year-old daughter love you! It's quite an entrance, a lot of fun.This is my very first interview. I'm glad that it could be with you. I'm usually hiding behind a camera.The first few questions I have were given to me by Bunte editors directly and they were sent here, and then I have a few questions of my own.Okay.Osho,Since when have you been aware of the dangers of AIDS?It was going to happen some day. It is something to do with how life functions. Life functions through polarities. The opposite poles create the tension for life. Life is a tension, death is a relaxation.It is just like positive electricity and negative electricity: if both are not functioning together there will not be any electricity. So in existence, opposites are really not opposites but complementaries. The same is the case with bioenergy: man and woman are positive and negative poles. Their meeting is the meeting of positive and negative energy. It is creative of life.So even before AIDS became known, I was aware that homosexuality is spreading fast. Sooner or later something very dangerous is going to happen, because homosexuality means there is no tension; man and man are the same poles. They can only create death, not life.I have always been telling people to move in their natural, biological sex relationships – man to woman. But about AIDS I became aware just last year, that that of which I was always afraid has come. It was bound to come sooner or later. It is a by-product of homosexuality. And homosexuality is a religious disease: if anybody is responsible for it, it is the founders of all the religions. They have committed this crime, perhaps unknowingly, because first they told people that celibacy is something spiritual, which is sheer nonsense.Celibacy is impossible. Nobody has ever been a celibate, unless he was impotent. But the most surprising thing is that the impotent people have not contributed anything to human progress, evolution. They have never been creative; they are just hollow, they have no potency to create.The religious people were teaching a forced impotency which is against biology. And whatever your ideology may be, there is no way to convey the ideology to your physiology, biology, your chemistry – there is no way. Once you have eaten the food, you cannot tell your stomach what to do with it. And it is good that it is beyond your control. Once you have swallowed it, it is beyond your control. Your body knows perfectly well what to do with it.You may take the vow of celibacy, but your biology is not even aware that you are a Christian monk or a Hindu monk or a Buddhist monk. Your biology goes on functioning the same way as before. It goes on creating male sperms in you, in millions, because nature depends on your not being a celibate. It is good that Buddha’s father was not celibate; it is good that Mohammed’s father was not celibate. If these people had been celibate, the world would have missed two very colorful people.Nature wants you to be alive, hence it has kept in its own control the basic elements in your life – for example, breathing. It is not up to you to breathe or not to breathe; otherwise sometimes you may forget. In sleep you are bound to forget, and then in the morning there will be nobody to breathe. So about breathing, no one can say, “I am doing it.” It is existence that breathes in and out, and you are not in control of it, because breathing is so essential for your life – it cannot be left in your unconscious hands.What breathing is to a single individual, reproduction is to the race. Individuals come and go, but humanity has to continue. Life has to continue. It cannot depend on individuals’ decisions, because they are only temporary. They will be here only for the time being; their decisions cannot be of any value.So celibacy, sexual energy, the power to reproduce, has been kept in the hands of life itself. You cannot do anything about it.You said before that this was something that had to happen sooner or later.Yes.And a question I have here, I ask why now? Why not in the fifties, why not in the sixties or seventies? Why right now?There are reasons. First, everything has to reach a particular climax. You don’t ask why water evaporates at a hundred degrees – why not at ninety-eight and why not at ninety, and why not at a hundred and one? It is simply something that is not in our hands. Everything happens at a certain point, at a certain climax, and there is no question of a reason why, because there is nobody to answer it.No scientist can answer it, why water evaporates at a hundred degrees – there is no reason! It could have been ninety-nine. And there is nobody to ask about it. We have to accept it as a fundamental law of existence.Asking about homosexuality…why it did not happen in the sixties, in the fifties, is pointless, because if it had happened in the sixties you would have asked the same question then too: Why did it not happen in the forties? It is irrelevant. Whenever it has happened, that means that now it has touched the evaporating point.And do you feel that homosexuals were the first to suffer because their unnatural way would leave them most susceptible? Is that something that might naturally or logically follow?It will follow logically, because what they are doing is absolutely perverted. And the consequence is going to be something that is not a disease – because I don’t call AIDS a disease – it is just a slow death. A disease is curable. Death is the only phenomenon which is incurable.And now the scientists all over the world have accepted the fact that there is no cure for AIDS. So AIDS is no longer a disease; it is death, just slow death.Let me ask a question that I have regarding that, that's a statement you made the other day in discourse. I think it would be fitting if I were to ask that now. You said in discourse a few days ago that AIDS is not a disease, it is death; that the scientists say there will never be a cure. Don't you feel this is quite a negative statement or assessment, just as I'm sure a hundred years ago people said that man would never fly, let alone set foot on the moon?No, it is not so. That was simply ignorance, and the people who said it simply said it because it had not happened before.But couldn't you say the same thing about a cure for AIDS?No, because if you understand the situation of AIDS…the situation is that it is not a disease that needs any medicine, any operation; it is really the death of the will to live. Deep down the person has lost his will to live, and there is no medicine which can create the will to live.I had heard that you had said, mostly as it pertained to homosexuals, that there was a loss of polarity in their lives. But how about those who are unwittingly infected, from homosexuals – normal, heterosexual people?I certainly would have the will to survive. I would hate to be infected from some kind of contact with a homosexual, but I would have that will to survive. Could I overcome that if there was even some, some sort of medicine that might help or prolong or who knows what – whether it was Interferon or who knows what that they've had some success with. Would my will to survive help me?I don’t think so, because the will to die is far more powerful than the will to survive. Ordinarily just the opposite is the case: your will to die remains dormant and your will to survive and live remains active. If you become infected from somebody whose will to live has died, and the will to die has become the dominant factor, he will provoke your will to die, which is very powerful because it has been dormant and never active.Your will to live is exhausted, tired; you may like to live, but you have been using that will, that energy, that power. You have never used your will to die. That has remained dormant there, underneath. In fact, Sigmund Freud was the first man to discover that man has a wish for death. Before him it was not even a known fact that there is something like the will to die.You can become infected only because your will to die is so powerfully there, ready to explode, that just a small infection is needed to make it creative. It will spread fast, and your will to life is exhausted, tired, old, spent. It is almost hoping against hope that there will be some way to survive once you are positive, an AIDS patient.What it actually does when the will to live disappears: you become vulnerable to every kind of disease. Ordinarily, whenever a disease attacks you, your body, your will to live, creates antibodies to fight with it. But when the will to live is almost dead or dying, or is fighting for its own survival – and instead of the will to live, on the throne is the will to die – then any infection is welcome. No antibodies will be created in you.This is the problem: your body is no longer fighting against any infection.So then this community, it seems, is the only one in the world that's going out of its way to avoid it.Certainly. It is the only…a unique community.So does the world want to die – is that what you're saying?And we are trying the same methods in our other communes around the world. Our communities will be the shelters for anybody who really wants to save himself.So you suggest…are you suggesting that the will of the world is in a sense looking to die?The whole world… In fact it is not only through AIDS – that is only one side of the story. The other side is that the world itself is preparing for a global death. So the attack is double-sided: from the individual…every individual is preparing for death; and the nations and the countries and the politicians, they are preparing with nuclear weapons. We are in a very unique time, pushed from every side towards self-destruction.Unless something helps people to rejoice in life, to dance and sing and love – which religions have crippled; that’s why I say they are the criminals… They have all been against life in some way or other, more or less. They want to renounce this life in favor of a future life after death. They don’t want you to enjoy, they don’t want you to laugh, they don’t want you to dance, they don’t want you to eat tastefully, they don’t want you to drink – they don’t want you to do anything that gives you joy. They want you to do things which are boring, utterly futile – stupid yoga exercises in which you are just torturing your body unnecessarily. There is no need; nothing is going to be gained by it. Fasting is religious, feasting is not, and if you can fast long you become a great saint – and all that you have done is repress your natural hunger.Everything that makes life worth living has been condemned. Poverty has been praised, comfort has been condemned. For thousands of years these people have been preparing you against life. My effort in the communes is to revive your will to live and to rejoice in it without any guilt.In Indian religions there are five basic principles. The first is aswad; it means tastelessness – you should eat but you should not enjoy the taste. If you enjoy the taste you are committing a sin. Now this type of teaching is going to destroy people in both ways: if they enjoy the taste they feel guilty and that becomes a wound; if they don’t enjoy the taste of food, much of the joy of their life is lost.The second is celibacy. Food and sex are very deeply connected, because food keeps you alive and sex keeps the race alive. So the second is sex – remain celibate. Now a person who cannot remain celibate – and nobody can – is bound to become frustrated, perverted, guilty, to feel himself a sinner. Life becomes a sin.Christians say you are born in sin. You need not do anything; you are already born in sin, because Adam and Eve committed the original sin, and you are their descendants and you are still carrying the same sin. Very strange! We don’t know when Adam and Eve existed, whether they ever were or not, or whether it is just a myth or a reality. And in fact, I cannot see there was any sin in what they did. To try to know, to become wise, is a sin! – then what is virtue? Those poor fellows just ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge – that is a sin – and they were going to eat the fruit of eternal life, but were prevented and thrown out of heaven. What sin is there in being eternally alive? The biblical story is significant: religions don’t want people to be wise, they don’t want people to live. There is somewhere, deep down, support from God himself, from the biblical story, for your will for death.If life is sin…and this has been told you continuously for thousands of years, and slowly, slowly it has penetrated your unconscious – one thing. The second thing: all the religions have forced people that if you cannot be a celibate, then get married. And monogamy has been the rule. It is something unnatural. One gets fed up with everything. If every day you have to eat the same food, three times every day the same food, how long can you remain unbored? Soon you will be bored. If you are bored with the woman you are tied to, you cannot say it but in every action, in every word, in every reaction it will be there. And so is the case with the woman: she is bored with you. But she is dependent, financially dependent; she had been prevented from education, she has children to look after… So you are tied to each other. Naturally, this is not…marriage is not a natural institution, it is a forced institution.Man would love to change women, women would love to change men. And then they will be more rejoicing, more loving, and more wanting to live as long as possible. Marriage has killed their sexual joy; celibacy has made them perverted, homosexuals. Marriage has also played some part in making people homosexuals, because the woman will not tolerate the man even looking at another woman – but as far as boys are concerned, they can go together, there is no problem. The woman is not aware that they will be doing the same nasty things!Religion created marriage, religion created celibacy, and both created perverted sexuality. In my commune marriage is just a legal game, because idiots are holding the power, so okay – just play according to their rules. But remember that it is unnatural.I was under the impression that you're encouraging marriage amongst people too.No.Especially in the light of the problem with AIDS and so forth, so that people become closer, and with one person? No?I don’t encourage marriage because marriage means boredom.So it's a legal game?So just legally they can be married, but spiritually they should be free, and they should be moving. And the basic religious teaching should be: drop jealousy and allow freedom – to anybody you love. It is your duty to make him happy and joyous. If he is becoming bored, it is good for both of you to be free. Remain legally married – no harm. If fools are making rules and they are in power, nothing can be done about it. But we can find a way – any intelligent person can find a way.In my commune marriage is just a game; otherwise whosoever wants whomsoever, they are free…and no prevention. That’s why they are so joyous – because they are not bored. Every day a new dish!A new…?A new dish! If they learn Chinese, Japanese…Okay.Every day a new restaurant! And in fact, it is human. If the husband is happy, if the wife is happy, perhaps once in a week they can be again in deep love without being bored. It is better to have authentic love one time, once a week, than to have seven days of just boredom and no love at all. And you are bound to hate the person who is keeping you bored, and you are bound to hate yourself also, that you are such a coward that you cannot get out of this imprisonment.So marriage has helped homosexuality, because the women won’t suspect it. Celibacy has created homosexuality in the monasteries – in Buddhists in Christians, in Jainas, in Hindus – everywhere. And all this has come to a point because anything that is unnatural can never give you contentment. That can be taken as a fundamental law: anything unnatural cannot give you contentment; it will only give you frustration.So man moved into homosexuality, and naturally women followed, because they are now for equality, into lesbianism. Both are frustrated, but women are less frustrated for the simple reason that this freedom of lesbianism is a very new thing. Only very few women in the past had been lesbians – only nuns – but now it is widespread. Every intelligent woman once in a while tries it, and I don’t think that there is any harm once in a while in trying something new. It simply shows you are an intelligent being. Only retarded people can remain contented with the same thing their whole life.The more intelligent you are the more freedom you need; otherwise you will become frustrated. But anything that is unnatural is going to create frustration also. Natural courses have been condemned and poisoned by religions; unnatural perversions lead nowhere. You lose the desire to live. That’s the reason why in Europe a school of philosophy – existentialism – arose.Existentialism is a philosophical analysis of this whole human situation: that there is no meaning in life, that there is only anxiety, boredom, anguish, despair, and suicide is the only way out. According to existentialism, suicide becomes the only way out of this nightmare that you call life. That was a philosophical expression; AIDS is a biological expression of the same thing.In my commune I am trying in every possible way to introduce my people again to the natural flow of life, with no condemnation, no idea of sin, no punishment in hell, no reward in heaven, no God in existence, and they have to decide their life. There are no ultimate laws about marriage or about anything. They are all just convenient ways. If you find it convenient, good; if you don’t find it convenient, don’t stay a single moment in the bondage. And we are teaching them something which the whole of humanity needs: meditation.Meditation leads you to the innermost core of your life. You are alive; you may have lost even the will to live, but still you are alive, and there is a small flame of life still in you. If you can reach that small flame, it can flare up again. If you can become consciously aware of that flame, things can change, totally change.Let me ask you this question. My feeling is that sannyasins don't fear death, so why fear AIDS, and are you not…?We do not fear AIDS; there is no question of any fear. When you are going on the road and you find a rock and you bypass it, does it mean you fear the rock? Do you have to stumble on it to prove that you don’t fear it? We do not fear AIDS; we just see it on the way. People are stumbling on it, and we are making our people not stumble. There is nothing to be afraid of in it. There is no reason for my people to be afraid of it.But how, how has it affected the quality of life here? – this avoidance of stumbling on the rock?Nothing has……because you say AIDS is death: I suppose you don't want to stumble on death if you don't have to. …If that's what you're saying.But you have…I have a feeling the quality of life is not quite the same, now that there is this avoidance of death.No. The quality is better. It is not the same – that’s true. The quality is better because people are more responsible, and people are not only responsible towards their own life; they are also responsible for not affecting anybody else’s life. Their life-quality is enhanced. And when the whole world is in the ditch of death and they are still dancing and laughing, they will see that if they had not been able to take all those precautions, this laughter would not have been possible.You cannot find people anywhere who are more joyous and more laughing and dancing and happy, and more hardworking at the same time. Even God got tired by the sixth day. My people work seven days a week!I thought God didn't exist?He does not exist, but as far as the story goes, he got tired.Alright.So whenever I want to make a joke of him, I accept the story. I don’t accept God.I had a question from somebody else about God and I put it aside because I was under the impression that you don't acknowledge the existence of God, but as far as the story goes it's…As far as the story goes…It's a good one?I can make use of any story without any difficulty.Okay. You've also said in discourse that no children have been born here in four years. And that the world is now not a good place to bring a child into. Isn't the child an opportunity to reeducate, renew and replace the old ways, or to use your own words, “Why wait to heal old broken bones? – replace them.” It seems to me that in a commune such as this, where you are going to great lengths to filter out the sick through awareness, the greatest opportunity exists to bring in new generations of physically healthy and spiritually pure individuals.We will do that, but the time is not right yet. I have to prepare my people. Once my people are ready – they have all the comforts, they have all the educational systems, they have everything that the children will need… In my commune, these children will be of the commune; there is no family fixation. The father and mother can be loving to their child, but the child will be part of the commune, not in a separate family from others.So all males will be his uncles and all females will be his aunts, and he will be welcome in every place and in every home. He can move wherever he wants, he can live wherever he wants to live, he can live with whomsoever he wants to live. I have to prepare my people first, and once my people are ready, you are right: I am not going to repair rotten bones; I will create my own people.I am heading towards that, but my ways of creating the people are going to be different. They are not going to be the old ways. The old way has failed. It was accidental. My people are going to be more scientific about it.Can you give me some idea?For example, no couple is free to bring an accidental child into the commune. They will have to get the permission of the medical board, and if…when the medical board suggests that their child will not be something unique – will be just ordinary, a mediocre mortal such as the whole world is full of – then the best way will be that the woman gets artificial insemination. So they can find the best male sperm in the commune and introduce it. And in fact it is easier; the natural way is really a strange way.I have been a competitor in only one race and that was when I met my mother’s egg!In a race?When I met my mother’s egg…Okay.That was the only race in which I was a participant – but the race was tremendous! One million participants! And if you compare with my size…the small passage that they had to move along was two miles. They are so small – male sperms – and one million male sperms rushing towards the female egg…! And I am a lazy person! I decided once and for all that “Put your whole energy into it and reach the egg somehow, because then your whole life you can rest and relax!”So I have done every competition, every race – even before my birth I was finished with competition and race. To find out of one million sperms, who is going to be who, is very difficult. But now methods are possible to decide: in these one million people there may be a few Albert Einsteins, a few Rabindranath Tagores, a few Mozarts, a few Hegels, Kants. One million is a big quantity.What about the possibility of using your sperm?I will not allow it…simply because even if you become enlightened, your sperms don’t become enlightened! And I am not going to give birth to an unenlightened child!Well, would there be the possibility, a higher likelihood, that your offspring…?No. The biology remains completely unaffected by your enlightenment.Well, what about just your intelligence then? I mean, you have an intelligence level that – I'm sure most people would agree – is quite high…No.…It's another thing to be an enlightened master, but you spoke before of having a new generation here, that you're planning for that, you speak of other great men…I am planning for that, and I have intelligence enough to find more intelligent people than me. But I am an ordinary man with no special talent. If we need a physicist, then Albert Einstein will be better or Sakharov will be better. If we need a painter then Picasso will be better or van Gogh will be better. So include me out!Do you think people will be disappointed?No, they will not be disappointed. They will be disappointed if I give birth to a child and he proves an idiot! They will be happy that I don’t leave any trace which is below me. And there is no way to make the sperms enlightened before their birth, so it is better not to take the risk.Alright. It seems like…I won't push the issue. I still have a few questions that I must ask here.Okay. Finish.What kind of protective measures has the community instituted to curb the AIDS threat? And should the problem become larger, what future measures may be taken?Very simple. The first is that the commune members should be respectful, loving, compassionate, to anybody who is found to be suffering from AIDS. That has to be their basic attitude, because that is what the problem will be in the outside world: once a person is known to have AIDS he will be a condemned person – by his own family, children, parents, wife, friends – everywhere he will be an outcast.So people are keeping the information repressed. Many more people are suffering from AIDS than are known. But it is human, because the moment people come to know you are condemned in everybody’s eyes. So this is the first thing that I am teaching to my people: that he is simply a victim – the victim of neurotic religious ideologies, the victim of unnatural social institutions like marriage, prostitution. So he is a sufferer and close to death; now don’t make him suffer more.Help him, respect him; don’t let him die in indignity – and teach him meditation. And I am telling my people that he is fortunate in a way: if he is going to live for two years, now for two years he is going to be one of the richest people in the world. Even the richest man cannot afford so much time for meditation. And we will arrange his food, his clothes, the best we can, and he should meditate, listen to the best music, see films, read novels – whatever he always wanted to do, let him do it. And let him feel that he is loved and respected and there is no discrimination.There are two persons from the commune, and four more have arrived from outside, because in the outside there is no place for them. Even hospitals avoid them, even doctors are afraid; families don’t want them anymore, their jobs are finished. But we have accepted them – that’s perfectly good. We can take care of them, there is no problem. They can help in their own way. They can edit, they can paint, they can sculpt, or do whatsoever they are capable of. We have arranged the most scenic place for them to live.And as far as sex is concerned, those who have AIDS can have sex amongst themselves. It is their responsibility towards the commune, which is taking care of them, giving them all respect and love, that they should not in any way affect anybody’s life in the commune. And certainly, with such respect and love it is impossible for them to interfere in anybody’s life here. They come to the discourses; they are allowed to move in the commune. They have been told just not to have any physical contact. And the commune has to take every care, because accidentally anything may provoke the thing. Tears can infect you, saliva can infect you; perhaps any liquid coming out of the body of an AIDS victim carries the virus – so just keep clean, make everything sterile.So even in small things – in the restaurant, everybody who comes to eat there first has to clean his hands with alcohol, and anything that has been used for eating is sterilized after eating. Even a person making a phone call, by chance his saliva may fall on the phone – so after every phone call the phone is sprayed with alcohol. In this way we are taking every precaution that no infection spreads.Did you help make these decisions, to implement these measures? Or the medical people here only…?No, no.And did they consult with…?…Because certainly these affect the quality of life here – these new measures – and I should think that's something that you would ultimately have a say over.No. This is the decision of the medical people in the commune. And we have the best medical experts, surgeons, who are capable – they take the decisions. Only in the beginning will it look a little odd that your hands have to be sprayed with alcohol, but finally you will find it more hygienic in every way. Even if AIDS disappears, these arrangements are not going to disappear, because they will prevent other infections too.So when they are new these measurements will seem to affect life, but the effect will be for the better. And not a single sannyasin has complained that he is not feeling good with these things. In fact, every sannyasin is excited that his commune is taking every care. Outside there is nobody to take care of you. This simply shows the carefulness, lovingness.And the commune is an organic unity.So in every possible way – people making love should use gloves, should use condoms. In the beginning it looks as if this is an unnecessary complication. When you are making love to a woman, in that moment to think of condoms and gloves – it destroys the whole joy, it seems. But it is not true. In fact it is better: the slower you are, the better is the possibility of having an orgasm. It is good that the man is slower – he has to put the condom, he has to put the gloves. It is good. And it will increase people’s sensitivity.When you touch a woman with gloves on, naturally there is a barrier in the beginning – the plastic, the rubber, or anything the glove is made of, comes in between. But soon you become accustomed to it and because you love the woman your sensitivity spreads out of the glove.Now it is a fact well established by a Russian scientist, Kirlian, who was working with photography and human energy, that each person has a two-inch aura of energy around his body. So if you are using a glove, don’t be worried – beyond the glove there is a two inch aura of your energy. It can be photographed. And it will be a good chance to feel that aura; otherwise, who cares? It is just a simple question…If you come to an aboriginal tribe in India and see naked people, they cannot believe why you are wearing a coat and suit and all these things, and missing life – the wind, the sun and the contact, the direct contact. But you have never thought about it, that you are missing the direct contact with existence because of your coat, because of your shoes. Your contact with existence has taken new dimensions.For example, your contact with existence is eighty to ninety percent from your eyes; the remainder is from your hands. In fact the whole body sensitivity has become concentrated into certain places: your eyes, your hands, your face. It has not been in any way a loss to humanity, because the hands have become immensely powerful. The eyes have become immensely capable of seeing beauty. Your tongue has become capable of tasting. Otherwise, buffaloes only eat one kind of grass and they go on chewing the same grass their whole life – no question of change. Even if you give them another kind of grass they will not eat it. They are not bored; their tongues don’t have the taste buds. Your tongue has taste buds, and because the whole body is covered, the uncovered part – your face, your hands, your ears, your eyes, your nose, your mouth – they have all become concentratedly sensitive. So you can see more beauty than a naked man; you can hear music, its subtle nuances, better than a naked man. You can taste better, more refined qualities of taste, than a naked man. He simply swallows things – there is no question of taste. But in the beginning it would have been difficult.So that’s simply the beginning. Once they become accustomed to it they will be able to have sensitivity even through the gloves. In fact you already have leather gloves of your own. And who is there? – you are in the head; the part, the center that feels it is in the head, and then there are bones and nerves, and it is a complicated system. In that complicated system, I don’t think just a little bit more plastic is going to create any trouble. If your mind can manage to feel the woman’s body through all this complicated system, it will be able to feel through a plastic glove.Soon you will find that it is more hygienic, because your hand will not be touching the woman’s perspiration, which can be dangerous. I have suggested to my people: stop kissing and start rubbing noses. And don’t feel that you are losing something – it is only a question of thinking. You are gaining new ground. You have never understood that noses are one of the most erotic points. Eskimos have been doing that for centuries; they never kiss, because they have always thought that kissing is unhygienic, ugly. If they see a Frenchman kissing they will start vomiting – what is this man doing?Should I think that I am doing well because I have a big nose?A big nose will be better, certainly. A Jew is better in every way!Does it show?I am a Jew – just born in a wrong country!I have another question here…a few more.I've heard rumors that you're possibly planning a program similar to the Share-A-Home Program, but with AIDS victims, and I'm wondering if there's any truth to that, and at the same time, in a certain sense, I personally feel there's almost a contradiction or almost an absurdity to that. I just wonder if there's any truth to those rumors.No. It is just a rumor.Just a rumor?My people are very creative in making rumors go around – and we enjoy! Nothing to be worried about.Okay. Now I have another direct question from the magazine. They're under the impression that the Dutch sannyasin population is one of the largest, percentage-wise, in relation to the total population of the Netherlands. If that's so, what is the explanation for that or what do you think could be an explanation for that?It is true. Holland is almost mine, the same way Germany is mine. The reason for both countries becoming interested in me is the same: both are people with guts, and cowards cannot be interested in me. Germans and Dutch both have guts and know how to take risks and go for adventure.French people are just intellectuals. I don’t have any impact on France, for the simple reason that intellectuals are interested only in talking and thinking but never in doing anything.The English are grumpy, long faces, so depressed and depressing to others that they cannot believe it is possible to laugh and rejoice and dance. They have lost all hope – with their empire gone, they are almost a graveyard. England is no longer a living country, and those who are alive have come to me.The Italians are here in large numbers. Many Italians have been to me, but they are as slippery as their spaghetti. You cannot rely on them. Just a national characteristic: they are not reliable. What they can do? They are not doing it knowingly. So many have come, many have gone, many go on coming and going, but they are slippery people.Germans and Dutch – any people who have come to me from these two countries have remained with me. They know the joy of trusting with every phase, and they also know a certain decisiveness which Italians lack. Italians are not decisive; they are always “To be or not to be” – either, or. The German or Dutch either will not become part of my world movement – that is clear, it is not indecisiveness; he has taken a decision – or he will become part, and it is not wishy washy. Now he is going to stay with his commitment.Every country has developed a certain character. Down the centuries, different geography, different history, different religious ideologies, different[There seems to be a gap between tape sides B & C. It is not on the printout of the transcript, so please check audio.]is one of the cleanest cities in the world, but when they come to the commune they understand that they can be defeated. And our vision is absolutely clear. It is not foggy, it is not based on beliefs; it is absolutely rational, scientific. We are all for peace and we want that there should be no world war – no war ever. The last war has happened. They are coming more and more, in greater numbers.It is a little bit difficult to characterize people, but people do have different characters. For example, Indians are so much in misery, suffering, poverty, but still they go on holding to the idea that they are the holiest people in the world – now what is the need for them to become sannyasins? They are the holiest people already! Just to be born in India is to be holy, so why they should bother about…? And they are afraid of me because I don’t accept their holiness, I don’t accept their religion, I don’t accept their tradition.I am against every tradition, every religion, every ideology. I want man to be deprogrammed, completely deprogrammed, so he is clean and clear, unburdened of the past and free to fly into the future. But that is most difficult for an Indian. He is so burdened with a long tradition of ten thousand years, and for ten thousand years he has been believing that his is the only religious community in the world, and the highest. It is difficult for them. They have lost all sense of humor, because holy persons don’t laugh. They have lost all sense of respect because they have become accustomed to being respected; they have forgotten that they have to respect also in response.There was a world Hindu conference. The secretary was interested in me and somehow managed an invitation for me. The president was the shankaracharya, the head of the Hindus. We have been quarreling and fighting for almost two decades. If he had known that an invitation had gone to me, it would have been immediately prevented, but without his knowledge the invitation came to me, and my friend’s letter saying that, “The shankaracharya does not know about it, but you have to come because your presence will make a difference; otherwise, all those Hindu leaders will talk the same nonsense.”I was to inaugurate the conference and the shankaracharya was to preside over it, but the moment he saw me he lost all gentlemanliness, had completely a nervous breakdown. He jumped over and took the mike and inaugurated the conference. Seeing that I had been invited to inaugurate it, the people were shocked and could not believe that this could be done. Even though a shankaracharya is doing it, this is wrong, because on the cards they had received, my name was down to inaugurate the conference and the shankaracharya was just to preside.While inaugurating the conference he told the audience that he cannot sit on the same platform as me, and he is not going to allow me to speak. I went close to him and I said, “I will not take more than two minutes – I have just one question to ask the people.” And not bothering about him, I took the mike and asked the people, “What do you want? Do you want me to speak or not? If you want me to speak raise both your hands.” There were at least one hundred thousand people, and two hundred thousand hands. And I said to the shankaracharya, “Look at these hands! You are no longer president here; you are canceled by the audience itself. Now go home and rest!”I spoke and argued against everything that he had said. He was becoming red and trembling with anger…and these are the people who think themselves holy! Since that conference it was made a point that I should not be invited in any Hindu conference. Since that conference I have not been to speak in any Hindu conference. And the fear is that what they are saying is absolutely wrong, and they are keeping the people still befooled. And those one hundred thousand people were absolutely in my favor, because on each point I completely demolished him. They clapped and they appreciated it, and the more they appreciated it, the more he was out of his mind completely. In fact, while getting down he fell from the stage. He was in such a state…Hindus have an idiotic idea of being the holiest people. Naturally they can’t come to me, because I will take their holiness away and make them simple human beings. My whole effort is to make simple human beings, natural human beings.What about the Americans?Americans are phony!Phony?Plastic – nothing much.How is that manifest most obviously?They used to come to me in India – while I was there many Americans used to come every year to visit me and they would remain there for two or three hours…months, do the meditations and everything, and then they would disappear, come back to America.Since I have been in America I have not seen those people at all, because now it needs guts to be here. I am fighting the Oregon government, fighting the federal government, and those people have simply chickened out.Do you think, in a sense maybe, that's a problem for you in that, as you say, the Americans are chicken, and that you're not robbing America of its sons and daughters, which is always what people are assuming?Not at all. For all the money that…Which would create more controversy, if more people were saying, “I'm losing my son and daughter to this commune,” since that's usually the way the media reports it – and that's the hysteria that's reported in many newspapers.That is a possibility. But one thing you should remember: I have not used American dollars in creating this commune at all. All the money has come from different countries. American dollars I have not used yet. I will use it…I cannot leave them just like that. Even they – they are chickens! I will…I have a chicken house here!Do you think maybe it's because Americans have a superior attitude? Is it possible that this isn't so attractive to Americans possibly because they have such a superior…?No. They have been coming – and not only they, but their leaders were coming. Erhard, the founder of EST came to me. Dick Price, the founder of Esalen Institute, came to me. I know where the problem is here: the problem is the people who had been coming to India and becoming sannyasins there were simply dishonest. They would wear red clothes there and the moment they left India they put their red clothes in the suitcase and became Americans. So here there was no problem for them.Now to come here means to get into trouble with the society, with the parents, with the wife, with the husband, and those who have come, they had to face all that trouble. In India they were coming; they were not afraid that their dollar is at any risk there. Here, it is. Here we have poured almost two hundred million dollars into this desert, and if we want to make this whole desert a lush, green place, it will need a billion or two billion dollars more. And certainly we are going to get them from the Americans. How far they can escape? They cannot escape, but they will try. That’s why I am saying they have chickened out.Seeing the enormousness of the commune, seeing that there is going to be a fight with the government – and we are fighting in so many courts and we are winning in every court… And I have made it a point that all the American politicians are doing things which are against the American constitution. Among our sannyasins there are four hundred legal experts. We have the biggest legal firm in the whole world, and they are working day and night to fight the government on their own grounds. And we are winning!Do you have fun with that?I am going to have immense fun. I am really excited. I was sick…I became healthy! I have not become healthy by any medicine, but just the excitement has proved of tremendous help.I have another direct question here. In the recent Der Spiegel interview you called Hitler a true and great leader. Do you stand by this comment, that Hitler was a true and great leader, or perhaps was it quoted out of context?He was certainly a great leader, but he was a crackpot! There is no contradiction in it. In fact, only crackpots can be leaders; otherwise who bothers to be a leader?I agree!Yes.Absolutely.Okay…or do you have some more questions?Yes, I think I have one last one.Yes, just one – the last.No, I'll let it go. That's okay. We can finish.You are certain?I'm sure.No. There is one question.Such an appropriate question! I've been at the Ranch now seven times. The news peg or reason or headline for each of my visits would be something like this: the first visit – India's sex guru comes to America; my second visit was India's sex guru swallows small town; my third visit, I came here for the first festival – welcoming sannyasins to the new Ranch and the small, swallowed town; the fourth visit I made was for the second festival and photographing the progress of the new city; the fifth time was for guns, gambling and because a very wealthy German blue blood showed up here; the sixth time was for welcoming the homeless; and now I'm here doing a story on AIDS. What do you think might be the reason for my next visit?Just that the red people swallowed America!

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 23 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Ma Yoga Vidya,Rajneeshpuram, OregonOsho,You say you are trying to deprogram the whole world. Specifically, what do you recommend for America?The process of deprogramming is the same; whom you are deprogramming does not matter. He may be American, he may be German, he may be Hindu. It is just like cleaning the room. What kind of furniture the room has, what kind of pictures are hanging in the room, doesn’t matter. You are simply to remove everything from the room and create a space.And it is a total deprogramming, so there is no question of choice, that something good has to be saved. Then your question will be relevant. But as I see things, whatever good is there is joined with something bad. They are together. You cannot separate them. For example, if you want to remove prostitution you will have to remove marriage. Without removing marriage there is no way to remove prostitution. That’s why for thousands of years every country, every religion has tried that prostitution should be removed. But they could not succeed, for the simple reason that they could not see an intrinsic connection between marriage and prostitution.If you really want to remove prostitution, you have to remove marriage. And that is the case with everything. So if it was something that American society has, something good which can be saved, German society has something else good which can be saved…Every society is an organic whole. A woman may be beautiful because she has a beautiful nose, but you cannot save the nose and throw the woman out. It is an intrinsic part of the woman. You will have to accept that the nose will also go with the woman. There may be a few things which appear good, but they are good only in appearance, because they are part of a bigger whole which is not good.So it is not a question that in deprogramming America anything special is needed. The same process will be applicable to every society, everywhere. You will be throwing different things out of human life, but the throwing is the same. And the problems of throwing things will be the same. This always will be the problem, that there is something good connected with the bad. It can exist only with the bad part. If you throw the bad part, the good part simply disappears.There is something good in marriage but you cannot save it. It is intrinsically joined with the whole fabric of marriage.So we have to be aware that many good things will have to be thrown out. But it is not going to be a loss, because once man is deprogrammed, he is now free to grow according to his nature. Now he will not be American, he will not be Christian, he will not be Catholic, but just a human being, as he was born. Deprogramming brings him back his second birth.When he was born he was neither American nor Christian nor Catholic. He had no name. He was just a potentiality to grow – which has been destroyed by people, society, religion. They have been molding people for their own interests.And our whole program is never to mold a person, because every molding of the person is destructive to his individuality. It is going to be against his nature. And then he will never be blissful. Against nature there is no joy. Against nature there is no ecstasy. Against nature there is except misery, suffering, agony, nothing else.One has to follow his own instinct. They have to be understood, these two words: instinct and intuition. Instinct is unconscious nature and intuition is conscious nature. First your instinct has to be freed from all the fetters of principles, dogmas, right and wrong, morality and immorality. Instinct, completely natural, has tremendous beauty. That is the beauty you see in the animals. A deer just jumping, running, has a certain beauty which man has lost. His jumping and running has a grace that comes from instinct. He is not jumping and running, it is nature jumping and running through him. He is just instrumental. This is the first step towards ultimate freedom, that your instinct should be allowed all growth possible.And alongside, you should continue to meditate, because meditation is not a program. Meditation is just a method of becoming aware of what is happening to you. No disturbance, no judgment, just watching what is happening in you. If you go on watching your instincts and their growth, a moment comes when your instincts start changing into intuition.The word is very significant. We are given tuition everywhere. That tuition is to repress your intuition. In the schools, in the colleges, in the universities, you are given tuition. It means something from the outside being forced upon you, and intuition means something coming from your innermost core. If you are unconscious, then it will remain instinct. If you are conscious, then instinct plus awareness is equal to intuition. Then for the first time you have found your master within yourself.Intuition is your master, your real university. And now you don’t need any scripture, you don’t need any guide. Your inner light is enough to lead you to the ultimate goal of enlightenment.So deprogramming is absolutely necessary. That simply means cleaning the person of the past and bringing him back to his innocence of childhood. And it doesn’t matter whom you are deprogramming. Of course, you will have to throw different things. If you are deprogramming an Indian, then certainly you cannot throw a TV because there is no TV. If you are deprogramming an American, the TV has to be thrown. Five or six hours he is glued to his TV each day; it is taking up the major part of his life.This is something that has to be understood. Humanity has been reduced almost into the state of a spectator. You watch television six hours per day. That means six hours you are not living, you are simply seeing other people live, other people playing: a football match, a boxing competition, and you are simply spectator. Then there is the movie – the same; again you are a spectator. Then there are real matches, and millions of people go mad; and the Olympics – and you are just reduced to a spectator. Eighteen persons are playing the game and one hundred thousand people are simply spectators.And if you observe in life, everywhere man has been reduced from being active, participant, into a spectator. Now, this kind of life cannot bring you joy. You are not living, you are avoiding living. It is better to compose your own music. It may not be great, it does not matter. You may not become a famous musician; that does not matter either. What matters is that you were composing it yourself. You were not a spectator; you were a participant, you were a creator. And if people are deprogrammed, all their energy will move towards creativity.You go into the church, you listen to the sermon and that is your religion. You have a Holy Bible and you read the Bible, a few pages every day, and that is your religion. You never live religion, nor does your priest live religion – reading the Holy Bible does not mean living religion. You are again reading something as a spectator.A deprogrammed person stops being a spectator. He becomes creative on his own. The value is not what he creates, the value is that he creates. Joy comes out of creation. Making any small thing – just making food for someone you love – is immense joy. But in America you need not do it. Everything is available, packaged. The whole creativity is in how to open the can. If you know how to open the can, you are a great cook.And this is happening in every sphere of life. People are being deceived. Certainly it is easier to open the can, and it is easier for the vested interests who are selling those cans; but you forget completely that there was a joy in cooking, in making something delicious for someone you love, your friends, children, parents. All that is missing.A deprogrammed person will have to start his life completely from scratch. So our function is not to bother with what is cluttering his mind. American, German, Hindu, Mohammedan does not matter; whatever, we have to throw it out of his mind without any discrimination. The whole mind has to be emptied of all good, bad, whatever he has.Of course, the poor man will have different things in his mind, the rich man will have different things; but when both minds are cleaned they are equal. They both have only emptiness, innocence, silence. Empty the Christian, empty the Hindu, empty the Buddhist, and you will not find three kinds of emptinesses. Emptiness is only of one kind.So deprogramming is a process which is going to be similar for everybody in the world. And the process is very simple. We just have to make people aware that, “You are miserable, you are suffering, your life is a pain, an agony. You don’t find any meaning in it. You are in despair. Still you go on, you continue on the same lines which are causes of all this despair.”Nobody wants to be miserable. We just have to make him aware that even though he does not want to, he remains miserable because he is attached to something which is the cause of his misery – the Catholic church, the Hindu religion – which he thinks is something spiritual, which he thinks is going to give him blissfulness. All they are giving him is misery, but he does not connect them.The function of the sannyasins is to make the connection clear. Once the connection is clear, nobody wants to be miserable. And if it is the church who is making him miserable, then along with his misery he will throw the church, too. Once he breathes in pure air, once he is out of the Christian atmosphere, he will be surprised that the misery has disappeared, that there is some dance in his feet, some song in his heart.One experience will make him go for the whole process, to empty his mind of all conditioning. As he goes on unconditioning himself, his misery goes on disappearing, and at a certain point the pendulum changes. Instead of misery he starts feeling glimpses of joy, and new windows start opening.Your work is done once you have given the man a clear vision of what causes his misery. He can never get out of misery itself He has to remove the cause. And if he removes the cause, blissfulness is not something that comes from anywhere, it is just his very nature. Let the misery go, throw its cause away, and you will find yourself full of blissfulness for no reason at all.Bliss has no cause. It is our very nature. All that is needed is emptiness so that our nature can have a space to grow, blossom, spread fragrance.Osho,You have said you have no interest in the outside, no interest in politics. Yet you often speak about politics and politicians and give us many insights into world problems. Can you comment?I don’t have any interest in the outside world, in politics, but I have immense interest in you. You are living in a world which is ugly, sick, one foot in the grave. And I don’t want you to be drowned with this sick world.That’s why I speak against many things. My interest is in you, my sannyasins. I speak against politics because I don’t want my sannyasins to remain ignorant of who the real criminals are in this world. That’s why I speak against the priests and religions, because I don’t want any single loophole for you. You have to be aware who the criminals are. The problem is that those criminals are thought to be great leaders, sages, saints, mahatmas, and they are respected tremendously around the world, so you will never think that they can be criminals. So I have to insist continuously, every day.It is for two reasons that you must become aware that these are the criminals. In fact, criminals have not done any harm to the world. Somebody murders a man, somebody steals something, it is nothing. A single Adolf Hitler kills ten million people. Now, that man has so much criminality in him that ten million criminals are needed to make one Hitler.So I have to expose all these people because they are the causes. For example, it is easier to understand that perhaps politicians are the causes of many problems: wars, murders, massacres, burning people. It is even more difficult when it comes to religious leaders, because nobody has raised his hand against them. They have remained respectable for centuries, and as time goes on their respectability goes on growing. The most difficult job for me is to make you aware that these people – knowingly or unknowingly, that does not matter – have created this world.Now, in the whole world they will be talking about AIDS, but this is the only place where I am saying that this is a religious disease. Nowhere else will it be said. On the contrary, the priests are saying that this is a punishment from God. And people will believe them, that it is punishment for homosexuality. But nobody will ask how homosexuality came into being, or who is responsible for homosexuality.And people don’t have intelligence enough to connect things. They cannot connect the simple fact that it is the religions who have been teaching people to remain celibate. They are the root cause of all perversions about sex. So if anybody has to be punished it is not the homosexuals. If anybody has to be punished it is those religious leaders who have preached celibacy. Homosexuality is just a by-product of the teaching of celibacy.The journalists get shocked because they were not thinking that I would put the blame on religion for AIDS. They don’t see. They think they are worlds apart. They are not. And unless you see the real cause, you cannot fight with the problem that has arisen.Now, the first thing needed is that every government makes celibacy illegal, criminal. Rather than that, they are doing just the opposite – making homosexuality illegal. Homosexuality is a symptom, it is not the cause. If you make homosexuality illegal, then these people will start making love to animals, which is not illegal. And there are people who make love to animals. It is not something new, it is as ancient as man. If they cannot find a woman, if they cannot find a man, the poor animal is available. If you make homosexuality criminal, illegal, the homosexual will go into another perversion which perhaps may bring a bigger disease than AIDS. One never knows what will be the outcome of that.People should be made aware that you cannot go against nature, and anybody who teaches you to go against nature is the enemy of the people.I have no interest in any religion because it is all just rubbish; no interest in politics because I have no ambition of any kind. It is for you, for two reasons that I criticize them. One is so that you become aware of the real causes, so that you are not deluded in the same way the whole world is deluded. Whenever something against the traditional mind is said, it shocks.For example, I was thinking, women making love to other women are not suffering from AIDS. In fact, no problem arises out of it. That gives a clear clue that the female energy is a receptive energy. The female genitalia are receptive. The male energy is the donor; in other words, it is positive and the female energy is negative. Two negative energies cannot do any harm because both are receptors; they cannot transpire anything to each other. That’s why I call it just a silly game you can play, there is no problem in it. No harm is possible. And if you are enjoying and no harm is possible, then why not enjoy?But two males making love, both are donors. That is the difficulty. Their biology has no way to receive sexual energy, and both are donating energy to each other. Both are naturally incapable of receiving energy. Now they are playing with fire. This energy is going to destroy their very natural structure. There is no place for this energy.I was thinking that these people who have become homosexuals have become addicted to it, and making it illegal, a crime, is not going to change them. They will simply go underground, which is more dangerous. Then you don’t know who is homosexual. Right now they have been moving in society as if they are avant-garde intellectuals, more liberated than heterosexuals. Heterosexuals are just still living in the animal world of biology, and they have broken out of the prison, and they have found something better. So they were not afraid to accept that they are homosexuals. In fact, they were bragging about it. They were looking on heterosexuals as something lower. So it was very easy to catch hold of them, give them the test, find the people who have AIDS and find measures to prevent it.Now, making it illegal will make it spread fast. And what they have done in Texas is going to be done everywhere – in America and in other countries – because governments are so idiotic. They simply start fighting with the symptoms and nobody wonders what are the causes.And in fact they don’t want to look at the causes because the causes are such that they are beyond their capacity. If they start looking for the causes, perhaps they may also prove part of the causes themselves. The priests may be part of the causes, the pope may be part of the causes, Jesus Christ may be the foundation stone. It is better not to go into it. Just catch hold of the symptom and start fighting with the symptom. Repress the symptom.When you repress the symptom in one place, it will erupt from somewhere else, and it will be going farther away from nature. The first perversion was going away from nature; the second perversion is now farther away, and a third perversion will be even farther away. And the man will become so miserable because he cannot find the way back. Things have become too complex for ordinary people to come back to nature again. So I want you to be aware never to fight with the symptoms.Now we have a world of our own, and if we act intelligently we can save our sannyasins from the destruction that is going to come to the other world. Right now you are minority. Tomorrow you can be the majority for the simple reason that you will be protected and the outside world is absolutely unprotected. They will be dying like dogs. They are dying like dogs.In Los Angeles one person is dying of AIDS every day, and nobody seems to know what to do. In fact the outside world is such that it is very difficult for them to do anything. And who will tie the bell on the cat’s neck? That’s the problem. We can do it. There is not much trouble. You know the old story, that the cat was eating the mice of the house every day and finally the mice had a meeting and decided something had to be done. A young mouse, not experienced in the ways of the world, said, “This is simple. Just tie a bell around the neck of the cat, so wherever she goes we will know immediately. Before she comes to us we can move into our holes. She will not be able to find us.” A perfect solution.But a problem arose: who was going to tie the bell?I have told the story again, and I said, “The young mouse who said, ‘Tie the bell’ said, ‘I will do it, don’t you worry.’ They were surprised. They said, ‘But since ancient days the story is going on. Here it stops. Whoever said, “Tie the bell” is going against the tradition, against the whole history. This is the point where the full stop comes. The story is finished.’ “The young mouse said, ‘No more, because I go to the medical store every day. Just by the side is the medical store. All that is needed are a few sleeping pills that I can bring and put in the milk of the cat. You give me the bell and I can manage.’ And he managed! Just a few sleeping pills and the whole story changes. After drinking the milk, the cat fell fast asleep, snoring, and the young mouse did his work perfectly well.”But this is my addition to the story. It is not anywhere, and I want to do the same as far as humanity is concerned. We can tie the bell around the neck of the cat. We have nothing to lose, so we have to shout loudly from every roof in the world that homosexuals are victims, that religious leaders are the causes, that to make homosexuality illegal simply means making people go away from nature. The best way is to first make celibacy illegal. That means all the religions will be disturbed immediately, because that is their whole base. Make celibacy illegal.The second thing – the same way I am not joking – if things are coming to such a bad end, then it is better to find some scientific methods. For women there are electric vibrators – more hygienic, more scientific, more patient, not in a hurry, not afraid of anybody – and their button is in your hand. So take as long as you want, and only an electric vibrator can give a woman complete satisfaction. Now, this will shock people, what can I do about it.This is true, because the woman has suffered for centuries without orgasm and that’s why she is so ugly in her behavior. There is no problem. You use everything scientific for everything else, so what is the problem? If a woman can have orgasmic joy through an electric vibrator, let her enjoy it. And something similar should be made for men. Rather than driving homosexuals underground, why not give them plastic ladies – or plastic men if they prefer? If they don’t like ladies at all, they can have plastic men. Plastic has no grudge against being a man or any preference, priority, to be a woman. Plastic is plastic.And in fact it can be more satisfying to men, too, because the wife is nagging, fighting, angry. To make love to a woman whom you hate from your guts, what kind of love is this? It is simply a way of masturbating, and an ugly way. So what is the need to force this woman unnecessarily?Make it clear, because the world is not clear even though medical science is absolutely clear. Even doctors in India I have found idiotic. I asked them “You tell me the medical viewpoint, I am not asking your Hindu viewpoint.” Hindus think – and perhaps other religions all over the world also think – that masturbation leads people to madness. That is just an idea to prevent masturbation. Nobody wants to be mad, and when from childhood on you hear again and again that masturbation leads to madness, naturally you become afraid that this is not good. Medical science is absolutely clear that masturbation cannot lead anybody to madness, for one thing. The second thing, the religions go on repeating that too much masturbation will destroy all your intelligence. You will die sooner.Now, nobody can masturbate too much; that is sheer impossibility. You can masturbate only so much – you have a certain quantity of semen in your body, you can release that much semen – more than that is beyond you. Whatever you do, you cannot suddenly produce semen. It will take time. So there is a natural prevention against doing it too much, and if the monks of all the religions listen to me, I will tell them, “Masturbate and meditate.”I can even give a title to a book: Meditation Through Masturbation. If super-consciousness is possible through sex, then why is meditation not possible through masturbation? And certainly it is possible. People just have to look at things with new eyes.As a person who is masturbating starts feeling he is coming to an orgasmic state, his thoughts disappear. He is in the same orgasmic state as while he is making love to a woman. There is no difference. His biology knows no difference. Whether the semen is released in some mechanism, in some body or somewhere else, it does not matter. It is just bringing your sexual tension to its ultimate, which is more easily possible in masturbation because with a woman the other is also there. In masturbation you are a master. You can go slow, you can go fast, you can bring the orgasmic state very slowly. And that orgasmic state is meditation, be aware. It will be easier, because there is nobody else to disturb. You are alone.So make it known to the whole world that masturbation does not lead to madness; celibacy can lead to madness but not masturbation. And if homosexuals are not interested in women, then perhaps masturbation will be closer to nature than homosexuality. And masturbation can be joined with meditation.So I am saying all these things for your benefit, because you will have to face these problems and you should not commit the same mistakes. If a child is found masturbating, then don’t do the same stupidity that is being done all over the world. Just tell him, “This is perfectly good. You meditate with it also and you will get more juice out of it. And there is nothing wrong in it, so you don’t need to hide.” But man is such a coward. He is not ready to face any reality.And secondly, I am saying these things so that you don’t start behaving in the same way. I will not be here with you forever. The moment I am not with you, you can start behaving politically, you can start making a bureaucracy, a hierarchy. You can start making small groups and fighting with each other and doing the whole thing, on a smaller scale, of course.Because you also carry them in your mind, you can start having the same stupid ideas when your children are masturbating – and they will masturbate. What do you expect when nature makes the child fully capable of making love at the age of fourteen? Will you are prevent him for ten, twelve years? Has he to be celibate until the time he is out of the university with a master’s degree or PhD? You are just asking nonsense.It is better to teach him how to tackle his sexual energy, and if perhaps girls are available for these times, then keep the girls and boys in the same hostel. Make them aware of birth control methods. Teach them, “Go on changing your partners each month so you don’t become addicted and you don’t feel jealous, because this is the time of your experiencing. Experience as many men, as many women as possible before you decide.”When people go to purchase the cheapest thing in the market – a mud pot – they tap even that all over to check that it is without any crack. What about marriage? They want two persons, both inexperienced… In fact, the girl’s qualification is that she should be virgin. What do you mean by virgin? She should be inexperienced – a strange qualification for any job. This is not right. That girl is inexperienced and the same is expected of the boy, that he will not be experienced. He should really be a bachelor, celibate. Two inexperienced people put together, and you think that there is going to be a beautiful life out of this meeting? They are going to spoil everything because they don’t have any experience.So for our children in the commune, girls and boys should be staying in the same hostel. And it is the duty of the superintendent to see that their partners are changed each month so there is no question of jealousy. In ten years’ time they will have changed so many partners that being jealous will simply drop from their minds. If their wife changes the partner, or if they want to change, it will be simply easy. They both have changed so many times and they are so much experienced that even your ninety-year-old man is not so much experienced. And experience is always good. It brings wisdom to you.These children should be taught that their love should be joined with meditation. If they masturbate, there is no harm in it. Medically it is healthy, hygienic, more hygienic than making love to a girl, more natural than making love to a man. You can join meditation with it very easily and it is the greatest joy. If meditation becomes associated with your great joy, then your whole life will be a different life.All the religions have done just the opposite. They have destroyed your joy and they have been teaching you meditation – so the meditation does not succeed. It can succeed only if it is a joyous experience, so why not join it with a biological joy which is available? But because I have been saying such things people want to kill me, assassinate me, even though I am simply stating absolutely scientific facts.So this is the second reason: that you become aware that in this society no priesthood arises, no politics arises. Even while I am here the same stupidities are arising once in a while. Just the other day Sheela has written a letter to me that now when she comes back here she does not feel as excited as she used to be. She feels happier working outside, in Europe, in Australia, in Japan or anywhere else. Perhaps she is not conscious – and this is the situation for all – she does not know why she does not feel excited here any more. It is because I am speaking and she is no longer the central focus. She is no longer a celebrity. When I am speaking to you, she is no longer needed as a mediator to inform you of what I am thinking. Now that I am speaking to the press and to the radio and TV journalists, she has fallen into shadow. And for three-and-a-half years she was in the limelight because I was silent.It may not be clear to her why she does not feel excited coming here and feels happy in Europe. She is still a celebrity in Europe – interviews, television shows, radio interviews, newspapers – but here all that has disappeared from her life. If you can behave in such foolish unconscious ways even while I am here, the moment I am gone you will be creating all kinds of politics, fight. Then what is the difference between you and the outside world? Then my whole effort has been a failure. I want you to behave really as a new man.I have given Sheela the message that this is the reason: “So think it over and tell me. If you want me to stop speaking just for your excitement, I can stop speaking.”To me there is no problem in it. In fact, it is a trouble. For five hours a day I am speaking to you, and it is creating unhappiness in her mind. So let her do her show business. I can move into silence. But that indicates that deep down those who have power will not like me to be here alive, because while I am here nobody can have any power trip. They may not be conscious about it; only situations reveal your power trip. And I can make it, show it to her. If she denies it, I can go to Europe and show her whether she feels happy in Europe or not, or wherever she wants to check about her happiness. But deep down this means that you would like me to die.If you would like me to be silent, not to speak, so that you are in the forefront, then deep down that means…why just silent? Silent men can start speaking any moment; make him silent completely.These are not conscious thoughts in anybody’s mind, but this is how the unconscious mind functions. And I want you to be aware of everything. Before I leave you I want you to be aware so that you don’t fall into the same pitfalls every society, every civilization, has fallen into.Osho,You have called this community your circus, your carnival. Is this carnival happening with any purpose or is it just for fun?It is just for fun. Purpose is a business word, where everything is done for some end, where every act is divided in two parts, the means and the end. The end is always in the future, so in every purposive activity you have to sacrifice the present for the future. And my whole teaching is not to sacrifice the present for anything.So against purpose, my work is pure fun. The word fun is not very respected, but we have to make it the most respected word. Purpose is ugly. Purpose means you always act with greed. Fun means there is no greed. Fun means there is no need for you to be victorious. You are playing cards – just fun; nobody takes it seriously whether you are defeated or victorious. After the game is over, all victories and all defeats are over too.That’s how life should be taken. Live each moment totally, but don’t carry the idea of purpose; otherwise you cannot live totally, your mind is somewhere in the future looking at the purpose, arrowed at the purpose. You can’t be total in the activity. Your action is half-hearted. You are doing it mechanically. But if there is no purpose, you can be total in the moment.My work is fun, but out of this fun there is much flowering. I am not saying that nothing will come out of it. So remember the distinction: the man who is working for some purpose perhaps may not attain it, because he is never wholeheartedly in the action. The man who is functioning only as fun is so totally in it that he may attain to many things which the purposive man can never dream of. So just thinking “Act out of fun” does not mean that you are a loser. You are a gainer in every way just because of your totality. Your action is going to bring more fruits, more flowers, although you were not working for fruits and flowers. You enjoyed the moment, its action, and out of that enjoyment and out of that totality many things are going to happen. But they were not your concern. When they happen, you will be surprised.A sannyasin is surprised every moment because he was not hoping that anything was going to happen. He had not even given a thought to it. He was so involved in his action that there was no space for anything. But when the moment and the action are finished, he is surprised that something great and beautiful has arisen out of it.My sannyasin will never feel miserable, never feel disappointed. The man who works with the idea of purpose in mind is always miserable.The proverb is significant: Man proposes, God disposes. God may not exist, but the proverb has a truth in it. The truth is, the more you propose, the more you will feel disappointment. You can dump that on the head of God – who does not exist so he cannot deny it: “I have not disposed of anything. You yourself messed things, because you were not total in your action. You have missed the target.”My people are living as fun. That’s why I call it a circus, a carnival. It is not a marketplace. It is just a commune of people who have decided to enjoy life to its fullest, materially, spiritually, in every dimension.Osho,You have said that if there are only two hundred enlightened people in the world a third world war is not possible. Can you explain what you mean, how these two hundred people would make a difference among the billions of unconscious people?Certainly. They will make tremendous difference. When the whole room is dark, just a small candle makes so much difference. In such a big room a small candle, lighted…the whole darkness disappears.An enlightened person is a tremendous light – very subtle but for miles around him many people’s lives will be touched. And if two hundred people are enlightened, which has never happened in history… At the most, ten people have been enlightened at the same time, in Gautam Buddha’s days. That is the only moment, and India remembers that moment as the Golden Age because the country felt something strange for which there were no words. It was mysterious, but the country felt unburdened, and an immense sense of joy, centering, nonviolence, understanding.But that was only ten people, and they were not all living their whole lives simultaneously. Just at one point Mahavira was old, Buddha was young. Goshalak was just between the age of the two. Ajit Keshkambal, Sanjay Vilethiputta and the remaining ones all were of different ages. But there was a time when all the ten were alive. It did not last long, because few were very old and they started dying. By the time Buddha died, he was alone. All others had died before him.So only at a certain point, perhaps for a few years, ten people have been at the same time enlightened, and they raised the consciousness of the whole country. Now, two hundred people around the world can create an aura of energy which will be a very subtle force, like x-rays. You don’t see them.Both Soviet Russia and America are trying to find death rays – just like x-rays – which will be far better than nuclear bombs, because nuclear bombs can be seen. America has made arrangements. Many billions of dollars have been spent by Ronald Reagan. Thirty million Americans are hungry and on the streets, and many billions have been spent on a secret plan. They are keeping certain of the latest developed instruments on submarines, so that if from the Soviet Union any missile carrying a nuclear weapon comes towards America, it will be able only to move seven miles. This much time those submarines and the machines will take. And they have arrangements to hit the missile directly to change its direction back towards Soviet Union itself.So before the missile leaves the Soviet Union it will be directed back. All around America they now have submarines waiting. If any attack is made, then they can redirect the nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union. In fact, they will never allow them to leave Soviet territory. We don’t know what arrangements the Soviet Union has, but they must be having some other arrangement.Both countries are searching for death rays, and perhaps the Soviet Union has found them, that’s why they are not worried about this arrangement. Perhaps they will not use nuclear weapons, which will be visible; they will use death rays, which will be invisible, and cannot be redirected.And with the death rays one thing is very strange: it will kill only the living beings. Houses will remain intact. Everything – furniture, cars, roads – everything will remain intact. The death rays will go on showering on living people, passing from one living person to another. Wherever life is, they will be moving towards that point. So trees will die, animals will die, man will die.Early in this century, there were a few painters who painted pictures with houses, furniture, roads – everything is in the pictures – but not a single living thing. They could not explain why this idea was so much in their minds. Even seeing their pictures, you feel a great sadness arising in you.It has been happening many times that poets, painters, get glimpses of things which may be going to happen someday. Now those pictures are predictive. If death rays come, they will simply hit living beings and go on killing them. There will be no bloodshed. The person dying will not know when he was alive, the death will be so quick. You never know when you stand before an x-ray machine that the x-ray has taken the photograph. You don’t feel it. The same way with the death ray; you will not feel it, you will be simply gone. And the death ray will not end with you. It will go on jumping, it will have its range.Two hundred enlightened people can create just the opposite situation. If they are together in a certain arrangement, they can create life rays which will protect people from death rays, which even may help somebody who has died through a death ray to come alive again. But those two hundred enlightened people have to be in a certain communication. Then they can create a circle around the world.My own idea is that we can create two hundred enlightened people amongst our sannyasins. They are already connected and they are not alone, they are supported by the commune. Their energy can be enhanced, multiplied, by other sannyasins who may not be enlightened but are in search of it, on the way.I mean what I have said. And if we can make a net of life rays around the earth, it can prevent even nuclear weapons from being destructive. But that is a totally different science and never experimented upon. But a few glimpses have happened in the past, and there is no harm in experimenting with it. Anyway, there is no other hope.Our communes have to be ready for it. And they should not think of trivia, of small fights, egos. They should understand their responsibility is so great as it has never been of any human being before. And I hope that we will be able to do something. There is still time, and my people are working hard. Now it is a question whether we can manage within the time or not.But I have a certainty that we have almost created a Noah’s Ark of consciousness for the coming flood of death to the whole of humanity.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 24 (Read, Listen & Download)

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John Dettinger,California magazine, Los Angeles, CA,Glad to meet you.Osho,When I came out of simple curiosity to the Ranch in May, it never occurred to me that I might be sitting here having your full attention. I had dreamed of such a thing perhaps, but I find the moment quite moving.I know. I can feel your heart and your tears. So there is a possibility of authentic communion. You are no more a journalist; I can talk to you now heart to heart. Otherwise, journalism is something superficial. The moment it becomes a communion of the heart…I know with your help I'll be up to that challenge. I've not tried that way often before.It is very rare, because journalists try to remain true to their profession, and their profession is superficial. Journalism does not become literature for the simple reason that it is so superficial. By the evening the newspaper is worthless.But if it is heart to heart, then journalism can also become art and literature. And it should become.I'd like to try.Start.I'd like to talk about the Commune.Okay.I'd like to know how many communes are there and where are they located?It is difficult for me to give you very detailed information because I myself don’t know. But in almost every country of the world there are communes. Germany has the largest number of communes; Holland has perhaps the second largest number. England has, Italy has…India, Japan, Switzerland. Other than communes there are ashramas, which are smaller communes with very few people living in. And then there are centers where only one or two sannyasins are living, but other sannyasins come to meditate, to listen to the tapes, to read, to discuss.In all we have almost one million sannyasins around the world. Of these one million sannyasins, nearabout two hundred thousand sannyasins are underground. That means they are either in Russia, in communist countries, or in countries where they cannot come into the open.Even in communist countries we have communes, but underground. You cannot declare, you cannot use the red clothes. Even in a red country you cannot use red clothes! My sannyasins are being persecuted by the KGB in Russia. Their books have been taken away, their tapes have been taken away, and they are constantly interrogated, harassed, to give more information about other sannyasins who may be having literature. My literature is banned. But that does not make any difference. In fact, it creates more excitement, more curiosity, particularly in the intelligentsia.So I have one million very intelligent people around the world, deeply interested, and not only intellectually interested but existentially interested. They want to be transformed into a New Man. And that is the function of sannyas.Do you suppose, or would you care to speculate, on why so many come from West Germany, why most of…the largest number of communes are in West Germany? Could it have anything to do with Adolf Hitler and the holocaust?It has certainly something to do with Adolf Hitler. He prepared the ground for me because he cheated and deceived the whole country. The youth of Germany is no longer interested in politicians.On the other hand, Adolf Hitler was also ambitious to be known as a religious leader. He declared himself to be the reincarnation of the Old Testament prophet Elijah, and Christian heads of Germany prayed for his victory. The leadership that he gave to the country almost changed people into robots.So the new generation is very frustrated with politicians, religious leaders, with anybody who would like to impose a discipline on them. And that’s the reason why they are interested in me. I don’t have any discipline to impose on anybody. My teaching is fundamentally for freedom of thinking, being. I have tremendous respect for individuality. The society is not more important than the individual. The society exists for the individual, not vice versa.I don’t have a dogma, I don’t have a God in which you have to believe. I am not a prophet, I am not a messenger. I am simply a human being who can see a little more clearly than you. And I am ready to share my clarity and I am grateful if you allow me to share my clarity with you. You are not obliged; I am obliged.So that is the reason why most of the German intelligentsia is immensely interested in me. And the German politicians and the government is in the same proportion afraid. They are afraid that anybody who comes to me never returns to Germany. They are afraid that I have more influence on their youth than they have.I have never been in Germany, but still the German politicians have put a few cases against me so that I cannot enter the country, or, if I enter, then I can immediately be arrested.I have no desire to go anywhere.On what grounds would they arrest you?They have made stupid cases against me in the courts. Summonses are there with arrest warrants, that I am saying something which is hurting somebody’s religious feelings. Now, anybody can put a case on that ground. Even in America, the president – I was not thinking that there would be an American Nazi party – but the president of the American Nazi party wrote a letter to me that, “You speak against Adolf Hitler and it hurts our religious feelings.”I could not believe it! Adolf Hitler and religious feelings…how does he manage to join them together? Then I discovered that he was the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah, and they believe that he had come for the salvation of humanity. That’s why they have put cases against me. There have been cases in India against me…That is surely a civil suit between you and the Nazi party.A civil suit, yes.Oh, that would…because our government is well known for its religious tolerance.There is nobody who has religious tolerance. If you have a religion you cannot have religious tolerance. Only a man like me, who has no religion, can have religious tolerance. So it does not matter to me – it is simply rubbish.But any man who is attached to any religion cannot really have religious tolerance. He has already decided what is right, what is true. Now he can show a hypocritical mask of tolerance, but if you look even just at the word tolerance you can see there is the taste of intolerance already present in the very word.If I say I simply tolerate your presence here, what does it mean? It simply means I do not rejoice in your presence here. You are not welcome. I do not respect you as you are; I simply tolerate you.But tolerance is not a great quality. It is a very third-rate value.It beats persecution. Governments elsewhere have been known to persecute on religious grounds.In fact, persecution is better than tolerance, because persecution at least recognizes you on equal grounds. Persecution really means that the people who are persecuting are afraid of you; they are afraid that if you are both allowed to exist together, soon the other party is going to win. They have the truth and you don’t have it. So before it becomes known, they have to be destroyed.But when you tolerate somebody you have already accepted that they are inferior to you; there is no fear about it.I would love rather to be persecuted than to be tolerated. Persecution simply means you are afraid, you are threatened.That seems to be the attitude of the German government at the moment.Yes. They are threatened. They discuss me in their parliament, against me – a person who has never been in their country. But if I am there, they are going to persecute me like anything. But I love it! I enjoy it.I am being persecuted here in America, what to say of Germany!So then you are persecuted here…never mind tolerated?Yes, there are so many cases going in the courts against me – false, utter lies. And we are defeating all those cases, because they are against their own laws, against their own constitution.You mean the constitution of the United States?Yes.We've been most impressed in Los Angeles, in California, at how well the commune has won each case and insisted upon the American way being served.We will fight.Even in Oregon there's a grudging respect for your triumphs.Certainly. They have to respect it, because we are standing for the constitution and they are standing against their own constitution. It is a strange fate, that we are to protect the American constitution against the Americans.May I ask you: with so many sannyasins – a million of them worldwide – I understand that you personally choose each Sanskrit name for each sannyasin. Is that correct?I used to.Because obviously my question would be: how do you arrive at the appropriate name for each sannyasin? How do you manage that? And if you could also, of course, explain what is the value of taking a different name than one's family name.In India I used to give new names, because mostly names in other languages are either meaningless or silly. For example, just the name of one American evangelist, Jerry Falwell – now I cannot understand why fall-well should be given as a name to anybody. It is simply silly.So I was giving meaningful names to people. From all over the world people were coming there and I was giving them meaningful names which can have a certain significance for them, a certain relatedness to their personality, a certain message for their future growth.If I saw a person that was very sad, long-faced, carrying many frustrations, disappointments, and out of that frustration and disappointment he has come to me but that long shadow is still with him, then I would give him something just the opposite of what he has been up to now, because I want him to be discontinuous with his past.For example, I may call him Anand Prem. Anand means bliss, Prem means love: a blissful, loving personality, that is his goal. And drop all this sadness and all this frustration. Whatever has passed has passed; now nothing can be done about it. Only one thing can be done about it: it can be dropped. And you can start anew. The new name is simply symbolic of a new birth. When you are born you come without a name; then your name is given to you.Sannyas has to be a new birth. So symbolically the new name indicates that the old person is dead and you have to start living, from this moment, a new way of life.I have given thousands of names. Now I don’t give sannyas myself. But sannyasins who have been with me for fifteen years and are perfectly capable of reading the mind of the man, the personality of the man, they are giving sannyas. And I have given so many names that out of all those names they can find what name will be suitable. I have initiated every kind of person and every kind of mind into sannyas, so they don’t need to bother about new names. I have given thousands of names; they have the whole list and they can find it and they can work it out.But it is certainly significant. Sometimes very small things are very significant. For example, your clothes. It is not anything important, what kind of clothes you are wearing or what color. But when you are mourning you use black; somehow it fits with your mood, somehow it shows others your situation. In a black mourning dress it will be difficult to have a hearty laugh; it will look just absurd.So small things – I have given my sannyasins the color red. There are only two basic colors in existence: red and green. All other colors are in a minority. The basic is green – the trees, the forest – and red. Strangely enough, red is almost always the color of the flowers. It represents blossoming, flowering, life. Very few people reach to the stage of flowering. They remain barren; they die without any fruition, without any flowers.I want to remind my people continuously. They will be using the red twenty-four hours a day. They have to flower. Before death comes, flowering has to happen. They have to work hard for it.Does the mala have healing powers?No.I've read in a book on Rajneeshism that I got here at the ranch that there was a…For the sannyasins it can have thousands of meanings. For a non-sannyasin, no meaning, because it is a question of your love, your trust. Then anything can have healing power. If you trust me, then just a glass of water from my hand will have the healing power. It is not in the water, it is not in my hand. It is in your trust.So to a sannyasin the mala is certainly of many meanings. In sickness he can have healing through it, just holding it. In fear, just holding it and he will feel courage. In a moment of loneliness, just holding it and he will not feel lonely, he will feel he is with me. But it all depends on his trust, it has nothing to do with the mala itself. The mala is only an excuse.I have heard that when the commune began here in Oregon there was a day off, but then something happened that caused you to institute a seven-day work week. Could you talk about that?No, in the beginning people simply started working the way they worked in the outside world. The outside world has followed the routine because in the biblical story God worked for six days, and the poor fellow got tired so the seventh day he rested. And since then nothing has been heard about him. He went to eternal rest.I don’t want my people to go to eternal rest. I said, it is better to continue working; the seventh day is dangerous. I was just joking, but the reality was that we had so much to do that even seven days are not enough.We came into a desert. When we came there was only one house, dilapidated, and no greenery, just barren hills. And we had to make it an oasis. Tremendous work was needed. Soon we found six days are not enough – even seven days are not enough.Our people are working twelve hours per day, and in festival times, four times a year, for months they work fourteen hours a day – but with great joy. It is their commune, it is their creation. It is not ordinary work in the ordinary world. It is just like a painter or a musician who goes on playing and practicing for hours without getting tired. In fact, the more he practices the finer becomes his music and the greater is his joy.We are creating an oasis. It is similar to creating poetry or music or sculpture. And in four years we have changed the whole color of the scenery. Now it is green. Birds have come, deer have come, of their own accord, seeing that we have managed dams and made big lakes, seeing that so many people are here – and harmless people. So we have thousands of deer now. And if you go in the street in the night you will find them standing, and they will not move. You will have to get out of the car and push them, because they know these people don’t harm anybody!In my garden I have three hundred peacocks. Even my car takes so much time to get into and out of the house, because they are all standing in the way, dancing. And they are not worried that the car is there and it is not a place to dance – but they know that nobody is going to harm them.My chauffeur was just saying that in this place there is only one sin: that is, don’t run over a peacock.I said, “That’s right!”Osho,If I may, just for a moment go back to…Yes, you can go anywhere.You mentioned that on the seventh day people fall into oblivion. Perhaps I've gotten a modern mythology about the ranch, but I have heard a story and I would like to know if it is true. I heard that when there was a six-and-a-half-day week, on the half day off there was a tragic accident, and that a sannyasin who was a member of the commune drowned. And it was from then on – perhaps lest he fall into oblivion – that the seventh day…seven-day work week was instituted.No. It had nothing to do with that. It may have been a coincidence, but I don’t remember that it had anything to do with that. Accidents can happen any day. It is not a question of…But our work is so great because we want to be self-sufficient. We don’t believe in poverty, we believe in luxury, comfort. This is the only commune in the whole history of man where five thousand sannyasins are living in fully air-conditioned houses. And we have made all these houses; we have made all the roads, we have made the hospital, the school, the university – whatever is our need.We cultivate our own food, we cultivate our vegetables; we have all our own milk products. We are vegetarians so we produce vegetarian eggs because that is an absolute necessity for all the vegetarians of the world. Unless they start eating vegetarian eggs, their intelligence will lag behind others’. So not a single vegetarian has received a Nobel prize up to now, for the simple reason that his intelligence cannot grow. It needs certain proteins which are missing in his food. So we have our chicken farm and we are now perfectly self-sufficient.We have our own cars for every sannyasin who ever wants to use one; we have our buses, we have our airplanes, we have our airport – we have everything that we want for every sannyasin. And we will go on producing more and more, because my approach is that true communism is possible only when capitalism comes to its peak. When there is so much wealth that nobody wants to hoard it – there is no point in hoarding it; nobody hoards the air, so much is available – then only there can be a natural communism. And I am all for a natural communism which will not come from a revolution but which will come from evolution. When capitalism evolves to its totality, this will be a simple matter.Russian communism is not true communism. It is distributing poverty equally. And I would like everybody to be luxurious, not equally poor. What is the point of equal poverty?So we are working and we are being successful. And the strangest thing is that you will not find my people sad or grumpy after working for twelve hours a day; they will be laughing and dancing and singing in the evening. They still have enough energy after twelve hours work. If work is something that you are not doing under compulsion, that you are doing out of your own choice and joy, it is never tiring. In fact, it is nourishing and it makes you stronger. So after working for twelve hours they are still able to dance for hours, sing for hours, and enjoy the evening late into the night.My approach towards life is that we have to create the paradise here and now, because there is no other paradise. Don’t hope for things which don’t exist. For thousands of years people have been told to hope, and because they have been hoping they have not used their time to create it here. If it is available ready-made after death, and you have just to go every day to the church or every Sunday to the church, or do a certain mantra every day in the morning five times and there is ready-made paradise after death, then who bothers to work twelve hours and create a paradise here?My reasoning is that you create paradise here, and if there is any paradise after death you will be the only person to enjoy it, because all others will be absolutely untrained amateurs – they will not know how to dance!Just think of your saints: how will they dance? How are they going to hug a beautiful woman? Impossible! They will close their eyes. This kind of paradise…and they have to live eternally there with all beautiful women and rivers of wine. What will your saints do? They will try to commit suicide – where have they come to?Only my people will be immensely joyful. They will immediately start making it better.You've made some suggestions to your sannyasins, both recently and in past history, especially those who live in California. I believe it was 1982 that you suggested to the Californian sannyasins that they move out of the state. Could you tell us about that?Yes. I had asked my sannyasins in California to move out because California is now the most sexually perverted place in the whole world. And I have always thought that sexual perversion is finally going to lead to something which will be incurable. And now it has come. It is not a disease, because a disease can be cured. AIDS is not a disease; it cannot be cured.There is only one thing which cannot be cured and that is death. So I call AIDS a slow death. And California is the leader in that matter. Homosexuality, lesbianism, sodomy, other kinds of sexual perversion – California is at the top. Just in L.A., one person dies of AIDS every day since almost one year. The government continues to repress the information about how many people are suffering from AIDS in California. How many people are homosexuals – the government does not supply the information.In fact, every government is trying to repress information about homosexuality and AIDS, because that makes them look so ugly, sick. But whatever you do, sooner or later you will have to face the fact.In Texas, just a few days ago, they have made a law against homosexuality. Homosexuality is now a crime in Texas. The politicians of Texas think that they have done something great. They are being simply idiotic. Because of their law, one million homosexuals protested. It is just because of their law that we came to know that there are one million homosexuals in Texas.Are you referring to the law that the L.A. city council passed recently that makes it a civil offense to fire a homosexual who has AIDS or a person who has AIDS not for health reasons?No, I am not referring to that. In Texas…No, I mean in California.Yes. I don’t know about that.So they have driven those one million homosexuals underground. That is more dangerous. Now you will not know who is homosexual, and nobody will turn up for tests in the hospitals. Hospitals are afraid…So I had called my sannyasins here, and they are here and they are safe. Perhaps this is the only place which is safe. Every sannyasin has gone through tests; six thousand sannyasins have been tested, and only two persons have been found to have AIDS. This must be the lowest rate in the whole world. Among six thousand people, only two persons.And we are taking care of those two persons, giving them all that they need. We have given them the best houses, the most scenic place. They can come to the discourses, to the meetings. They have been told just not to spread the disease in any way. Don’t come in physical contact with people – because AIDS is passable through kissing, through tears, perhaps through any liquid coming out of the body.Four other sannyasins from other places have just arrived, because the moment it was known they have AIDS, hospitals were not willing to admit them because nobody wants to take the risk. Their own families – their wives, their children, their parents – don’t want them to enter the house anymore. For them they are already dead. Their friends have turned into enemies.Hearing about this – that we have made a special place for our AIDS patients – four sannyasins have come. We have accepted them, told them that, “This is perfectly good. You are simply victims; you should not be condemned.” So in the commune there is no condemnation for them. They are victims of a society which has been in many ways driving people into homosexuality.For example, all the religions are teaching celibacy as something spiritual, which is simply nonsense. Celibacy is not even possible. Celibacy is not in your control, that you can be celibate or not. Your body goes on creating male sperms; your body has no idea that you are a celibate monk. So what are you going to do with your sperms? When they collect they have to be released.My understanding is that homosexuality was born in monasteries, where religions put men and women separate. That’s where both lesbianism and homosexuality were born. These are religious diseases, and if anybody is responsible it is the founders of your religions and the teachers of celibacy. And they are still doing it. They should be punished by law. Celibacy should be declared illegal, and anybody staying celibate should be imprisoned immediately. But rather than punishing the celibates, you are punishing poor homosexuals.All the religions have forced marriage, monogamy. Now, man is an intelligent being, he is not a buffalo. The buffalo is satisfied with eating the same grass her whole life, chewing the same grass the whole day every day. She is never bored. You never see any buffalo bored, nor do you see any buffalo laughing. Both those things go together. It needs intelligence to be bored, it needs intelligence to laugh.Now, man has immense intelligence. And intelligence has grown with the ages. We are evolving. In this state of evolution it is absolutely wrong to force one man and one woman to stick together for their whole life. That creates lesbianism, that creates homosexuality, because the woman is watching – she will not allow you to talk to another woman and laugh with another woman and go to the movie with another woman. But if you are going with a friend, a male friend, then there is no problem – but she does not know that you are both are queens! This is a problem. If your wife is going with some man you become jealous, suspicious, angry, outraged. But if she is going with a woman it is perfectly okay. But they may be lesbians.So it is the responsibility of the society and the religion who are enforcing marriage and monogamy on people.In my commune we take marriage as just a legal game, because the whole idiotic society is there with their laws, so we accept their laws but we are not serious about them. Their laws are absolutely inhuman, unintelligent. So here there is every freedom, and it is good that once in a while your wife stays with some man and you stay with some other woman – just for a change. It will not disrupt your marriage. In fact, it will make it stronger. And there is no need to hide it. You love each other, you give freedom to each other, and you would like each other to have more experiences of life. You would like your wife to know more men because you are not all men. You have your individuality; other individuals have their own uniqueness. Loving them will make her richer – you will have a richer wife, and she will have a richer husband because he has known so many women. Experience is never bad. The bigger the experience the better.So in my commune there is no problem. It is taken for granted that people get bored. They are intelligent. But if you don’t allow them then they will find some substitute, but that substitute will be a perversion.Religious leaders, political leaders, are the criminals, but they will not be punished. Homosexuals, who are simply victims, will be punished.I call my people to come from California because California is the worst place right now.It is a strange paradox. We in California had thought it was an enlightened policy to – as with San Francisco and West Hollywood – incorporate cities that had a large voting population of gay people and protect their civil rights. Now, the amendment that I was talking about, the L.A. city council last week passed an ordinance, a city ordinance, that made it a finable offense to dismiss and thus endanger the civil rights of a person who is afflicted with AIDS from any job, including jobs where he may be handling food, dealing with the public on a personal level like that. It is naturally quite controversial. What do you think of that?Before AIDS became known, all the homosexuals and the lesbians were thinking that they are more progressive, avant-garde intellectuals. Heterosexuals are backward people just clinging to the biological heterosexual relationship. They have evolved higher; they are in a better intellectual position. So they were proud. They were having conferences, they were publishing books, they were publishing periodicals, newspapers. And they were trying to prove that their way of sex is better than the ordinary kind – the ordinary kind is animal, it has nothing human in it.But now they cannot say that. AIDS has proved that they were simply perverted. And they were not progressive, not intellectual; they were simply stupid and retarded.To me, every child between the ages seven and fourteen has certain homosexual tendencies. Between fourteen and twenty-one – because the society does not allow marriage yet, because they have to be educated – the danger is that they may either become auto-erotic or they will become homosexuals. But after the age of twenty-one they get married and they simply forget all about it.But a few people remain stuck there. Their mind never grows beyond their homosexual state. So they are retarded people, they are not progressive people.Is that a hopeless retardation?It can be helped.I don't think you have many gay people in your commune.Yes, and we are trying to help them. We are trying to bring them back to heterosexuality.In 1979 the American Psychiatric Association declared that homosexuality was not a medical disease, and the presumption was that since it was a sexual preference it need not be helped.In fact, all these psychiatric societies are not sciences either. So whatever they say should be understood as a statement coming from some vested interest. There are so many psychologies and so many psychotherapies and so many kinds of psychiatrists – it cannot be science. Science has to be one.And all these people, most of them are themselves perverted. Their statements make no sense at all. Just look at this fact: that in comparison to any other profession, twice as many psychologists go mad, twice as many commit suicide. Then madness and suicide, because they are committed by a psychiatrist, should not be a medical problem! And no profession can compete with them – they are doing double the job in comparison to any profession.So in the first place I don’t accept psychiatry and psychology as a science. And now with AIDS they will have to swallow their own saliva that they have spit on their hands. So tell them to swallow it and take back their statement. It is not only a medical disease, it is an existential disease. It is pure death.Homosexuality?Homosexuality.And they have been supporting it because homosexuality was growing and these were their patients. It was their vested interest. To say anything against homosexuals means losing their job, their profession. Now let them come out and say something in favor of AIDS. Then we will know whether they have any guts or not.Gay people – lesbians, homosexuals – these constitute the major part of the patients of psychiatrists and psychologists. Now, these are their clients and they are living on them. Naturally their associations cannot condemn them But because they have not condemned these people, in my view they have condemned themselves as simply professionals interested in business, not interested in humanity and health.California has been thinking itself a very enlightened state, because more homosexuals, more lesbians, more womens lib members, more Indian gurus and their followers…and all kinds of idiotic things claiming to be therapies like primal therapy.I have heard about one therapy in which hugging and kissing is the only methodology. I have heard of another therapy in which you act like an animal, naked on all fours. You move in the room with your tongue hanging out, shouting like an animal, a wolf or a dog.All these things… Werner Erhard’s EST, in which the only important thing is that you have to sit for six hours without pissing. Naturally it gives an enlightenment when you go to the bathroom! It is such a relief. And for two hundred and fifty dollars, it is worth it. Ordinarily you don’t get such a relief. But there is no need to join EST; it is freely available, you can manage it yourself. And there are even more enlightened people who start pissing sitting there in their seats. Then it is an even better relief because then they don’t care about anybody; they are freed of any respectability or anything.But these idiotic things don’t make any state or country or people enlightened. It simply means that people are rich enough, gullible enough, and there are always cunning people around to cheat you.When my secretary Sheela was searching for a place for me, I said that, “Not California. Anywhere is okay but not California, because all the idiotic Indian gurus who don’t have any hold in India, who don’t have any intelligence – I don’t want to get mixed up with that lot.”I have chosen Oregon because this poor state has not known a single enlightened man in the whole of history.Paul Bunyan.No.I have one last question about this very subject. You've told me that only two sannyasins have so far come up with AIDS, although four more have come in…making a total I presume of six at the hospice.Um hmm.Can you call it a hospice, the place in Desiderata where they are…?No, we are not calling it anything, because we don’t want to discriminate them in any way.But it is a place where they can…Yes.…come to spend their final days?Yes. There they will be, but they can come into the commune and go to the disco and go to the restaurant, go to the meetings. They are not prevented anywhere, because everywhere we are taking preventive measurements. Everybody going in the restaurant will have his hands sprayed by alcohol…Whether or not they have AIDS.That doesn’t matter. They have to. And anything they use for eating – like spoons – which touches their saliva, will go for sterilization. So there is no problem. But we don’t want to separate them, that is inhuman.They were…We have given them a faraway place, but we will not call it a separate thing. It is part of the commune.Can non-sannyasins enjoy that hospitality? If a person has AIDS and is not a sannyasin, could he come to the ranch…?No.…and stay in that faraway place?That will not be possible.I remember when I first heard you describe this last month, this program of caring for victims of AIDS who are sannyasins, that you thought at the time – and I believe that you even said, please don't ask me why – that because these people had nothing to lose they could make love with each other and perhaps through that could be cured.They are allowed to. They are allowed to make love with each other because nothing more can happen. There is no harm. If something good happens, it may be a great revelation for the whole world. If nothing happens, they are going to die anyway.And we are making arrangements for them to see films, to listen to talks, to read books. All that they have desired their whole life we are trying in every possible way to provide them with, because that is their final time – six months, eight months, perhaps at the most two years.And simultaneously we are teaching them meditation. That is something very essential, because people go on postponing meditation and things like that for tomorrow. Today they have so many things that meditation goes on being postponed. But these people cannot postpone meditation for tomorrow. There is no tomorrow for them.So we are teaching them meditation. If they can die meditatively, then their AIDS may have proved a blessing in disguise, because even the richest man cannot afford two years with no work, rest, listening to beautiful music, or swimming or going into the mountains, into the hills, into the forest, reading – we have given them the best opportunity that is possible to meditate.And they will meditate more intensely, more earnestly, because death is so close. If they can become centered in their being – that’s what meditation is – then death will come but not to them, only to their body. Then they will be able to experience death and experience at the same time the eternal source of life that moves on, that never dies.So I would like that anywhere there are special arrangements for AIDS people – hospitals or AIDS homes – they should make it a point that these are not sick people; these are people on the verge of death. They don’t need medicine, they need meditation.And you will be surprised to know that both the words come from the same root: medicine and meditation. Medicine is for the body to heal and meditation is for the soul to heal. But both mean the same in the original root.If there is no medicine, at least give them meditation.How is your health?My health is really great.I have heard…you complained earlier about…less than a year ago that you were ailing from a variety of causes.No. I have been suffering because my sickness is not something that I can say I am cured of. It is allergy, so it can erupt any moment.What symptoms does it take when it does?Dust can create it, perfume – most dangerous. And there are a few things which I should not eat – any things which have acids. So if I just avoid them… And in the commune everybody is aware of my trouble, so nobody will use perfume, nobody will come close to me if he has been smoking. Nobody will come to me if he has been perspiring, because any smell is enough to provoke it. And what it does is it starts breathing trouble; my breathing becomes abnormal, difficult.Lungs?Yes. And then coughing starts. Then the coughing will continue at least for two hours to six hours. It is a problem in the night; then I cannot sleep. So this disease is such that I can never say I am cured. And I can never say that I am sick; only once in a while when something happens I am sick for a few hours. Otherwise I am perfectly okay.The second problem I had was my back. So my people have arranged for that too, because no medical treatment was helping. In India we had called experts from England who had worked their whole life only on backs, but they also said that, “This is strange.”I knew that they would not help and I told them that, “The problem is, it is not a sudden thing – somebody slips and falls down and the back comes out. Then you can fix it. My problem is that I have been sitting in this kind of chair for almost thirty years. The chair changes but the shape remains exactly the same. So the back has got a certain curve, and if that curve is disturbed, then I am in trouble.”I cannot sit on your chair. It is more comfortable, but my back will not fit with it. I can use only one car. I have used all the cars, the best in the world; the seat of just one car, one of the models of Rolls Royce, the Silver Spur, fits with me perfectly. It is not their costliest car; their costliest is the Corniche, then the Carmargue. And then the third is the Silver Spur. So I tried a Corniche – they didn’t work, my trouble started. But with the Silver Spur it has settled completely.So up to ‘89 I can use it at least, because in ‘89 they are going to change the model. I have persuaded the president that, “Don’t change the seat” – and he has to listen to me because I am the only person in the whole world who has ninety Rolls Royces!Why do you have such an abundance? Surely you can only ride in one at a time.I believe in abundance.Isn't that a bit of overkill, though?These ninety are not yet enough.I understand that…My people are trying to arrange for three hundred and sixty-five, so that every day they can give me a new car.California is Los Angeles…people in Los Angeles will truly appreciate that. You know, they say that there's more Rolls Royces in Los Angeles than there are…Yes, not in Los Angeles or anywhere else.So ordinarily I am perfectly okay if I take care, and I do take care. Just the problem was that I was moving among the masses, going outside. That was creating trouble so I had to stop. Now I live in the commune and everybody is aware of my problem, so everybody keeps clean, non-smelly.Some of my friends who are not sannyasins, when they speak of you find it difficult – particularly because California is such a health-conscious place, such a robust, active sports-minded place, possibly because of the climate – they find it hard to resolve the fact that you have poor physical health and yet are enlightened.They don’t understand enlightenment. In fact, anybody who has been enlightened has had poor health, for the simple reason that enlightenment is something which goes beyond ordinary biology, physiology, chemistry. It is a great disturbance in your whole natural system.The ordinary man’s consciousness is completely in tune with his biology. But once you become enlightened, you have a distinction between your biology and your consciousness.The ordinary man follows biology, which is part of nature. It is healthier. The enlightened man follows consciousness, which is not part of nature, so many times he has to go against biology, against physiology. But he cannot go against his consciousness. That creates the rift.So no enlightened people have ever been healthy.Could you give some examples of the consciousness going against biology and natural instinct and that sort of…?The ordinary man has no awareness that he has something in him which is not part of the body yet is in the body. And that space which is not part of the body and yet in the body is your real being. So once you get to it, it becomes your direction for everything. Then the body cannot dominate you, physiology cannot dominate you, biology cannot dominate you.And people go on in their blind way. So in fact now you are on two tracks, and to keep them together is the problem that creates unhealth, sickness.Buddha was sick and continuously had a private doctor with him. Wherever he was going the doctor was with him – and the best physician of the times. One king had presented his own physician to him saying, “Take care of him because he is in a fragile state.” A small unbalance and he will be out of the body.The strings between the being and the body become very loose as you become enlightened. The old tightness is no longer there. Just a slight shock and the being and the body will fall apart.So it is a wrong notion that is around. Many people think like that, that the enlightened person should be perfectly healthy. They don’t understand. That means people like Muhammad Ali should be enlightened.Yet there are some yoga teachers, particularly in…They are not enlightened. Not a single yoga teacher is enlightened. Yoga teachers are healthy, but yoga teachers are just experts in an old gymnastics, nothing else. It does not lead to enlightenment or to self-realization or anything. But it certainly leads to better health.Do you practice Hatha Yoga?No.I understand that you swim for your health.I swim.How often and where and what do you wear?I don’t wear anything. I used to swim twice, but for two months I had to stop it because my physicians became afraid. The water going into my ear was creating trouble, and my ear drums may get hurt or some trouble may arise. And it is possible because I have been swimming from my very childhood for hours. It may have damaged my ear drums.So for two months I have not been swimming. My pool is there, Olympic size, just for me. That’s how I live, in abundance! But if you want to swim in it, you are welcome. Just you will have to not wear anything.I would enjoy it, to use that invitation, sir.Yes. Okay?Thank you.You can come. My photographers will be there.We'll run it on the front page.Something more?Oh yes, if I may. I have a short list of prominent American people, and I was hoping that you might be able to give just a brief impression, one line or so, about each, if I might run it down. For instance, what do you think of Johnny Carson?I don’t think of idiots at all.Nathan Pritikin.Have you collected the names of all the idiots?Perhaps.Mm, it seems so.Jerry Falwell?They are all the same. I don’t think about any of them. And for five years I have not read any book, I have not read any magazine, any newspaper, because for fifty years I have been reading so much that finally I saw that ninety-nine percent is rubbish, and to find the one percent you have to move into the ninety-nine percent of garbage. I stopped it.And as far as that one percent is concerned, I have it. So there is no problem.The reason I asked is because so many people spend their lives in front of television sets and in movie houses. Do you watch movies? I understand that sometimes they bring cassettes to the ranch.Once in a while if my people feel that some movie is worth seeing – very rarely. Then I see one.Have you any favorites? Any movies that you've enjoyed? Or actors?Anything that is really great literature, great art. For example, I enjoyed Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov.The David Brooks production.Yes. I have enjoyed the book, I have enjoyed the film too. I enjoyed the film, Ten Commandments.The Cecil B. De Mille version?Yes.The one with Charlton Heston?Yes.Or the early…he did two, you know. He did one that was silent, I believe.I don’t know which one it was. But whichever it was, it was really done with great insight and art. And my people brought it so they must have brought the best one. So once in a while, if they see…They watch. They have movies here and they also have television, so whenever they see something good they bring it to me. Otherwise I am not interested.So if I might ask, then, if any of these names are…have you seen these recently, because they are at least top of the charts in terms of American popularity.No. I have not seen them.Neither Woody Allen, for instance? Or Prince? How about Jesse Jackson? Now, he's a politician, and surely…I have just heard the name, but I know nothing about. The Prince – I think I have seen that film and the book. And another book similar to The Prince, which was really my autobiography: The Difficulties of an Ordinary God. That I enjoyed very much.Is it made by sannyasins?No. It is not made by a sannyasin. It is some outside production. But it simply is my difficulty. I am so ordinary and yet I have found in ordinariness the greatest blessedness, the most beautiful experience of divineness.I don’t believe in God but I have experienced godliness, certainly – as a quality, not as a person. Every enlightened person experiences godliness, not God. And those who claim that they have experienced God simply indicate they have not reached enlightenment yet. They are still hallucinating about a God of their belief. They are still projecting a Christ, a Krishna. But that is their projection.In the moment of enlightenment there is no projection. It is absolute nothingness – but not empty; utterly full of light, love, blissfulness.So I enjoyed that film the most. It is not a great film. It is just a small film but tremendously humorous – the Difficulties of an Ordinary God. I would suggest you see it.Where might I find a print?You will find anywhere. If I can find it in this desert, you can find it anywhere.I wanted to ask you about the university because I took three courses there. And I understand that when the university began with you in Pune, some called it Esalen East. Esalen is a growth center in California. How does your university differ from California growth centers?Absolutely, because the founder of Esalen had come to be initiated in Pune, to become a sannyasin. He became a sannyasin. And he could see the difference, that what they were doing was just intellectual work, and what was happening in Pune was existential and experiential work.In Esalen there was nothing like meditation, and meditation has been my central teaching. Nothing else is needed. One simply has to come to a space within oneself where there is no thought, no feeling, but utter silence, and that comes through a very simple method: by watching your thought process.So there are three steps in it. Start from the easiest: watch your body movements. For example, I can watch my movement of the hand. Either I can do it mechanically or I can do it with full awareness. So walking, eating, swimming, doing anything with your body – chopping wood – just remain watchful. Don’t get lost in the activity. Be as if you are somebody else standing by the side, not the person who is chopping wood. You are seeing the person who is chopping wood.Once you get accustomed with the body, then the second step is very easy. Then sit silently once in a while and watch the process of your thoughts, the constant traffic on the screen of your mind. The method is the same: just watch. Don’t judge, don’t condemn, don’t evaluate. Whatever is passing just see it.And the strangest thing is, if you don’t judge and can just see, thoughts start becoming less and less. There are gaps. A thought comes and for a few moments there is no thought. And then the gaps start becoming bigger and bigger. When the gap can be as big as forty-eight minutes, then you can move to the third step. Then there is no difficulty at all.The third step is to watch your feelings.So one is for the body, one for your head, and the third is for your heart. The process is the same.When for forty-eight minutes your feelings are no longer there, a quantum leap happens on its own accord: the fourth step. But you don’t take it, it happens. Suddenly you find yourself standing in the innermost core of your being. And it is so full of light, so full of delight, so fragrant, that you cannot conceive that anything can be more than this.You have come home.This was missing in Esalen. There was no meditation. Therapy alone is superficial.The prognosis at the university in my particular case was that I had the California syndrome. I was one who professed a great eagerness to change, to transform myself, to drop the mask, to discover my original face. But though I proclaimed that, I was unwilling simply to do it. I find myself still on the cusp. How can I move?Um hmm. The best way will be just to come for an unlimited time. Don’t decide the time limit. And just be here. Don’t do therapies; just work with the sannyasins, meditate, enjoy, dance, and forget all about that you want to do all this, that you want to drop the mask, that you want to change. Forget all about it. Just live in the moment here for a few days. And don’t decide how many days, because your decision of the number of days beforehand will be a hindrance.So just come and be here, and when it happens you can go. It can happen the next day, it may take one month. It all depends on you, how quickly you can get absorbed into the commune and its work and forget about this self-transformation. That is one of the most hindering thing. The more you want to transform, the more difficult it will be, because who is it who wants to transform? It is your ego, and ego has to be dropped.Now, that’s the very crux of the whole process. The ego wants to change, the ego wants to transform, the ego wants to become new, the ego wants to be enlightened – but the ego is the only barrier.So what has to be done is to put aside all enlightenment, all change, all transformation, and just drown yourself in the work in the commune. Suddenly one day you will find what you have been searching and trying to find is there. And you may be dancing on the street because you have found it!There is a saying of Jesus: Seek and ye shall find. I say to my people: Seek and ye shall never find. Do not seek and it is there.It is always there. It is because of seeking that we go on missing.Jesus says: Ask and it shall be given. I say: Never ask, otherwise it shall never be given to you.Be silent and it is there.Nobody gives it to you. You have it, you have brought it with you as an intrinsic part of you.Jesus says: Knock and the door shall be opened unto you. I say to my people: Don’t knock, because the doors are already open.If you knock, that will prove only two things: either you are standing before a wall or you are blind. But one thing is certain: you can’t see that the doors are open. They have never been closed.Must one come to the commune to do this? It seems a heavy price to give up the world as I know it, to enter the alternative society.Whenever it feels that it is worth giving anything, only then you can get it. If you feel the price is great, then wait. Soon you will know there is nothing except frustration and AIDS. Just wait.Good.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 25 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Tom Greening,Humanistic Psychology magazine, Los Angeles, California, United StatesGlad to meet you.Osho,Thank you for this opportunity. I've enjoyed the Ranch and the people today, and your discourse this morning.That’s great.Now you can ask your questions.Well, it's an auspicious day, what with your discourse this morning about power and Sheela.What's happening in the Ranch and the consciousness that would in the future more rapidly confront the over-concentration of power or the misuse of power, the processes within the people themselves that would correct that in an individual?The human mind is so old, its conditioning is of thousands of years. It takes a tremendous effort to detach yourself from the conditionings of the past. The conditionings are not only your past, that is a very small fraction; beyond your past is the collective past of humanity, which is almost infinite. And you have been programmed in this whole past – programmed in such a way that lust for power has become almost natural.If you get power, then you want more. And there is no end to more. And the more power you want, the more people are going to lose their freedom. Your power is their loss of freedom. If you become ultimately powerful, they will become just slaves. So the real struggle is between the instinct of power and the value of freedom.It is possible to prevent it happening in a small commune like this. Simple methods can change it. What you are suggesting is an ultimate change – a change of their awareness: they become so conscious that no lust for power can raise its head in their psyche. That is a goal of all spiritual growth, but it will happen when it will happen. Meanwhile, we have to take temporary steps. For example, decentralization of power; it should not be in one hand, it should be in many hands. It should not be concentrated but diluted.There should be no hierarchy. Whatever one is doing, you may be a doctor, a professor, a president of a corporation, a farmer, a gardener – these are functions, they are not definitions of your individuality. The moment you come out of the classroom you are no longer a professor; you are a professor only while you are “professing,” you are a teacher only while you are teaching. The moment the function ceases, you are simply a human being. The function is not you. What you do is not your being.This is my approach, and it is working. It was just because I was silent for three and a half years, and I was not in contact with the day-to-day activities of the commune, that Sheela could get into a power trip. But that too has been of immense significance for the whole commune to learn something – how people can go on becoming more and more attached to power and how power goes on corrupting them. And it is a vicious circle: power corrupts you, then corruption needs more power; otherwise you will be exposed, More power needs more corruption…Osho,What prevented the sannyasins from dealing with it earlier on their own?There were many problems. First, the sannyasins have not gathered here for any political reason. They have come to me – to be just in my presence, in my silence, and to learn how to be silent and more conscious.But meanwhile they are living in a political world that can harm them and so they must become political and…No. It is better to get harmed than to become political, because that is more harmful than any other harm can be. And somebody, somewhere in the world, has to take the initiative not to be political, to be available to be harmed, and not ready to harm anybody.These people have not come here to harm anybody. They have just come to live silently, and to seek, search, whatever is their reality. So because they were all focused on that program, it was possible for Sheela and her group to go on doing things and nobody bothered about it. If it was a political group, then there would have been conflicts, there would have been elections and there would have been fights, and she would have been thrown out long ago. But because these people are not in any way power oriented, and they were thinking that whatever Sheela is doing she is doing on my instructions – that’s what she was telling them.Certainly she was receiving a few instructions from me, but it was at her discretion what instruction to use, what not to use, and it was in her hands to arrange any instruction that I had not given.I have come to know just today that she was doing exactly what Nixon was doing: she has bugged houses, and you will be surprised – my house, my bedroom!There was a leadership vacuum and…Yes.…she filled it. And that always happens when there's a vacuum – someone will fill it. It's simple.No. But it has not harmed anybody, she simply befooled herself. Nobody is harmed by her bugging or taping peoples’ conversations, because these people and their telephone conversations are either simple gossips, or some loving words to a friend. Taping them is simply stupid; they are not plotting any conspiracy. But people who are power oriented are paranoid – they are always afraid that somebody is going to take their place.Otherwise, bugging my room was absolutely stupid because she was the only one who used to come there – just for her work, if some advice was needed. There was no need to bug it. But she must have been afraid: perhaps somebody else enters without her knowing, informs me about what is going on – just paranoia. These people were not living happily; they were simply trembling inside, continuously afraid and looking everywhere with suspicion. And my people are meditating, working, enjoying, dancing, singing – they don’t have anything to bother about. That’s why she could carry on for three and a half years.It became difficult for her only now, because I started speaking. My speaking created trouble for her.Osho,The day will come when you will stop speaking again. Will your sannyasins then have moved spiritually, politically, to where they can handle that kind of problem?I am not going to stop speaking until I am dead. And who knows – I may speak even after that!But in case you don't.Just old habit.Or they may hear you speaking even after death…Yes.…whether you do or not.But I will prepare them – and they are preparing. It has been a good experience for them, so that it should not happen again – they should not be political, but they should be aware that they are not being politically cheated, that somebody does not become political on their account and take advantage of them. It will not happen now. I will prepare them for it too, that they should keep an eye open.Decentralization of power into many people’s hands will be one of the basic things. Second, the people should be taught that they do their meditations, they rejoice in their life, they need not worry too much about it, but they should keep an eye open. It is their life and nobody should become so powerful that he starts interfering. Now, it is against human freedom to tape somebody’s phone, to bug somebody’s room – it is inhuman and ugly. And that too, of people who love you, who are not against you – there are no political parties here.But people do that, we know they do that. Were you surprised?No, I am not surprised. I am never surprised because I know human mind so clearly. It can do any stupid thing – there is no need to be surprised.Osho,I guess my hope is that by knowing that people will do any stupid, ego-oriented, power trip, that we can sometimes design strategies in advance to prevent that from happening.I will be doing it. It will be prevented – it won’t happen again.Decentralization of power is one way – other ways of…?People have to – I am now going to constantly make them aware and alert. I am going to help them not to ignore what people in power are doing, and I am putting in power people who simply have no ambition, who have been connected with me. And I know them – they have no ambition of any kind. In fact, they are taking the posts unwillingly. And my third idea is that we will be rotating; there is no need for power to remain in one hand for a long period, so that the person starts taking it for granted that it is his.So, rotate power, change people. And it is good, we are doing that rotation in other fields: professors are gardening; a gardener who has been a professor is back in the university. A therapist is in the carpenter’s workshop and a carpenter – my own carpenter who has made this chair is a Ph.D., he can go to the university any day and be the vice-chancellor.So, we are doing that in every field. We were just not touching the power elite, for the simple reason that there were so many complications with the government, with law courts, so we wanted the people to deal with it who knew, who had been dealing with it, who had been going to the court. But now we will take that risk. It is better to take the risk, rather than give somebody an opportunity to become an egoist. It is against his spiritual growth to give him the opportunity to become an egoist.Osho,I assume that the rotation of roles does not include yourself?I am not in any position, so rotation is impossible. I don’t hold any position; I am not even a member of the commune, I am not a voter. I live outside the city. I am just an outsider and I have been an outsider everywhere – in my own country I was an outsider, in my own family I was an outsider. To be an outsider seems to be my fate.Who will make the appointments though, of the new leaders that are to be rotated?There are councils. I can suggest my ideas to the councils, then it is up to them to function accordingly or they can decide on their own. I can simply give them my advice. I cannot dictate anybody.And you feel that they are now sufficiently enlightened or self-empowered that they can make their own wise decisions?They can. They can, certainly.Without being too swayed by your recommendations or opinions?No. They can, because they were the people who were not supportive of Sheela and her fascist group. They were in the group…But yesterday they were not strong enough to remove Sheela – tomorrow they will be strong enough?No, there was no question of removal. They had no idea that Sheela could be removed. Now they know it. But they were ready, and when Sheela asked them if they would like to go with her, they simply refused. They were simply feeling nauseous and sick at her behavior. Those who were with her have left with her. It is good; it is a good cleaning process. And only those who were against the whole process that she was doing have been left behind.So now these people are more reliable; they will not allow anybody to do anything in the same way. And I am telling them that power should now be a rotated thing. Whenever you feel somebody is getting too interested in power, change them immediately.I hope it works.Yes, we can only hope – what works, nobody knows.Osho,Someone, perhaps it was Ezra Pound, once defined a slave as someone who waits for someone else to set them free, and it sounds a bit like the sannyasins had to wait for you to grant them the authority, permission, to exercise more self-governing power.No. It is not permission, neither is it authority; it is just a little awareness which they were missing. And the moment I said it, they immediately understood. They danced in the streets as if they had come out of a concentration camp. All that they needed was just a little awareness that that too is their work: to keep alert that nobody becomes dictatorial, that their freedom is not interfered with.And Sheela seems to be really insane. In fact, all power-oriented people are a little insane. A sane person would not like to enslave anybody. Just today I have come to know that Sheela and her group even tried to poison my physician. They wanted to poison two other persons who were close to me, for the simple reason that nobody should be close to me except Sheela. These three persons were in the way.This did not surprise you?No.It surprises me.No, it surprises you but it didn’t surprise me, because it is simple arithmetic – it can be understood. Anybody who wants to be dictatorial, who wants me not to be approachable by anybody else, would think of this. My physician was able to approach me to check me, so he could inform me about what is going on. My caretaker who brings food for me – she may bring information. My dentist who sometimes works on my teeth may tell me something. So there were only these three persons who were in any way capable of informing me.And part of your awareness was the thought, “Hmm, perhaps Sheela might want to poison them?”No, that never occurred to me. I was never thinking that.Then you were surprised.No, I was not surprised. I was simply sad – sad that a woman from whom we expected a more loving heart, should think in terms of killing people. I was simply sad – sad for Sheela, that she must be in a mess. The very idea is sickening. I am not angry at her, because I can understand these things can happen to power-oriented people.Osho,We could look at this event in terms of systems theory and ask in what way is Sheela a product of all of us? How are we all – including yourself – responsible for Sheela?That’s true. In a way we are all responsible for everybody – not only for Sheela, but for Adolf Hitler, for Ronald Reagan, for Joseph Stalin. We are responsible for our whole humanity, because we are part of it and in some way or other we contribute to it.Osho,And my sadness and my concern is that we never seem to learn fast enough to anticipate and heal the paranoia or power drives that are everywhere. And so when someone such as yourself comes into the world with love or creativity, then throughout history it bumps up against…It is true. And we are not only slow in learning, we are almost incapable of learning. We have not learned anything for these two thousand years. Our values and qualities of being human have not grown. We may have become more polished, more sophisticated – we may not crucify Jesus Christ, we may give him a good electric chair – but that makes no difference. We are the same people.Osho,How will your message and your practical strategy in the world be more durable, more wise?No, I never think about the future. My concern is not the future.Only you have security forces to preserve the future a little bit longer.They were not my security forces. The commune thinks about the future – naturally – because they are going to live here longer than me; their children will be here, living longer than me. I have no interest in the future. My interest is totally in the present. My interest is in my people and whatever I can share with them – my experience – and in whatever way I can help them to become more conscious. The whole thing is how to deprogram them of the past and make them conscious in the present.If my work is done in the present, it will take care of the future too, because the future does not come from anywhere else; it comes out of the present. Your present grows into the future, so if you are taking care of a rosebush now, without bothering about the flowers… If your care is enough, the flowers will come in their time – you need not bother about them. A person who thinks too much about the flowers, may perhaps neglect the care of the plant.My interest is my people who are with me, and whatever I can do for them I am ready to do.Osho,I also feel some concern or sadness about the relationship between your people and the people of Oregon, and wish that there be a process there also that could be healing or de-escalating. Do you see that happening?It is difficult, for the simple reason that I am not interested in converting people. Neither am I interested that the well should run after the thirsty, because that may make the thirsty even more afraid. A well coming toward you – I don’t think you will stand in your place, you will run away!So my idea is that the thirsty have to come to the well.Well, we're not talking about conversion; we're just talking about some live and let live.That is happening – there is no problem in it. We are living, they are living – there is no problem in it. And we are living very happily. They are in worries and unnecessary tension, frightened, hostile, for no reason at all. When we have been welcoming them, saying, “You should come and see what we are doing here,” nobody comes. Even the governor has not the guts to come here. Three times we have invited him.He speaks against us without knowing anything about us. The United States attorney declares our city illegal without ever thinking that we have changed a desert into a oasis, where five thousand people are living self-sufficiently. Perhaps the desert was according to the land-use laws. To turn it into an oasis, create enough food for five thousand people – enough vegetables, enough milk, and everything; to make houses for five thousand people with all modern facilities, the whole commune fully, centrally air-conditioned…We have invited them: “You should come and see, and if you see that this city is not doing right or the land is being misused, just tell us. We are ready to change; we have no problem. If you say that this is not the right use of the land, show us. Otherwise we can show you what the right use of land is.” All the ranches around are poor, and they have been working on their ranches for hundreds of years. And we have been working for only four years on this ranch. And this was the worst ranch, perhaps in the whole of Oregon – because for fifty years nobody was ready to purchase it.But you know we're talking about more than land-use; we're talking about attached, vulnerable egos. I'm hoping that, perhaps with Sheela gone, there might be some new strategies that you would have that would deal with it in some new ways.We will simply go on doing our thing. And just by our transforming the desert, making our people happier, our laughter is going to reach them. And perhaps one day they may come to understand, and if they don’t understand, that is their problem.We are not worried, and it is not a problem to us.Well, it does occupy a lot of time, energy and money fighting these battles.No, there is no problem, because we have four hundred sannyasins who are law experts – the biggest law firm in the world.Wouldn't they rather be laughing than doing law though?They are enjoying. They are enjoying, and we are going to fight. And we are winning the cases – and finally we are going to prove that we are strangers here, but we love the American constitution as something immensely valuable for humanity. And we are fighting for the constitution against the Americans – this is such an exciting project that we are going to do it.That strategy appeals to me more than the name-calling.Name-calling does not mean anything.Well, it stirs up needless opposition sometimes.That is helpful. I know my business! If you don’t disturb them you are ignored. They understand a certain language; that language has to be used against them.And again you were not surprised at how much opposition and paranoia you ran into in Oregon?We are not surprised at anything. It just proves that Oregon must be the most stupid state in America. A small community of five thousand people, and the whole state of Oregon should be afraid of us – what can we do?But you know what you can do. You can shake their world apart.That we are going to do! – that we are going to do. And if they want that we should not do that, then it is better they come to their senses. And rather than being hostile, just be friendly. We are friendly; we have no hostility against them.No intentional hostility, but you constitute a threat to their attached egos.That we will continue to do. Unless they start seeing the fact that they have to come here and understand us, we are going to hurt their egos more and more. And we are going to drag them up to the Supreme Court and we are going to expose them throughout the world. I am using the whole modern media…I was silent, so they were not in much trouble – now they will be. For one month continuously, I have been giving interviews every day, to newspapers, magazines, radio, television, from all over the world – and this program is going to continue till we have exhausted every media, big or small, around the world. This small community certainly can create trouble for them.Osho,In addition to the creative and effective use of the constitutional law and of the media, I guess I'm wanting to hear more about some compassion and love for those people who are having trouble adjusting to the change.We have immense compassion for them.Do they know that? Do they feel that?That is up to them. I can love you, you may not feel it; that does not mean that I don’t love you.But then there are so many…There is no necessity by law that because one person loves another, the other immediately feels it – it is not that way.We have every compassion for them. We are ready to do anything for Oregon. And whatever we are doing, is doing for Oregon. We don’t have any hostility at all, no hate against anybody. But if the people who are in power in Oregon think that just by being in power they can misuse laws, take advantage of their power, go against the constitution, we are not going to tolerate it.We love them. Still we will love them, but we will fight them.There are so many ways of loving; are there perhaps some new forms of love that the community might extend outward?What do you want – I should go and hug the governor? He will die, then and there! Then don’t say, “You are responsible. You killed the man.”Well…that might be too much. Perhaps another way.It is not too much. They are such cowards, and we have been continuously sending them invitations: “Be our guests. And before you do anything – and we are not saying not to do anything – before you do anything, just see and be acquainted with us and what we are doing, and then go to the court and do whatever you want to do.” None of them has been able to come here.And they are not only cowards, they are very third-grade politicians. They had a private, secret meeting in which all the agencies of the state were present. And the meeting was concerning us, so we asked that at least one person – the mayor of Rajneeshpuram – could be there, just so that no misinformation was given. They did not allow anybody from here. They were discussing us and they didn’t allow a single person from here – they did not even allow the press.The governor told the press to stay outside: “After the meeting I will tell you what has happened in the meeting.” He gave a press conference, and you will be surprised, everything that he said was a lie. It was not discussed in the meeting – not a single word of it. And what was discussed in the meeting, not a single word was told to the press.How did you learn that?Because a journalist somehow managed to get the secret file, and it was shown on the television; then we came to know. We contacted the journalist and got a copy of it. In the meeting they discussed, “We should keep the army alert that any moment they can be ordered to reach Rajneeshpuram. At the most, three hours notice will be given. So, within three hours they have to be ready to reach Rajneeshpuram.” Now, this is the result of our invitations to them, and this is your governor, your statesmen, politicians.They lied to the press. And putting the army on alert, for five thousand people who are not doing any harm to anybody – what do you want we should do to show our love to them? We have been inviting them. If they cannot come, they can invite me – I am ready. But they are just chickens. At the most you can make good soup out of them!Well, calling them chickens or stupid or third-rate politicians – which they may be – I'm not sure that helps.Mm? We don’t care. We are so happy with ourselves, we don’t care at all. We are so utterly contented that it does not matter. We can fight a few cases here and there. And we are going to win, because the constitution is in our favor and the law is in our favor. So they will be simply proving themselves utter fools.It happened just a few days ago: we had the annual festival – fifteen thousand people were here from all over the world. The tents we had made were special tents. We made them ourselves, and we had made them such that they can be used in the winter. So they were not ordinary tents, but still they were tents. And we have applied for a patent for the tents, that we have invented a tent which can be used in snow, which can be used in winter without any trouble, without any problem. The United States attorney immediately imposed a fine. [aside] How much fine did he impose?Reply: One point four million dollars.One point four million. We asked them, “Come and see before you impose a fine. They are not permanent structures, so they don’t need any permission. And you have not seen them – none of your officers have seen them. You have taken it for granted that they are permanent structures just because they’re winterized.”But nobody came. And I told my people, “Just take a tent into the courtroom. Open the bag, put up the tent – it takes ten minutes; and then unfold it – it takes ten minutes – and ask the judge, ‘Can a permanent building be made in ten minutes and unfolded again in ten minutes? So this is a tent.’”The judge simply dismissed the case and said, “This is absurd. This is a tent. Nobody can make a permanent building in ten minutes.”Now, if this attorney has any dignity he should have jumped into the ocean! He must be a buffoon: you fine somebody one point four million dollars without any grounds, without even looking at what you are punishing them for – all their cases are such, and we are going to prove in each case that they are being behaving in a stupid way.It is better for them that they should come. We have no antagonism against them. We have no political aspirations, we have no political parties; we are not concerned at all, just leave us alone – but they cannot leave us alone.Osho,But you won your point there, why call the man a buffoon? Why not let him be? You got what you wanted – why rub it in?I have got – and we will be getting it more. They are going to be the losers on every point.Osho,You also, of course, are depending on there being first-rate politicians and judges who will follow the constitution, and fortunately there are such people. Then there are people who are half way between buffoon and first-rate.Yes.Many of those people are my friends, or like myself…easily impressed one way or the other, not knowing what to make of you, of the Ranch, hearing gossip, reading things, getting little pieces of information. I like that you're doing more interviews, more media – I hope that that gets more information out.We will make more information available, and we know that there are judges who will be pressurized by the politicians, there are judges who are just fifty-fifty, cannot be relied upon. But there are a few judges who are one hundred percent fair. So we will drag the cases till we find the person who is a hundred percent fair.And once we have got the hundred percent-fair judge, then there is no problem. Right now only my legal people are fighting; if it is needed, I am going to stand before the Supreme Court myself.That would be a marvelous drama to witness!Yes, it will be. It will be. And my whole circus will also be there.Osho,This morning you said that you're an ordinary man, and I know you meant in terms of your way of being and living. And yet, of course, you don't always look and act like an ordinary man – why is that?Because everybody is extraordinary here in this world, so I have to look a little separate from the extraordinary people. And because I am being just an ordinary person, I have to use a gold and diamond watch, a Rolls Royce limousine – just to be out of the crowd of the extraordinary people.I promised myself that I was going to be one of the few people who didn't ask you about the Rolls Royces. But I did ask my mechanic before coming, “What should I talk about? What should I ask this man?” And he said, “If he's going to buy expensive cars, why does he buy Rolls Royces? It's not a car: it's stodgy furniture.” So he wants you to buy Maseratis.No. They don’t come close to Rolls Royces. No car comes close to it.For you it's not stodgy furniture?I love it!Osho,I work as a psychotherapist and I've been influenced by Carl Rodgers and Rollo May and also by Maurice Friedman who is a sort of interpreter of Martin Buber. I was wondering how psychotherapy would look in the context of your buddhafield? What would I see that is different? What could we find that we could point to that would say, “Aha! There's something different here, different even from relatively enlightened existential psychotherapy”?It is different, and it can enrich psychotherapy tremendously to understand the difference. All psychoanalytical schools are very superficial. Psychoanalysis – the very word – does not go beyond mind. And man’s real being is beyond mind.Well, the transpersonal psychotherapists certainly would agree in principle to what you're saying, and many of us have long ago put psychoanalysis behind us.Even the transpersonal psychoanalysts have no idea of what meditation is. It is not transpersonal, it is transcendental. It is a state of no-mind. And psychoanalysis goes on and on, on the circumference – moving, analyzing, and it never reaches the center.In the East, man has been working on the mind for at least five thousand years. In the West, psychoanalysis is not even one hundred years old; it is just childish. Patanjali is five thousand years old, but he does not bother about psychoanalysis. He simply says there is no need to be bothered about it. Simply become aware of the content of your mind – the thoughts, the dreams or whatever is passing through. And just remain a witness, without any judgment, “This is good, this is bad.” You have nothing to do with it; it is just traffic that is moving, and you are standing by the side of the road, just watching without any judgment.Slowly the traffic becomes thinner, and a moment comes when the traffic simply disappears. When the traffic completely disappears, a new experience of no-mind, a new experience of simple awareness – awareness aware of itself, because there is nothing else to be aware of.Once this awareness – you can call it enlightenment, you can call it total consciousness – once this is realized, you are beyond all mental problems because you are beyond mind. Now the mind cannot affect you at all.Psychoanalysis continuously tries to analyze the content of the mind, to find out the symbols, the meaning, and somehow…Osho,But many therapists nowadays have put that aspect of psychoanalysis behind them and, at least in principle – perhaps not always with the ability, but at least in principle – attempt to work with clients in the way that you're describing. And I propose it to you as a research project, to study the process of psychotherapy as it occurs here, and to see how it is different from…certainly from psychoanalysis, but also from psychotherapy as done by people who have done extensive Zen meditation or whatever else.Just one thing: you think the people who are doing transpersonal psychoanalysis have something, at least intellectually, about meditation. The only criterion is: have these people themselves gone beyond problems? Do they have worries, do they have tensions, do they have sadnesses, do they feel things that everybody feels and goes through? – the boredom, despair, meaninglessness, anguish.If they don’t feel these things at all and don’t show any indication of it, and they don’t have any desire to know God – because that desire is just a projection of a child for a father figure. If they don’t desire for any paradise – because paradise is only desired by beggars – if one is content and fulfilled, he is in paradise. So it is not a question of intellectual understanding. You have to watch these people and you have to watch their patients. Years in psychoanalysis and where are they?There is not a single person in the whole world who can be said to be completely psychoanalyzed. A strange profession. And there are people who have been analyzed for twelve years by many analysts, and they just go on and on, just moving round and round, reaching nowhere.The only criterion is: the person whose quest is fulfilled, who is not in any inquiry anymore, who has no question about existence, about himself, about anything, who has found himself, who has found the ultimate answer for everything – and that will show in his every act, in his every gesture. It is not a question of intellectual conceivability, comprehension, presentation. You will have to look at the person and at his existential status: if his wife falls in love with someone, whether he feels jealousy or not. If his wife is happy with someone, the man who is enlightened will be immensely happy, because he always wanted his wife to be happy. It does not matter if she is happy with someone else, what matters is that she is happy.Osho,I'm also involved in the training of psychotherapists, and it would be of immense value if you could produce some video tapes of therapists here working with people in this way, so that I and other teachers of psychotherapy could show them to students.Yes, that can be done very easily, there is no problem in it. Anything that you feel will be useful to anybody, anywhere, just suggest it to my university people and they can produce it.And, as your university progresses, if there were people and money and time and energy to do some research attempting to describe this work, it would be good as part of your public relations to reach out to the community of psychologists, to say, “Here, we are serious. We do this work.”That’s perfectly right. It can be done. It can be done very easily – there is no difficulty.Osho,Back to the issue of building the community in ways that power can be shared and decentralized. Another method – I wonder if it's being done – is to have not just informal discussions amongst the people, but even some formalized processes for reviewing decision-making, power usage and misusage, some way of self-review. The group practice that I'm in, we meet for eight hours once a month and for one hour every week to look at what's happening among us.Yes, that can be easily done. That’s perfectly good and helpful.Again, it distributes the power and it builds a skill into people…to look at what's happened in terms of awareness, really.It can be of immense help. Thank you for the suggestion!Osho,In about two weeks I'll be making my third trip to the Soviet Union, to talk with psychologists and others there, and just as you struggle with the citizens of Oregon, some of us are struggling with the citizens of the Soviet Union. I keep thinking, “What can I do there? How can I make some difference? What can I say?” If I were a sannyasin, would I be better equipped to go there and to talk?Certainly. And it is never too late.I told my friends if I wasn't back in a week, to send help!When are you going to the Soviet Union?October third.Because I have my underground sannyasins there.I read an article about some of them in the Soviet press that…Yes, they are writing against me. They are persecuting my people. They have banned my books, they have taken my books away from people, and they have been harassing them. The KGB has been calling and continuously interrogating them. But it doesn’t matter; my people are very excited and interested. I can inform them at least to meet you.You must have been amused to hear yourself accused of working for the CIA.Yes, in Russia it is known that I am working for the CIA; in America I am working for the KGB! Perhaps…You're the most conspicuous double agent that there's been!Perhaps I am working for both, or both are working for me. But it is interesting – I don’t think any man is in such a position, who will be condemned by America, by Russia, who will be condemned by Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Jainism. I don’t think there is anyone who will be condemned by everybody. But to me…And by the Maserati dealers of America.Yes. To me, it means that whatever I am doing and whatever I am saying must have something of immense value. Otherwise, so many people would not simultaneously be against me. That gives me enough courage, encouragement.Osho,I sense that you do derive energy and excitement from the controversy.Yes, I certainly derive energy.Osho,While you're a courageous man, I become worried when I see so much hostility – the guns.No, it will go. It is just natural, human nature; it will go. It cannot stay long, because in fact there is no base for it. If there was any base for it, I would have been concerned, but there is no base. From our side we don’t have any hostility. Our hands are always outstretched and ready to meet with their hands. So it will just take a little time – it will go, it is not to be worried about.But when you are in the Soviet Union, talking with Soviet psychoanalysts, just mention me. And if they have not read my books, tell them that their education about psychoanalysis will remain incomplete, and if they ever come out of the Soviet Russia they should come to this red commune. Soviet Russia has only a red flag; we are all red people here. They should come here.I will extend that invitation, and I know a few Soviets who have a particular interest in the kind of experiment that you are doing and who…Just give them the invitation on my behalf. And here in America, anybody who wants to come, just give him also on my behalf – and my people are very hospitalizing. He will not be…[laughter about the use of the word]He will not be disappointed – they will hospitalize him!I hope you'll allow me to translate that into hospitable when I…No! This way it is better. We have a hospital for the guests.Osho,When I return and I tell people of the hospitality and warmth that I felt here, and that the people did seem conscious and alive and free and autonomous, then some of my friends – the eternal skeptics – will say, “Oh, well, Tom is always kind of gullible, eager to please, believes in things. They must have sold him too.” What shall I say to them?Just tell them it is true. I am almost a second-hand car salesman – just tell them that. I can sell any kind of car!Osho,If I were really shrewder and tougher, what tough question would I ask you now?You can ask any.No, I'm asking you for help here!Just try.What do you see as the unresolved problems in running the Ranch, in enlightening and liberating the sannyasins – what's next? How must the work proceed next? What new form do you envision? Just decentralization of power, certainly, is one.I never think of tomorrow. After talking to you I will go to sleep and forget everything, and if tomorrow comes, then I will have it – but it will be again today. So I have managed only for today. Tomorrow has no place in my life, in my thinking, in my vision. One day is enough.Today was a pretty big day for many people here.Yes, it is good. Come back again whenever you can find time.Thank you. I will.Good.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 26 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Mark Hendricks, KOIN-TV, Channel 6, Portland (CBS Affiliated); Scott Miller, KGW-TV, Channel 8, Portland (NBC Affiliated); Roberta Ulrich, The Oregonian, Portland; Richard Wagner, CBS Network; Brian Ecker, Associated Press, Portland; Don Lattin, San Francisco Examiner; Pete King, Los Angeles Times; Steve Davis, KGO-TV, Channel 7, San Francisco; Bill Graves, Bend Bulletin; Grey Hoy, Seven Network, Australia; Swami Anand Videha, Italy, Les Zaitz; The Oregonian, Portland; Tom Stevenson, The Dalles Chronicle, The Dalles; Ma Mary Catherine, Osho Times; Gerald Erickson, The Dalles Weekly Reminder; Ted Viramonte, Madras Pioneer, Madras; Jackie Johnson, KBND Radio, Bend; Ma Viren, Espresso magazine, Panorama magazine and Eurepeo, Italy; Susan Barr, Q104, The Dalles; Bob Smith, KPRB Radio, Redmond; Alex King, KACI Radio, The Dalles; Fred Breuning, Newsday, New York.[Introductions of new corporation officers have been omitted in this transcript.]Isabel: Osho, I have told the press you will give a statement before they ask questions.This is a moment of great rejoicing for my commune. I have been silent for three and a half years. The people who were in power took advantage of my silence. Because I was not in contact with the sannyasins, I was not aware what is being done to them.As I started speaking again, a strange thing happened. Sheela became very sad. She was the president of the Rajneesh Foundation International and my personal secretary. Everybody in the commune was immensely ecstatic that I am speaking again except Sheela. This was strange. But just within few days it became clear what is the reason. While I was in isolation and in silence, she has become a celebrity. Through the news media she has become famous all over the world. She was representing me. Because I started speaking again, she found that her ego is shrinking, her image from the television screen is disappearing. It was bound to be so. If I am speaking myself, then there is no need for any mediator, any messenger, any representative.She started going more and more to Australia, to India, to Europe, for any small excuse. Finally when she came back she wrote a letter to me that, “I don’t find the same excitement as I used to find before. But I am happy in Europe, happy in Japan, happy in Australia.” I replied to her that, “If you want to know the real reason of your happiness, I can come to Europe, to Australia, to Japan, wherever you want to check what is the real reason of your happiness. You have become addicted to be famous, and this is a far worse drug than any drug in existence.” And my sannyasins are not power-oriented. They are not political people. They are absolutely apolitical.The world has suffered too much from politics. At least let few intelligent people decide to be dropouts from all dirty politics – and there is no other kind.And then suddenly one day, just one day before, Sheela and all her gang simply left America, without even giving any cause why they are leaving. It was strange. And the moment they left, other sannyasins started informing things which are ugly, sad, but I have to say them to you because I don’t want to happen such things again in this commune or anywhere else. The moment their airplane left, immediately people started coming, saying so many things that they have done while I was in silence, that it seemed, listening to them, that instead of being a meditation commune they had turned it into a fascist concentration camp.First they tried to kill three people, three people who were very close to me: my physician, my dentist and my caretaker. Because these were the three people who had the opportunity to meet me except Sheela. She wanted nobody to meet me, for the simple reason because they may inform me what is going on in the commune and what she is doing there. So finally they decided that these three people have to be given slow poison. Now there are witnesses who participated in their meetings, but they were afraid that if these people can kill my physician, they can kill anybody.One woman who has reported that she was in the meeting and left in the middle, disgusted, feeling sick, that what kind of people are these? And the innocent sannyasins trusted them absolutely. But she herself became so much afraid that for six months she has not eaten the food in the commune’s restaurant. She was getting food from outside. And it really happened.My caretaker once went into Jesus Grove where Sheela and her gang was living. She took a cup of tea and fell immediately sick. And the sickness was absolutely strange. She is healthy, young, there was no reason for it. Doctors could not find any reason why her heart is beating so fast. For three hours the heart was going just crazy. All their medicines were of not much help. But nobody thought about it, that she has taken a cup of tea and somebody could have poisoned her. But it happened to Devaraj, my physician. After few days he took a cup of coffee in Jesus Grove and came from there. Because he is a doctor, has the highest qualifications from England, he immediately suspected that he has been poisoned. He was entered into the medical clinic here, and there too he was injected poison again. And now many people have come, that Sheela was researching for some poison which can, in slow doses, kill a person in a long period of time, so nobody will suspect.Third time, here in this meditation hall Devaraj was injected again. He immediately showed to people around him, pulled his pants and showed blood where the injection has been put. They delayed the ambulance to come here. All these informations have come within two days. The ambulance people have informed that they were told to delay as much as possible, then take him as slowly – because he refused to go to the medical center here. He was to be taken to Bend. So, “Take him slowly to the airport.” And the pilots were informed that there is no hurry: “Go as slow as possible.” And these were the poisons which are not detectable. He remained sick, became okay.Hasya was his wife, was looking after him. The doctors in Bend told Hasya there was no disease, it seems to be simply a case of certain poisoning which cannot be detected. They said exactly the same has happened one year before to the attorney of Jefferson County, Sullivan. He was poisoned in the same way. Nobody knows, perhaps the same people who had poisoned Devaraj were poisoning Sullivan, because this commune’s land is divided half in Wasco County, half in Jefferson County, and it has much to do with the attorney of Jefferson County.Many more things have surfaced. We are reporting to the police, to the government, because the whole bunch has immediately disappeared and they must have been planning for months. One information has come that at the election time last year, Sheela and her group of six, seven people tried to put chemicals in all the vehicles of police and officers in The Dalles, so the vehicles could not move. And they were successful. Not only that, what I cannot even conceive, they tried to poison the water system in The Dalles. They did not succeed in it, but they made every attempt.Now, these people are absolutely criminals, inhuman, brutal, fascist in their outlook. Here in the commune they were sorting out anybody who had any independent mind. And my whole teaching is to have independent mind! Don’t believe anything unless you know it. Be skeptical. But because I was silent, they were doing just the other.They were saying, “Believe, and surrender. And all these instructions are coming from Osho.” They were making their instructions, people were writing letters to me, they were never reaching to me. They had created a small fascist state here, so many people left just because of them who wanted to be here with me, who have come from long away, who have sold their everything just to be here with me. With tears in their eyes they had to leave, because they could not surrender to any stupid kind of thing. For example, if you tell somebody that, “Go and poison” or “Inject poison to somebody,” they could not believe that this can be my instruction. And they have come here for me, not for Sheela.I have been teaching my whole life that my people have to be absolutely nonpolitical, but in three and a half years Sheela was functioning just like a politician, third-grade politician. It was ugly to take over Antelope. We are here, just guests of Oregonians. To take those poor old people’s house does not seem right. I would like the Oregonians and the people of Antelope, if they can buy the properties which Foundation owns, we will vacate Antelope. They can have their place. That is their town. It belongs to them. And we have no hostility against anybody. In fact, we are part of Oregon to them. And we have no hostility against anybody.In fact, we are part of Oregon now. It does not matter that you have been hundred years here and we have been only four years. Years don’t make any difference. Now this earth is ours, this sky is ours. And we have done everything to change this desert into an oasis. And we want to change this whole place in such a lush green holiday resort that it becomes the best tourist center in America.We need all support from Oregonians, from Americans, from everybody. Ours hands are stretched and waiting for their hands. In the last press conference, the first journalist had asked me, “Is there any possibility for coexistence between you and Oregonians?” I said, “Never!” And before I could elaborate and make clear my implications of the word “never,” the journalist has moved! I said, “For coexistence, never.” But not for one existence. Coexistence implies hostility. It means we are hostile, but what to do? Just destiny has brought us together, somehow we have to manage to live. Coexistence is not a beautiful word. That’s why I have said, “Never. Coexistence never! One existence, ever.”We can understand, human nature is always suspicious of strangers. We are strangers. If they are suspicious of us, there is nothing to be disappointed. Just we have to make them aware of our way of life, our creativity, our joy, our celebration. Just we have to welcome them as guests, just to have a feel that we are human beings. Red clothes don’t make any difference. Everybody behind the clothes is naked, red or blue or black does not make any sense.I have called you media people here especially to inform you a glad news, that this commune is free from a fascist regime. Adolf Hitler has died again. And now we would like in every possible way to be an intrinsic part of Oregon, to contribute whatsoever we can contribute, and expect your friendship, your love, your hospitality. And you will never repent that we came here.We will make this place so beautiful that Oregon will be proud of it. When we had come just four years before, there was only one house, and one hundred twenty-six square mile desert. For fifty years there was nobody to purchase it. It was for sale for fifty years. Who is going to purchase a desert? But when I heard that it is a desert, I said, “It is a good challenge. Let us try to make it an oasis.” And we have immensely succeeded. But that success goes to my sannyasins, not to that fascist gang. These people have been working twelve hours, fourteen hours a day. And those people were trying to kill our own sannyasins. They were going to kill whole The Dalles. And just because I was absent, uninformed, they have taken in their hands whatsoever they wanted to do.You will be surprised to know that they far transcended Nixon. They bugged houses, they bugged every place where they thought somebody may be not in favor of them. But strangest thing is my own bedroom, my own sitting room, was bugged. And to me they were saying, “We love you, Osho. We have never loved anybody so much.” Of course. If you had not loved me, why you should bug my bedroom, where I am alone? Perhaps once in a while in sleep I may deliver a speech. But what else is there to be bugged? It seems these people could have even killed me. Because my silence was favorable to them, my absence would have been more favorable. And if I was dead, they could have worshiped my dead body, made a beautiful marble memorial, and be in full power to do whatsoever they want to do.I came to know only late that they are bringing street people for a program here. They had already planned, people had gone to pick up, buses had moved. And I asked, “What is the reason?” Because I am not much interested in uneducated, illiterate, street beggars. I am not much interested. My interest is in intelligentsia. All my people are university graduates with master’s degrees or doctor’s degrees. I don’t want to lower the standard of the commune.But they said, “It is only for three months, and we are having it because we have surplus money out of the festival, two and half million dollars. We have more, so we can share in some humanitarian work.” And this was a lie. They were even lying to me, because today I inquired and found that we are fifty-five million in debt. They wasted almost three million dollars and created unnecessary hostility, created some ugly publicity. We are not interested in publicity. We are certainly interested that whatever is the truth about us should be known by everyone, so nobody lives in deceptions, gossips. But we are not interested in publicity. We really want that we forget the whole world and the world forgets us and forgives us, so we can live here silently and peacefully and do our thing.And then they made in Antelope a housing complex, and never told me exactly what are their intentions about it. I thought it must be for festival purposes, when more sannyasins are there. Only at the last date, next day they were going to have a press conference, and they had to inform me because I was going to be in the press conference. If I had been silent there was no need even to inform me. They informed me that they want to make that housing complex, which can accommodate five hundred people, and they have wasted almost two million dollars on it, they want to make it a AIDS home.I said, “It is good that you are feeling so compassionate about people who are having AIDS, but you should think also of all the people around Antelope whose life will be in danger. You can put the whole life of Oregon in danger, because AIDS spreads not only by sex contact, it can spread, just by kissing. It can spread even by somebody’s tear. It can spread, somebody eating with a spoon is not sterilized and you use it. Saliva is a carrier.” I said, “This is not right. You are not only putting whole Oregon’s people in great danger, you are putting our own commune in danger. Our doctors will have to look after them. Our nurses will have to look after them. And the same doctors and the same nurses will be looking after the commune.”I had to stop it. That’s why the great press conference that was going to happen did not happen. Instead, this great press conference is happening. That press conference would have been a curse. This is a blessing.I would like the media people to spread the news to the farthest corner of the world, because I have my sannyasins around the world, almost more than one million. And these seven people have gone to Europe, and they can do harm to other sannyasins, other communes. They are expert in lying. So please let the message go throughout the world that a group of criminals has reached in Switzerland. Sheela and Puja are the leaders of the group, and they should be avoided more than AIDS!Now you can ask any question if you have.Mark Hendricks,KOIN-TV, Channel 6, Portland (CBS Affiliated)You said the commune is fifty-five million dollars in debt, that was your figure? Is that the result of negligence on the part of these people or criminal wrongdoing on the part of the people you mention?It seems because of these people, because they kept the whole commune in ignorance, what they have done with that money seems to be mysterious. We will be searching for it. Because Sheela has done that kind of thing before, too.While I was in India she managed three hundred million dollars through her brother, Bipin, to swallow it, but in such a way that the whole blame went on Bipin. And Bipin was in America, and we could not do anything about it. And, very strangely, while she was… He had never been here, but the day she left here he was here. Before she left, for two days he was here, perhaps making arrangements.In fact, purchasing this land Bipin was also the part. The owner was the friend of Bipin. Nobody was purchasing this land. Highest price that was offered was three and a half million. And Bipin managed through Sheela to purchase in seven million. Now I suspect that they both must have got at least two million out of seven million. And just now, today I have been informed that Sheela has a Swiss bank account, and they must have been sending money because how they are going to survive there, taking all these people to Switzerland?And, by the way, it reminds me one thing more. Sheela was married to one American sannyasin, Jayananda. But because she wanted to escape from here before all these things explode, either from internal sources or from government agencies, if all these things are exposed, then she had to make someplace where to go. So she married one Swiss sannyasin. Just one month before, she went to Mexico. She never told me that she is going to marry. And this was bigamy, she was already married to Jayananda and she married a Swiss sannyasin just to get a Swiss residence. Only later on, legal people suggested her, that this is bigamy, and you have committed a crime. So she rushed to Nepal with one of the sannyasins, a Russian sannyasin who used to live in Nepal before she came here, and her family in Nepal is very prominent and in very close contact with the royal family. She took her with herself to Nepal. To me she said she is going to Singapore for some work for the Commune, but now I have found she has been in Nepal getting a divorce predated. In poor countries you can get, just a little bribe. So she got a divorce in Nepal which is false. She has committed bigamy.Poor Jayananda was not yet, because he is in Australia. She sent him to Australia so that he does not create any trouble and does not make any fuss.Does a fifty-five million dollar deficit endanger the future of the commune?No Money is not such a big thing. We have put more than two hundred millions already in developing it. If we can manage for two hundred million, fifty-five million is just nothing.Scott Miller,KGW-TV, Channel 8, Portland (NBC Affiliated)Since you began speaking again, in the past you have defended Sheela fairly vehemently. How did she get you to go along with all this? You've seemed very well versed on the issues, all the way through, very much in command of the issues that affect your community. Did you really not know what was going on in Antelope, really not know what was going on with the finances?No. When I was silent I was completely unaware.Since you've been speaking again, though, there's been about eight months where you have supported Sheela from time to time.Yeah, because all these things came just to my knowledge yesterday. And today immediately I have called you here. We have not wasted a single minute to inform.Do you feel like perhaps you're a prisoner here?No, I am not prisoner here.In the past, I'm referring to.No, not even in the past. I was just in isolation. If I was a prisoner, then they would not have escaped. I would have escaped.Roberta Ulrich,The Oregonian, PortlandYou have sort of held out an olive branch to the people of Oregon and the people of Antelope. Will this include any action to perhaps settle some of the numerous lawsuits amicably?It can be. In fact, it can settle everything. Why a few? Because the whole problem was Antelope. And we are ready to leave it, because we don’t want… There is no reason. Unnecessary trouble for us. People should manage their own work. Why we should manage their work?Would you perhaps consider dropping such as the suit against all of the state and local officials as part of your olive branch?But we have not put any lawsuit against anybody. They have started lawsuits.You have one against Governor Atiyeh and Dave Frohnmeyer and a long list of…That is because they have put so many lawsuits against us. If they withdraw their lawsuits, I promise we will withdraw ours.Richard Wagner,CBS NetworkI thought I heard you talk of poison, and Swiss bank accounts, and fifty-five million dollars. Are we talking about attempted murder and theft, or what are we talking about?Certainly. You have not been listening well. A journalist is not supposed to have deaf ears.I agree completely.Okay, you can ask again.Specifically, the group you refer to as the fascist gang, of what do you accuse them of doing?They have attempted to murder people in the commune, they have attempted to murder people in The Dalles. They have attempted bugging people’s houses, my own house, which is against democratic values and against human freedom. They have been taping every phone. If Nixon was a criminal, then these people belong to the same category.Have they stolen money from the commune?That has to be discovered, because the person who was managing the money has also escaped with them. So we will have to work out and find ways how…Do you have the means to discover if the money was stolen?Yes. We have every means, because we have all kinds of people here: economists, financial advisors, bookkeepers. We have all kinds of best minds. Just they have to put… We never thought about it, so nobody took care of those books. They have to be taken care of.Do you intend to pursue these people in the courts of Oregon?Certainly. First, we will find out within the commune everything, and we are making it public so the whole public knows. And we will find out everything. Police we have already reported. We are reporting the Interpol, that these people should be watched. And meanwhile we are investigating everything, and soon we will be going to the court. Because it is not a question of betraying us, it is a question of betraying human values. Otherwise we don’t care about money. Fifty-five million, if they have taken, that is nothing to be worried. That is not much of a problem. We would not have called you here. But bugging houses, telephones being taped, we cannot tolerate. And attempting murder… So we will sue them. We will pursue them wherever they are. Now that is going to be our pursuit of happiness.Brian Ecker,Associated Press, PortlandWe've been told that Sheela delivered a letter to you on Saturday before she left the commune. If that's true, can you divulge to us what the letter said?In the letter she did not say that she is going to leave the commune. She simply said that she feels no more excitement coming here, she feels more excitement in Europe. But there was no indication of her leaving. In fact, there was no need to come back, but she had come here to clear few things.Just today we found in Jesus House they had a special room where they were keeping white mice and injecting them with doses of poison, just to be clear that how much dose is enough not to kill immediately, but in the long run. Otherwise there was no need. She was not here, she had just come two days, three days before. There was no need to come at all. And now we have to look into the books, they may have taken parts of the books or even the whole books may have disappeared.I have been informed today that she has taken so many tapes, which may be significant. Perhaps they are the tapes that they were recording of telephones and bugging. So her coming was not coming, it was just to clear things so nothing is to be found. And she was to collect the whole gang, because if even a single person is left behind the person may betray. So she were talking to those people for these three days, persuading them to leave: “It is dangerous now to be here.” And her most significant statement to these people was that, “Osho is not interested in the commune or commune’s welfare. His interest is only in diamond watches, Rolls Royces.”It is was really a surprise to me, because Rolls Royces don’t belong to me. Neither the diamond watches belong to me. The watches that belong to me… This watch you can see, this is not a diamond watch. These are just authentic stones. And this is not a Piaget. From Piaget it is half million dollars. It is not even hundred dollars! Our own sannyasins have made. I am using watches made by my own sannyasins. They can deceive you, but… And the Rolls Royces have its own trust, they don’t belong to me.But hearing this, that she was saying this, I am going to talk to the trustees of the Rolls Royces that, “Make a pool of all the Rolls Royces, because I don’t need any, so all the sannyasins can use them.” I have many dozens of diamond watches – the same. I am going to ask the Jewelry Trust that, “Make all the watches available to sannyasins.” For me there is no point. Only for one hour while I am speaking in the morning or in a press conference I need a watch. That too is unnecessary, because my bladder functions so perfectly that I know when I have to finish.Do you believe the sannyasins who have left the commune were involved at all with the salmonella outbreak in The Dalles last year?I just don’t blame anybody. They have simply showed the animal nature that is behind in each of us. Just it needs power to surface. So I am not angry with them. I am not against them. But they have showed to all the sannyasins that if you don’t become fully aware, these are the poisons that everybody is carrying within. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And now we are going to take every measure that power is decentralized, many more people have the power, and people in power have to be changed more often so nobody takes it for granted that it is his position. It is nobody’s position. And every person who is in power has to understand that he is the servant of the commune, not the master.I'm not sure if you understood my question. There was an outbreak of salmonella last year in The Dalles. Do you believe that these sannyasins had anything to do with that?Yes.Do you have any evidence of that?Evidence police will have to find, but my sannyasins have much information about it.Don Lattin,San Francisco ExaminerOsho,Last summer Sheela made an announcement during the festival where she said you had declared a long list of sannyasins enlightened, and had set up three committees to continue Rajneeshism after you leave your body. My question is, A) Did you in fact tell her that, and B) Are any of those people who you did declare enlightened among this fascist gang?This was just a joke. We enjoy everything, even we can make a joke of enlightenment.So you're saying you did tell her that, but you were just joking.Yes. Not to her, I told even those people. And they were puzzled, and they were shocked, because they know they are not enlightened. And one of my oldest sannyasins said outside that, “Osho is a rascal. I am not enlightened and he has declared me enlightened.” This I call clarity. It was nothing but once in a while the commune needs some entertainment.The last time there was a change in your personal secretary, the previous woman, Laxmi, sort of disappeared, from public view at least. Where is she and do you expect her to come back now?She is here! Laxmi? She is here, but she is such a small woman that you may think she has disappeared. Laxmi stand up. Where she is? Not feeling well… She is here.Pete King,Los Angeles TimesDid you confront, or try to confront, Sheela with any of this before you went public with us, on any of these accusations?She avoided to see me. She came here and to avoid seeing me there are very simple methods. You have just to say that you have cold. My doctors don’t allow anybody having cold to come close to me, because I have an allergy and immediately I become sick. So when she came, immediately she said that she has cold. And this has been going on for many times. Yesterday she was suffering from cold, and this morning when she had some work she came, and there was no cold. Cold does not disappear so soon. It takes at least four days, seven days.She left today or she left Saturday?She left day before yesterday.What specifically have you told the police and local authorities, and do you have any fear or concern or desire to bring them in here to investigate maybe some people who were accomplices in any of these alleged things?No. No. No fear, and we don’t want any compensation.Do you think all the bad people have left?Yes. At least the one bunch of fascists have left, and now there is not going to be another bunch because I am going to continue to speak for my whole life. And I will be here.Steve Davis,KGO-TV, Channel 7, San FranciscoOn the matter of the AIDS clinic or AIDS home in the Antelope housing project, you mentioned here this evening that you learned the day before the news conference that that was what was to be announced at the big news conference. You and I spoke a week or ten days before the news conference, and you alluded to that project in a taped interview with me, in which you characterized it by the same phrase you used tonight, that being something extremely dangerous, and said that you wouldn't have the street people program again because you had done that, but that you were going to do something that would shock America and that was even more dangerous, as you characterized it.I am doing it. This is more dangerous.And you weren't at that time alluding to the AIDS clinic in any way? That was not on your mind?No. I was not alluding. I was alluding to this press conference.Others – Ma Anand Puja, and I understand she is one of those who is gone now, and Sheela – at that time said that it was indeed the AIDS project that.That was her idea, which I stopped the moment I came to know. I was aware that the conference is going about AIDS. For that there was no problem. I was ready to talk about AIDS. But when I heard that it is not only AIDS but the opening of the AIDS home, then I freaked out.Would that conversation about AIDS to which you say you had agreed in the news conference had been something you would consider dangerous, as you refereed to it in our news conference, or in our interview?That will need another press conference. It is a big subject. This time you cover this. This is more dangerous. And if you are interested in AIDS, we can arrange another press conference. Or you can come alone, and have an interview on AIDS. There is no problem.No, I'm…But please don’t change the subject.I don't believe I did, sir. Thank you.Bill Graves,Bend BulletinOsho,Will you definitely be pulling out of Antelope? And what's to become of all that housing there, that's there now?Just if they are ready to purchase all the properties that Foundation have there.So they would have to buy back the property that…Certainly, because we have buy it. We have purchased from them, we have paid for them.How about giving them back the name of their town?No.You will not do that?Then they can give, just they have only eight houses and we have almost the whole Antelope. They have one-third, we have two-third. So that will be more reasonable, they should give it up to us and go into Oregon.What are you going to do with that housing now that you're not going to use it for the AIDS project?Just my sannyasins I can call from all over America, and we will be using for my sannyasins.Why did Sheela and these other sannyasins try to poison Mike Sullivan, do you know?I don’t know, because I had never been interested in all these matters. Just even the name of Mike Sullivan I have heard today. I don’t know anything.Grey Hoy,Seven Network, AustraliaOsho,You do know Sheela very well. Where do you think she and the others will go to settle?Nobody knows anybody very well. We remain strangers even if we live together for our whole life. That’s something unique in human beings, that there is no way to know the person in his totality. That is his dignity. You cannot penetrate to his privacy. So I don’t claim to know Sheela very well. I was just acquainted, as I am acquainted with all my other sannyasins.Do you have any idea where she might go to settle?Perhaps Switzerland, because she has got married there, so the idea of getting married to a Swiss sannyasin certainly makes it clear she is going to settle there.You advise all of these people to be skeptical. Could I just ask one question of them, and that is: Many of you have also known Sheela well for a long time. Did anyone here express skepticism publicly or privately at Osho's allegations? And I'd invite anyone to answer that.If you want to ask my people, the best way will be: I can present your question to them. He is asking, “Do you agree with me?” Then raise both of your hands. Look well!Swami Anand Videha,Les Zaitz, ItalyThrough a situation like this, there seem many possibilities for learning. Can you tell us what you have learned?I have nothing to learn. In fact, long ago I have unlearned everything. Since then I am just empty, a nothingness. This has given just something to be excited about, nothing to learn. I am enjoying it. And you have to forgive me, because I don’t see movies, I have to create my own movies. Even though I am enlightened, a little entertainment is to be forgiven. Right?The Oregonian, PortlandYou said this evening that you're going to stir in these people again the thought that they have to be independent. You've lectured along that vein for many years. yet in the past three years we've seen that they've surrendered that independence to “the gang.” What does that suggest about your teachings? Have they not listened to you, or have your teachings failed?No, my teachings cannot fail. It simply suggests that I have got a very trusting, innocent people around me. And I would like a person to be trusting, even if he is deceived, because to be deceived is not a big loss than to lose trust in humanity.I still trust Sheela and her gang. What they have done is actions, not their being. And my trust is unconditional. If they want to come back and be part of the commune, they will be welcome with the same respect and love.The people that you've accused of attempted murder would be welcome with respect and love?Certainly. Even murderer has a human dignity, and they have only accused of attempted murder. Even a murderer should be respected as a human being.Tom Stevenson,The Dalles Chronicle, The DallesOsho,You said earlier that Sheela and her gang had wanted to poison the water system of The Dalles, am I right? You did state that? Did you know that the fact, how far they went, at the fact when they were going to do that, or did you just find that out?They do really go to the very end. But because of some purifying systems, they could not succeed. The poison could not reach to people. But they had poisoned the reservoir.You talked about them poisoning or trying to poison other people. Wasco County Judge Bill Hulse was sickened after a visit here.Yes, that too I just heard today, that he felt also that he was poisoned here.By Sheela and her gang?It is possible. The same group can do that too.Ma Mary Catherine,Osho TimesOsho,These last two days for the people who live here have been an emotional time. A number of them have expressed to me the wish to ask you: How is it that we didn't say what we saw at the time that we saw it?It always happens. When Adolf Hitler was defeated, his generals, his ministers, many of his prominent people, expressed the same thing that, “How we could not see it?” People are almost asleep. Unless something really shakes them and wakes them up, they don’t see much. But we have seen in time. No harm has been done. Nobody has been murdered, and my people are immensely happy. They have been dancing on the streets, rejoicing, as if they have achieved freedom from a concentration camp. We have to keep it as open, as human, as possible, and we have to be alert that nothing like this happens. We are young, only four years old commune. There is every possibility to commit a mistake. Commit as many mistakes as possible, but don’t commit the same mistake again.In that regard, what can we watch out for in ourselves to be certain that mistake doesn't happen again?Just watch one thing, that you are not dominating anybody and that you are not being dominated by anybody. You are a free individual, and you are as important as anybody in the commune. The professor is important, the plumber is as much important as the professor. It makes no difference what is your function. What you are doing is not the question. What you are, your being, is the question. So remember two things. Don’t try to be in any power trip on anybody, and then you will be easily capable to see if somebody else is trying to be powerful over you. Avoid both. And that will give you your integrity and your individuality, and a crystallization that has immense beauty.Gerald Erickson,The Dalles Weekly ReminderAbout six months ago there was a fire, apparently arson, at the Planning Department office in The Dalles. Do you know if Sheela and her gang are responsible for that?Thank you for reminding me of it, because the same group was involved in that.You've laid out an olive branch tonight, and as you know, Sheela was very much disliked by the people of Wasco County and the people of Oregon. Do you think that with the olive branch that you've laid out tonight, and with Sheela being gone, that the people of Oregon and of Wasco County in particular will respond positively to that?That is up to them, but we are positive.Ted Viramonte,Madras Pioneer, MadrasOsho,Feelings run strong in Antelope for the people that have been there for an awful long time. They may look upon your offer with distrust. Do you feel that the offer of vacating the houses there is enough, or will you send emissaries out there to talk to them?No, just for the time being the media is enough. And if it is necessary, I will send emissaries too. And wherever you feel anybody is ready to listen, just contact Isabel, and she will arrange some professor from the university, some psychologist, some therapist. But, by the way, I again love your moustache.Jackie Johnson,KBND Radio, BendOsho,What is your answer to your enemies who will say that Sheela is being used as a scapegoat because she's not here to defend herself?You can inform Sheela and call her, and she can defend herself. She was not even brave enough to face me. She was here for three days, and she will not come to see me. Just facing me would have been enough. You can inform Sheela. I am available. It may be Sheela, it may be Governor Atiyeh, it may be Ronald Reagan – anybody. I am ready to face, because whatever I am saying is truth. So there is no fear for me. She was afraid, so she escaped, and escaped in a very cowardly way. And all the seven people she has escaped with, none of them came to see me. They just wrote a small letter, the same kind, it seems dictated by Sheela. All the letters with the same matter that, “Beloved Osho, we love you. We are very grateful to you, and we are leaving.” Just great letters. And these people have some guts to call me yet “Beloved Osho” and “We love you, and we are grateful, and we are leaving.” And they give no reason why they are leaving. And all the letters are the same.You can inform. You can get the address of Sheela, her husband particularly we have. You inform, they can come and face me. I don’t think she will come unless Interpol brings her here. But sooner or later she will have to face me.At another interview that I was present at, you stated that you were a man who loves controversy. What are you going to do for controversy now?And what am I doing? I have been controversial with outside people, now I am being controversial with my own people. I will be controversial, whatsoever happens, whoever the target. But I am going to be controversial.Ma Viren,Espresso magazine, Panorama magazine, and Eurepeo, ItalyOsho,I come from Italy…Great!…And Italy is a country known because of the Mafia. What I see here is that a deep cleaning is happening. How can be this relate to the birth of the new man?The Mafia was here. Now it is in Switzerland. And there is more possibility for the New Man to happen now. Otherwise the Mafia will kill the New Man anywhere. It is against the vested interests of any kind of Mafia. We are feeling really unburdened. Strangely, even I am feeling clean and fresh, just out of my shower. This small group was something heavy and dirty, and they must have been creating a very dirty vibe. It is good that they are gone. In fact, I am making this statement so that they never think to come back again.And what will be the future in the commune? You were speaking two days ago about calling intelligent people here now that everything is being rid from the mediocrity. So what these intelligent people will do? When what you see…?You have to be worried about retarded people, that what they will do in the future, because they are dependent on somebody. These people are not dependent on me. I hate anybody to be dependent on me, just as I am not dependent on anybody. I have even dropped God because that was a trouble. If there is a God, you have to be dependent. So I don’t have any god, and man is the supreme reality. You need not be dependent on anybody. And now people have seen that in these three and a half years depending on a certain group, and they got deceived because that group was telling to them, “These are from Osho, these instructions are from Osho.” And these people had no way to find out whether these instructions are from me or not. Now, I am available to everybody.Susan Barr,Q104, The DallesOsho,There are lots of lawsuits involving your commune and the state of Oregon and the county of Wasco, and since these may have been initiated by some of the people in this gang, and may be politically motivated, are you going to back off on the lawsuits that are back and forth between the state and your commune?Just wait a little. All those lawsuits will disappear.By your action?Certainly.Another question. Do you believe that all the people who wanted to betray you are gone from this commune?No. Nobody can betray me, because I never expect anybody not to betray me. They did what they could. It is not betraying me. That was their potential that came up. Because they had power, so they could use their potential. It must have been there, dormant, for their whole life. They have not betrayed me.Have they betrayed anyone here?No. They have just betrayed themselves.Bob Smith,KPRB Radio, RedmondOsho,In the past you, at least on one occasion, referred to the people of Oregon as being stupid. Do you still know of no people as stupid as those in Oregon?In fact, I don’t know any Oregonians. I know only about the governor, Atiyeh, and the attorney general. Both are stupids, both are idiots. I can’t help, I have to say the truth. But if you think they are representatives of the whole Oregon, then it is your viewpoint. I don’t think they are the representatives of the whole Oregon. There must be many intelligent people in Oregon.Is it necessary for the people of Rajneeshpuram and any other group, or the people as a whole of the state of Oregon, to have anything to offer to another as a larger social group. Do we need in any way to depend upon one another for anything, or do we stand as separate entities?Everybody depends. In that sense nobody is absolutely independent. Life is an interdependence. If you don’t breathe for few moments, you will be finished. That means you are dependent on the air. If you don’t drink water, within a few days you will be gone. You are dependent on the water. We are all interdependent. And there is nothing wrong in it. It is not dependence. Interdependence simply means we are an organic whole, that we are somehow interlinked, not only with human beings, but with trees, with birds, with animals, with earth, with sky, with the sun. We are connected with the whole universe. Every single individual is connected multi-dimensionally, otherwise he cannot exist for a single moment.Seeing this organic unity, I am against divisions of religion, divisions of races, divisions of nations, divisions of societies. Those all divisions are wrong. Humanity – at least humanity should be one. Then perhaps we can spread that unity towards animals and trees and clouds, and hope one day that man has become universal. But that will be total interdependence.If Sheela were to come back to Rajneeshpuram, what kind of greeting could she expect?She will be welcome. She can come only if she goes through a transformation and understanding. She can come only if she comes and confesses what she has done. We will welcome her, because her past cannot hold her future. Her past is past, and gone. Her future is still open and free and fresh. And that’s my attitude about everybody.I am against death penalty for this reason, because you don’t give the person another chance, you finish his future. The murder was his past, but he has a future too. Give him a chance. Teach him how to live. There must be something psychologically wrong with the person, that he had to murder.So if Sheela comes here, we will welcome her. And we have all kinds of therapies. We will clean her completely, deprogram her, and make her a simple human being.Alex King,KACI Radio, The DallesOsho,Was there an effort to subvert the state and federal election laws while Sheela was running the show?I was in silence in those days, but just now, coming out of silence, I came to know about it, that it was suspected that she had some idea of bringing these people to vote. It is possible. She has a political mind. But I cannot be certain about it. But it is possible. Otherwise I don’t think she will waste money on three thousand street people unnecessarily, knowing me perfectly, that I am against poverty, and I don’t want my commune to become poor in any way. I want my commune to be the most luxurious place in the world.Can we be assured that Sheela's terrorism has ended in Wasco County?It’s certainly ended. There is no possibility… Sheela gone, we don’t have any other politicians. Even the mayor or Rajneeshpuram has gone with the gang. All those who had any political minds, they all have escaped. Now it is going to be difficult, whom to choose the mayor. Nobody wants. That’s why everybody has been declared the president of the commune and president of the foundation. Just the mayor has not been declared, because nobody wants.Isabel: Osho, There is one last question, from a journalist, Fred Breuning from Newsday in New York. He interviewed you recently and couldn’t come in time. He asks…Osho, Were you not aware that this kind of elitism was taking place in your name, and why didn't you act sooner?No, I was not aware. People have a misunderstanding about enlightenment. They think to be enlightened means to be aware of everything in the world – past, present, future. I am not even aware what is in my bathroom, what is going on in my bedroom. If they could bug my bedroom and I was not aware… I was not aware at all what was going on. To me, enlightenment simply means I am aware of myself. And that’s enough, more than that is unnecessary.Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 27 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/the-last-testament-vol-2-27/

Don Latin, San Francisco Examiner, California and Pete King, Los Angeles Times, California.Don Latin,San Francisco Examiner, CaliforniaOsho,This morning you said Sheela's group injected one of the Share-a-Home people with a drug and he died of an overdose. Were you referring to the death of William Allen whose body was found last October behind a tavern near Mount Hood or another case or could you explain what the details were of that?Details I don’t know. Perhaps that is the man. Just one sannyasin has informed that one of the participants in Share-a-Home program was overdosed. Sheela and her company was giving drugs to all the participants to keep them silent, calm down, almost unconscious, and this was an accident. So the man died and they threw the body outside Rancho Rajneesh. Perhaps that is the man that you are referring, but details you should inquire Isabel.Okay. Did you say they were inject the Share-a-Home people with drugs or were they putting it in their food or beverages or just how were they?Because I was silent and I had no idea what they were doing – whether they were inject… Giving them injections or giving them orally, you can inquire it from our medical corporation who will be more capable to give you the details. But certainly they were giving them drugs; it does not matter whether you give it orally or you inject it.Pete King,Los Angeles Times, CaliforniaThere's confusion among the press and among your press office and among the financial people that we've talked to today over exactly what you meant when you were referring to allegations of theft that had come to you, and also statements about a potential debt of fifty-five million dollars. Can you precisely lay out what those two things are about?I cannot say anything precisely. Because I have not been part for three-and-a-half-years, and I was not knowing what is going on. Just within these two days, as Sheela left – perhaps afraid that now it is time, things will explode. She had done so many crimes, she must be aware that you cannot go on doing; one day, sooner or later… So she departed with all the group of criminals who had committed things against humanity and against the values of love, life, compassion.In these two days, hundreds of sannyasins have opened their mouth. The whole day, the office is receiving informations that, “We were silent – we knew it – but we were silent because we were afraid that if other people can be killed, we can be killed also, so it is better to keep silent.One sannyasin from Germany phoned – he was here and he was our best pilot – and suddenly he was sent to Germany, to a commune where they don’t have any airport, no airplane, he is not needed there. He phoned from there as he heard that Sheela has left. He said, “I had been sent as a punishment, because I was told to take one of the airplanes, with as much bombs in it as possible and crash it on the Wasco County office and jump in time in a parachute – so save yourself.”Because I refused, I was simply told that you get on the plane and leave the country immediately, because they suspected I may say it to somebody. But now is the time that I should say it. We have called him that, “You come immediately.”And as his message was received, just another sannyasin came, that from Sheela’s house they have found materials from which bombs are made. Now that material is there and they have found other mechanisms which are all illegal. And there was no need for them to be here, and nobody was aware that they are here.So just it will take a week for everybody to gather courage to say things which they have not been saying, and there is going to be a far bigger Watergate soon.What do you think gave Sheela the power to make these people so afraid that they would not come forward, with what sounds like very scandalous behavior, should no one have been killed by her. The guns were held by the police force. The police or the peace chief says that she was not an accomplice to any of this. So what gave her any power to have such a reign of terror?They had tried to poison three people.But nobody knew that.Just now things have become more and more clear. First, they poisoned the sannyasin who takes care of me. Sheela never wanted anybody to be close to me in any way. She never wanted anybody even to talk to me, so that I don’t know what is going on.Three persons she was trying to kill. The people before whom she discussed the plan are here. One was my physician, one was my dentist, one was my caretaker.First, my caretaker was given poison while she was visiting Sheela’s house and took a cup of tea – but nobody suspected. We thought some illness has happened. She was immediately taken to the hospital. She remained few days in the hospital, got well, and nobody even thought, nobody could even conceive that.Then my physician one day was taking coffee at Sheela’s house and he came… But because he is a physician, with the best qualifications from England, he could feel that there was some poison in the coffee. But everybody laughed at the idea that, “You must be mad! Who will put poison in your coffee and for what?”He remained sick for few days and while he was sick, he was here in the medical clinic and Sheela’s accomplice in all these crimes was Puja, who was a trained nurse and knew everything about medicine, drugs, poisons. She injected him again with a poison. Since then he has been feeling weak, for no reason at all.And third time, just in the last celebration – here in a meeting – a woman who was the third in Sheela’s group, Shanti B., she injected him while he was sitting in the meeting. And he immediately thought that something has been pushed. He took over his robe and called people to see: there was blood and something has been injected.He was taken to the clinic, but he refused to go to this clinic, because now he was afraid. If these people can do it in a public meeting where fifteen to seventeen thousand people were present, what they can do in the medical clinic? And Puja was a dominant figure in the medical corporation.So he insisted to go to Bend. He was taken to Bend. His wife, Hasya, was with him there. The doctor said, “There is no disease. We can only assume perhaps he has been poisoned. But there are poisons which are not detectable.”And the doctor also said, “The same thing had happened to Mike Sullivan, the attorney of Jefferson County, one year before – exactly the same thing: he suddenly fell sick, suddenly felt white and weak, as if dying, and no disease and no symptom of any poison.”Today, one sannyasin has come on his own and he said, “I am an eye witness. In front of me, Shanti B. has injected Devaraj, but I was keeping silent: if they can kill Osho’s physician so easily – I am a poor sannyasin – they can kill me any time.”So what was keeping people silent was that I was not available. Whatever they wanted to say, there was nobody to listen. Sheela was all-powerful. She has placed her people on every power post. She had thrown out all the sannyasins who had some independent mind, who were more intelligent than her, and she has put dummies who were just puppets, who will do whatever she will say. And to me, she will bring only news, what she wanted to bring. And from me, the instructions that I gave, only those will reach to the people that she wanted to reach to them. It was very simple, because I was silent.The moment I started speaking, it became impossible; now I am available to people. They can say to me whatsoever they want to say and they can ask any question they want to ask. She never wanted me to start speaking. I was surprised, because the whole commune wanted me to speak – except Sheela. But when I started speaking, then I understood what was the problem. She became sad. The whole commune became ecstatic, that for three and half years, waiting, they are again able to communicate with me. But she became sad and she started going away for longer periods, for small excuses.Finally, it became clear that because her face from the television was disappearing, her voice from the radio was disappearing, her statements from the newspaper were disappearing. In these three and half years she has become a world famous celebrity. The ego has become too big and now it was hard for her – I can understand – just to drop that ego and be again an ordinary sannyasin as she was before. This was the trouble.And then people started bringing news to me and she became afraid that all these things that she has done – without my knowledge… She escaped, with the whole group, suddenly. She did not even came to see to me.For three days she has been here. In fact, there was no need to come, if she was going to go back. There was no need to come. She came back just to put things – files and everything away or burn or destroy or take away. In three days she did that work, and once it was finished, she without saying that she is going today… She went on saying that she will be staying few days more. Suddenly one day, four o’clock, she left. And that is the time I go for a ride towards the forest in the Ranch, so she knew that I will be far away – this is the best time to escape from here.After her going, so many things have come to knowledge. Just today somebody informed that Sheela and Puja had herbs, poisonous herbs, to put in the food of these three people. And because the woman who was doing it was afraid to do it, and because Devaraj was afraid – after these two poisonings – they have started eating outside. They started arranging food from outside, so they could not succeed to poison their food. That woman has also escaped. Now other people from the restaurant have informed that that woman was doing something and putting some herbs in their food, but they never turned up. So they were… They killed one person certainly.There are sannyasins who informed that they were the people who burned one of the offices of Wasco County, because there were many papers concerning Rajneeshpuram and their activities, that they were the people who had poisoned the tea of one of the judges of Wasco County who was visiting here. But just within two days, all this information has surfaced. Much more is bound to come up – what else they were doing, what else they have done, what else they were planning.For example, I am against politics or any kind of political atmosphere. These sannyasins here are not for politics or to gain power. These people are here to meditate, to be silent, to be themselves, to experience what this life is all about. They have no interest in power. But she was not interested in meditation. And the group that she has collected, also was not interested in meditation.Most of his group has never been to India, into my ashram, to learn meditation. She had a center here, in America, and she had her people running the center. When I came here, those people, certainly, were my hosts and because I remained here, my health improved, those people and Sheela became more and more powerful.They tried to create hostility. They unnecessarily took over Antelope – there was no need. We have such a big land that there is no need to take Antelope, but just ego, power.I would like the people of Antelope to take their houses back, just as they have sold them to the foundation, purchase them back. And I will ask my sannyasins to come back to the commune. They are forcibly living there. And Antelope should be Antelope – there is no need for it to change its name. And it should be in the hands of the people of Antelope.I am not for any hostility, antagonism, with anybody. That’s why this time I have advised my people that choose most of the officers who are American, so that other Americans can feel at home with them and they can feel at home with them.We can enrich Oregon immensely. We can make this place – in four years we have already made it an oasis, it was just a desert when we came, not… Nothing to see except barren hills, not a single bird, not a single animal, and only one dilapidated house – and we have changed it into an oasis. These people have worked tremendously hard and lovingly.We can make it an… Tremendously luscious holiday resort, one of the best tourist spots in the world. Anyway, more people are coming here every year than in any other place. Seventeen to twenty thousand people every festival, and all the year round hundreds and thousands of people are coming and going. If we can make more arrangements – and we feel that Sheela and her group gone – the wall between us and the Oregonian government and the federal government has disappeared. There is no reason for any conflict. We are not against any law, we are not against the Constitution. In fact, I respect the American Constitution as one of the best in the whole world. It is one of the hopes of humanity.And we are ready to go according to the law, according to the Constitution, and we hope that Americans should show, in reality, what they have written in their Constitution: respect for individuality, respect for freedom, respect for religion, respect for different religions, no discrimination – a little help from their side. And we don’t want them to be unlawfully helpful to us; just don’t be unlawfully hindrance. A lawful little help, and we are enough intelligent – we can make this place something beautiful, clean, livable.This is for you, the media, to give the message to the whole nation that we are friends, not enemies. In fact, perhaps in the whole of America, there is nobody who is more against communism, fascism, than me, because I believe in individual property, I believe that the person who is capable of creating wealth is a genius in the same category as a great painter or a poet or a scientist. Everybody is not Henry Ford, neither everybody is Picasso. The man who can create wealth should be respected.And now that science has made technology available, so much wealth can be created that it is sheer stupidity what is happening in Soviet Union: they have simply distributed poverty. It is a poor country. I have my sannyasins there. But they have distributed poverty. Everybody is equally poor, so nobody feels that he is poor – there is no comparison to feel. I also want everybody to be rich – so rich that nobody feels poor, because nobody is poor.In Russia, a certain illusion is being created. Wealth can be created so much that just as you don’t hoard air, you need not hoard wealth. I am against equality, because it is psychologically impossible. Every individual is unique and his individuality should be respected, and his uniqueness should be respected.Everybody should be given equal opportunity to grow his uniqueness. In other words, everybody should be given equal opportunity to be unequal. But equality should not be forced on people; that is the greatest crime one can commit.So please let America know that we are in absolute agreement with a higher quality of capitalism than you have. Your capitalism still allows poverty. Thirty million people are still poor and starving and you are still going on piling up nuclear weapons. You don’t care about those people.The same energy can create so much wealth, that from America all religions will immediately disappear, because paradise will be herenow. Then who cares about a paradise after death? And that is my, one of the basic approaches, that paradise is the poor man’s projection, that father is the helpless man’s projection – and all these projections have to disappear. And man has to be centered, integrated, completely satisfied with the here and now… And this very moment is paradise!I can send my people, who are trained for years in meditation, to every university campus to teach exactly what meditation is: the simplest method which can be followed even by a small child who can understand language, which can be followed by the oldest man who is just on the dying, last phase of his life, perhaps only for few minutes more. But in those few minutes, he can know something that can make him experience the deathless.Ronald Reagan was wrong to ask for prayer to be introduced, because prayer is bound to be part of some religion. And prayer is basically based in the belief of God, which is the ultimate lie. There is no God. And there is no argument that has been able to prove.Out of nine judges of the Supreme Court, eight rejected – and this is what I respect in America: that even a president cannot pressurize fairness and justice. And one judge, who was not in agreement, made a really beautiful comment and he used the word ‘meditation’. He said, “It will be better if meditation is introduced,” because meditation has nothing to do with any religion; it is a scientific method. An atheist can do it, because it needs no belief system, no prerequisite condition to be fulfilled.Prayer is ugly, because it has to be Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan. Prayer cannot be pure. It is polluted. Meditation is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Jew, it is simply a science of going inwards.I would like the Supreme Court to consider again and change the word ‘prayer’ by ‘meditation’. And if they don’t know what meditation is, then I am willing to send trained meditators to every institution of education to teach – it is such a simple thing.In the East we have been practicing 112 methods for almost ten thousand years and out of 112 methods, I have chosen one which is the simplest, which can be done by anybody and everybody.So now that Sheela and her fascist group is gone, there is no question of any antagonism – they were creating unnecessary hostility. We withdraw all hostility that they created and we are ready to welcome everyone who wants to visit our place or wants us to visit their place. I can come with my whole circus!Okay.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 28 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/the-last-testament-vol-2-28/

Metro Media,Los Angeles, CAHasya: [inaudible]…Mary Eckenburg [?] from KT-TV…Glad to meet you.Good evening. What a nice way to begin an interview.We heard a number of things you said this evening, so I will try not to go over the same material again. This is for a television report, and unfortunately television reports are short. So if you will help me by making your answers as short as possible, I would appreciate it. Thank…Thank you.…you – Within reason.Serious question: You knew Sheela for a long time.Non-serious answer: Not very long, and not very much.How was she able to fool you, do you think?Just accidental.An accident?Life is accidental. We are talking just an accident, nothing predestined. Somebody else may have been in your place taking the interview, so just by chance. Her…So she was just by chance, do you think?Just by chance. Everybody is by chance. There are only two ways to understand life: either everything is determined, then freedom disappears, then you are just puppets, machines; the other way is that everything is accidental, then everything is free and you are not a puppet, you have an individuality.And I respect individuality, I respect freedom. In a democratic world, determinism has no place. Otherwise, Adolf Hitler is simply doing what is determined, killing ten million people; he’s not responsible. Responsibility is possible only if life is accidental.So everything is accidental, and it is a great excitement because it is unpredictable, too.We've seen that.Yes.Do you think your life personally was in danger here?It is always in danger, everybody’s life everywhere, because life is between two points, between birth and death. One point has happened, the second is bound to happen. So how it happens does not matter; and where it happens, who cares!So my whole insistence is to live in this moment and live totally, because the next moment may never come.Do you believe these things happened, though – the deception of you and others – for a reason? Why?No reason.None?None. Just human nature, just lust for power.A power struggle?Yes.How can a power struggle occur in a religious setting like this?Every religion is a lust for power. You may call it spiritual power, you may call it divine power; it does not matter. But every place, wherever human beings are, unless they are all unconditioned – which is very difficult and rare… A conditioned mind is trained for ambition, for power, to reach higher and higher, to climb to the very peak. So whenever there is a chance, your mind starts climbing the ladder.I was in silence for three and a half years, so it was good opportunity for Sheela. I was completely absent to the commune. I was living in isolation, in silence; she alone was my communication with the commune. Whatever she informed me of, that was all I knew. What was going on in reality I came to know only when I started speaking and people started informing me.So none of this you were aware of?I was not aware – when it was happening, I was not aware.Only later, obviously, when people told you?Just within the last two days I have become…not even ‘later’. And as I became aware, I wanted to become available to the world media so that everybody else becomes aware of it so at least it does not happen in my communes anywhere else. I have hundreds of communes around the earth; one million sannyasins are involved with me.Fifty-five million dollars in debt you mentioned.Yes.How do you arrive at that figure?Just now I have been told. I never go to the office, I never have seen where the office is. It’s…Perhaps now you'll learn where the office is.No, that is not my style of life. I don’t care about fifty-five million or five hundred million. I live my life in my own way. Now it is the responsibility of the people of the office, the finance department, to look after things more carefully.Sheela called the people of Oregon bigots. Do you agree with her?Everybody in this world is a bigot, and I don’t think Oregon is not part of this world. Bigot simply means that you are a Christian, you are a Hindu, you are a Mohammedan, you are a communist, you are belonging to this ideology or that ideology. You have already come to a conclusion, and you look at every new thing through the curtain of your conclusion; that is to be a bigot. It is very difficult to find a man who is not a bigot.I am not a bigot because I have no ideology, no principles. I’m an agnostic, just a seeker, a searcher.So Oregon is not in any way special in being bigots. It is just the characteristic of all human beings around the world. So don’t take it seriously.Do you plan to stay in Oregon?I love it, and I’m going to be here and I’m going to make it as beautiful as possible and as little bigoted as possible.There had been some reports that you own some property in other countries – Australia for example – and the possibility of you packing up and leaving and going to that country.Never.Not true? You talked about the constitution of the United States today.Mm mmm.The government of the state of Oregon says that Rajneeshpuram is not a legal city because of the conflict between church and state constitutionally. Do you intend to continue the fight to keep that city as an incorporated city?We have to defend our American constitution, because we are constitutionally right, and the state of Oregon is not constitutionally right in calling us illegal city. We will fight up to the Supreme Court, and we know that we are going to win, because I understand the American constitution, its values, and whatever has been done to us is absolutely unconstitutional.For example, the city was incorporated by the state. For two years we were a legal city. For two years the state government, the federal government, both were helping the city; and suddenly the legal city becomes illegal. Great magic!So you will continue your legal fight?We will fight because we have to defend American constitution. In my vision, the American constitution is the only hope for humanity; otherwise, all constitutions are just somehow or other fascist. This is the only constitution which is not fascist, and that’s why American politicians are continuously in difficulty – because they are fascist, and the constitution is not.You talked about fascism, and you said that a fascist state had been created here on your own property. How will you change that now?I have changed it – just like that!What's different, though?Simply because people are intelligent. My people are not retarded. I explained to them the point…what has been happening here. They saw the point – and Sheela escaped.They simply…They understood immediately that now she will be in trouble. And not only she escaped, her whole gang – even the mayor of the city, who was part of the gang – they all disappeared. And nothing was done. I simply explained to people that these things have been happening here just because you were not aware, alert, watching. Now you have to be more alert, more watchful. A democracy needs people to be always alert, because anybody who is in power is dangerous. Even if you put a saint in power, you will find a Nixon comes out of it.I assume you're going to be your own spokesman from now on?I am. And I had always been, and there was no difficulty. Just because I was not speaking for this three and a half years, so this fascist nightmare happened. Now I am not going to have anybody as a spokesman for me; I will be speaking for myself.The immigration service had challenged your being in this country legally. Do you continue to tend…?They are absolutely wrong – otherwise, what the hell are they doing? For four years they could have deported me. They don’t have the guts – just impotent! If I am wrong then what are they doing? I have applied on five counts, and there are only six bases for application to be a resident in America. I have applied on five; on the sixth I can apply any day. That is marriage. I am still unmarried – I can get married any moment! And I’m perfectly capable for all the other five, and I will fight for each up to the Supreme Court. All the INS people will be dead, I will be dead, but the case will not end!I think we get the point.Yes. [tape changes] Good, this is the exact right time.We can only get so much on a tape so we have to change.Okay? Wait a minute, because I have to hit this INS a little more.They have to prove to me that I am not a religious man. I don’t think anybody in the whole world can prove to me that I am not a religious man. No court, no law, no government can prove that I am not a religious man. And if I’m not religious, then nobody else is religious today nor has there ever been anybody who is religious.They have to prove that I am not a religious leader. And five thousand people are living with me who are enough proof. And I have one million sannyasins around the world. I have sannyasins underground in Soviet Union, in Yugoslavia, in China – and I am not a religious leader. Then who is a religious leader? They will have to prove.I had come here for health reasons. I have a few allergies – perfume creates asthma attacks immediately. I need a dry and cold climate. Humidity creates asthmatic attacks for me. That’s why I had chosen this desert. For fifty years this desert has been for sale, nobody bothered about it; but I liked it because it was suitable for my health. And certainly it proved helpful – my asthma completely disappeared. But the disappearance simply means that I have to be completely alert about perfumes, dust, anything that can disturb me.I had never come with the intention to stay here. I had a perfectly beautiful commune in India. It is still there, sannyasins are still living there. But feeling that my health is better here, I have changed my desire; I want to stay here. And I have every right to take care of my health, and any law that prevents me and wants me to be sick and ill is criminal.I will fight with those people.And finally, if they are bent on being fascist, then I can get as many women as they want…I think you've made your position clear.We have heard in Los Angeles reports that several people here have AIDS. Is that true, and if so what are you doing about it?In Los Angeles, several people have AIDS; not here.None?Two.Two.Two. And in L.A. every day one person dies from AIDS.What are you doing about the problem here?We are doing everything, and in L.A. you are doing nothing!What are you doing here?First, we have checked six thousand people completely. Have you checked. all the people in L.A? By not checking all the people, you are constantly creating the danger. And L.A. perhaps may have the most homosexuals of any city in the United States.These two persons – one has got AIDS through a blood transfusion, he’s not a homosexual. The other is a woman; lesbians don’t get AIDS, so she has got it from some man. She is a heterosexual, she is also not a homosexual. So neither of the persons is the outcome of homosexuality.Are they in isolation?They are in isolation, and we have placed them in the most beautiful place we have, the most scenic; we have we have given them the best houses. They are allowed to come to the meetings, to the discourses, to the meditations; they just have been told not to be in physical contact in any way. And they understand, because we respect them and love them – they are victims – and they are immensely grateful, because nowhere else are people suffering from AIDS going to be respected and loved.Four other sannyasins have come from other parts of America, because their families have closed their doors, their friends turned into enemies; even their wives and children will not have anything to do with them. Hospitals will not allow them. We have accepted them because they are in trouble. And it is not their fault.Homosexuality is a religious disease. It has been born in the monasteries of all the religions, so if anybody is responsible it is Jesus, it is Buddha, it is Confucius and that kind of people – the whole lot is responsible, because they all insisted on celibacy. And to make celibacy possible they separated monks and nuns and they created the ground for lesbianism and homosexuality. And the pope should be immediately imprisoned, the shankaracharya of India should be immediately imprisoned, because they are still propagating celibacy; they are still creating homosexuals.In my commune celibacy is a sin because it is against nature, and anybody pretending to be celibate is a hypocrite. It is impossible; biology does not allow it, unless you happen unfortunately to be impotent. Only impotent people can be saints. There is no question of celibacy. And there are so many beautiful woman – why should you…? It is out of necessity that people became homosexuals.There are people in forests, in mountains, where they become even further degraded. They start sodomy, they start making love to animals, for the simple reason that neither a man nor a woman is available, so what…? It is intelligent. They have to find something. If one food is not available, they will find something else; it may not be so delicious, it may not be so nourishing, it may not be the [natural?] food, but somehow they have to manage.In this commune there is no need for anybody to be homosexual.Secondly, we have taken every precaution because AIDS can spread not only by sexual contact, it can spread by kissing a person. The saliva can carry the virus, or even a tear. You may wash, out of compassion, a person’s tears and you become a victim of AIDS.So we have made people aware in what ways a person can be infected without his knowing it. You are eating In a restaurant; you don’t know whether the spoons and other things have been sterilized after somebody else has used them. Here, in our restaurant, the hands of every person who comes to eat are sprayed with alcohol; everything, after he uses it, is being sterilized. Even in a telephone booth…if somebody phones, immediately the telephone is cleaned with alcohol, because you may leave your saliva on the telephone and just a little saliva may be enough to carry the virus.Now many things have to be made criminal, but governments are so idiotic… In Texas the government has made homosexuality illegal. Now, this is something so stupid that perhaps it can happen only in Texas.Let me return for a moment, if I may…No, just wait. They should make things that prevent the spread of AIDS compulsory. For example, everybody should use condoms; while making love everybody should use gloves; kissing should be made illegal, criminal, and people should be taught substitute ways.That’s what I have been doing here. I have told people that kissing is now killing; avoid it. If you respect the person you love, then kissing is not right. Eskimos rub noses rather than kissing; that is more hygienic, and more exciting too. You have been kissing so long; you must be stupid if you are not bored yet. And you go on kissing. The French people must be the most strange kind of people, exploring each other’s mouths with their tongues. It is just – makes one feel like vomiting, the very idea. But rubbing noses seems to be so clean. So I’m telling my people: rub noses as much as you can, there is no harm; but stop kissing, and use condoms.I’m not against sex, because the people who have been against sex are the cause of AIDS. They repressed sex, and the repressed sex became homosexual, masturbatory…sodomy and all kinds of perversions. So everything natural should be accepted as it is. And use intelligence to prevent getting infected and so that you are not giving the other person any infection.And if somebody wants to find new ways…because the old ways are becoming not right. For example, your wife may be having a child and you start sucking on her breast: it may create AIDS, because any liquid coming out of the body can carry the virus. So it is better – because a few small children have been found with AIDS, who know nothing of sex, who have never heard of sex, who cannot think of sex, and they have AIDS. That means they have come with AIDS from their very mother’s womb.We have to learn other ways. For example, Vatsyayana in India – the greatest and most ancient sexologist in the world, five thousand years old – he says the ear lobes are the most erotic and most hygienic; just play with each other’s ear lobes. And they are very erotic – he is right, they are.Change? Okay. But don’t change the subject. Okay?Is that the end of that subject?Okay.I have a couple of other things I want to talk about.Mm mmm.Do you have a concern that the incidents of the last couple of days that you've found out about could tarnish your work, your group, your organization, in such a way that it would be hard to get new recruits or converts – converts to your organization? Would this make it difficult for you to have new people come in?I’m never interested in converting anybody, and I have never converted anybody in my whole life. I’m not a politician, and I am not interested in numbers. That is just politics. How many members you have – six hundred million Catholics, then the pope becomes powerful; no Catholics, then the Polack has to go to Poland!I’m not interested at all in converting anybody. Those who are interested in my ideas come to me, and nothing makes any difference. In fact, because of Sheela and her group many people had left the commune with tears in their eyes. They never wanted to leave. They had come to live with me, but Sheela made it impossible for them to live here. They were intelligent people.The chancellor of our university left, the vice-chancellor of our university left. Many therapists, who were the best therapists in the university, left because they could not be just puppets in the hands of a stupid woman. Sheela knows nothing, and she wanted to dominate everybody. So all those people will be coming back, and many more who were prevented because of Sheela and her fascist structure.But I’m not concerned about it, whether anybody comes or not. I am just stating a fact, that many more will be coming. All over the world there is excitement; every day, the whole day, there are phone calls from all over the world that, “We are happy that Sheela is gone; can we come back?” And all the sannyasins here are so excited. When Sheela left, they danced on the streets as if a fascist regime had ended and they have attained independence.So I don’t see any problem. More people will be coming. But I am not concerned with it, whether anyone comes or not.The attorney general here in Oregon has said that you have a large stockpile of guns here on the property. Is that true, and if so why would you want to have those?I don’t have any idea how many guns are here. It will take a little time for the new people who have come in power now to figure it out. But the attorney general is not right. We have a few guns which belong to the police force – and the police force belongs to the Oregon police. We have a few guns which belong to the security department of the commune, which are all registered. But perhaps Sheela may have had something which we have yet to discover.Just today we have discovered that there is a tunnel underground, and the door goes out from Sheela’s room, and there are many rooms underneath. And for what was it? It cannot be for anything good. But there is no reason to hide it. Nobody knew about it – even I never knew about it, why it was made, for what purpose, what they wanted to hide.And just today we have found in a bucket all the chemicals and things that are needed to make a bomb. We have literature about how to make bombs, and how and what poisons can be used in what quantities to prolong the death of a person so he does not die immediately and you are not caught.So what was she doing? Perhaps there may be some weapons. Either she must have removed them or they must be here somewhere. If they are here, then we are going to deliver them to the government. Anything that is not legal we are going to deliver to the police. We have already started delivering things – anything. We don’t want any dirtiness here.You are obviously making an attempt to heal the bad feeling of Oregon and perhaps some other places in the United States against your organization.No.Do you think that you're going to be able to be successful in…I don’t need to. We are perfectly happy. We don’t have any wounds to heal. They have wounds which we are trying to heal. We are not hostile to the Oregonians; the Oregonians are hostile. We don’t care. We are living on an island, totally sufficient. We have our food, we have our vegetables, we have our fruits, we have our milk products, and we have all kinds of experts. We don’t need anything. And we are not in any way worried. The whole of Oregon is worried, and that we do want – that they should not be worried. We are harmless.Is that the message you're trying to get…?We simply want to make it clear that they need not get disturbed nights. We are harmless people, and if they allow us we can be immensely useful to Oregon and its economy. We can make it a tourist place. In fact, in Pune our commune attracted thousands of people from the world, and the government of Maharashtra would not allow me to leave Pune and move the commune to another place in India. They forced the central government that I should not be allowed to purchase any quantity of land anywhere, because “If these people move, then our whole tourism will flop.” And that’s what happened. When we moved, their whole tourism simply flopped. We were bringing in so much money to them, and we had made such a beautiful place that every day thousands of people were coming just to see the place.So there is no question of our wounds; we don’t have any wounds. The question is: we want Americans and Oregonians to understand that they can be completely unafraid of us, and there is no need for hostility. And what can we do? What harm can we do? It is such nonsense. Just a small group of five thousand people… If you become so freaked out with us, what will happen to you when the Soviet Union attacks you? I simply cannot believe it, that you become so afraid that the governor and the attorney general alert the army that they have to be able to reach Rajneeshpuram any time within three hours. Strange people. Just out of their minds, nuts.So there is…I am just trying to say that the people you were afraid of are gone, and the people who are absolutely harmless are here. Now, it is up to you to remain hostile or friendly. But we are friendly, and we will remain friendly even in spite of your hostility.That does not mean that you can harm us. We will fight legally, and we will defeat you in every court. It is a strange fate that we, who are strangers to this country, are fighting for the constitution; and the people to whom this country belongs are prostituting the constitution, their own constitution. It is better to come here and understand us.And there is no need to have any antagonism at all. It is simply a phobia they are suffering from. Perhaps our red clothes are creating a phobia in the bulls of Oregon…or I don’t know what is happening. If they are so afraid of red clothes, they should ask us – we can change the red clothes. But please don’t be so afraid; it makes us feel sad, because we are not harming anybody and we have no intention of harming anybody.Just today I was talking to the president of the Foundation and to the new mayor, and I told them to, “Change the name of Antelope back to Antelope. This is not right.” And if the people of Antelope just want their properties back, we are ready to sell all the properties back and we can move our people up here. We don’t want their city and we don’t want to rule over them. But if they want not even to purchase the land, the houses, then naturally sannyasins are in the majority… There are not more than twelve, one dozen, old Antelope people and one hundred sannyasins. Then what can be done? Do you want that twelve people should rule over one hundred people?So you would return the city if they will purchase it back?Certainly – if they purchase it. We have purchased those houses from them, and we are ready to give them back at the same price. We have improved the properties, the prices have gone higher in four years, and we are still ready to give them at the same price we had purchased them at – because it is not a question of business, it is a question of the simple understanding that we don’t want to create any misunderstanding anywhere, and we don’t have any interest in American politics.So either they can purchase them, or their sympathizers in Oregon can purchase them, or the Oregon government can purchase them. Something can be done.Are you saying that you're no longer interested in participating in elections in Wasco County, for example?No. We – I never participated in any election anywhere.But your sannyasins did.That is their business. I myself have never voted because I see only two idiots standing, and it is very difficult for me to decide who is a lesser idiot! So I simply dropped the idea of giving any votes to politicians.But are you suggesting or thinking that your sannyasins will not be interested?No.They may be…This is just my individual thing. The sannyasins should decide for themselves. This is the whole difference that people don’t understand.My sannyasins are not my followers, they are not my blind believers. They are just my friends. There is no essential difference between me and them, just a little bit of difference: perhaps my eyes are open and theirs are closed, but they can open them any moment. Otherwise I am going to throw ice-cold water in their eyes and make them open! That’s my work. But otherwise, there is no difference.And they have to decide on their own about matters which I am not interested in at all.And whatever they decide, it would be all right with you?It is perfectly all right with me. It has always been all right with me.But if I see that anything I feel needs my suggestion, just for them to think over it… For example, Antelope. This is my suggestion, that there is no need to change the name. I was in silence when they changed the name. It is ugly, just sick. So put it back.And I am suggesting to them to make arrangements to sell the properties back and come here. We have so many houses empty, so come back here and we can create more houses.And if the government is not behaving unconstitutionally and illegally, then there is no problem; the city is legal. Their own county, their own judges, have incorporated it. It is such a strange thing. The city’s plan is included in the Wasco County plan. Now, if the city is illegal the whole of Wasco County becomes illegal. Wasco County’s plan is part of Oregon’s plan. This city’s being illegal makes ultimately whole of America illegal. It is just a simple thing: Wasco County wanted not to keep the plan, but the court insisted that “Because you have incorporated the city you have to include the plan.”Change?Mm mmm. So you've made it clear that this is something that is important, that the city remains?Certainly.And that obviously you will take whatever steps legally are necessary to do that? You will take whatever steps are necessary legally to defend that?We will do everything that is necessary and legally right, but we are not going to do anything illegal. In fact, we are in a very good position: we are in the legal position and the government is in the illegal position. We have a very good group of legal experts here, four hundred sannyasins – this is the biggest law firm in the whole world – who are continuously working, and they will fight. And finally I am going to stand up in the Supreme Court to save the American constitution. It cannot be allowed to be destroyed by petty politicians.Osho,I want to thank you very much for talking with us tonight. It's been a pleasure, and we've learned a lot.I am also happy, and I would like you to come again and again whenever you can find time.Thank you. I appreciate that.Can you wait for just one moment? We need to get one shot here.When is your next festival? Is it in the summertime you have festivals here? You mentioned it.We have them four times in the year.Four times a year.But for me it is every day a festival. That’s why…But isn't the biggest one – the biggest one is in the summer, isn't it?Yes, it is the summer.Have you traveled at all outside Oregon in the United States?No, I was just in New Jersey for three months in the beginning when we were searching for the land. I had a very beautiful castle, one-hundred years old, and really a piece of art. We renovated it and made it completely new. We enjoyed the renovation of the old place, but by the time it was finished I had to come here and we started making this place.Now we have rooms for five thousand sannyasins, with all modern facilities. The whole city is centrally air-conditioned. Perhaps this is the first commune which is completely air-conditioned, with all the facilities and comforts. I don’t believe in poverty; I believe just in super-comfort.Do you have more building to do here? Do you have more buildings to build, more things to build here?Yes, we will – just this case has to be finished. We cannot build anything now because the case is going on.I see. Until that's finished…Yes, it is under litigation. Once the litigation is over, we are going to make more. But not big buildings. We don’t want to make New York! We can make… Our place is three times bigger than New York, but we will make small chalets like in Switzerland on all the hills around. We want it to be a fairy land.Thank you once again.Okay.

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The Last Testament Vol 2 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 2 30 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Bunte magazine,Offenburg, West GermanyGreat.Osho,I want to thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to talk with you. And let's start with what happened in the last few days here. Could you ever imagine that something like this would happen to you and to the commune here?I never think of the future, so I am always prepared for everything. I am never surprised, never disappointed either. Whatever happens, I take it for granted that it must do some good. Anything looked at rightly is always beneficial. Whatever happened here has helped my people immensely. Now it will never happen again.They were innocent people. The whole life of the commune was only four years. They trusted me absolutely, although I have never asked anybody to trust in me or have faith in me. Just the contrary: I have asked them never to have any belief, any faith. Doubt is my fundamental teaching.Doubt is so clean. It has given us the whole of science. In just three hundred years doubt has given us so much, and in ten thousand years beliefs have not given anything except wars, bloodshed, fanaticism, retarded people, divided humanity.But it is a paradox of life that the more I tell my people not to have faith, not to have belief, the more they love me, the more they trust me.For three and a half years I was silent. Sheela was my secretary; she was the only link between me and the commune. The commune simply trusted Sheela, and that whatever she is saying she represents me. That’s how the whole thing happened.And I don’t condemn Sheela, either. It is just a human weakness. Everybody carries will to power within him. It is just a question of opportunity. If you get the opportunity, the will to power takes possession of you. And she had a good opportunity. These people had tremendous trust in me; she was representing me. She used the opportunity to become almost a fascist leader.She was nobody – she was only a hotel waitress. But in three and a half years she became a great celebrity on the television, on the radio, in the newspapers. Naturally the poor girl got a swollen head. When I started speaking again, then the problem arose; otherwise it would have never arisen. Because I started speaking to my people again, they could not believe me. Sheela had been saying something else for three and a half years and I was saying just the opposite! She was asking them to surrender completely, to trust totally, and those who don’t surrender she was throwing out.And when I said to my people that, “You had completely forgotten me and my teaching,” she immediately understood that now this is not her place. On the one hand she is no longer going to be the celebrity she has been; on the other hand, all these people are going to bring all the complaints that have accumulated in their minds for three and a half years. She simply escaped.And now so many things are coming out it seems almost inconceivable. She has tried to poison people, to kill people. Just today somebody has sent me the message that one of my most important sannyasins, who was also the vice-chancellor of the meditation university here – very well educated, had an MA, PhD, an experienced psychiatrist, for twelve years the head of an army psychiatric hospital – suddenly he and his girlfriend disappeared. And Sheela told me that they wanted to go, so I allowed them to go.I said, “This seems to be strange, because Prabodhi was there just the other day dancing and receiving me at the door – the girlfriend of Siddha. Siddha was there in the meeting every day and I saw him flowering and rejoicing. I don’t see that they have any reason to leave. What reason have they given?”She said, “No reason.”And just today I have heard that most probably both have been killed, because they were – particularly Siddha was so devoted to me that he wouldn’t listen to Sheela.This is just a rumor right now, but I am going to inform the police and to find out what happened to those two people. It is possible, because she has done the same thing to one of the Share-a-Home people. When she arranged that Share-a-Home people program, she ordered a certain drug in such a great quantity that our pharmacist simply refused, because, “What is the point of such a great quantity? How am I going to explain it? What is the need?” So Sheela’s people simply said, “Don’t be worried. We will find some other way.”And they must have found some other way. Now people have come to say that they were giving a certain drug to all the street people to keep them calm and quiet and under control. One man by accident got too big a dose and he died, and they just threw him out of Rancho Rajneesh. If they can do that…They tried to kill my own personal physician by giving him slow doses of poison. They were very much against three persons because those three persons were very close to me, and they were afraid that those three persons might be giving me information that they didn’t want me to know. I was in isolation and silence. Nobody else was coming to see me except Sheela and these three people: my physician, my dentist and my caretaker.At first we thought that this was something strange, because nobody could conceive of it. My caretaker one day went to Jesus House, where Sheela used to live, and took a cup of tea, and her heartbeat suddenly went to such a high speed… She is not sick, she is perfectly healthy – there was no question of it. Even the doctors were puzzled how it happened. And after much medication – it took three hours for them to bring her heart back to its normal condition. But nobody even connected it with the tea.But after just a few days my personal physician…the same thing happened again. He had a cup of coffee in Jesus House, where Sheela lived, and he came back and he said he had been poisoned – perhaps because he is a well qualified doctor he was able to suspect that some poisoning has happened – and he became sick. He had to be admitted into a nursing home. There they again tried to inject him.One of Sheela’s accomplices was Puja, who was really the expert. She was a trained nurse, almost as qualified as any doctor. She again tried to inject him with poison, and then my physician became absolutely afraid to live there in the nursing even for a single moment longer. He was brought back home.They tried a third time in the public meeting we have every morning, in the discourse. In the crowd they injected him with poison and he immediately felt…he took up his robe and showed people the blood coming out and the place where the injection was given. Now he was absolutely certain that it was a certain injection that is not detectable, and it simply weakens you, and in a period of six to eight months it kills you. So nobody can be caught; it is not a sudden killer.This time he refused to go to the commune’s nursing home again because that was under Puja, so we had to send him to Bend. His wife Hasya was with him there. The doctors could not find any disease. They told his wife that, “We don’t find any disease. All we can say is that some undetectable poison had been injected. But we can only say it;. there is no proof because it is undetectable.”They said the same had happened to Mike Sullivan, the attorney of Jefferson County, one year before – exactly the same situation. And there is every possibility that the same people were behind that case too, because our commune’s land comes half in Wasco County and half in Jefferson County, and Jefferson has not been in any way helping us to develop the land or to make a few houses there for farmers to live in. It is a big stretch of land – one hundred and twenty-six square miles. We need a few houses there at the other end. Perhaps because Sullivan was not helping, was a hindrance, they may have tried…But all these things have come out within the last two days, and more and more information is pouring in. These people had got the information from some source that a grand jury is going to convene within two or three days. The moment they got that news, immediately Sheela took the whole group away – twenty people – and escaped out of the country. There was no need for them to fear; if they had not done anything wrong, I don’t see the point of escaping from the country.Just today Hasya – she is the new president of the Foundation – moved into the president’s room and she could not believe it: there was a door going underground, and they had a few rooms underneath that room which nobody in the commune knew about, and a tunnel which goes out. In any case, if somebody attacks or takes possession of the house, people can escape by the tunnel. So they have been preparing really well, doing things mathematically.And in whatever they have left in the rubbish, we have found literature about how to make bombs, materials out of which bombs are made, material on poisons, in what doses poisons can kill and how they should be given. We have also found that the fire that had happened in Wasco County, in one of the offices, was the work of this group. They burned the whole office because the county had the papers against them and they wanted to burn all those papers.Today one sannyasin phoned from Germany. Knowing that Sheela and her company had left, he was immensely happy. He was our best pilot, and nobody knew why he was sent to Germany, to a commune where there is no airport, no airplane. He was sent as a punishment, because Sheela wanted him to take one airplane full of bombs, full of petrol, and crash the plane into the Wasco County building, and before the crash happens he should jump out with a parachute to save his life – “but destroy the building and have enough bombs and enough petrol so that the fire burns the whole place.”He refused. He is a simple man. Because he had refused, and afraid that he might tell this thing to anybody, they immediately packaged his luggage and sent him to Germany.I informed him that, “You come immediately, because your evidence to the government will be of immense help.”The whole day the office is buzzing with phone calls from all over the world about how people have been thrown out of the commune, humiliated – and particularly those people who were more devoted to me, have lived with me longer than Sheela, knew me more than Sheela. She did not want anybody like that here. And she had arranged a clique of almost all new people who had no idea of my ideology, so that whatsoever she said, they thought that she had brought the news from me.We are informing the police – we have informed the police, the state police, the federal police, and we have asked the German police, the Swiss police, because they are hiding in Switzerland in a small village near Zurich. And just today I received the message that they are spending fifty thousand dollars per day. So that means our people have to look into the books well, because from where have they got the money? They have left the commune in fifty-five million dollars of debt.So it has really turned out to be a criminal gang. But deep in the unconscious every man has the same possibility. One just needs opportunity. They got the opportunity.Now it will not happen for the single reason that I am going to speak directly to my people. Secondly, I am making every arrangement to decentralize power. Thirdly, I am making arrangements to change the power positions more often so that nobody takes their position for granted, as if it is their inheritance. And I am telling my people to be alert and aware because my teaching is for freedom, not for fascism.I value democracy not dictatorship. To me, individual and respect for his individuality are the highest values. And no individual should be humiliated.So now I will have to teach them that, “You have to be aware of your own power elite, too. And anything you see, immediately inform me.”This was an ugly nightmare, but they could not do any harm to the commune. They tried. Money does not matter; if they have taken some money, that is not much of a thing to be bothered about. But otherwise they have not…And all the people that have left are asking to come back, and I am calling them to tell them that they can come back. There has been such rejoicing. People have been dancing for hours in the street when they heard that Sheela and her group had left – as if they are freed from a concentration camp.So in a way it is good that these people are gone. They were creating a rift between the commune and Oregon, between the commune and the American government. Now that barrier has disappeared and we can create bridges of friendship, because to me America is the only hope for humanity. If America does not succeed, then the whole of humanity is going to be under communist regimes, and humanity is going to be reduced to robots. They have done that in the Soviet Union and they will do it more forcibly everywhere else.So America is not just a country; it is now more than that. It is a hope for freedom and hope for democracy and hope for individuality, justice.My respect for the American constitution is immense, so great that I feel that American politicians are all prostituting it. The constitution is something immensely valuable; but the third-class politicians cannot keep up with the constitution, that’s the difficulty.I can understand. The constitution has such high goals and ideals, and the politicians have no goals and no ideals except a lust for power, so the gap is big. They are doing things which are unconstitutional, illegal. So in every way I would like to be part of this country. But I will also fight any illegality that is being done to the commune and against the constitution. We are fighting and we are winning, and we will fight up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is still a ray of light.And we see no reason why we cannot win. We are going to win, because whatever they have done to the commune is absolutely unconstitutional. They had recognized the commune as a city for two years; their judges, the county, the state and the federal government were all helping the commune for two years as a city. And then suddenly – perhaps under some Christian pressure – they declared the city illegal. This is the only city in the whole world which is illegal. There are cities and there are no-cities, but illegal cities don’t exist.And the greatest beauty of it all is that this is the only place where in four years nobody has been raped, nobody has been robbed – and still they go on calling it illegal!It took the attorney general of Oregon – his must be a mighty dull head! – two years to discover that the city is illegal. You should have done every investigation before you accepted the city and its incorporation. If it is illegal, then you are the criminal. Why did you incorporate it? You did not investigate properly or you don’t understand the law. It took two years for you.Now also they are trying and fighting for one thing: we want the case to be decided in a federal court, and they want the case to be decided in a state court. Now, it is a very simple thing, it needs no legal knowledge, that if the state itself is involved in the case, the state courts cannot be expected to be fair. And why are they afraid of the federal courts? Do they think their state courts are more fair than the federal courts?Now they are fighting for that, that the case should be decided in the state courts. We will not let them decide in a state court, because the state court is under their influence. We want a federal court to decide. We don’t want any favor from anybody; we simply want that whatever is legal should be given to us.I will come back to what happened before, that you are sure something like that wouldn't happen anymore. Does it mean that you take over the control again?Who?You.No, I don’t have any control. I never had. My love is my control. I don’t have any position. I never had before, and I don’t need it. You need position only when you don’t have enough love. I love these people, I trust these people; they love me and they trust me. I have enough. What can any position give to me?So I don’t have any position legally, but I am one of them and my heart and their hearts beat together. We have a certain synchronicity.So I am not going to take control. When I said that, I said simply that I will be continuing to speak. I was in isolation and not speaking; that gave the opportunity to some wrong people. Now I will be speaking and meeting my people every day, and that’s enough.It never happened in India for thirty years for the simple reason that nobody would have dared to do anything. When I am present, then none of my people is afraid of the president or the mayor or the secretary or anybody. Then they can say the truth openly. And the president and the secretary will also never feel that this is an opportunity to take advantage of.So just my presence, my availability, is enough. It won’t happen. It can’t happen.From those people who went to Europe, everybody can come back? Also Sheela?Yes, everybody can come back. I love them; they are my people. But I will have to make it clear to them that, “I love you as a person, as an individual, but I don’t love your wrong actions. For your wrong actions you will have to face the courts. And for your wrong actions we are not going to help you. As far as you are concerned, our love remains the same.”I make a clear distinction between the action and the person. The action is a small thing. For example, for thirty years you were a perfectly nice person and one day you commit a murder. Nobody could have conceived of it. And after that day you may never murder again. But our legal systems are blind: because you have murdered, they will murder you.This is a strange, primitive law. If murder is wrong, then the punishment which is to murder the person is also wrong – more wrong. Just because it is being done in the name of society, civilization, culture, law, the court, does not make it right.To me, the murderer as a individual is as respectable as the magistrate. His action, murder, is wrong, which is a small thing considered against the personality of the being, his whole life.I would like every wrong person, illegal person, criminal person, to be sent not for imprisonment but respectfully, with dignity, to a psychiatric camp, to a hospital where he can be treated, because murder is basically something psychological, rape is something psychological. Power, the lust for it, is something psychological.Perhaps the person is not responsible at all; it is just some instinct that takes possession of him and he does something. And it is wrong to behave in the same way. An eye for an eye – that is not civilization. He can be treated. You don’t have any right to destroy a person’s whole future because of a single act in the past. The past is over, the future is open. Why should you destroy his future? You should help him so that the same thing does not happen in the future. So whatever steps are needed should be taken: medically, physiologically, psychologically – everything should be done to get this person out of this instinct to murder or rape or do something wrong.I will call that a cultured society.So I will have to see. Even if they come back…whatever they have done is small. Their humanity and their being is far more precious.But I will not protect them against the law. Just as we are lovingly receiving them, I would like them to go and surrender to the court and tell everything, whatever they have done, and ask the court that they are willing to accept whatever punishment is needed.Did you send somebody after them?No, not yet.You will?No. I will just wait, because one of them has already come back, another has phoned. I will wait. Soon they will be feeling that they have done something wrong and that it is not right to be there. They will all come back.Those who will not come back will be the three persons – Sheela, Puja, Shanti B – who were really involved in killing people. They will be brought back by Interpol or the Swiss police or German police.And I don’t need to send anybody anywhere because I have my sannyasins everywhere; they cannot go to any corner of the world and hide. I have my communes in Germany, in Switzerland, in Holland, in England, in Italy – wherever they go my people will find them. And I am going to inform all the communes…And they are committing the same stupid crimes there. A phone call just came that Sheela has married one Swiss sannyasin. Now this is bigamy; she is married to an American here. She has married there just to remain in Switzerland. And her husband was a trustee of the commune – we have a big commune in Zurich and one of the best in Europe, and he was a trustee there. Another trustee was Pragyan, who is missing. Again the same suspicion…because if they could do such things here they may have done the same thing with Pragyan.Pragyan is missing, and Dipo has withdrawn from the bank all the money which was the commune’s money and he is not entitled to take it for his personal use. So they phoned and asked, “Should we give him to the police?”I said, “Immediately, because once Dipo is behind bars Sheela and the whole group will be without support.”So we will catch them. They cannot escape anywhere.In Europe there are some rumors in the last few days that you would leave Oregon, probably to Australia. Is it true?I was just joking with an Australian journalist. Nothing…no rumors.You will stay in Oregon?I am going to stay here.For how long?Till I get the green card. If they give me the green card I may go. If they don’t give it to me, then alive I am not going anywhere.Do you trust these new people on the top of the commune?Perfectly. I even trusted those people, and I trust them even now. To err is human; it is nothing very important. And my trust is unconditional. It does not depend what you do and what you don’t do. I trust your being, your very existence. I certainly trust the new people. Now, without my trust, without my love, my commune is not going to choose anybody.So you don't feel hurt?No. Not at all. There is nothing to feel hurt about. I just feel excited.Thank you.Good. Great.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Ma Yoga Pratima,Rajneeshpuram, OregonOsho,You have said that you are the new man that the world needs, and that this commune is a preparation for the arrival of the new man. Do you see that other people here are going to become, like you, the new man, or are you talking about a preparation for future generations?I am never concerned about the future, neither about the past. My whole concern is the present. And when I say the New Man, I don’t mean a certain model, type, an ideal. By the New Man I mean a man without ideals, a man with his own individuality, not imitative, not a carbon copy of somebody else. So the New Man will not be like me or like anybody else. Everybody will be authentically himself.One of the most fundamental psychological things has to be understood: equality is an illusion. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lenin, and other communist thinkers of the world have created almost a conviction in millions of people’s minds - not only those who are communist but also those who are not communist - that equality should be the goal. Only machines can be equal; man cannot be. If you want man to be equal, then you will have to destroy his humanity and make him a robot.It is very simple: just as two faces are not the same, in the whole world even two fingerprints are not the same - and you want two beings to be the same? You don’t value the being more than the fingerprint even? A very absurd idea of equality has become widespread.Why it became so influential can be understood very easily. Everybody feels inferior to somebody, either intellectually, financially or physically. In some way everybody carries deep down an inferiority complex, because he is continuously comparing himself with others. Naturally, somebody has more intelligence, somebody has more physical strength, somebody can run faster than you, somebody can swim better. It is impossible for anybody not to feel inferior if he starts comparing.Even a man like Napoleon.you would not think that he would ever feel inferior. For what? He was one of the greatest conquerors, one of the greatest fighters and warriors in the world. But on one point he was very touchy. His height was only five feet, five inches - even his bodyguards were taller - and that hurt. That gave him pain, and he could not even say it to anybody.One day he was trying to fix a picture on his wall, and the nail was a little high up, beyond his hand’s reach. His bodyguard said, “Sir, I can do it. I am higher than you.” Napoleon became so angry. He said, “Take your words back, otherwise I will kill you right now, here.” But he said, “What have I said?” Napoleon said, “You are taller than me but not higher than me. I can tolerate taller; but higher? - I cannot tolerate anybody.” He had touched his wound.Even the people who have immense power in some way or other feel inferior when they start comparing. That leaves almost the whole of humanity feeling an inferiority complex. And this is the root cause why communism is so influential. It has nothing to do with economics, nothing to do with capitalism. It simply fulfills a deep desire in every man that everybody be equal. He feels gratified even to think that everybody is equal. Then there will be no wound, no hurt feeling, there will be no question of comparison.Nobody has looked at communism from a psychological viewpoint. People have been studying communism only as an economic theory. It is not. Basically it is a psychological consolation to all those who are feeling inferior in any way. Hence more than half of humanity is already communist. Communism is the biggest religion right now and is growing fast, and will take over the world if we cannot create a New Man who has no inferiority complex.The New Man will not be a communist, because he does not want to be equal to others. The New Man wants to be unique in himself, and wants everybody else also to be unique. A society of unique people - everybody unique in his own way - will be the richest society that has existed in the world.Somebody is a painter, somebody is a poet, somebody is a scientist, somebody is a sculptor. They all have their own uniqueness. It does not matter what you do, all that matters is that everything you do has your fingerprint on it, and you have become a creator. There is no reason to compare. A painter is a painter and a poet is a poet. It is stupid that both start comparing. Then the painter becomes inferior because he is not a poet, and the poet becomes inferior because he is not a painter. And we have been living under this inferiority complex for thousands of years. So everybody is suffering - “Existence has not been compassionate towards me.”Start looking at the uniqueness and drop the idea of equality, which is in every way impossible. Unless man is produced in a factory on an assembly line, there is no possibility of equality. And a man produced on an assembly line will not be a man; he will be just a machine.The New Man will not be like me in the sense that he will not be my carbon copy. But in a way, in a very different way, he will be like me. I am independent; he will be independent. I am my own self; he will be his own self. I have never accepted anything just as a belief unless I have experienced it. Then there is no question of belief - I know it. So either I know something or I don’t know, there is nothing in between.The believer is in between. He does not know, yet he pretends to know. You will find all these hypocrites assembled in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, all over the world. They don’t know God and they are praying to him. They don’t know that any prayer has ever been heard, and still they are praying. They don’t know that any prayer has ever been answered, but still they are praying.The New Man will be a seeker, not a believer. He will trust in inquiry, in doubt - and doubt is the only method that can lead you to the truth. Belief is a barrier, not a bridge. No believer has ever known the truth. His belief never allowed him to inquire. So in a very different sense, he will be like me.I have doubted everything. I have never accepted anything because it is written in the holy scriptures, because the great founders of religions have said it, because great saints verify it. I have insisted my whole life that nothing else can prove it to me except my own experience. And when it comes as your own experience, it brings tremendous rejoicing, great blessings, flowering. Your being finds its home. The wandering is finished, you have arrived.Now my wandering and your wandering will be different. The point where I started and the point where you will start will be different. I will arrive to my own innermost core; you will arrive to your innermost core. The ultimate experience of blossoming will be the same, but the path will be totally different. Everybody has to search and seek in his own way.The way to truth is just like the sky. The bird flies but leaves no footprints. You cannot follow. There are no footprints. The inner sky is exactly the same, and everybody has to find his own way. It will be better to say the New Man makes his way. He does not move on a ready-made way. Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, are ready-made ways, superhighways, comfortable - you need not bother - but they go nowhere. They go round and round the earth. You can go on moving on them for millions of lives and you will never reach to your own being, because that way is not connected to you. It is not yours.The real seeker steps out from all these ready-made ways. He moves into the unknown. It is great excitement, great ecstasy. And every step that brings you closer to home also brings you peace that you have not known before, brings you love and compassion that are absolutely unknown to you. Closer and closer.and you start feeling a new music, a new poetry, a new song arising out of your own heart. Your every heartbeat becomes music.These are the signs that home is coming closer. Your whole being becomes harmonious. You can feel in yourself a new coolness, freshness, aliveness - indications that the source of life is not far away. And when you are just coming, maybe a few more steps, suddenly your walk is no more a walk, it becomes a dance. Nobody has reached into his being in any other way except dancing. It is not up to you. Your feet start feeling the dance. The whole milieu around you makes you thrive, thrilled.Yes, I am the New Man and I am preparing the way for you to become the New Man. That’s why I go on insisting that you keep yourself intelligent, meditative, silent. Keep yourself alert, aware. Change every stone on the path into a stepping-stone. Don’t think, “Now the stone is blocking the way.” No stone blocks the way. You just have to know that every stone can be turned into a stepping-stone.Just now you have passed through a fascist, poisonous time. Those who can make it a stepping-stone will be grateful for it. There is no need to be afraid, to be worried, to be frustrated that it happened. Rather than wasting time over why it happened, use the energy to make it a stepping-stone to go higher. As I see it, the commune looks purer. It looks fresh. People look unburdened. These are good signs. A few people look angry that they have been deceived; that is stupidity. Now, what has happened has happened. Anger is wasting your energy; that is hitting your head against the stone. That is not going to help. A few people look as if they are lost, because they had become dependent on a fascist kind of order. They needed the order, they needed moms, and they look like helpless children whose moms are lost.This is a good opportunity. The moms have escaped. It is time that you become independent. Drop this childish helplessness. Take responsibility and prove that independently you can do better than under a repressive regime, that you can be more creative if you are not being humiliated, dragged, forced to do something. But a few people are feeling helpless because unless somebody is on their neck, continuously nagging them, they cannot work. They have become addicted to nagging just as people become addicted to smoking.I know people whose wives are nothing but a pain in the neck. They know, and they have been telling horrible stories to me about their wives, and when their wives go for a few days to their parents’ house, just within two or three days that man completely forgets all the horribleness of the woman’s nagging and everything, and he starts hankering that she should come back. I was puzzled. I have seen many friends in the same position, in the same vicious circle, and I have asked them, “What happens to you? You are left free, now enjoy! Before you were saying you could not enjoy because the wife was so horrible, it was impossible to enjoy. Now why are you looking sad?” And they will say, “We feel very much alone. Something is missing. Without the wife, the house seems to be horrible.”I said, “This is great! With the wife it was horrible; without the wife it is horrible. Then what do you want?”They have become dependent. The wife was not only nagging them, she was taking care of them also. They don’t know where their shoes are, they don’t know. I know people who don’t know how to put on their necktie. Only the wife knows, because she has been doing it. Everything is in a mess. They have completely forgotten what pain she was giving them, and now they remember only the best part.So there are people who have forgotten that they were not happy under a strict system where there was no question of independence, total surrender was asked. They were unwilling to do it, but they were doing it. Now you are free, and you don’t know what to do. You will have to learn that you can work out of your own love, that there is no need for surrender. You need not become a slave; you can remain a master. But certainly remember that the quality of the work of a master must be higher than the quality of the work of a slave. That’s the only criterion to prove whether you are a slave or a master.The New Man will live out of his own love, creativity and joy, without depending on any father figure. He will not need a God. God is a projection of the sick minds of people who want a permanent father. These human fathers are not reliable; today they are alive, tomorrow they may die. You cannot trust them. They need a father who is eternal. They need a father who is all-powerful. They need a father who knows everything, past, present, future. That gives them great consolation.Now a few people are angry at me. Why did I not stop it?.But I am not omniscient; I didn’t know what was happening. I don’t know even what is happening in the other room. I can just hear the noise; what is cooking, I don’t know. Something must be cooking. But I don’t pretend to be an omniscient father; neither am I a peeping tom, that I should go on looking into everybody’s bathroom keyhole watching what is happening, who is doing what. I never go out of my own room.They are angry. The reason is that they must have been unconsciously projecting the father figure on me. Please, don’t make me a curtain to project anything you want. I am nobody’s curtain. I am not a screen, that you can project any idea on me and then feel angry because I am not behaving according to you. When had I said to you that I will behave according to you? I don’t expect you to behave according to me, neither do I want you to expect me to behave according to you. Here we are agreed only on one point, and that is the independence of everybody; there is no other agreement.The New Man will have communes, but the agreement will be freedom. You can look into my eyes and you can see my silence, my depth. You can feel my presence, my joy, my song. But you are not to repeat anything. I am simply indicating to you that what has happened to me can happen to you. There will be differences, there will be uniquenesses. I may be just a marigold flower and you may be a lotus - so don’t imitate me. You may be a rose and I am just a marigold, a very poor flower who has nothing. But whoever named it marigold must have had great insight; it is the poorest flower, but there is great merriness, great joy in it - and it is pure gold, twenty-four carat.One never knows what is hidden in you. Something certainly is hidden - everybody is carrying a being - you have to search and bring it into light and let your fragrance take its wings into the air.I am the New Man. You have to be the New Man. I am not ordering you, I am simply saying so loudly so you can hear. And we have to create more opportunities for the New Man for more people around the world.The New Man will not be a politician. The New Man will have no desire for power. The New Man will not create people like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong. The New Man will not create heroes as in the past, because everybody will be a hero. With the New Man, history is finished. You cannot write history with a New Man. Otherwise it will be such a big job, because every man will be a unique man and he has to have as much space as anybody else.In the old world, history was possible. You will be surprised to know that before India became a slave country there was no such thing in India as history. Mohammedans started writing history about Mohammedan kings, then Britishers started writing history about the British rule, but before India was independent there was no history. A country so ancient that they had discovered mathematics, astronomy. They had discovered the most scientific language in the world. They had written the best literature, the best poetry. They had created the best architecture - temples, palaces, memorials, statues which have no comparison anywhere, so alive that it seems the stone statue is just going to breathe again, or perhaps is deceiving you by stopping its breath. So alive!But they had no history, and nobody has bothered why. My own understanding is that there were so many unique people that to write about all of them would have been an impossible task. So they found a different way of writing history which was called Puranas, the ancient tales. They don’t write about twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas, they only write about Mahavira. But in Mahavira’s life everything essential about all the twenty-four tirthankaras is represented. Nothing is missing, so what is the point of writing about twenty-four people? Because Adinatha must have been ten thousand years ago, they write about Mahavira, the best, the last, whom they knew more than any of the others.If you go into a Jaina temple you will see twenty-four statues of twenty-four tirthankaras, but you will be puzzled: they are all alike, exactly the same. It is impossible, twenty-four persons exactly the same - the same size of nose, the same eyes, the same long earlobes - because a Jaina tirthankara’s lobes should touch the shoulders - the same height, the same type of athletic body. Strange. Even Jaina scholars cannot see any difference, so they have made small symbols underneath every statue. Those symbols indicate whose statue it is. For example, under Mahavira is the symbol of the lion. So any statue with the symbol of the lion is Mahavira’s. You just change the symbol, and no scholar.In my neighborhood, in the same university where I was teaching, lived the best Jaina scholar of India, Doctor Hiralal Jain. I took him a statue of Mahavira which was presented to me, but I erased the symbol. He was an old man, and really wise, knowledgeable. I asked Doctor Hiralal, “Whose statue is this?” He said, “But where is the symbol?” I said, “I have erased the symbol. I want to know from you, is there any way to find out whose statue this is?” He said, “You are strange. There is no way. Scholarship cannot help at all in this matter, because all twenty-four statues are really exactly the same.” I asked him why they are the same. He said, “That, too, is beyond me, because no Jaina scriptures give the answer why they are the same. Do you have any idea?”I said, “I always have some idea. My idea is that these statues don’t represent real people, they represent qualities. And all the twenty-four tirthankaras are bound to have similar qualities. For example, this earlobe. Everybody who is not a Jaina laughs - why such a long earlobe? It is never seen anywhere.”In my whole life I have come across only one man, but even his were not perfect. They were not touching his shoulders, just almost. I said, “You just massage your earlobe. Try, so it starts touching your shoulders.” He said, “Why? Already people call me donkey, and you want me to make my earlobes longer!” I said, “If you can manage to make your earlobe touch your shoulder, then I can declare you the twenty-fifth tirthankara of the Jainas. You will be immensely respected.” He said, “I don’t want to get into any trouble. Your suggestions always lead to trouble. You just forgive me and don’t tell anybody.” Otherwise I have not seen anything like that. But why do all Jaina tirthankaras have such long ears? “To me,” I told Doctor Hiralal, “they are symbolic. It is symbolic art. These long ears show that the man was capable of listening. People are dead they don’t listen. And these people must have listened to the ultimate music of life. How to represent it in marble?“This is a beautiful symbol. The eyes are closed. That means these people are not seeing anything, that all thoughts have disappeared, that there is nothing to see. The closed eyes are symbolic that there is nothing to see. The long ears are symbolic that they have started hearing the ultimate music of existence.”He said, “Your explanation looks plausible and I cannot argue with you, but you don’t have any support from the scriptures.” I said, “I don’t need it. What I am saying is self-explanatory, it needs no support from scriptures. And what I am saying is not a scholarly statement; what I am saying is my own experience. With closed eyes I have been in a state when you don’t see anything, but in that moment you hear for the first time a very celestial music surrounding the whole existence. So I am saying it on my own authority.”Jainas never wrote the history of the twenty-four tirthankaras, but only about one. And they cannot call it history because in Mahavira’s life they have included all twenty-four tirthankaras’ lives too. All that was essential in twenty-four lives, all that was meaningful, they have combined. Mahavira is just a representative, a symbol. Just the way the statues are symbolic, Mahavira’s life is symbolic. So they don’t call it history, they call it ancient tales, old stories. But they are not fiction, they relate to reality.The New Man will be the end of the world of heroes. Alexander the Great will not be possible any more. Even if he comes riding on his horse, people will be simply entertained. He will look just like Don Quixote. Nobody is going to bother about Alexander the Great.History ends with the old man. Heroes end with the old man. The New Man will write symbolically. He will write about the New Man and his qualities in a symbolic way - not about separate persons, which brings comparison, which makes someone big, high, holy, someone a sinner, inferior, a nobody. The old man was living vertically, in a hierarchy. The New Man will live horizontally, with no hierarchy. Everybody is doing his best and doing what he wants to do, and doing it not just as work but as worship.You have said that you love to disturb people because only by disturbing them can you make them think. To what extremes would you go to disturb people?It depends on the people, not on me. For example, I will not have to go far to disturb Avirbhava. It is easy. She tries, but again and again she gets disturbed. So it depends on the people.There are people with very thick skins: they really need Zen hits; perhaps then they may open their eyes and see what is going on. But I can go to any length. If the person is stubborn and has decided not to be disturbed, then I can go to any length. Until he is disturbed, I don’t stop. I don’t have any limitation, and I am disturbing him only so that he can wake up. And I know, once he wakes up he will be grateful. In his sleep he may be angry.I am reminded of Immanuel Kant, one of the great philosophers of Germany. He was very particular about his routine. People used to fix their clocks just seeing him, because at an exact time he would go for a morning walk, up to the exact mile, and he would come back every day at the same time. At the same time he would take his food, at the same time he would go to the university, at the same time go back home, at the same time he would go to bed. And people knew - it was a small place - that Kant is going to the university, so what should be the time? And immediately everybody would set his clock right. Your clocks can be wrong, but Kant cannot be.Once it happened that it had just rained, and there was too much mud outside. One of his shoes got caught by the mud when he was going to his classroom. He did not wait to take his shoe out. He entered his class with one shoe on and one foot naked. The students were puzzled because he was walking as if he were lame or had got his leg fractured. Everybody gathered and they asked, “What has happened? We don’t see any fracture or anything, just one of your shoes is missing.” He said, “I know. It got stuck in the mud, but I did not want to be late. If I had taken the shoe out, I would have been a few seconds late. And this I cannot allow. I will take the shoe while going back.”This man Immanuel Kant had a servant. No other servant remained with him because he was such a difficult man. If his tea was even one second late, he would make so much fuss. Every night at ten o’clock he would go to bed. Even if he was talking to somebody, he would not say goodnight to him; he would just jump into the bed and pull the blanket over him. And the visitor could not believe what was happening. The servant would come and say, “The master has gone to sleep. You can go now. It is the exact time. He cannot even say goodnight, that will make him late; so you can just go.” He gave strict orders for his servant to wake him early in the morning, at four o’clock. And it was cold.He was a hard worker, working the whole day writing treatises - one of Germany’s most significant thinkers. The orders were, “You have to wake me, and pull me out of the bed. I may shout, I may scream, I may beat you. You can beat me, but don’t leave me. You have to wake me up, because at that time I want to sleep. So I am making you aware beforehand: at that time I will make every effort to go to sleep, and you have to make every effort to wake me up.”Only one servant remained with him for many years. He was really a strong man. Kant used to hit him, but he was also good at hitting. He would hit even better. And every morning this wrestling would happen. But till Kant said, “Enough!” the servant would say, “No, you go into the bathroom, and I will take up your blanket and your mattress, so you cannot go back to sleep again while I’m working outside in the kitchen.” And after the bath he would come to his senses and come to the servant and thank him, and would be very grateful. “You are the only man. So many servants.just one day and they are finished.”They would say “This is not the kind of job that we want to do. You yourself say ‘Wake me,’ and then you start beating us. And it does not look right to beat the master - we are just servants - and when we allow you to sleep, you wake up later on and start shouting and screaming and making the whole neighborhood gather, asking, ‘What is the matter?’ And Kant would say, ‘The matter is that this man deceived me. For what am I paying him?’“The situation is the same whatever you do. I am going to wake you up. You yourself have asked me; it is not my own decision to wake you up. I never interfere in anybody’s life. You became sannyasins; that was an agreement that you are going to be with me and I am going to wake you up whatsoever happens. So just keep on remembering the agreement. And I can go to any length, there is no limit for my efforts. It all depends on you.For example, I told Avirbhava that she will wake up very soon. It won’t take much time. But there are people who think they are already awake; then it is very difficult to wake them up, then it is going to be a hard struggle. But I will create every device. Howsoever hard I may look, whatever I am doing is just out of my love for you. It is not out of hardness but out of my softness.When asked if Sheela was heir apparent to your spiritual kingdom, you replied that there is no power and no kingdom. How can a community run with no power and no kingdom?Power is the word which has to be dropped by the New Man and replaced by love. Love has its own power, but it is not the power a politician has. It is not the power a rich man has. It is not the power of nuclear weapons. But still it is power, and more powerful than any weapons in the world, nuclear or not nuclear.The New Man will live according to the laws of love. Kingdom is an old word with ugly associations. It reminds one of kings and kingdoms; it is the same political game. No, the New Man will have a paradise but not a kingdom; a commune, but not a society; a loving power.If five thousand people in this commune can just be a little courageous and be loving to each other, without any conditions, you will see here what I mean. A new kind of power arises and a new kind of paradise where nobody is higher, ruling over others, where everybody is a king.When everybody is a king you cannot call it a kingdom. It is a commune of kings and queens, but with no hierarchy. Of course, functionally somebody may be working as your president, somebody working as your plumber, but both are necessary and both are serving the same commune with the same love.When asked how ordinary a man you are, your reply once was, “Extraordinarily!” what does extraordinarily ordinary mean?Exactly that.In a recent interview, you said that if the hell’s angels came here, you would welcome them. They’re known as one of the most violent motorcycle gangs in America. If we would welcome them, why do we have all this security?Our security will welcome them. Do you think I am going to welcome them? I will not welcome even Ronald Reagan if he comes here. Our security will welcome them, and will welcome them the way they need to be welcomed, the way they deserve to be welcomed. Everybody according to his need.If somebody comes with love, we will welcome him with flowers, and if somebody comes with hate, we will welcome him with bullets - because we are fair people, we cannot be unfair to anybody. So when I say that we will welcome anybody who comes here, that does not mean that our welcome will be the same. It will depend who comes and what is the purpose, what is the intention of the person who comes here.We are not a suicidal group. This is not Jonestown. If somebody wants to destroy the commune, he has to understand that the commune cannot be destroyed so easily. We will fight for every inch, for every sannyasin’s life. And it will be great excitement, something new! One gets bored doing the same routine thing, so something new once in a while brings excitement. But our motto is tit for tat.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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George Paravanani, Freelance German TV, ZDF TV, Germany; Richard Wagner, CBS Nightwatch, National TV; Scott Miller, NBC, channel 8, Portland, OregonGlad to meet you.Osho,I consider it a great privilege to be sitting once again opposite to you. I have made a commitment to Isabel that from the moment I start the first question I have exactly one hour, so I would like to be very precise and go to the point.Let me start this off with a quotation from Eternal India by Indira Gandhi, in which she said, “The rishis conceived of a glow that was brighter than a thousand suns. They sang of the circle of birth and death, of creation and destruction, of the many ends which culminated in new +beginnings.” Now, the events of the last week starting Friday, September 13th - funny, Friday, September 13th! - have led to a lot of attention here, but what interests me personally is not so much the scandal but your teachings and what the future is going to be.First of all, I would like to ask you to tell me as precisely and concisely as possible the essence of your teachings; and secondly, if it has changed from 1970 - when I sat opposite you, and at the first interview ever for Western television - until today.The first thing, you have to remember is to be precise if you want me to be precise. This is unfair.I beg your pardon, it is not my intention at all to be unfair. I.No. Then it will not be my intention, too.I forgot to say one thing.So just remember it.Okay.Never again be imprecise.Okay.Just be precise and to the point.Okay. I apologize. And I was made a little nervous because of all this [inaudible].I understand.I apologize.A nervousness when one starts speaking, that I understand.I also want to say - I also want to say that I have come here not so much first as a journalist but as a countryman, as an admirer, as a well-wisher.I know..who has read a lot of your books.I know, and I can see love, immense respect in your eyes.One thing: everything has changed since your first interview. To me life is a permanent change; only change is unchanging, everything else changes. If you are alive you change, if you are dead, of course you cannot change. The moment you stop changing you have died. Many people die nearabout thirty years of age; then they may live fifty years more, but that is a posthumous life. I will live to the very last breath. I will go on changing, I will go on growing. There is no limit to it. There may be a limit to the sky, but there is no limit to the consciousness.Secondly, you want [to know] what is my teaching. It is very simple. The essential core of my teaching is: no belief, no dogma, no creed, no religion, nothing borrowed. But only that which you have experienced has to be trusted; everything else has to be doubted. Just as other religions have their foundation in belief, I have my foundation in doubt. My foundation is exactly the foundation science has: doubt until you find something indubitable.Science moves outwards; I move inwards. This inward movement I call meditation. You have to take three simple steps for this inward movement, and the fourth happens on its own accord.The first step is observing all your activities; that is your body and its acts - walking, chopping wood, drawing water from the well. Remain a witness. Don’t do it like a robot.May I interrupt?No. No interruption.Second, when you have become capable of watching and witnessing your body and its activities, then you can take the second step: watch the activities of your mind - thoughts, dreams, imagination. Just remain a witness, as if you are standing by the side of the road and a procession of thoughts is passing on the road. You are not part of it. You are just a mirror reflecting, without any judgment - because the mirror has no judgment. A beautiful face.the mirror does not say, “Great!” An ugly face.the mirror does not say, “My God!” The mirror simply reflects whatsoever comes before it. Exactly one has to become a pure witness, without any judgment, evaluation, good, bad. Then a strange experience happens: as your witnessing grows, thoughts start lessening. In the same proportion, if you have ten percent witnessing, then there are ninety percent thoughts; if you have ninety percent consciousness, awareness, then there are only ten percent thoughts. A hundred percent witness, then there is just pure nothingness. This is the state of no-mind, this is the door to the third and the last step.Now watch subtle emotions, moods. Thoughts are not so subtle. Moods - a certain shadow of sadness, a certain joy.One is concerned with the body, the second with the mind, the third with the heart. And when you become capable of watching the third too, the fourth happens on its own accord. Suddenly a quantum leap and you are standing exactly at the very center of your being, where there is nothing to be aware of. Awareness is aware of itself, consciousness is conscious of itself. And this is the moment of ultimate ecstasy, samadhi, enlightenment, or whatever name one prefers to give it; but this is the ultimate, there is nothing above it. There is no way to go beyond it, because wherever you go beyond it you will still be a witness. If you start witnessing the witness, you have not gone above it; you are still a witness. So the witness is the very end of the inner journey, you have come home.And this is my whole teaching. It is absolutely scientific; it needs no belief, it needs only experimentation. And I don’t ask anybody to trust me. I ask only to experiment and experience.I know that it will happen to you because it has happened to me, and I am just as ordinary a human being as you are. I don’t claim to be a prophet or a savior or an incarnation of God. I don’t claim any speciality. I am just exactly like you. The only difference is you are still asleep, and I am awake. It is only a question.sooner or later you will be awake too.So there is no need to worship me, there is no need to adore me. If you really love me, that’s enough for you to move into the experiment. I will stand as a guarantee that it happens. I will be your encouragement, but I will not be your savior. I will not take the responsibility, but I will do my best to shake you and wake you up.Can I ask something?Yes, now you can do.Okay. Thank you very much. That, in essence, gives your teaching and it has already taken away some of my questions.In one of your lectures you had already said - and I quote: “The only consistency in me is my inconsistency. I always contradict myself.” So a person has a right to change.”I want to let you know that ever since 1969 or ‘70 when you were with fifteen followers in a little apartment in Peddar Road in Bombay.a friend of mine called Deracharya[sic] came and begged me four or five times - I was on a different assignment, and after four or five times, on some instinct I came, I did the interview with you, and after the interview you took me in your arms and said, “Come on, join me and go to the West and let my teachings be known.” And already since then there has been a love affair between you and me, and it has always been there. But I go with Victor Hugo in saying that you have the right to say what you feel, and I must have the right to say what I feel - even when we have mutual love.That’s perfectly true.I’ll defend that right to my death. Yes.I love a lot of your teachings, and one of the things - and I had come back to Pune again, and lived fourteen days there and interviewed Laxmi. And I made a film called Ecstasy in Orange - I gave you a copy, I’m sure you never got to see it.Mm, mmm.I would suggest that - I left it last time when I was here. And I also want to congratulate you basically on what has happened in September, because when I came here in November 1984 I was here two days, I was happy to get out alive. As soon as my cameraman and I left, I said, “My God, thank God, never again am I going to this place, not for a million dollars.”And I’ve come because I wanted to find one answer. I have studied your teachings. I’m also enlightened. Many of these people don’t know the meaning of enlightenment, and you finally cleared them up. They asked that if you were enlightened then you should have known all about Sheela. Enlightenment obviously doesn’t mean omni - omnipotent and knowing everything, being able to know the complete future. That already I know. So I have been enlightened a little bit in [inaudible] and I have to thank you a lot for many things.But I would like to come to one point.Before you come to that, I will have to interrupt you again.Yes sir.Again you are not being precise, and you have made so many points which need answers and I will not have time to answer them. And you wanted me to be precise.And this has been my experience with almost every journalist, that they go on saying things and want precise answers, but don’t have any precise questions. It is so stupid. A question has to be very precise. Now, what you are saying is so absurd. Either you are enlightened or you are not enlightened; you cannot be a bit enlightened; that is not possible, that has never happened and can never happen. What do you mean by a bit enlightened? That means a bit unenlightened, too.Yes.Both cannot exist together.I only meant to say I was starting on the journey.That is a totally different thing; that is not a bit of enlightenment.Okay; agreed.And I can see you are not even a bit enlightened. And you are just thinking to start the journey, you have not started yet.So just be clear, honest and sincere.Okay. That was my total intention. Okay, now I put precise questions.First question is: On Friday, September 13th, Sheela prepared and she left. And according to - now I’m quoting.Mm, mmmm..The Oregonian: “The future of this community” - this utopia that you have started here is one of the greatest achievements that any human being has done. And there’s a quotation which says, “Everybody leaves footprints in the sand.” You have left your footprints in the sand. This is something incredible that has happened. Now everybody is asking the question - this interests not only me: What is Osho going to do? because obviously there is a suspense. I see them that - there’s a relief. I feel much happier here than last time. There’s a relief. People are happy. But there is doubt, there is an air of - a vibration of suspense. You hold the cards in your hand, if I may quote these people. What - if I may be allowed to ask - are your future plans? What is going to happen?I never think of the future. The present is enough for me. Sheela’s going is an immense relief to the commune. It is a great freedom to my people. Naturally freedom brings its own problems. Slavery is less complex; somebody else is always responsible, you are not. You are ordered to do something, you do it - whether it is right or wrong, that is not your responsibility. Freedom means you are responsible for its being right; if it is not right then you will be responsible. You cannot throw the responsibility on somebody else.So freedom is always a risk. That’s why most of the countries have chosen dictatorship of some kind or other. Even if they call themselves democracies it is only in name; the basic structure is dictatorial for the simple reason that they are afraid that the people cannot take the great responsibility of freedom.But this will settle, there is no problem in it. These people are all intelligent people. They’re all graduates, most of them have master’s degrees, a few are PhDs, a few are DLitts; many are psychologists, many are doctors, all are well-qualified. Professionally they have been successful in life; just out of love for me they have dropped their success, their professions, and have come into this desert to create a utopia, an oasis.Sheela was a hindrance. She was creating what every power-lusty person creates: hostility amongst the neighbors. Adolf Hitler writes in his autobiography that unless you create hostility amongst your neighbor nations, you can never become strong; keep people always afraid that the enemy is going soon to attack, soon you will be destroyed. That fear will keep them strong and ready to order and surrender and trust and believe anything the leader says.I was silent for three-and-a-half years and in isolation. That gave her an opportunity. These people love me; they have nothing to do with Sheela, Sheela means nothing to them. She was just a waitress in a hotel, but I saw in her a few very important things: she was very practical, very pragmatic, very clever - and that was needed to create this commune. It was absolutely essential in the beginning. And she has contributed wholeheartedly. But only in the beginning she was useful. As the commune started growing, taking roots, she became dangerous - and this is one very important thing to understand, that a person may be useful to a certain limit, and beyond that he can become harmful, he can be dangerous. She was useful up to a point. She made the commune strong, she made the commune self-sufficient. She made the commune feel protected, unafraid. But then, by and by, she started the unconscious human urge, lust for power.And she was doing everything in my name. These people were doing everything because of me. I was not available, she was representing me. So whatsoever she wanted to do, just she had to say that “Osho wants it,” and my people did it.And whatever she wanted to report to me, she reported; whatever she never wanted to report to me, she never reported. And she was the only communication.When things became too much, she became afraid of three other persons who were also able to approach me - my physician, my dentist, my caretaker. She became afraid that these people might start informing me that “Sheela is doing something not according to Your wish, that the meditation commune is turning into a concentration camp.” At that point she started to think how to kill these three people. She poisoned two of them, and when she poisoned them then it became clear for me that now I have to come out of my isolation and start speaking again.And the moment I started speaking again, Sheela started wandering to other communes in Europe, in Australia, in Japan, in Singapore, and she was rarely here. She did not want to face me. Even when she would come here, she would pretend she was sick and she was afraid she would infect me, so she would not come to see me.Even the last time she came, she pretended that she had a cold, so that she would wait three, four days, and when her cold is gone she will come to see me. But she wrote a note to me, that, “Now I don’t feel excited coming here. I feel more excitement in Europe, more excitement in Australia, but I don’t feel any excitement here.”I told the person who had brought the message, her secretary, that, “Give Sheela my message that, ‘Watch and find out the reason. The reason is simply that because now I’m speaking myself, your function as a representative is finished. Your face will disappear from the television; your voice will not be heard on the radio. And in these three-and-a-half years you have got a very swollen head. That’s why you don’t feel excited here. And if you want, for an experiment, I can come to Europe and you will not feel excited there too - I can come to Australia or anywhere. Because there you are receiving respect because you represent me, so if I myself come to Germany, then who is going to bother about you?’”That she understood clearly, and rather than staying three days and face me, she escaped the next day and took away twenty of her intimate colleagues who were conspirators against the commune in many crimes. And as she left, people started opening their mouths. Before they were afraid.Okay. Here I would like to ask two questions with your kind permission.According to the reports in The Osho Times and in the papers, she was sent off at the airport with a song. Obviously they knew that she was leaving. Why didn’t you stop her? You obviously had the authority to stop her.I had no idea that she was leaving. She left at a time when I always go for a ride. She left at four o’clock.In a plane?In a plane.In your plane?Yes, in my plane. And the people had no idea that she had resigned.Well, they were helping packing up her clothes and.Yes, because they had no idea. She had not informed anybody..that she was leaving?That she was leaving, that she was leaving forever.Well, she said, “Osho is only interested now in jewelry and not in the thing; I’m leaving.”That she said only to those twenty people who were leaving with her.But the commune was absolutely unaware that she was leaving forever. And then, too, only forty people were there out of five thousand people.And some of these forty people are still here.Yes; there is no problem in it. It is understandable. She has been working here for three-and-a-half years with all these people, and she had done immense work. She may have committed many crimes, but she has done much good too. It is not that everything she did was wrong, and the people who had worked with her, many may have started respecting her, loving her, but out of five thousand people, only forty people were there. So that means only twenty people were there to give her a send-off; twenty were going with her.When did you know that she had left?I knew when I came back from my ride. Every day I go at two o’clock for a ride in the forest, in the mountains. When I came back then I came to know that she had left, and I was informed that she has left forever. And it was told to me by her second, and she wanted that her second should be made the president of the commune. I said, “I will have to think over it.”.Because if she could deceive and she could commit all these crimes, to put her second person. “You have been with her for three-and-a-half years, and you never informed me about anything going wrong. I will have to think about it.”The next day in the morning she left.When did you discover the tape recorders, the hidden passage? How did all that happen? I mean, it’s almost like a, you know, Shakespearean novel or a suspense crime story, a Sherlock Holmes thing.It is a crime story, but there is no suspense in it. It is very simple. While she was in power she had put in every power post - we have many corporations, it is a big phenomenon. We have put two hundred million dollars into the commune to develop it. We have seven or nine corporations. So she has put presidents, secretaries of her own, in each corporation. In three and a-half years, slowly slowly she managed all those people who were of independent mind, who were more intelligent than her, who were more capable than her.to harass them in some way or other so that they had to leave.The vice-chancellor of the university left, the chancellor of the university left. The woman who had collected thirty-three million dollars - the initial money that started the commune - she had to leave. Sheela forced her to leave when she took all power from her hands. It was so insulting that she had to leave.Slowly slowly she has dropped all the people who could be suspected of going against her. So naturally the people who had left were simple, innocent people who had come here just to live with me in peace and not to get into any power politics.So when she left, and all the gang of twenty people - who were all criminals. I will tell you what crimes they had committed. When they all left, people started coming on their own.This is where your critics outside are going to ask you the following question.Yes.You’re one of the most courageous men that I know, and for the simple reason: You have dared - even in India, in those days, when you were not that powerful and that not well-known - to go against Christianity, Judaism, Jainism, every religion. You showed a remarkable amount of courage, and yet - things I would never have the guts. Okay.But, now they’re going to ask you either - these three people were close to you: your doctor, your dentist, and your caretaker; they have been with you since India?Mm, mmm.And if you had educated them and brought them up to a sense of responsibility, then they should have - if they were your servants and if they loved you - overcome this fear and informed you of what was happening here. And indirectly, are you willing to take part responsibility for the phenomenon Sheela and what happened?No responsibility. And the reason why my people could not inform me was that they were also as much uninformed as I myself.Sheela cut my whole house and the people who lived in the house off from the commune. Even the guards on my house were not allowed to talk to the people of the house.Your dentist, or your daily - your - or what is the lady’s name who is your nurse? She saw you daily.Yes. They are living with me in the same house. And Sheela managed that she. She was clever. She managed that my doctor should not be part of the medical center.But he was poisoned. He felt that he was poisoned.That’s when I started speaking, when he was poisoned. He was poisoned in a meeting. First he was poisoned at Sheela’s house.How many months ago? How many weeks ago?Just a few weeks ago.So then why didn’t he tell you immediately?It was impossible, even for him. He felt something strange. He had taken just a cup of coffee - and you don’t immediately suspect that somebody will poison you. And in a commune where you are completely devoted to the welfare of all, he could not even imagine that he would be poisoned.My caretaker was also poisoned the same way, a cup of tea. Even she could not think.Even you got an injection or a needle or a pin or something, is that right?No, my physician got that. But my milk was poisoned, and they were poisoning it so slowly, with such minute doses, that its effects would come only after years so that my death seems to be natural.I would like to quote one of.Just first.because your question is not answered and it will remain in your mind. These people could not inform me for the simple reason. Sheela stopped the dentist from going to the dentistry because he works on my teeth, so it is better that he should do editing in the house and just take care of my teeth.So he’s with you all the time?He’s with me all the time.Then he had an opportunity to tell you, “Listen, Master”.No, no; but he never goes anywhere. They are cut off. You don’t understand the thing. He’s not going to the dentistry. He’s not going anywhere.And people - Sheela’s people - have tried in every way that these people get no information of any kind.So these three people were as unaware and as cut off from the rest of the community?Yes.Okay.Completely cut off.So they’d never been to the canteen and spoke to the people?They were eating there, but everybody in the canteen was not aware what was happening, it was only a small group of these twenty people who really knew what was happening.For example, taping. Only two electricians knew about it. Now, even they bugged my sitting room - in front of me!Are you scared?No, there is no question because I have nothing to lose.But did she threaten to blackmail you? I don’t know what she has tape recorded. Supposedly there was a tape recorder in your bedroom. I mean, each one has his own private life. Are you scared that she might blackmail you?I’m not afraid of anything, because there is nothing to blackmail me.Because she was a little crazed - that I knew a long time ago.Nothing to be worried about that. But she was in a paranoia. The bugging was so that if somebody - my caretaker or my dentist or my doctor - says something, then she knows.But not to hold the power over you?For me there is no question, because when I am alone I have not been speaking to the microphone.It’s possible that one might speak in one’s dream or something.But the question is, even she bugged my room. I don’t know about electricity, what wires are for bugging. Everybody in my house knew that she’s putting some new wires, and she told me that this is an emergency buzzer. “If you press it, then the guards will immediately come into the house.” So I said, “Okay, if you want. There is no emergency, but if you want to put it you can put it.” And I have never touched it. The people saw it being done, but nobody is an electrician, nobody knows what they are doing. So in the buzzer, inside, she placed a microphone. Even the people from the government, FBI people, when they saw all the bugging that they had done, they could not believe it. They said, “These people have far more sophisticated ways of bugging than Nixon had.”But I think you will agree with me. Obviously you know Sheela since a long time. When I was here last time I interviewed her and saw her many times on television. This is definitely not the Sheela you knew in the beginning. Something happened to her.No. It is the same Sheela. What happened was just whatever she was carrying in her unconscious - she may not have been aware of it. When she got the opportunity. She was just a waitress, and now she got millions of dollars in her hands. Yesterday her old secretary’s letter has come saying that she had opened a private account in Switzerland in her own name. The money that was to come here she was accumulating slowly there, small parts of it; now it is forty-three million dollars.So when she got the opportunity.just human mind.It’s very.It is nothing special. I feel it, anybody else in her place would have done the same, more or less.More or less. In German there is a nice saying - if I may quote - Gelegenheit macht Diebe. It means when a man gets a chance to do a thing like that, he does that. And you said in your quotation too - and I’ve heard it before, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”Right.But I have to unfortunately come back to a question that might annoy you, but I have to put it.No, nothing annoys me. You put it.Thank you, sir. I feel that this - you have built a community of - I remember in Pune, I was so happy when I spent fourteen days there. And my crew didn’t want to leave, they wanted to take sannyas. I said, “Nothing doing; come on. We’ve got to go to work.” And - but these people - you have created a miracle out of the earth. I mean, your name is going to go down in history, no doubt about it.But what I want to know is, if this - all this meditation.that they should have had a sense of responsibility. Among these five thousand people - doctors, lawyers, psychologists, they’re all asking: What is it in Rajneesh that brings all these educated, well-to-do people? One of them should have had the guts to somehow get the message to you, through your dentist or through this. There’s something funny happening here.No; but even they were not aware. You don’t understand a thing..fear.No, no, they were not aware - not fear. Otherwise they would have approached me. There were thousands of ways to approach me. They could have phoned to my caretaker, they could have phoned to my physician, if the guards were not allowing them in. They could have managed any way.The real thing is that what kinds of crimes she committed were such that in the community, except the people that were committing them, nobody was in any way able to know.For example, they burned a county court house, an office in Wasco County. Now, only one person knows who burned it, and that person is with them.This is what I don’t understand.Now, this is very simple. Nobody who has a little understanding will make it.that fifty persons know that you are burning an office. One person knows. And if he behaves in any disgusting way or goes against you, he can be killed - and he knows that, because these people are doing just that. He’s part of the gang.They killed one person.Yes, one of those street.They killed one of the street persons and simply threw the corpse out of Rancho Rajneesh.You obviously know that the attorneys and the FBI.you will have to prove all these charges. That’s not my concern. But what I would like to come to know a little more about, about the fact that you have taught these people - you have been telling them for years again and again, “Take responsibility for your life in your own hands. Your life is yours. Life is a joke.” And that surprises me that they knew, not the crimes - they knew there was something funny happening. There was fear here. One could see. When I came here last time, it was as if I were in an imminent Jonestown. I mean, I could feel it, an outsider; my cameraman could feel it. I mean, I know how - if they’re honest with them, they would have felt - they may not have known the crimes, but why didn’t somebody have the courage to indirectly let you know that something is not right here, this is not paradise, this is not utopia?I don’t agree. First, the fear that you felt here was a paranoia created by Sheela and her gang, that the whole of Oregon is out to destroy you, that everybody is against you. If everybody is against you, naturally you have to have your security force, you have to have your own guns. And she was not absolutely wrong. This is how human psychology works. Wasco County people were purchasing guns suddenly. Even the Wasco County shopkeepers who sell guns reported to the police that “There has never been such a great sale.” Suddenly, at the time of election, when these people were going to vote in Wasco County, people were purchasing guns. I had finally. Even though I was in silence, Sheela brought the news to me, asking that “What we have to do?” I said, “Simply boycott the election. We are not politicians and we are not interested in American politics. Our work is here and our work is meditation. There is no need.”But she created the fear in the people, and people could see it - that “They are moving on the county road with guns.” Then naturally these people started getting ready, learning shooting, becoming alert - just the way it goes everywhere around the world. If Russians go on piling up nuclear weapons - they are afraid of America - America goes on piling nuclear weapons afraid of Russia, and it seems there is no end to it.And that’s what was happening. She created hostility through her statements. Those people created hostility through their statements. And it became a very tense situation.So if you had felt it, it was not that the commune was going to harm anybody; the commune was simply trying to defend itself. But whether you are trying to defend yourself or harm anybody, there is an atmosphere which any sensitive person can feel. But even I would not prevent it, seeing that if they are having guns, and if I stop my people having guns.Yes.Then tomorrow these people can be killed and I will be responsible.But you and I know very well that guns never solved any problems. But I would like.They never solved any problem, but no-guns have also never solved any problem.I would like to.No, just.Yes.Remember it: have no-guns solved any problem?It depends how one looks at it.No, never; not a single problem has been solved by guns, not a single problem has been solved by no-guns. In fact, no problem has been solved.I agree with you. But I personally see a golden opportunity - okay, I will ask a last question. I have to leave. Let me ask you the last question: One of your disciples right here said, “By the time it was over I was boiling with tears and anger. He should have known. He should have seen what a monster she was. He should have protected us.” I also feel that Sheela could not have been Sheela without [inaudible]. She was a reflection of you, she got a power from you that I don’t know how you would be able to explain.And, secondly, my last question, please give me an answer possibly if you can - this is very important to me.But this is not a question.Yes, yes. The question is: I would like to know who is Osho Rajneesh? Please answer this question only.I am.Okay.because some people have called you - your critics have called you, “He’s a cosmic Santa Claus”, “He’s a charlatan”, “He’s an intelligent man”, “He’s well-read”, “He’s a psychologist”. People say - you have critics, you have lovers, well-wishers, like me well-wishers who are not sannyasins, not critics. But I was trying to find an answer to who is ‘Osho’? Is he - what is he, what is he? Is he for real, what is he? I was trying to find.Yes..out. Probably there’s no answer.I am exactly what I am - Osho.Thank you so much.Okay. Okay. Come back whenever you feel like.I would love to come here.Good.I hope you will look at this one film that I did; it’s called “You Are a Rainbow.”Mm, mmm.And I think - it’s all about Esalen and the human potential movement, and I would like to write a letter to you. I hope you will read it.Okay.Thank you very much.[new interviewer]Come here.Good evening, Osho.Glad to meet you. Come here.Isabel: This is Richard Wagner from CBS Nightwatch.Good.Not quite so many people tonight as there were.No, no problem..last Monday night. And I am sure that I have no questions that you have not been asked before, because all journalists tend to ask the same questions.You don’t worry, but I will not answer the same!I will be your straight man.Good.I will feed you good laugh lines. While they’re getting ready, just - I’m curious on a personal basis. Um, do you enjoy the attention of all of us, all we reporters who come here, or would you rather we didn’t come and ask you things?No, I love it.Good. Cause I’ve only been here a couple of times, but it’s always interesting to come and speak to the people here; I enjoy it.Great.Are we ready, gentlemen? [Yes] Just about. Okay.Okay. So you just. Okay?I appreciate your patience. I believe we are ready. Do I believe correctly?[Answer from team: Yes.]After how many minutes do they have to change their tape?Twenty minutes.That’s okay.Okay. We’re ready. Osho, I’m sure that you’ve answered this question now many times in this past week, but.You don’t be worried, you just ask.Okay. What is the situation here now? Sheela and the gang are gone - what is the mood? What is the feeling at Rajneeshpuram now?Of great rejoicing, as if they have come out of a concentration camp. They are feeling free, unburdened. And for the first time it seems that the commune is a place of absolute freedom, love and joy.Which it is meant to be, right?Which it is meant to be; which Sheela and her gang had destroyed.Osho, how were they able to do that? How could they distort the aim of the commune?Because I was silent. I came to America in silence, and I remained for three-and-a-half years silent, and I wanted no information from the outside world - no newspaper, no radio, no television.And I have told Sheela to bring only absolutely essential things to me. That gave her a great opportunity on three grounds: one, she was a poor hotel waitress before, and suddenly she saw millions of dollars in her hands. Two hundred million dollars we have put into developing this oasis in the desert. It is just human. I don’t condemn her that she started saving little bits in Switzerland, money that was coming from Europe, so she started accumulating her own account there. Her old secretary’s letter yesterday informed me that she has accumulated forty-three million dollars.Forty-three million dollars she has?Yes.Of money that belongs to the commune?That belongs to the commune, that should have come here.What can you do?We will see what we can do.Secondly, I was silent, and the people who have come here have come out of love for me, they are ready to do anything for me, and she became my representative to them. She became my symbol. Otherwise, she was just as any other sannyasin. In India she was nobody special. Because she was the only communication line between the commune and me.But you gave her that power because you chose not to speak?Because I was in silence, I did not want to be disturbed.If I may ask, how did you discover what she was about after this time?I will tell you.Okay.So this gave her immense power. In my name she could say anything to my people and they would follow, knowing that it is coming from me. Even if sometimes they would suspect that “This cannot be from Osho because it is against his teaching”.I have never taught them to believe anything. Be reasonable, be rational, and doubt everything unless you come to an inevitable reality. I am not teaching them to be part of a faith. I am trying to give them a science of the inner world, which begins in doubt and ends in the experience of truth, of their own reality.So sometimes they suspected, because Sheela was asking for surrender - to trust everything: whatever comes, comes from Osho and you have to do it.So those people who had any suspicion, she simply threw them out of the commune. The chancellor of the university she threw out, the vice-chancellor - all the intelligent people who could see that she was getting into a power trip. The best psychologists she threw out. The people who have been devotedly in love with me for fifteen years, she harassed them in such a way, misbehaved with them, that finally they decided to leave, it was such a humiliation.These people couldn’t communicate with you and tell you what was happening?Because I was not available, that was the.I see.A:.trouble. I was in isolation, I never came into the commune, I never met anybody.Understood.So that gave her an opportunity.And thirdly, because all those intelligent people left, she replaced them with her own people - who were just puppets, who would follow her whatsoever she said. Even if she was committing crimes they would support her, because their whole position was dependent on her support; otherwise they had no reason to be there. So to keep their position they had to support her crimes. So it became a clique of twenty people conspiring against the whole commune.They did every kind of crime. They killed one man in the share-a-home program. They were giving all those people some drug to keep them drugged so that they would vote for them, or whatsoever they said those people would do.This is their packing the polls?Yes.Uh huh.Yes. Keep them like robots.Uh huh.But this man they accidentally overdosed, and he died; and they just threw him - so inhuman - out of Rancho Rajneesh. The corpse was found by the police, but they could not figure it out - from where it came, who the man was, who had killed him. And it remained a mystery and died out. Only just now, when people started revealing.when Sheela left and their fear disappeared that they would be punished, they would be thrown out, or perhaps they may even be killed. Because she killed that man and then she tried to kill three other people, and that’s what started the whole thing.This was your doctor, your dentist.My doctor, my dentist, and my caretaker.Uh huh.She was very much afraid of these three people, because they were the only ones, except her, who could approach me.Uh huh.So the only way was that those three should be simply finished.First she tried to poison one of my sannyasins who has served me for fifteen years as lovingly, as carefully, that I don’t think any other woman is capable of. From the morning ‘til late in the night she is just running and doing everything for me, to make everything convenient. They had asked her, “Why don’t you come once in a while to visit Sheela?” So she went there, and just in a cup of tea they poisoned her. But she could not think of poisoning; it was so unnatural to think of it. She became sick, she vomited the whole night; for three days she had to rest. But still we did not think of poison - for the simple reason that if I come to your home and you give me a cup of tea, there is no reason to believe that you will kill me. For what reason?But then the same thing happened with my physician. Because he is a physician, he became aware that there was poison in the coffee. So he immediately went to the medical center. Other doctors also suspected that there was possibility of poison, but some kind of a poison which is undetectable.Oh, they never discovered what kind it was, huh?No. There are poisons, they discovered, there are poisons which cannot be detected. They can be given to you, but from blood or from any other source you cannot detect them.And that’s what they were using?They have been using the book. When Sheela left, in her room a whole literature on poisons, a whole literature on how to murder people so that you cannot be caught, in what doses you have to give the poison - and particularly that poison which the medical people were suspecting, that page was underlined. So it seems they have been using that poison.no way to detect it.I must ask, though, if they were using it and they understood how to use it, why didn’t they use enough to kill? Why just use enough to make someone sick?Yes. The reason was that if suddenly you kill somebody who was not sick, then there will be suspicion. You have to give the poison slowly so he becomes weaker.I see.And slowly, within three, four months he dies almost like a natural death. That was the reason. And that is given in the book, that depending on when you want the person to die, that much dose you should give.Is this being investigated now by the authorities?Yes; the FBI and State Police and other agencies - the county police. They all have an office here and people are going and revealing everything that they know.You’re cooperating with that?Absolutely. I am absolutely against crime, and I am all for law.On a third occasion they injected my doctor, and that was in a meeting. I started speaking after the second poisoning. It was still not certain, but the suspicion was enough. And when I asked Sheela, I could see on her face a little hesitation. And I told her, “From tomorrow I am going to speak, and I am going to meet my people. Now you need not be my representative. I will represent myself.” In the meeting, while I was speaking and ten thousand sannyasins were listening, they injected my doctor, just in the crowd.In the crowd?In the crowd. But it is such an injection that it can be done from outside the robe. He felt it immediately, he pulled up his robe, he showed people. He knew who had done it, and people saw blood and the mark of the injection. And one person has come as a witness, saying that, “Whatever the doctor says, that is the person who has done it, and I have seen her doing with my own eyes.”They saw the person who did it?Yes. And that girl also has disappeared with Sheela’s group.After that, I made it clear to people that this group must have done more crimes. And if anybody has any information, then now it is your responsibility to expose them.Are people coming forward now?People are coming forward, and with so many stories that it seems just unbelievable. They have even bugged my room.That sounds so hard to believe.And they have bugged the whole hotel. They have bugged every house where they suspected there are people who may one day not be with them.Was the reason for this to steal money? Is that at the base of it? Did they want to take money and run?No, not only that, because money was already there and nobody knows. This letter has come yesterday. They have to change? Okay.I’m sorry, I didn’t know we ran out of tape. You were so quiet.Osho, let me, if I may, ask - re-ask that question. I must ask the last question again because we didn’t have the tape in.Essentially the question is: Sheela and her gang, were they betraying the commune simply for.to get rich? Were they just trying to get money and flee?No. The money they had already got there in their own name, and here they were doing all these crimes to keep the whole commune under their control. And because I started speaking, two things happened. One, Sheela lost her big ego that she had accumulated in three-and-a-half years; she lost her face on the television screen, her voice on the radio, her picture in the magazines, because when I’m speaking myself, who is going to take interest in her interviews? She was representing me.So since I started speaking, she went on touring Europe, Australia, Singapore, where my other communes are. There she was received with the same grandeur that she had become accustomed to - television people coming, all the media lined up, interviews. She has become a celebrity, and that is a very poisoning thing.Have you spoken with her by telephone since she left?I told. No, I never have used a telephone in my whole life.Would you speak with her in any way if you could?No. Only if she comes in front of me.Would you speak to her if she came and asked to be forgiven?There is every possibility. The future is always unpredictable.Last time she came here, she wrote a letter to me saying that, “I don’t feel excitement coming here,” because the whole commune does not go to receive her at the airport. There are no photographers; nobody is taking any note when she comes and when she goes. To become special and then to become again ordinary is difficult. I have every compassion for that. And if she had asked me, I would have arranged everything. I could have told my people that “There is no problem, you can go. Have photographers gather around her airplane, put as many garlands as she wants. Why unnecessarily make her unhappy? But she never told me. She simply told that “I feel no excitement coming here. But in Europe I feel very happy, in Australia I feel very happy.”The person who has brought the note, the second person, the one who was always bringing notes when Sheela was absent, I told her, “Tell her it is nothing but ego, and if she wants to see it, I can come to Europe and stay just three months there, and all her happiness will disappear. Or if she wants Australia, it is perfectly good; I can come to Australia and prove to her what is really the reason. The reason is that ‘You are now no more getting nourishment for your ego.’”Did she and her gang steal so much money from the commune that the commune could be in financial difficulty?No, the commune can never be in financial difficulty. We have one million sannyasins around the world. And my sannyasins are all rich, all intelligent, all professional people. There is no problem: just a word from me and we can have one hundred millions immediately available. That’s not a problem. So she was just foolish; that does not make any difference to us.But you must be hurt?But she will be caught, and she will soon be in trouble. And I am certain of it because the next person to her has said to me the last day that “We have certainly an account, and the rumor is not wrong, but we were keeping the account for your safety. If in any case you have to leave America, then we should keep some money there.”But I said, “If it was for my sake, at least I should be made aware of it. And how much money is there? I should be made aware of it. What is the number of your bank account? What bank is it? I don’t know anything; you have never told me. She said, “Tomorrow I will be bringing every detail.” And ‘tomorrow’ she too disappeared.What is your status vis-a-vis staying in the United States? Are you here legally? Can you stay with no problem, or do you have a difficulty with Immigration and Naturalization?No, there is no difficulty. They are having difficulties. I have been here for four years, and I will be here. And in four years they have not been able to find anything about which they can say no to me. I want them to decide this way or that. If they say yes, okay; if they say no, then I move to the courts.They have six grounds [for immigration] and I have applied on five grounds, and I will fight on each ground separately. One ground will take twenty years to reach to the Supreme Court. Five grounds will take a hundred years, so what is the problem? So many judges will die, so many INS people will die; I myself will be dead. Perhaps they will give the green card to my grave. That will be their tribute.Assuming - and I do assume - that you will be here as long as you please, how are you getting along now with your neighbors in this part of Oregon? Are you friends with them?From our side there is no hostility towards anybody. Sheela and her company has created hostility. That is a necessary part of any fascist mind, to create hostility with the neighbors. That creates fear, paranoia; then your own commune becomes more in your hands, more surrendered. And they know that they cannot stand alone, they can only stand with the commune. So even against their will they have to follow your orders. So the more hostility you create, the more your small minority becomes stronger. So that’s what she was doing. But now they are gone. I don’t have any hostility towards anybody. In fact, in America everybody is a foreigner except Red Indians. So what is the problem? In fact we are legally here and you are illegally here.What about.?The Americans, the forefathers, have invaded this country.I say no argument; you’re absolutely right.Right. We have not invaded the country; we have purchased the land, and purchased also in a right way. We have paid seven million dollars for this land. Your forefathers paid thirty dollars for the whole area of New York. So this land is three times bigger than New York; that means ninety dollars at the most. And remember that you may have come one hundred years before, somebody may have come two hundred years before, somebody three hundred years before - no visa, no green card. And we are asking you on every legal ground. And foreigners are trying to prevent other foreigners - strange - and illegal foreigners are preventing legal foreigners!Let me - we could go on and on about that one.What about Sheela and her group bringing the homeless people from around the country here at election time? Was that one of her plots?Yes, it was a plot. They wanted to take over the county. But that, too, only just now people have started telling me. I was silent. I had no idea. Sheela has simply informed me only one thing: that they have surplus money out of the annual festival, so they want to do some humanitarian job, that’s why she is bringing these people. I said, “If it is a humanitarian job, perfectly good, do it.”Now, as I have started speaking, people have revealed to me that it was not humanitarian, it was just the opposite, very inhuman. Those people were drugged completely every day. Gallons of drugs were imported from outside, so they cannot be detected here - that they have purchased them in America.They killed one man, and then finally they wasted three million dollars on it and created so much hostility and a negative kind of publicity.They were going to do something like that again; if I was not speaking, they would have done that too. They had made in City of Rajneesh one housing complex for five hundred people, a beautiful housing complex with separate bathrooms, and they wanted it to make an AIDS home just to create more trouble for Oregonians.How can you make up to the local people? How can you get the confidence of the people who live around the commune?It will come by itself, because now there will be nobody who will be creating any hostility. It will take a little time to heal.But I stopped it immediately, that this cannot be done; this is making a dangerous spot for Oregon and also for your own people. Five hundred AIDS patients will be dangerous for everybody, and we will be the closest to them, so this is simply idiotic. So I had to stop it. So now the whole housing complex is just lying there and unnecessarily we have to keep it clean and keep it in order, and there is.But I had made the gesture. I had told the press that we are ready to vacate the City of Rajneesh, change its name back to Antelope, because there is no need, Antelope was perfectly good. And we have got our own city, there is no need.And our people unnecessarily were being forced to live there. Every day they work here the whole day; in the night they have to go to Antelope just to show that a hundred sannyasins are living there, an unnecessary trouble. And those people don’t want to go; after working the whole day they would like to meet their friends who are here, they would like to go to the disco, dance, sing, go to the restaurant, drink; but they had to be packed into buses and sent to Antelope. I don’t want that. So I had told to the press that we would like to take all our people back, but then it is the responsibility of the Antelope people that they should take their properties back.Buy them back?If they want them, yes, they should buy them back; and we are ready to give them back at the same price. We have improved their property, we have made almost renovated houses, and prices have already gone higher in four years, but we are ready to give them at the same price as they had sold us. The price is almost double now, so they are not going to be at any loss. We have made the city beautiful.But the ex-mayor’s news, I saw.she says, “We are not going to purchase.”Why would she say that?“.because our city is already destroyed by these people.”Strange people. If you don’t want to purchase, then we are ready to purchase. You sell your houses and be finished, be clean. And they are in a minority; only twelve people are there. So only one-third of the property is now in the hands of Antelope people. If they want to sell it at a reasonable, market price, we will purchase it; but we will want them all to vacate. We don’t want any more trouble. Either they should purchase our properties, or we are ready to purchase their properties.But if they think that we should vacate and just let them have their properties free, they are wrong; this is stupid.I think it’s about time; are we going to change our tape? Do one more. [inaudible conversation]Osho,While they’re doing what they have to do, I’ll ask you a long rambling question.Okay.I haven’t been here except two times, and I’m curious to know why - why the security? The people here clearly wish you no harm. Why is it necessary to maintain such rigid security in this commune?I was thinking that as Sheela has gone and the hostility between Oregonians and this commune disappears, we will slowly withdraw security. But there was reason for it, even in Sheela’s time.Before we had no security, just the police - which is part of the Oregon, city police, but we had to create the security because Christian fanatics started coming and creating a nuisance in the city. And then Hell’s Angels started coming on their bikes. Now, that we cannot tolerate.And we don’t want our people to be harassed by these fanatics.Perfectly understandable.So unless the government gives the guarantee that our people will not be harassed, the security will remain. If they give the guarantee, the security will disappear tomorrow. There is no problem, because we don’t want it. In fact, one hundred people are unnecessarily involved in security. They are creative people - somebody is a doctor, somebody is a plastic surgeon and he is just carrying a gun. This is - that gun is meant for retarded people, not for intelligent people who can do better things. We don’t want it. And those guns look so ugly. We want the whole place to be full of roses, not full of guns. But, the problem is that if we remove those guns.Just one day we experimented - yesterday. In the morning discourse, two security people stand by the podium where I speak. We removed them. It doesn’t look right. I’m talking about love, and you have to keep two people with guns on both the sides. We removed them, and a madman jumped on the podium. He would have harmed me.We know that there are people who belong to Sheela’s gang; they are hostile. We know that there are people who have been posted by INS in the commune to give them all information. Now, with all this. And we are giving all the information, everything, without keeping anything back, to the FBI.Still the FBI said to one of our people that, “We would like at least 500 people from the commune to be locked in prison.” Now, this means they are not interested really in Sheela, her gang, her crimes; they are more interested in destroying the commune.Why would they want to destroy the commune?Ask the Attorney General. Why should they declare a legal city illegal? For two years it was legal; it was incorporated by the state government, by the Wasco County, it was accepted by the federal government. We were receiving support from the federal government, the state government, the county, from everybody. And then suddenly the city became illegal.The Supreme Court of Oregon said that the land use was not proper, is that correct?Yes, they have said it. But the Attorney General has found another way. Now he says that state and religion are mixed, so on that ground the city is illegal. We have won that case, that on land use laws city cannot be declared illegal, so they have now found another way.And you can see the intention of the person. We said, “That’s perfectly okay. We are ready to fight, but the case should be decided in a federal court.” Because if the case is state versus city, it cannot be decided by any state court.So you’ll appeal to the highest courts - the federal courts?That’s what we are trying, but they are insisting that the case should be decided by a state court, which is absolutely illogical. Those state courts are under state pressure, they are part of the state; naturally we cannot win in those courts. And why they should be afraid of federal court or Supreme Court? If we are not afraid, why should they be afraid? We know perfectly well we are legal, the city is legal; we have not committed any illegality in its incorporation. There is no question of mixing any religion with the state. I don’t see - because we don’t believe in God, we don’t have any heaven and hell, we don’t have any prayer, we don’t have any catechism. The city’s work is making the roads, taking care of the public park, the public dam; I don’t know how we can mix religion with the roads.What is the purpose of the commune? What is the goal of the commune?The goal of the commune is that people should realize their reality, their self, their center. They should become fully conscious. There should not be a corner in their being which is dark. That is the goal, the eternal goal of all humanity, to achieve self-realization; and that is our goal.Now, how can we mix that goal with the municipality of the city? I don’t understand. I don’t see that there is any way to mix.They are mixing everywhere. In every court you are keeping the Bible for taking the oath; this is mixing religion with justice. Why is the Bible being kept there? And knowing perfectly well that there is no other book so pornographic as your Holy Bible. Now, I cannot take oath on a Bible; I would rather prefer a Playboy magazine, which is at least colorful and glossy.There are a few people, a group of atheists, who are publishing all the passages from the Bible which are pornographic, and what they have come to is a five-hundred-page collection. And they say this five-hundred-page collection is the most pornographic; no other scripture is comparable to it. But why you are keeping it in the court? The court can keep the Constitution of America; that one understands, and that has some value, that has some democratic respect for freedom, respect for expression. And that is made by far more intelligent people than the Old Testament. I can accept the Constitution, but I cannot accept the Bible - when you have such a beautiful Constitution - the best in the whole world.What do you think of historic figures in religion like Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha? What is your opinion of them? Are they historical personages, historical figures, what?They are mixed. For example, Jesus: everything that is important is fictitious, and everything that is real is not important. Now, walking on water is fictitious, the virgin birth is fictitious. That he is the only begotten son of God, that is nonsense. That he revived people from death, it is all fiction. These are not histories. Then what remains is just a poor carpenter’s son, that I don’t think any would bother to worship.About all these people, miracles have been created by the followers to make them as high, holy, unique as possible, and as far away from ordinary human beings so that you have to fall down on your knees and pray to them. Only then they can be your saviors, prophets, messengers of God.There is no God, hence there is no question of messengers.And if Moses saw God, that simply means that the heat of the desert, forty years wandering in the desert, just got the man crazy, drove him crazy, nothing else.What is the purpose of life?There is no purpose beyond life itself. The purpose is intrinsic. Life itself is so beautiful, so ecstatic, such a dance; but we don’t know it, we don’t live it. We go on postponing. We are always thinking tomorrow we will live; today we are occupied so much in other things, living can be postponed. And we go on postponing. We realize only when death comes that, “My God, now there is no tomorrow.”Change?Do you want to change?[Cameraman: No, we’re okay.]I only had one last question.Okay.And I think you’ve answered it, but let me ask it anyway. Is it possible for your views, your outlook on life, your beliefs, to be allowed just to exist in the world we live in, or will people always try to stop you - the people who believe in organized religion, the politicians? Will you always have enemies?I will always have enemies, and because that is the very nature of things, it is not a disappointment. I accept it joyously. Whatever is the way of life is perfectly good, and I am happy with it.You’ll take as it comes, huh? Okay. I thank you. It’s always a pleasure to speak with you.Always come back whenever you can.We shall be, we shall return, I’m sure. I think what he [the cameraman] would like to do is just take some more pictures of you. The talking part is essentially complete, but inescapably they need more video.Do you think you will be seeing the press daily, or.?I have been seeing the press for the last whole month. And I will be going.seeing the press every day because I’m not going to travel around the world. My health does not permit it. So I have to take your help.Do you think we treat you fairly? The things you read and see on television, do you think you get a fair treatment from the press?Quite fairly.Is there anything you don’t like to read about yourself or see about yourself? No?No. I like everything.Do you think you may ever travel to your other communes around the country - around the world again?My health is not good. My problem is my allergy. Any perfume, any dust creates asthma attacks. For four years I had not a single attack. In the last twenty years I have never been so healthy and happy. So I am not going anywhere. In fact, I’m always puzzled why I was not born in Oregon.I told a friend last night that I was coming over here today to speak with you, and he said, “You must ask him why Oregon?” Why did you choose Oregon?Because of my allergies. It has a dry climate and cool; humidity is disturbing to me, so humidity I don’t like. Hot I don’t like. So this desert simply was waiting for me for fifty years - since I was born, this desert was waiting for me!Well, I’m sure there are people that would say this high desert has never been put to better use.Yes, it has never been. During my whole fifty-five years on the earth this desert has not been used. It has been reserved for me by existence. Now, no government can prevent me. When existence itself is on my side, then I don’t care about small governments.May I ask you how you spend your days? Do you - do you meditate, do you - do you - do you - I know you have discourses in the morning.The morning goes in the discourse. Then I take my lunch and go to sleep. Two o’clock I wake up and I go for a drive into the forest, and near 3:30 or 4:00 I come back, take a bath, swimming. I have a beautiful swimming pool, olympic-size. And I love the change of hot and ice cold showers, so one-and-a-half hours, two hours in the morning, two hours in the evening. And then the press conference.That’s the rest of your day.Then in the end, if anything is about the commune needs my attention my secretary brings it, and by 11:00 I go to sleep again.But whatever I am doing, my meditation continues. It is not something that I have to do separately; it is just an art of witnessing. Speaking to you, I’m also witnessing myself speaking to you. So here are three persons: you are listening, one person is speaking, and there is one behind who is watching, and that is my real me. And to keep constant contact with it is meditation.So whatever you do does not matter, you just keep contact with your witness. I have reduced religion to its very fundamental essence. Now everything else is just ritual. This much is enough. And this does not need you to become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or anybody, and this can be done by an atheist, by a communist, by anybody, because it needs no kind of theology, no kind of belief system. It is simply a scientific method of slowly moving inwards. A point comes when you reach to your innermost core, the very center of the cyclone.Did you have teachers or have you developed this on your own?No, I have developed it on my own. I have never had any teacher. I was not as fortunate as my sannyasins are.Are you a reader? Do you read a great deal, or not very much?No. For five years I have not read anything - no newspaper, no book, no television, nothing. I’m so happy. And what is there to read?I envy you.Mmm? I neither read nor write.You don’t write?No.You never.All my books are my discourses.You never put your thoughts on paper?Never. In my whole life I have never written.Any particular reason why not?It is easier to speak the truth than to write it. The written word is dead. The spoken word has some life at least. The eyes, the gestures, the tone, the nuance of the voice, everything which the written letter misses.We live in the video age. You could make video cassettes.We are making.That’s better than the written word. That’s still some life to it.Yes.Will they be made available to the general public?It is available all over the world. I am a very contemporary man.Well, in a way, then, I mean of course it’s not writing, but it’s communicating; so you are communicating other than just one on one or just to a group?Yes; this is communication.Uh huh. But the video cassettes are, in a way, a book - not a written word, but a record.It is different.Yes, I agree.Very different.I agree. And yet it’s a record, it’s a.And soon, when it becomes three dimensional, then it will be really beautiful.I thank you very much.Okay.Scott Miller,Channel 8I know him.I feel like I know you as well, although we have never really.Great..met face to face. My pleasure.Yes. Okay. How are you doing today?I am doing fine.How was your swim? I noticed that you.Great.I’ve been a big fan of hot and cold showers myself for quite some time.Some day you can come to my bathroom.Well, I’ll leave you my business card when I leave. If we could arrange that, I’m sure my news director would be very happy.[inaudible] Are we.Isabel? Let them be ready.I’m here just to talk to you very briefly today, and I just wanted to check.in the nature of our business, which sometimes doesn’t make any sense to me either, with the competitive nature of our business I do need to be somewhat.somewhat careful about what I say right now. Isabel, are we clear at this point? Okay.Competitiveness aside, I guess we’re ready. I’m here also as a representative of NBC news. We’re an affiliate of NBC, and NBC has obtained, I understand, a copy of an interview with Ma Anand Sheela which is purported to be the first one since she left the ranch a week and a half or so ago. And so what I’m going to do, once we do get the cameras rolling and squared away, is just ask you to respond to a couple of the allegations that she’s made in the interview. Of course, doing our best to tell both sides of the story, we can give your side as well.Good.I agree. And, Tom, if you just tell me when you’re ready, we’ll do that.So I understand you feel you’re treated fairly. I’m glad to hear that.I am.Do you ever get to see what we say about you, though?Anything she says, she will get a good reply. You just.Oh, I’m sure. I’ve heard you speak enough, Osho, to know that I have - I have no fear of that. I have no fear of that. I was - I was just interested in your comments, as my cameraman is getting ready, that you - that you do feel that you are.Let them get ready..that you do feel like you get fair treatment.Meanwhile you take few grapes.Well, thank you. They’re good grapes.They are our own.They’re grown here?Yes.My compliments to your farmers then. Okay? Okay. Allegation number one. First of all, Sheela claims that there has been widespread use of narcotics among your sannyasins, drugs, specifically the drug ecstasy, which I have also heard referred to as MDM. And she goes on to charge that with your knowledge, sannyasins were induced to sign over money and belongings while under the influence of drugs.I know ecstasy, but that ecstasy can be a drug I am hearing for the first time. I have never even heard the name before. And I was in silence and isolation for three-and-a-half years. I was not coming into the commune, not meeting anybody. So if drugs were used and people were given such a drug, then Sheela must be the one to do it. How I can do it in isolation, in silence? Except Sheela, nobody was coming there. Have I given the drug to Sheela?Which drug?The drug that she is mentioning. I have never heard even about the drug.Have you ever heard of your sannyasins being on any drug?No. In my commune drugs are absolutely prohibited. We keep a dog to check every car coming in, every luggage coming in, just for drugs. Drugs we don’t allow for the simple reason that every drug is against meditation. No drug can bring you to ecstasy, it can give you only a hallucination.So I know ecstasy. I am twenty-four hours in ecstasy, but I’m not drugged. And nobody has been drugged by me. And if Sheela says so, she was the whole and sole in-charge for all these years, then she must be responsible for the drug and she must have done it to people.Do you believe that she’s done it to people?If she is saying it - that in the commune drugs are being given - then except her nobody can be responsible, because she was the president of the Foundation. And if she thinks people have been drugged in order to take money from them, then it must be she. Because all the money that the commune has received has come from donations far away - from Europe, Asia, Australia. And she has stolen forty-three million dollars out of that money. Perhaps she has been drugging people and taking the money to Switzerland.The second allegation is a little bit more personal. She says that you threw temper tantrums and would threaten to commit suicide if you were not given more Rolls Royces.That is sheer cow dung! I have already ninety Rolls Royces, and a simple law of economics is that as you have more and more of a thing, it has less and less value. Now ninety-one Rolls Royces.what meaning they can have to me?Have you ever asked for a Rolls Royce? Have you ever asked?Never! There is no need. In fact I wanted to distribute all the Rolls Royces to people, but they don’t belong to me. I cannot distribute - I am not their owner. They belong to a certain trust of the commune, and the president is here. I had declared in a discourse that tomorrow all the Rolls Royces should be distributed, because unnecessarily.I use only one and eighty-nine are just sitting. Let all the sannyasins enjoy them. Make few pools and everybody can take whenever he wants.John.?He is the president of the cars’ trust. So I asked him distribute the cars. Now he will answer you what happened.John: We decided that we didn’t want to do that.I think we chatted about that.John: The cars are sacred, and we want them where they are. So we voted, and that’s where they’ll be.Did you ever throw temper tantrums then?That is up to them. But this is simply stupid. I never thought Sheela to be so stupid.that I should commit suicide for a Rolls Royce?Final allegation for right now at any rate. I’m sure you’re expecting more over the weeks to come. Sheela says that she’s afraid for her life right now. She’s afraid for her life because she fears that you will have her killed. And she believes that you’ll have her killed. How would you respond to that?She must be afraid, because every murderer is always afraid for his life. She has killed one man here; she has attempted to kill three other commune members. She has attempted to kill the whole city of The Dalles. Naturally she must be paranoid that she will be killed. Anybody who commits a crime like murder, dosing people with poison, throwing poison into water systems, is bound to have the fear that she is going to be killed. But we are not to going to do anything to her. Nobody here is a murderer; she is the murderer.Didn’t she run the affairs here for a long time after you heard such rumors of such hideous acts?No, nobody. I did not believe that she would do it. I thought it was just a rumor. But now I can say that she must have done it; it cannot be just a rumor. Because what she has done.When she left, in her room we have found all kinds of books on poison, how to poison people, all books on murdering, how to murder people without getting caught. And we have found an underground tunnel in her room, that she was prepared completely to murder somebody, or in any case if the police come she can escape. So her fear has reason, and the reason is that her own crimes are following her like a shadow. Every murderer is followed by his own guilt.Thank you very much, Osho. If we could just get one or two wide shots, would that take too much time?Okay.I really appreciate it. I know it’s been a long night for you.I’m interested.when.how long ago did Sheela’s first husband die? I know you’re not good with dates, but.That [inaudible]I’ll find that out. But.what specifically, he.I know he had some form of cancer, but was he sick back east or.?I think.Devaraj is here?.He had something to do with lungs - lung cancer.Devaraj: Hodgkins.And at this time was Sheela involved with Jayananda?No, she was involved with Veetrag.It gets complicated.And this reminds me of one thing more. She was involved with Veetrag in India, and she came to America for some work for the Foundation and got involved with Jayananda, got married with Jayananda. Then there was trouble because Veetrag was in a very sad state. Here, because she has done all these crimes and she saw that if she does not escape soon she will be caught, in Switzerland she married Dipo, another sannyasin. She committed bigamy. She is married to the American Jayananda and she has married in Switzerland to remain in Switzerland. Then, seeing that this is bigamy and will become trouble, she rushed to Nepal. Because in a poor country like Nepal you can bribe the magistrate and get a backdated divorce. So she has got a backdated divorce - she has become a professional criminal now.What happened to Veetrag?Veetrag is here.He’s still alive?Still alive, because he refused her. She had told him. He is our best pilot. She told Veetrag, that “You take the airplane, fill it with bombs, and crash it into the Wasco County office, and jump out in a parachute.” He said, “This is too risky and I may be killed. I don’t want to do it. And this is an absolute crime. It will not only destroy the Wasco County office, it may destroy a few other houses also. It will become a wild fire.Was Sheela’s first husband hospitalized in India?Yes.And she would visit him in the hospital?No, no. He was in the commune.In the ashram?In the ashram. Once in a while he used to be hospitalized, when he was serious; otherwise he was living in the commune.And he would.he would need oxygen there?He died in the ashram.And he.he could get oxygen in the ashram?Yes, he could get; every arrangement was there. In their room every arrangement was there.Okay. Osho, thank you very much for staying late for us. I really appreciate it.Good. Come again.I will be.I’ll be here.Good.Thank you.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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USA TodayGlad to see you.Good evening. First of all I’d like to request that you try to keep your answers as brief as possible. I realize I only have so much time, and I do have thirty or forty questions that I’d like to ask - and the style of my paper is abbreviated to begin with, so it would all fit well.That’s perfectly okay.Thank you.Just remember that your questions are surface and short.I’d like to ask you just a few questions regarding Sheela. I’m sure you’ve heard.Any question, just start.Okay. She has surfaced in Europe and has spoken with the West German publication, Stern, and alleges, among other things, that drug use is rampant here in the commune. I’d like to know, is that true?That is absolutely wrong.She speaks of a drug in particular, called ecstasy. Have you ever heard of a drug by that name?No.She also claims that she was having a physical love affair with you up until the time she left.That is absolutely wrong.At any time during.?Never. She is just disgusting.She claims as well that the commune is broke, that all the money has been spent on Rolls Royces and diamond watches.That is absolutely wrong.What kind of shape is the commune in financially?Perfectly alright.She claims that she fears for her life. She thinks that you feel she knows too much and you’re going to try to kill her, obviously not personally, but you’ll send people. Does she have any grounds to make this claim?She is afraid my people are going to kill her. That’s because she has killed so many people, and attempted to kill many more: almost poisoned the water system of a whole city, The Dalles. She is afraid because of her own murders, her own crimes. She cannot give a single piece of evidence that I have ever killed anybody.And I was in silence for three and a half years, and in isolation. She was in total control of the commune. And if there was drug use, then she is responsible, because this was my instruction, that no drugs should even enter into the campus of Rancho Rajneesh. I have seen her interview on video; she looks drugged.And the drug, ecstasy, she is talking about - she must have been taking it. I do not need it: I know the real ecstasy, I am twenty-four hours in it. Any drug can only create a hallucination. She is drugged, she is in a paranoia from her own crimes; otherwise there was no need to escape from here. She had not even the courage to face me. She escaped from here without seeing me.She claims that you taught her everything she knows, and that you were fully aware of the things that she was doing during her period of leadership here, even during your years of silence.I was only aware of what she was telling me, not fully aware of what was happening. Now I am becoming aware that she was not telling the whole thing to me.She was telling me only nice things - what she is doing and what is happening. She was not telling the crimes that she was committing. And she has committed every kind of crime.Do you still feel as you did a week ago, that if she did want to come back you’d welcome her?Yes, I will welcome her. And I will tell her to confess all her crimes to the court, and we will ask the court that she is sick, psychologically sick, and her punishment should be to be sent to a psychiatric hospital, not to a jail.If we could change the subject, I’d like to ask a few questions involving your own personal image and how you appear to the outside world. First I’d like to know, why have you chosen to make the Rolls Royce so much a part of your image?I have not made anything. If my people offer me something with love, I cannot refuse. Although in a subtle way I have refused, because I don’t own those Rolls Royces, they are owned by a corporation, a trust, so ultimately they belong to the sannyasins, not to me. Nothing belongs to me.I’m curious to know, what do you do during an average day from the time you get up till the time you go to sleep - say, hour by hour or two-hour intervals?It is completely busy without business. Six o’clock in the morning I wake up. Two hours in my bathroom and swimming pool, which I have always loved.Then my breakfast, and I go to the meeting of the commune, my everyday discourse. By eleven I am back. I take my lunch, go to sleep for two hours.Then for one and a half hours I go driving in the mountains. That is the only time that I have for myself. Back again; two hours to the bathroom and the swimming pool. Then I take my supper.And straight from the supper table I am here for any interview. Sometimes there is one interview, sometimes two, sometimes three. Now today your interview is one hour; then at 8:30 there is a big press conference that will last at least two hours.Then one hour for my secretary, for day-to-day problems about the commune. Near about twelve I go to sleep. And the day goes so fast.What kind of dreams do you have?I don’t dream, because whatever I want to do, I do it. I have never repressed anything in my life, and there is nothing to dream about. The dream is a necessity only if you repress something.Do you keep in touch with events going on in the outside world?No. No, for five years I have not read any newspaper, any magazine, any radio, any television. My sannyasins are my only world.I’m curious to know what you eat. Do you keep a strict vegetarian diet?Absolutely vegetarian. And just three thousand calories in the whole day.How is your health?My health is better than ever.I’ve read that between the years of 1947 and 1957, I believe, when you were living in India, you made it a practice to run 16 miles every day. Is that true?That’s true.What was your reason for doing this and why did you stop?I had then very beautiful health and I enjoyed my well-being. And that was my only exercise: running, jogging, swimming. You cannot conceive how healthy I was. I was 190 pounds in 1960, and people used to say that I had a body as if it is made of marble. But then I started traveling around the country spreading my word. And that created slowly deterioration of my health: every day changing food, every day catching trains in the middle of the night, getting down from the trains in the middle of the night.Everything got disturbed: my routine, my way of life. And that brought.otherwise I was never sick. That started bringing strange things. One was an allergy for dust, perhaps the trains; Indian trains are dirty, dusty. Most of them are still running on coal.Perfume of any kind started troubling me, and finally all those allergies culminated into asthma attacks. Then humidity started affecting me and I had to stop traveling.It helped, but not perfectly. I wanted to move to a place which was cool, dry, not humid. And that was the reason for me coming to this desert in Oregon. It has suited me perfectly well.There’s been some confusion in the press regarding the question of are you or are you not celibate?I am not celibate, I have never been celibate. Why should there be confusion in the press?Well, because I think there have been reports that you have been celibate since 21, and then.No. Nobody can be. It is scientifically impossible. Anybody who is creating that kind of confusion does not know anything about physiology, biology, science. He is simply stupid.Not only have I never been celibate, there has never been a celibate in the whole history of humanity. There have been pretenders, hypocrites. There have been monks who have been really homosexuals. There have been nuns who have been just lesbians.That’s why I say all the religions are responsible for this dangerous disease, AIDS. This is their greatest contribution to human growth.According to me, celibacy should be declared criminal. All monks should be forced do marry the nuns; otherwise, face life imprisonment.My whole teaching is: be natural, be simple. Don’t go upstream. Just go with the stream, be in a let-go. It is a physical need.What do you think of all the attention you’ve been getting lately from the press? Have the commune and yourself been portrayed fairly, by and large?It is almost fair. It cannot be absolutely fair for the simple reason that journalism has not raised itself into an art. It serves the retarded masses, and depends on sensationalism. It is criminal. That’s why I say ‘almost fair’.How do you feel about the image that most of the outside world has of you as being at best an eccentric and at worst a phony or a fake?I don’t think about the outside world at all.As far as the commune then, doesn’t your choice of Sheela as the day-to-day leader, in light of her recent actions, reflect poorly on your capability as a judge of character, and ultimately hurt your credibility with your followers?No. My choice of Sheela was absolutely correct. In the beginning, to create this commune we needed a very pragmatic, practical, strong person. And she is. She was not a criminal when I had chosen her; neither was Judas a murderer when Jesus has accepted him as his disciple.Something very basic is implied there. There are two possibilities: one is that the future is determined, so that you can know about it, what is going to happen tomorrow. But then all freedom of humanity disappears. Man becomes only a machine, a robot. The other alternative is that the future is open. One who is a murderer today my become a saint tomorrow, and one who is a saint today may prove to be a rapist tomorrow. The tomorrow is absolutely open, and there is no way to predict it.And I believe in freedom. I do not believe in God for the same reason, because if there is God, there is no freedom. He created man; man is just a puppet. He can any moment destroy him, there is no way to change the course.God is whimsical. What has he been doing before he created man? According to Christianity he created man 4004 years before Jesus Christ. So just 6000 years before the world was created - and what was that guy doing for whole eternity? He seems to be crazy, nuts. And suddenly he creates the world in six days! And then he creates such a big world in six days, you know you are going to have a mess. And the seventh day he retired to rest, and since then nothing has been heard about him, he is resting. Now any moment he can wake up and decide to destroy.I do not believe in any God, because God is against freedom, against human dignity, against democracy, against every value which we have cherished for thousands of years. Only existence without God can be an existence beautiful, free, democratic, loving, growing. But then tomorrow remains unknown. You have to take the risk.So when I chose Sheela, she was just a simple woman. She was just a waitress in a hotel. But because I went into silence, into isolation, and she was my only communication with the commune, she got the opportunity of becoming a power. And power corrupts.Why were you silent for three and a half years?Really I wanted to be silent forever. I had spoken for thirty years. There are at least four hundred books of my discourses. It is enough for a man, and I was tired of speaking. It is out of necessity that I have started speaking again, because when I became aware that my silence is being exploited and Sheela and her gang is trying to create out of a meditation commune, a concentration camp, then I had to come out of silence.She persuaded me not to speak because that may endanger my health. Again, because it is a question of breathing.speaking again I may start having attacks. But I said that that does not matter. If my whole commune is being destroyed, then I want to be in the commune and stop everything that is wrong.And it was good that I was alerted in time. I would not have been alerted if Sheela has not tried to kill my own physician. She was trying to kill anybody who was a danger to her power; either he should leave or she would kill him.Many left; the chancellor of the university left, the vice-chancellor of the university left - who have both been devoted sannyasins. Many psychotherapists left, and I was not even informed.But this case was such. My physician lives with me in my own house. First he was given poison in a cup of coffee. Because he is a physician - well-educated, has the best qualifications, is a member, the youngest member ever of the Royal Society of Physicians in England, is a genius mind.he immediately suspected some poison has been given to him.But nobody would listen to him, because why should my physician be poisoned? The very idea was inconceivable. And the poison that was given to him was such that it is undetectable. So he went to the medical center, but they could not detect anything so they thought he was simply hallucinating.The second time he was injected in the hospital while he was recovering from the first poison, and again he felt that it was poison. But nobody would listen to him, because the poison was undetectable.The third time he was poisoned in a meeting of ten thousand sannyasins listening to me, and one woman came and inserted the needle. Now there are eye-witnesses. He immediately pulled up his robe and showed people there was blood, there was the mark of the needle. And he refused to go in the medical center here, because that was under one of Sheela’s gang, Puja, who was a well-trained nurse.He was in Bend Hospital. There also doctors said that he had no disease: “All that we can think of is some kind of poison, but it is undetectable.” Then he started looking into books and found that there are poisons which cannot be detected. And when Sheela left, we have found in her room literature on poisons, a book in which that same poison which is undetectable is underlined. That is the only poison which is underlined in the whole literature.So when my physician was poisoned, my caretaker was poisoned, then I thought that it is better I should come out of my silence and be available to my people and see what is happening.As I came out of my silence, Sheela started going to Europe, to Australia, to Japan, and she would not stay here. And stories started coming to me, and she started making arrangements to escape. She was married here to an American. She immediately got married to a sannyasin in Switzerland. Now that is a crime; she committed bigamy.Then they realized that this is not right, so she went to Nepal, a small kingdom in the Himalayas, where in small villages you can bribe a magistrate just a small money and you can get any kind of certificate you want. So she got a backdated divorce certificate. But she was planning for two months, because she was looking also here for any Swiss sannyasin to marry Puja.But all these things came to my knowledge as these people left. When they left, then the whole commune felt free of fear; and now there is so much coming up that it seems Watergate was nothing. She had bugged my own room, my caretaker’s room, all possible rooms which she thought may someday be her competitors. She has bugged the room of my old ex-secretary. She has bugged Hasya, who is now the president of the Foundation - her whole house, six rooms, all bugged.And the FBI people were here - when they were looking in my room, they said to the person who was showing them, “Whoever has done this bugging has done it in a far more sophisticated way than it was done by Nixon.”And they had made all kinds of things like taping machines for every phone. Every phone was tapped.In the entire commune?In the entire commune. Either phones coming from out or phones going out - all were tapped.If I might interject.women hold approximately 80% of the supervisory roles here in the commune. I’m curious to know why.For the simple reason because my feeling is that women have been deprived for thousands of years by men. You don’t ask this question when a hundred percent of power is in the hands of men; you take it for granted. But you cannot take it for granted if eighty percent power is in the hands of women. I am simply trying in my own way to compensate for all the crimes that humanity has done against womanhood.And I’m also trying to prove that woman can do far better in many areas than men. In many areas, man can do better. So it is not a question of who is superior and who is inferior; it is a question of division of labor.Both are human and both have potentials and they should be given a chance. And they are doing perfectly well.You’ve said in the past that in your opinion, such people as Mother Teresa - and this is quoting directly from you - “should be hanged for her views on birth control.” Do you still feel that way?Still I am right; they should be hanged as many times as possible.What is your policy as far as birth control goes here on the commune?In this commune, in four years, not a single child has arrived. The earth is already too much overpopulated. In Ethiopia people are dying, in India people are dying, everywhere there is starvation. Even in America thirty million people are undernourished. Now, anybody who teaches against birth control is a criminal.You’ve also said, quoting again: “The people of Oregon are getting very disturbed and I’m getting great joy out of it” - referring to the hostile history of relations between the commune and the state. Do you still feel that way?I enjoy everything. Now I am enjoying to withdraw everything that Sheela’s criminal gang has done against Oregonians, of which I was absolutely unaware.For example, the City of Rajneesh will be again Antelope. I have asked my sannyasins who are the government there to change the name back, “because this is absolutely unnecessary. You have your place; why hurt other people?”And I have told the press that we are ready to vacate Antelope completely, because we have enough houses and we don’t need those third-rate hundred-year-old rotten houses. I don’t want my sannyasins to live there like rats; they should be given back to the rats!Just they have simply to pay back the money that they have taken from them. So Antelope will be Antelope again; we are withdrawing our police forces from there. Why should we bother about anybody?And as they start possessing their land and houses back we will vacate; we don’t want them. It was Sheela’s mind, which became power-oriented, to take over Antelope, and when she succeeded in taking over Antelope then came the desire to overtake the whole of Wasco County, and for which she brought three thousand street people.And to me she said that she is bringing these street people just as a humanitarian gesture, because we have more money than our needs. So we can spend two, three million very easily without any trouble.I said, “If it is a humanitarian gesture it is perfectly good.” But I was not aware that it is election time, I was not aware that she is bringing them for election.She brought those people here and she imported from outside America special drugs, tons of drugs to keep those people drugged, so whatever she says they will do.And by mistake one man they drugged too much and he died. They simply threw his body out of Rancho Rajneesh. The police found the body but could not find where the man had come from, who the man was and who has killed him. Just now I have been discovering from my people that it was Sheela’s gang that did all those inhuman acts.So I am withdrawing everything that she has done against Oregon - I am withdrawing. I don’t want any hostility.Do you have any followers who live in Russia, the Soviet Union?I have many sannyasins there, but they have to live underground. And I don’t want to live underground.Can you tell me approximately how many you believe are followers in the Soviet Union?No, that I cannot say because they are already persecuting twenty people that they have found. So I cannot say the whole number.Is it true that your followers around the world bow to Oregon each morning?Certainly! Oregonians should be happy!Do you believe in reincarnation?I don’t believe, I know. It is true. It is not a question of belief, and I don’t want anybody to believe in it. I want them to experiment with their own past lives, and there are methods available that you can go into your past lives and experience the truth of it.Can you describe who you were and what you did in some of your past lives?That will be simply fiction for you. It does not make any sense to anybody. It only makes me certain that there is rebirth, reincarnation; that life continues beyond death. But anything that I say will be just like a fiction.Nonetheless I think it would be interesting to know if there were a particular role or position that you do remember.No, I was never anybody special: Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte.no.Do you still believe that the end of the world is near?No.So you’ve changed your views on that?I have not changed my views. The politicians are preparing for the end, the religions have already prepared for the end. But we are trying to prevent it, and I am hoping against all hope that we will succeed.Thank you very much.Good, come again.Thank you.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Jim Hyde, Channel 2, KATU TV, Portland; Scott Miller, KGW-TV, Channel 8, Portland (NBC Affiliated); Swami Anand Subhuti, Osho Times; Walden Kirsch, KGW-TV, Channel 8, Portland (NBC Affiliated); Swami Anand Videha, Latin-America Courier, Italy; Ma Viren, Loto-Payo [Leuropayon?], ItalyIsabel: Osho, I have told the press that you will first make a statement and then they could ask questions.I welcome you all. I had to give you the trouble to come here because there has been FBI people, state police officers, Wasco County police, attorney general’s office people, to investigate the case against Sheela and her fascist gang. I offered them my own interview, four times they gave the appointment, and all the four times they canceled it. There seem to be a certain conspiracy going on. I want to make that conspiracy open and available to the public.We were cooperating fully. Our police, our sannyasins, were going and revealing facts concerning all kinds of crime that have been committed while I was in isolation and silence. It was really strange that they should not take my interview. They should have taken my interview first. I represent the heart of my whole commune. I live for these people and I will die for these people. Rather than asking me for an interview, they went on postponing and canceling appointments. And the reason was that they were trying to protect the criminals. They were not taking any step against the criminals.And they were trying to persuade people to betray the commune. They were giving as a bribe that, “We will give you immunity.” We were supported them, we were revealing everything on our own accord. We wanted the criminals to be punished. But behind the screen was attorney general and he was trying a totally different thing. I have known dirty politicians, but not so dirty as this man.All kinds of crimes have been committed, murder, attempts to murder many other people, efforts to poison the water system of The Dalles, the whole city of innocent people who have done no wrong to you.Sheela was persuading one of the pilot, that he should take bombs in the airplane and crash it on the Wasco County office and before it crashes, jump out in a parachute to save himself. Because he refused it, as a punishment and as a safety measure that he does not reveal it to anybody else, he was sent to Germany in a very small commune where he was useless, because there is no airport and the commune has no airplanes. What can they do of a pilot? And he was our best pilot. As he heard the news that Sheela and her gang has escaped, he immediately phoned. He has come back and he revealed his story that, “This is what I was asked to do. Because I refused. It was not only a question of my life. It would have destroyed the Wasco County office and it may have destroyed many other houses surrounding it.” The quantity of bombs was so much.We were trying to help FBI and all these other agencies. Why they were afraid to take my interview? The reason was, they wanted to find few people who can protect the criminals and can indicate false names, innocent people, that these are the real criminals, so that the community can by destroyed. One of the FBI person was being heard by sannyasins, he was saying that, “We are going at least to imprison five hundred sannyasins.” All those sannyasins who are very essential for the life of the commune, to cripple it. They were not interested at all about the crimes.One of the street people was murdered by Sheela because she has imported special drugs in tons for all those street people, to keep them drugged till the election day. So whatsoever she says to them, they will do it like a robot, almost in a hallucinatory state. This man by accident was drugged twice. He died on the spot. They simply threw his body out of Rancho Rajneesh without any compassion, humanity, without any feeling what they are doing. The police had found the body, but they could not find even the man’s address. He may have come from New York or from anywhere in America. And street people don’t have address. They could not figure out what is his name, they could not figure out how he has died, whether he has been murdered or drugged himself too much.Just now people are coming, because the fear, the terror of Sheela and her gang is finished, they know now they can say the truth. I wanted to cooperate with the government, with the law, but the government has its own designs. Its design is to use the excuse of Sheela’s crime who has already gone out of country with twenty co-conspirators. A good chance for them in the name of those twenty people who are out of country - just blame innocent people and force them into jail.Not taking my interview was essential to do this, because I was going to reveal everything. First they said, “You cannot record it.” I insisted that, “It has to be recorded, because in the court you may change.” It was a strange situation, as if I was the interrogator and they were the criminals. “You cannot take a video tape of it.” I insisted.I said, “We will not release it to the public, we can give you the guarantee, written, but the video will be taken, because we know that you are not worthy of any trust. This video will be a proof that things are totally different and you are presenting before the court different people.”Sheela and her group has bugged my room, my caretaker’s room, the new president Hasya’s whole house, six rooms, my ex-secretary Laxmi’s room, the whole hotel, all the rooms. Even the FBI experts said, that Nixon is left far behind. They have done such a sophisticated job. He said that, “For one bugging, five years of jail.” And this woman has bugged so many places that even one thousand years will be not enough! You have solid proofs in your hands.They have found machines in Sheela’s room that all telephones from the commune, going outside or coming in were taped, which is very criminal. It is interference into the freedom of the individual and his privacy. Now what solid proofs they need? We have tapes which we have presented to them, we have the mechanism which was being used, we have people who are ready to confess that they were part in it and who others were part in it. But it seemed as if they were not interested in it. Their interest was somewhere else.One woman came up and said that, “She does not know exactly, but she suspects that the house belonging to the planning office in Wasco County was burnt by Sheela.” Because Sheela told her that at a particular place late in the night you stand there with a car, two sannyasins not in sannyasin clothes will come to you. You need not ask anything, simply take them in and bring them back to Rajneeshpuram. She was a little worried and concerned that what is the matter, what is going on, what is the secret in it? Why they should not be wearing red clothes and why such secrecy? And next day she came to know that the planning office of the Wasco County has been burnt. Now it is very simple. She can indicate those two persons who have escaped with the twenty in Sheela’s gang. Sheela has taken her also in her gang so that no proof is left behind. But she felt so guilty that from Seattle she turned back. She said, “I am not going. I am going back to the commune.” And she has come back to the commune.All these things. In Sheela’s house literature has been found: How to Murder, How to Kill. Literature on all kinds of poisons. Three persons have been poisoned. My own milk was being poisoned slowly every day. And only now the poor sannyasin who looks after the cows has opened his mouth that, “Every night Puja used to come to mix something. I was not aware that this is poison. I thought it is something herbal, must be for your health.” Certainly it was for my health!Seeing all these things I became aware of one thing that has happened in India. And now I am absolutely certain that Sheela murdered her own first husband. He was sick. He had cancer of lungs and the doctors had said that he cannot live more than two years. When he came to me he was really in despair, death was so close. I said to him that, “Death comes to everybody. You are fortunate that you know when it is coming. You have some uniqueness about your death. You can use these two years in such a way that only your body will die and you will live forever.”And he started meditating, and a strange phenomenon happened. Two years passed, four years passed, six years passed. He came back to America. He was American Jew. He went to the doctors, they could not believe. They thought that he must be dead by now, long ago. They said, “It is something miraculous. You are not supposed to live! What have you been doing.”He said, “I have been meditating and I am feeling healthier and I am getting better.”But once in a while he used to have attacks and when he had the attack, oxygen has to be given to him. Sheela was continuously harassing him. All this I have come to know now. People who had lived in the same house in India have revealed to me that Sheela was harassing him continuously. And because he was sick she was having a love affair with another man. And that was really disgusting. Her husband was dying in the same room and she will bring the other man to make love in the same room in front the husband and naturally he will throw a tantrum. And one day it became so much that she stopped the oxygen. She took out the tube. The poor man died in immense suffering and torture, suffocating.I did hear the rumor, even in India, that something in mysterious about the death. But there was no solid proof. The man was already burnt. There was no witness. But now seeing Sheela’s all these acts here I feel certain that she has killed her husband too.When I left India Sheela had burnt two bare houses just to show that all my literature has been burned by somebody. Nobody would have told this if Sheela was here. People were afraid that they will be killed or thrown out of the commune. Many have been thrown out of the commune. Whoever was a rebel was condemned as negative and he has to leave. And because I was in isolation and in silence and I had no connection except Sheela, so even if people wanted to inform me about something it was impossible. They could not phone. Every phone was taped.All the guards on my house have just revealed that they were told not to have any contact with the people who lived with me, my physician, my dentist, my seamstress, my cleaners. Almost twenty people lived in the house. My kitchen people, my gardeners. The guards were instructed that, “You have not to talk to anybody, you have not even to smile at anybody, you have not to see eye to eye to anybody. Even if they wave you are not to answer.” And that’s how it has been going on. And it seems she had put those guards saying to them that they are for my safety.But just today all the keys of my house have been found in Sheela’s room. Now what those keys were doing in her room? She has made a lock into my sitting room which connects the bedroom. I sleep alone there and she wanted to have the key from the outside. The lock is from the outside and she wanted to have the key. It was only because of my caretaker. Her insistence that the key cannot be given to anybody because things that have come to light, if she can poison my milk, if she can bug my room, if she can try to kill my physician three times, she could have tried to kill me. And the best way would have been any night. Guards were hers, I don’t know even their names, I don’t know even their faces, because they are on the roof, I cannot see them. She could have entered into my room any moment, given me an injection. It was so easy. She wanted to keep that thing available.One should be wondering why she would like to kill me. Because three and half years being in full power she became a power maniac. Now her only fear was, if I start speaking again, then her face from the television screen will disappear. Then she will not be a celebrity. Then from radios her voice will disappear, from newspapers her name will disappear and it is really difficult for someone whose ego has become blown big, then suddenly to become nobody.She was nobody. She was just a waitress in a hotel in America before she came to me. Here she saw power in her hands, millions of dollars in her hands. We have put two hundred million dollars to create the commune. She has stolen money out of it. Her old secretary is dying with cancer in California. Death sometimes makes people reveal truth. She has written me a letter yesterday, that Sheela has stolen forty-three million dollars from European communes which were bound to reach here, but they never came here. They went into a account in Switzerland. When you get so much money, so much power, and my people love me and she was using my name for everything.Even very intelligent people proved very gullible for the simple reason, she found their weakness, their love for me. She will simply say it is for Osho’s sake, it is for Osho’s security, it is how Osho wants it. And people were ready to do it. She exploited the whole situation and committed all kinds of crime.They were trying to culture AIDS virus. One wonders for what. Two persons from the commune who have been found by Sheela’s assistant, Puja, who is a medical person, as positive confirmed AIDS patients. When Sheela left, we let them tested again outside. Both are negative. Strange, where the virus has disappeared? It has disappeared with those twenty people? It seems their blood before sending for test was mixed with AIDS virus. And the reason seems to be that those two persons were just experimental the way scientists use guinea pigs, rats, they were using human beings. Perhaps there was a desire that if they cannot rule the commune, then they will destroy it.Just the other day in Patanjali Lake, five hundred big fishes, beautiful fish, suddenly died. It seems poison has been dumped there. Otherwise there seems to be no reason for those fish to die simultaneously.I wanted to say all these things to FBI and all other state government agencies and wanted them to ask me, interrogate me, so I can go into details. But they are not interested in the criminals. Their interest is that somehow the criminals has escaped, it is good. Now find people who have done small things, for example, this girl who has driven two people who burned the planning office, now give her immunity and make her say that who were those two people, any two people they choose.That’s what they are trying to do with K.D. K.D. has not gone with Sheela’s group, he is hiding in California and trying to make a deal. He is a politician. He is trying to make a deal with the attorney general that, “If you give me immunity, then whatever you say, I will say.”I would like the press to support this small minority against the whole dirty political regime. Help so that real criminals can be caught and should not be protected and make it sure that no innocent people are harassed.That is the desire of the attorney general. That’s why they never wanted to interview me. I wanted them first to interview me before the press so the whole public knows. What is the fear? I should be afraid. Why you should be afraid? They refused that, they refused video, they refused taking a tape and finally, they refused that they don’t want to take my interview at all. And all this time they were continuously inquiring the attorney general on the phone, for everything. To cancel the interview or not, to let them have it on the video or not.It is your duty and responsibility to expose this dirty state of affairs. We are ready to support the law and the Constitution and we are ready to help them catch all those twenty people, because we are keeping an eye on them, we know where they are. We have sannyasins all over the world. When they were in Zurich, Zurich sannyasins were looking after them. When they went into Germany, German sannyasins were looking after them, watching. Now they are in France. Wherever they will go, my people are there. But FBI does not seem to be interested even to inform the Interpol that these people have committed crimes, they should be brought to America.Perhaps if Sheela comes back. Or perhaps FBI people are already making deals with those criminals there, that they are not criminals. They are capable of making deals and can give them immunity and then any innocent person can be imprisoned, for ten years, for twenty years, for his whole life.I have called the press just to make it clear to the people that it should not be allowed to happen. And when we are helping and cooperating, they don’t want our cooperation. Just now I have heard that because I have called the press conference and I am exposing them, they are packing their suitcases and they will escape. Strange, you belong to the federal intelligence department, you belong to the state police, you belong to the county police, such cowards. You cannot face a press conference. Rather than packing their suits they should have been here, because they have been here for seven days. And we have been their hosts and we have been helping them in every way. We gave them our hospitality and they are giving us their criminality.It is somehow a psychological fact that the criminals and the people who belong to the police are not very different kind of people. Just criminals employed by the government become FBI, KGB, and criminals who are unemployed, those poor people serve in jails or electrocuted or given death sentences, but I think both belong to the same category of mind.If you have any questions, you can ask.Jim HydeHow would you convince the people who will see and hear this videotape that you are telling the truth and Sheela is lying?Simple. Why she has escaped? If she is not a criminal, she should have been here and faced me. She did not even come to say goodbye to me. People who don’t commit crime don’t escape like that. And all the twenty people are involved in all these cases. So tell her, if she is innocent and I am criminal, then face me, just stand before me. She thinks she is brave, so tell her to be brave and come back. Why you are escaping here and there, hiding in Black Forest in Germany. What is that is going to do? How long you can hide? And if the police is not going to take the action, then my people will take the action! We can wait for few days and see what these idiots do. Otherwise we are capable enough to bring all those twenty back here.Would you rather the investigators, who’ve been invited, go away now? Have you given up on the system?First they have to take my interview before the press. Now that is an absolute condition on which there will be no compromise. Before I was ready to give the interview in privacy and keep the video private till the case is over. But now, no.Scott MillerThe person who is being investigated is not usually allowed to record or videotape those interviews and certainly, these investigations never occur in front of the press. Why should you be different?This is not an ordinary crime. It is a series of criminal acts and it has been committed in my name! So I have every authority to force the investigators, because my name has been used, misused. Advantage has been taken of my name. And when I am willing, what they are going to lose? Unless there is some conspiracy that they will not be able to manage if my statements become public. But it does not matter, if they don’t make it public, I will make them public. I am making them public. Who can prevent me?Are you saying that you have the authority to tell the investigators how to investigate? Or to tell the investigators who to arrest?Certainly. The government is the servant of the people! They are not our masters.You said that you won’t talk under certain conditions, Are you still recommending that your sannyasins cooperate with the law enforcement agencies?They are cooperating.Do you want them to keep cooperating?This is cooperation.Tomorrow, do you want your sannyasins to keep talking to the investigators?I will not. It is finished. Cooperation is finished! And if they don’t pack now, we will pack them out.Swami Anand SubhutiSorry. Do you think the FBI could have been waiting for a series of counter-allegations from Sheela?They should bring Sheela here. Why they are waiting for? Because there is every possibility she may be killed by the other nineteen criminals. I am afraid of that, because I have seen today the interview she has given. She looks absolutely drugged. I am afraid that she may be killed. Because all the remaining ones will be free if she is finished. Then the main criminal is gone. The main source is finished. And these people are taking so long time which is not needed at all. She should be caught immediately with all those people. And to my sannyasins I would like to say, now no cooperation. Nobody goes to report anything unless my interview is taken with my condition, our cooperation is finished. Now they can go to hell! And as far as Sheela and her nineteen colleagues are concerned, we will make our own arrangements.Walden KirschGood evening. We have been meeting like this for a week.You are behaving like FBI! [laughing]Each time the stories that we hear become more and more extravagant. Right now as we speak, there are a certain number of sannyasins here in this room, who don’t believe what you’re saying.What do you want to believe them? Who are the people?They’re out there, sir.I will show. Raise the hands who believe in me and say three times, Yes![Audience: Yes! Yes! Yes!]Now you ask your people to raise their hands and say no!I’ll let you do that.Just come here. Is anybody there who can stand for this man? Have pity on him! Just look behind.You say in various ways that you ask your sannyasins not to believe you. You ask them to trust in you but not to believe you.That’s right!Why should they believe the facts which you’ve been laying out for the past week?Because they know it as a fact.Why should they believe you now?They are not believing me. They know the facticity of what I am saying.Why should they believe your version and not the other version when you tell your followers not to believe the words you say?They are not believing me! They are believing the facticity of what I am saying. If it is a fact, you said that there are few people, you cannot make them stand. You cannot stand yourself rightly.Have you told any lies the past week? Have you told any lies at all?Never! Why should I say a lie? I have been trying to say the truth for thirty years and yet I have not been able to say it.It sounds as though a showdown is inevitable between you and the criminal investigators here. At this point you are telling your followers not to speak to anybody unless they speak with you first. Is that correct?I am simply saying that those people are trying a conspiracy to destroy the commune. And I will not allow anybody to destroy the commune.You said a moment ago that none of your sannyasins should grant any interviews to any investigators unless those investigators have taken your interview first.Certainly!And until your interview happens you’re ordering your sannyasins to speak to none of these investigators.Just let me repeat clearly to you.They have been investigating up to today and we have been cooperating with them in every possible way. And they have been trying to exploit our cooperation. Rather than being thankful and grateful that we are cooperating, otherwise they have no way of finding the criminals and the crimes. It is only by our cooperation they can find the criminals and the crimes. They should be grateful.They are not grateful, but they are being tricky. They have been trying behind the doors to bribe few people who have committed some small crime that, “We will give you immunity.” And you just tell what we want. This cannot be done. This is not cooperation. This is exploitation. And their desire is not against the criminals at all. Otherwise the first step, because we have given them all evidence, they have found all the bugging, they have taken all the wires, all the bugging, photographs, everything, we have delivered all machines. Now we think perhaps it was not a right step because these people perhaps may destroy all those evidences. If they want to protect the criminals and destroy the commune, from today there will be no cooperation. Now they will have to understand it that no conspiracy can be tolerated.They have to take my interview before the national press, and only after that my sannyasins will cooperate. Otherwise not.Swami Anand VidehaWe had a Watergate one week ago, now we have a double Watergate. Who do you suspect is behind the attorney general? Any guess?Attorney general is my guess. He is behind this Watergate. He is trying to protect the criminals and punishing the innocent. The idea of putting five hundred sannyasins behind the jail, into the jail, is out of a very criminal mind. And when we are supporting in every way, when we are withdrawing every hostility that Sheela and her group has created between our commune and Oregon.For example, we are changing city of Rajneesh back to the old name, Antelope. We are removing our police forces from there and we are ready to sell all the properties that belonged to the foundation to the people of Antelope, or anybody who wants to purchase, at the same price as we purchased them. We have improved them, renovated them, we have put money into them, they are already double of the cost and we will be giving them half of the price. And we want to move out of Antelope because we don’t want to have anything to do with politics. It was Sheela’s trip, it is finished with her going from here.We want to be left alone here, we don’t want any hostility, any antagonism with anybody. And we will give the proof of it by changing the name to Antelope, be removing our police force from there and we will remove our people as the properties are sold. Now, it is the time for all the Oregonians who were showing so much love for Antelope to purchase those properties. Now they will know who is their friend. It is one thing to talk and make great slogans that it is better to be dead than red, now it is time to show it, that you really intend. So they should purchase all the properties. We can vacate in a single day. Just they should purchase all the properties the way we have purchased from them.Our people don’t want to live there. Who wants to live in that third-rate one hundred year old houses? We have enough houses, fully air-conditioned, with all modern facilities. Our sannyasins want to come back home. Sheela was forcing them to go there. It was done all without my knowledge. Otherwise it would not have happened at all because I am absolutely apolitical.I am not even against politics. Because to be against politics becomes politics. I am apolitical, neither for nor against, I simply want that the politics does not exist at all. That all the politicians are dead.You say that Sheela stolen forty-three million dollars. There is any real proof that has happen and why the European commune did not take direct action with Interpol in this case?Just now when I was coming here I have heard Sheela’s husband is in the prison.You mean the last husband?And that too you have to understand. Sheela’s first husband she killed. Sheela’s second husband Jayananda is an American, before divorcing him she married a third husband who is Swiss just to be in Switzerland because from escaping from here where she was to go? So she married Deepo and then she became aware that this is a crime, she is committing bigamy. So she had to rush to a Himalayan small kingdom, Nepal, because in Nepal, it is so poor, in small villages you can bribe any magistrate and get any certificate, any divorce certificate or anything you want. So she has brought from Nepal a divorce certificate back dated to avoid bigamy.But the third husband is in the jail. He is in the jail because he also tried on Sheela’s instructions to take the money out of the bank. It is not those forty-three million, it is another account of the Zurich commune. The money belongs to the Zurich commune. Deepo was one of the trustees and he has taken the money for his personal use, the whole money, and closed the account. I don’t know exactly right now how much money he has taken, but from all over the world news is reaching.One woman from Geneva who had been my sannyasin long. Sheela came into my contact. She has informed that Sheela’s whole business was selling drugs, particular heroin. And while she was going to Europe the excuse was visiting the communes, but the reality was heroin. She has been doing the business in selling gold also. I have called that sannyasins to come here, because she will be an eye witness, because Sheela and she were both very close friends. She knows every detail, that how much money she has got out of drugs, how much money out of gold, how much money she has taken out of the communes.We will wait and see how capable American government, FBI and its other agencies are capable. If they cannot manage such a small thing, then forget about Soviet Union.But till now there is no direct action towards Sheela for the forty-three million dollars stolen in Europe with Interpol there?I have called the secretary of Sheela who is dying of cancer in California to come here and expose the whole thing clearly. That from where she has got those forty-three million dollars, in which bank they are, what is the account number. I am certain there is money. For one reason because Sheela has told me many times that, “I have a surprise for you.”And I always asked, “What surprise and when.”Then one day she said that, “Now I cannot contain it any more, we have opened a bank account in Switzerland, in Sheela and Savita’s name, but it is for me. In case you have to leave America, we will make a beautiful place and a small commune in Switzerland.”I asked her that, “If the bank account is for me, at least I am entitled to know how much money is there, what is the number of the bank account, and what is the name.” That was never told to me. I have asked it almost half a dozen time.Even the last day Savita left, I had told Hasya that, “Ask Savita about the bank account number.” In front of me she promised that she will give the bank account number and every detail to Hasya, but she never gave, and escaped. So there is certainly a bank account, how much it is we will figure it out. They cannot cheat my sannyasins, they will repent badly.But we will wait for this FBI capacity and if we see that these people are impotent, then we will do things on our own. We can catch hold of those people right now! We know everybody, where he is. And we wanted to inform these people but they don’t want to have my interview.You say your name has been used to do all these criminal acts. You think you can file, or you will file Sheela directly for using your name for this?Certainly. She has misused her power. She had my power of attorney. She was my secretary and I had given her all power and she has misused it for doing all kinds of crime. She will have to come back and she will have to ask apology to each of the sannyasin of the commune, because she has misbehaved with each of the sannyasins. She has harassed these people.You will not believe that even the mayor of Rajneeshpuram was punished by Sheela and the punishment was that, “For few days you simply go on digging ditches. This is the punishment from Osho.” I would like K.D. to come back, there is no need to hide in California. Just come back here and expose everything that you know and ask forgiveness from these people and we will fight for you. You expose to the government, to the court, about the whole gang and we will make every effort to get immunity for you. In fact the American Constitution is in every way favorable, there is no problem in it. He will get immunity, he has not done any crime himself, he has been only in the group. His only crime is that he did not expose the group, but for which immunity is not difficult. So if he sees somewhere on the television screen, he should come back immediately without any fear. Nobody is going to punish him and he will never be told to dig ditches.But that was one of the methods of the fascist group to punish people, to humiliate them, to force them to do things, otherwise they are not surrendering, they are not trusting, and all in my name. In fact, I can go to the court that my name has been misused and under my name’s cover all these crimes have been committed. And I will protect my innocent sannyasins who have not done anything. Okay?Ma VirenYou said few days ago that the government maybe wants this part of Oregon, this desert, for nuclear experiments. Would this enough reason for they to conspire against the commune?Any reason may be there, but this commune is going to remain here. Their reason for nuclear experiments is against man, against life, against everything that is valuable. It is not worth anything. If it was worth anything, we would have vacated this place immediately.But this is true in absolute, it is not true as far as power is concerned. I mean they always win!It is not so easy! Just because we are five thousand sannyasins here does not mean that we don’t have power. Do you think only nuclear weapons have power? In fact, nuclear weapons have no power at all anymore. What power they have? Their power is that they can create another Hiroshima here? But that will destroy the whole America’s image. Their democracy, their Constitution, their values, and they will prove just hypocrites.They cannot do any harm to this commune because my people are around the earth and everywhere there will be protest against it if any harm is being done. I know also how to deal with these idiots, if worse comes to worse! Then no American agency in any country can function. I have enough sannyasins everywhere. So don’t be worried about power. No need to be worried.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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George Lurie, USA Today; Jeannie Senior, The Oregonian, Portland; Bill Graves, The Bend Bulletin, Bend, OregonI’d appreciate brief answers, and I’ll try to keep my questions precise. Last night you spoke of hijackings and other extreme measures. Could a mass action like the one that occurred in Jonestown could ever occur here at Rajneeshpuram.Never. Hiroshima can occur here but not Jonestown. If anything happens here, the responsibility will be of President Ronald Reagan. And the whole America will be condemned for it. And it will be a betrayal of American constitution and its great values.I’d like to know how the AIDS epidemic has caused you to reevaluate your attitude towards sex between your followers.There is no problem, just people have to be a little more cautious. They have to take precautions.Six thousand sannyasins have been tested. They are free of AIDS. These people have been given all the instructions to use condoms and gloves, stop kissing, start new ways of loving: for example, rubbing each other’s noses, pressing each other’s earlobes. But kissing is absolutely prohibited.I’d like to know what your current immigration status is.The same as it was four years before, the first day I had entered America. And I think it will remain the same the day I leave my body.I have never seen such an idiotic bureaucracy anywhere. Four years and they have not been able to decide anything this way or that. And the reason is: yes they cannot say because of the politicians and their pressure, and if they say no then I am going to the courts, because their no will be against the constitution.So they are in a dilemma. So let them be in a dilemma. I am not starving without their green card. I am not going to eat it. And they are unnecessarily harassing themselves. I am not harassed. I have simply forgotten all about it.I have been four-year-old American already. And a fresh American is far better than the rotten old corpses.You’ve said in the past that you’d prefer assassination to a natural death. Do you anticipate assassination?Every day there are phone calls, letters, threats to assassinate. I don’t care a bit about them. And attempts to assassinate me have already been made in India. Twice I have been poisoned. Once a knife has been thrown at me.And I was just joking when I said that I would prefer assassination better. Ninety-nine percent people die on their beds. That’s a very common and ordinary way of dying. In fact, everyone should be afraid to go to sleep on the bed. That is the place where ninety-nine percent of humanity has died. You should pull your mattress on the floor, that is better.Since the commune appears to function both spiritually and financially around you, after you’re gone what will become of Rajneeshpuram and your followers?They are intelligent people. They will find ways to function. I am no one to decide their future. I will leave it open for their intelligence to function.Even now I don’t decide anything. I simply explain my position, my attitude. Then it is up to them to do whatsoever they want.The ultimate decision is their own. They cannot throw the responsibility on me.I’d like to know where you envision yourself and this commune ten years from now.I never think of the future. Ten year is too long. I don’t think even for ten minutes afterwards, what is going to happen.Future is simply nonexistent. This moment is enough for me. And I am enjoying it to its fullest.Do you travel much outside the commune aside from your drives?No. Even my drives are within the Rancho Rajneesh, our own land. I don’t go out.Between your collection - the commune’s collection - of Rolls Royces and its quite extensive bus system, your elegant clothes and the sannyasins’ simple red clothes, even your differing statements to your followers and the press from day to day, there seem to be so many stark contrasts here. I get the feeling that it’s intentional. Is that the case?I believe in the uniqueness of every individual. I am not a communist. I don’t possess anything. These robes are also possessed by the commune. It is their generosity, hospitality, that they provide me whatever they can do for a guest. I am not a member of the commune, I am not a sannyasin. They love me. And love knows no boundaries.But I don’t take anything into my possession. I am as unpossessed as I was born, just naked. Everything that I am using - my shoes, my hat, my watch - they all belong to the commune. And you should also know, they are all created by my own sannyasins.. Even my watch is created by my own sannyasins.And all the Rolls Royces.I use only one Rolls Royce for one and a half hour per day.They love me, they want to do something to me, and they know that my whole philosophy is not of poverty but of abundance. So they go on pouring as much as they can.Just today a new Rolls Royce limousine has come, and in the coming week five more will be coming. But they all belong to the commune. And whatever they want to do with them they can do.In fact, I had told to the press that I would like them to be distributed among sannyasins, but the trust that holds Rolls Royces is not willing to do that for two reasons. First, the commune has enough cars, more than needed.I always believe in abundance in everything. The commune has more buses, more than needed. It has more airplanes than it ever uses. So there is no point, according to the trustees, to give Rolls Royces to the commune. It will be heavy unnecessarily on the commune.Secondly, they think that because I have used them they have become sacred, and they don’t want those cars to be used by anyone else. They will remain as a memorial.Will you have anything to do with appointing or choosing someone to succeed you?No. Nobody succeeds me, because enlightenment is not something that you can somebody. It is not a post.The commune will choose their president, the commune will choose their vice-president. That is up to the commune. But I hold no post. I don’t have any power except my love and my trust in my people.Even if somebody misuses, takes advantage of my love, it does not matter to me. My love remains the same.There is no way to find another person to succeed me. Once they have lost me, they have lost me forever.When I was here last week I recall you saying during one of your addresses to the commune members that you purposefully chose Sheela and willingly allowed her to continue what you called her reign of terror in order to give your followers what you referred to as a taste of fascism. Were you serious or was this a joke?Serious.Does that mean, then, that generally you did know of some of the things that Sheela must be doing?No. I did not know anything that she was doing. One thing I knew, that she will do something which will give a taste to the commune of fascism. And it is good to have a taste of fascism so that you don’t get into the trap again.And it is better to give that experience while I am here.I stopped it before it could have become too much. And now my people will remain aware, and they will know how it happens, how it grows and how it destroys everybody’s freedom, individuality, integrity.I was absolutely serious when I said it.And yet you say you stopped it. My impression is that Sheela left without you knowing and on her own accord.I stopped it without her knowing. The moment I started speaking she was finished. Being here was of no more of any nourishment to her ego. Except leaving like a coward, she could not do anything else.I never said her to leave. In my whole life I have never said anybody to leave. I just create the situation that you have to leave.I started speaking and that was enough. She was finished. Her whole power was that I was silent, and in my name she could exploit my people, could manage anything she wanted them to do. Once I started speaking, no representative was needed, no mediator was needed. I was face to face with my people. She was absolutely useless.Unless she was able to become again the same old sannyasin as everybody else, this was the only way: to escape like a coward.And she will suffer. And she will repent.Whether you knew specifically or not, when you answered my original question that you did appoint her in order to give your followers a taste of fascism, had she succeeded in poisoning the water system of The Dalles as you allege she wanted to, or having killed more than the single individual that you allege she killed, would not part of that responsibility be on your shoulders?No, it is her responsibility because I have never told her to do these things. She could have been a fascist without doing these things. These are not necessary to be a fascist.And I have never given any details for her. She never asked me.It was a very general statement. A taste of fascism is good exercise for all those who are going to live longer than me. Once I am gone, if then somebody starts becoming fascist, it will be impossible for them to stop it. But now I have destroyed that possibility completely.Jeannie Senior,The OregonianYou said was that you hadn’t been invited to talk to the police yet and you advised your sannyasins not to talk to the police until you had talked to the police. And you set some conditions under which you wanted to talk to the police. You said you wanted to have the press present and have a video crew there and an audio crew there.Are you going to maintain that stand? The police don’t traditionally do this when they’re interviewing a witness. Are you asking for special treatment?First I had asked for no special treatment, just for an interview so that I can give them an overview what the situation is and they can work better to find out who is the criminal. They made the appointment and then at the last moment they canceled it.Then this went on happening second time again. It was only third time that I made it that, “There seems to be something fishy and you canceled the appointment only after asking somebody higher up. Then I would like it to be videotaped so that you don’t do any mischief, because now I cannot trust you. The videotape will not be released to the public. That we will give you in a written contract that the videotape will remain sealed till the case is over. But it will be a guarantee that you don’t misuse anything or change anything which I say.”I don’t think it was anything against law.And when they accepted that, that means certainly they were not thinking it as an special obligation. And then they canceled that too.Third time they canceled it. And then I told them that, “I will give you one time more, and if fourth time it is canceled then I am going to call a press conference and give the interview to the press conference.”So that’s what you did last night, you mean? You gave the interview to the press conference?So it is very simple. I am not asking them anything. In the press conference I said to them that now the things. They have deceived four times. It is enough one can take. There is a limit. Now I will give the interview only before the full press present.So you had an agreement with them that you would meet with them? You could have your crew videotape the interview?Yes. And that they had agreed.Things are at rather an impasse as far as your interview?Yes.The mass media have been full of allegations between you and Sheela. At present you’re embarked on a real war of words, you and Sheela. Who you think’s going to win.Only truth wins. It is never a question between me or anybody else. Only truth wins.If she has courage enough, she should come here. We can call the whole national media and she can discuss before the media with me. And that will expose the whole thing, where the truth is.Similarly, you seem to be involved in a war of words with the attorney general of Oregon. I wonder who you think’s going to win that one.The constitution of America is going to win. And it is in our favor. Attorney generals come and go. The constitution remains.One of the things that’s being said in the press is that this entire thing that’s happened since last Saturday night is a carefully orchestrated scheme that’s going to culminate in you also leaving Oregon. Do you want to comment on that?No, I am never going to leave unless they give me the green card.And then you’re going to Germany, right?Perhaps I may go for a world travel to meet my other sannyasins who are being corrupted by Sheela and meet the world media in different countries to make things put right. But I cannot leave without the green card.If America wants me to leave America, green card first.The Oregonian received information today that the police investigators who’ve been working here at the ranch for the last few days have been victims of bugging and wiretapping. Are you aware of that?Then that must be the immigration department who has been bugging and taping everything, every phone from Rajneeshpuram going out or coming in. But my people - we have shown them every place.Every wire has been taken out. Every bugging device has been given to them. Every machine which was taping phones has been delivered into their hands, and if they feel still it is going on, then they should look into it.It must be INS or perhaps attorney general.Perhaps they are worried that what is going on between the FBI and the police and between my commune.Because their intention is clear. The intention is to use this situation to destroy the commune.And Sheela is giving all those things in Europe without any foundation and without any evidence, and she is talking to the press again and again that, “I have immense information.” That means she is indicating to the attorney general and to the FBI that she is willing to be purchased, that she would like to be given immunity, then she can give all kind of information against the community.And that is a possibility because they are not concerned about the crimes that she has committed. Their concern is more how they can destroy this commune from Oregon. So if she can give them information - and certainly she can give them information because she has done everything so she knows everything. And if you give her immunity she can indicate to any innocent sannyasin who knows nothing about it. And if you are intend to destroy the commune, this is the simplest way.And politicians are so dirty-minded that they can do anything.For example, in second world war Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were enemies, but they became friends. They made a peace treaty which was amazing to everybody in the whole world, that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin becoming friends is a miracle. And then even a greater miracle was to happen: when Adolf Hitler attacked Soviet Union, Josef Stalin became friends to America and Britain, to Roosevelt and Churchill.America and Soviet Union has been enemies for decades: the only two permanent enemies in the whole world. But they became friends. Then the question of communism or capitalism did not matter. Only thing mattered was how to destroy Adolf Hitler.So Sheela’s continuous emphasis in every interview that she has so much information to give but she cannot give it is an indication to the politicians here in Oregon, to FBI, that, “If you give us immunity, I can deliver you all the information.”And certainly she can deliver all the information, because everything she has done or she has ordered to be done. And if she is immune then there is no problem. She can impose crimes upon innocent people without any difficulty.And who cares that one man died or three persons were being poisoned or Dalles system was poisoned? Who cares about these small things? The big thing is how to destroy this commune, which has become a pain in the neck of all the politicians.But it is not so easy.I challenge Sheela if she has any guts, then come here and face me.How would you characterize Sheela and the corporate leaders of Rajneeshpuram who left, and how would you characterize Hasya and the new corporate leaders at Rajneeshpuram? One word for each.Sheela and the people who have left is a criminal gang. And the people who have taken their place are very loving, compassionate human beings. And they are going to change the whole quality of the commune. Okay?Bill Graves,The Bend Bulletin Are you beginning to regret having invited the police in for this investigation?I had invited them. We have been cooperating with them. We have been giving them every information that was available to us, to any sannyasin. But they have been taking advantage of it.Rather than trying to find the criminals, they were trying to find few people in the commune who have committed crimes and to give them immunity and tell them that how many people they have to name for certain crimes.It was overheard by a sannyasin that FBI people were discussing that at least five hundred sannyasins need to be imprisoned. Now this is strange. We are cooperating, we are giving you information, we are going you.taking you to every spot which has been bugged, but they are not interested in the criminals who have escaped.The first step would have been to inform the German police, the Swiss police and the Interpol to prevent those twenty people from escaping, and bring them back here. They had enough solid proof.Just the bugging was so much that one of the FBI persons said to the sannyasin who was showing them around that, “I cannot believe. These people have surpassed Nixon. Their bugging is far more sophisticated.” And he said that for one bugging there is five years jail. And anybody who has done this work will need at least one thousand years jail.But rather than preventing those criminals, they were trying to do something else. Their strategy has been to take the cooperation to find the crimes and to find few people who had done little bits - according to the gang, according to their orders - and make them immune and force them to take names of innocent people, particularly of those without whom the commune will be completely crippled.If you take five hundred important people - doctors, engineers, electricians, drivers, the restaurant people - if you take five hundred people who are essential for the life of the commune, you will cripple it. You will destroy it.So how are you recommending your disciples respond to this?Now we are not going to support. I had asked them - in fact, they should have asked me first. They should have taken my interview first. They did not ask. That is strange, because I was the one to invite them here and they would not ask for my interview.Then I asked them that, “I want to give my interview.” Four times they gave the appointment, and four times they canceled it.Then yesterday I had to call a press conference. I told them that, “This is the last time.” Yesterday two o’clock was their appointment, and I said, “If you cancel it again, that means something is cooking, that you want to avoid me. Perhaps you are waiting for somebody who can indicate that I am the criminal. So I am going to call a press conference tonight.”And I called the press conference. I have explained to them all the crimes that Sheela and her group has committed here. And I have told them that, “Now onwards we will not be supportive. We will not cooperate. We will not be your hosts any more. You can pack your luggage and get out of this place.”What is your response to governor Vic Atiyeh’s criticism of your not cooperating today?I have not heard.He said that his patience was growing thin with your refusal to cooperate.His patience! He knows what patience means? For four days we have been cooperating and for four days they have been canceling my interview. My patience is ruined or his patience is ruined?He does not know the meaning of patience. Just by being a governor does not mean that he is understanding enough of psychology language.We have invited him for many times. He goes on speaking against us without coming here. Is he a coward or what?When we invite you and we want you to be acquainted with the commune, and then say whatever you want to say, we have no objection about it. If it is wrong we can confute it. But without coming here, saying things based on gossips will prove you simply an idiot.That’s what has happened in the case of attorney general. We had made few tents. They were not ordinary tents, they were winterized tents so we can use them in all the seasons. But they were not permanent structures. Permanent structures need permission. Tents don’t need.And because they were different from ordinary tents - as if there cannot be different kind of tents - he simply without coming here. We asked him to come and see. If he feels they are permanent structures, then it is up to his decision whatever he wants to do.He imposed a fine of $1.4 million. We went to the court, and I told my people that, “Take a tent there in the court. Put up the tent in the court. Within ten minutes the tent is ready. Ask the judge to see, and then within ten minutes unfold it. Put it in a bag. And ask the judge, ‘Can a permanent structure be constructed in ten minutes and folded back in ten minutes?”‘I told them that there is no need for any argument. Simply show it.And the judge laughed. And he simply said, “There is no case. These are tents.”And the attorney general is absolutely wrong in giving that kind of punishment. And that man seems to have no shame. Otherwise he would have jumped into the ocean and gone forever.The same is the situation of the governor. He should come here and he should know what patience is.For four years they have not given a single reason why my green card has not been given. Does it take four years to decide?Is there a danger that these statements that Sheela’s been making in the Stern magazine will cause any damage to your image within the Rajneeshee movement around the world?No, because I don’t care about my image. Never cared. I am not a politician who cares about his image, because my image does not depend on anybody’s voting.I don’t care at all about any image. My image is within me. Nobody can distort it.Sheela said that she was draining community resources to keep you supplied with jeweled watches and Rolls Royces. Did you ever tell Sheela that you would die if you did not get a $2.5 million diamond watch or that you would commit suicide if you did not get another Rolls Royce?She is simply going insane. In the first place, what do you think of this watch? How many million dollars it will be? This is the cheapest watch you can find anywhere in the world. It is made by my own sannyasins, and these are not diamonds. These are pure stones, authentic sincere stones. And it costs nothing.But it is invaluable. Even for one billion dollars I will not sell it. It is made with such love that it cannot be sold.And I am using mostly the watches that are made by my own sannyasins with stones, not diamonds. But what can I do if people don’t have the understanding and the eye to make the distinction between stones and diamonds? That is their fault. That is not my fault, that is not the fault of the stones. People should learn a little more about stones and about diamonds.And ask Sheela that: for four years I was silent, I was not going even out of my room. I was living in isolation. Why she continued to bring those million-dollar watches she is talking about? For four years continuously it was right. And when I started speaking it became wrong. Was it a kind of bribe that I should remain silent and should not speak?Who was bringing those watches? She was the one who was bringing those watches. And I don’t know how much they cost, and I don’t know from whose donation they have been purchased. I don’t possess them either. They are possessed by a trust. They are only given to me for use.I don’t use the watch more than five hours - two and half hours in the morning in the lecture, two and half hours in the evening in the interview.And do you think a certain simple law of diminishing returns.? If you get one Rolls Royce, you are immensely happy. I have ninety. What difference does it make to me that in the garage there are ninety-one? The number of that one will come in three months time only for one day for ninety minutes. What does it matter to me? For that I will commit suicide?I have never gone to the garage. I have never looked into the garage, how many cars are there, what kind of cars are there. And that too belongs to a trust.I had declared that all those cars should be given to the commune. They are basically commune property. I don’t own anything. For thirty years I have not owned a single cent. I have not touched even money for twenty years. I have been four years in America; I have not seen even how a dollar bill looks like. And I don’t have any hope of seeing it in this life. There is no reason.I had told the president of the trust that, “Distribute all those cars and distribute all those watches. I don’t need.” But they don’t want. And they are not my possessions. They say they are sacred because I have used them, and they will keep them as sacred memorial. They are not willing to give them.And they say already commune has more than enough cars, so what is the need? One hundred buses, four airplanes and five hundred cars - and nowhere to go.So neither they want to give the cars nor the commune is ready to receive them. They say, “Unnecessary burden. Why we should be burdened? Because Rolls Royces are just white elephants. Ninety white elephants, why they should be put? You take care, Your trust should take care. It is the trouble You have created.”So neither the commune is ready to take them nor they are ready to give it to them. And I am nobody. I am not even commune’s member nor I am the owner of the Rolls Royces. And do you think I would commit suicide for a car of which I am not going even a owner? And that too after ninety cars are there waiting for me. Ninety-one will not make any difference. Economics has the law.the law of diminishing returns. The more you have, the less meaning.It was Sheela, and there is her statement in many television shows in which she has told that, “We want three hundred sixty-five Rolls Royces for Osho.” So now she is simply swallowing her own saliva that she has spit.Tell her to be a little sane.You have said that what happens in this commune is really none of no concern to you, that you’re not a Rajneeshee. But in the last week and a half, you seem to have expressed a lot of concern about what’s going on here. I’m just wondering if you’re thinking about taking a more active role in this community or becoming a Rajneeshee.No. No. What I have said is, I have never been a Rajneeshee but in these three and half years when I was silent Sheela created this idea of sannyasins being Rajneeshee. So I have taken it back. I have told that not only I am not a Rajneeshee, nobody is a Rajneeshee, because that is again going into the same stupidity as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, communism.While I was in silence she has written a book: Rajneeshism. Now I don’t read. For five years I have not read anything. But I was going to tell my publisher that, “Look into that book and withdraw it from publication, because there is no Rajneeshism. This is all absurd.” That was her creation.About a month ago you said of Sheela, “I have been sharpening her like a sword. I told her to go out and cut as many heads as possible.” You were defending her then, and the abrasive way that she represented this movement to the outside world. Have you changed your position? And were you using her.?No, I have not changed anything. At that time, whatever she was doing was right. As far as the outside world was concerned she needed to be more assertive, and I was putting more and more emphasis that she should not be defensive in any way.A small commune cannot live, cannot survive, if it takes a defensive attitude. And truth is never defensive, it is always assertive.So it is not a question of defending Sheela. The same I will say to Hasya, that, “Be assertive.”You become defensive only when you are afraid and you are not certain whether what you are saying is right or wrong. When you are clear, then you are a sword. And the sword has to be so fine that it can cut as many heads as possible - I mean metaphorically. I don’t mean that you have to go and cut people’s heads. But intellectually you have to do it.I had been doing my whole life. I am not a defensive person. I never take the position of defense. That is only for cowards. My position is always of assertion, because I am absolutely certain of what I am saying. My whole being is in it.I’ve heard that you have called yourself a great con man. How Sheela was able to con you without your knowing.She has not conned me. She has conned herself. She has missed an opportunity that she may not get for many lives.What she was when she has come to me? Just a waitress in a hotel. I made her almost a queen, a celebrity. But it was my work. I will destroy it immediately.If I can make, I can unmake too. And you will see that within few months there will be no Sheela. She will be again in a hotel, a waitress. That’s all she is capable of.Did the Share-A -Home program and Sheela’s growing addiction to power have anything to do with your ending your period of silence? Was there any relationship between Sheela’s growing power and celebrity and your coming out of silence and beginning to speak again?No, it has nothing to do with that. My silence started in India. I came America in silence. And the Share-Home program was long before when I started speaking again.I started speaking again because my physician was poisoned twice, thrice. My caretaker was poisoned once. And then it became necessary for me that something inhuman is going on.It was my physician’s attempt of Sheela to kill him with a slow poisoning so that death appears almost like natural. But the third time she poisoned him was so clear that there is a witness who saw the woman, because it was in a meeting, in a discourse, morning discourse. Ten thousand sannyasins were there. And a woman sitting behind my physician simply pushed the needle into his body.There are eyewitnesses.He simply took over his robe and showed to many people, blood coming out and the point where the needle has been pushed in.He was taken to the hospital. The doctors said that this is certainly poison, but it is a poison which is not detectable.So we started looking. I asked our doctors to look into the poisonous literature: are there poisons which are not detectable? And they found that there is a category of poisons which are not detectable.And when Sheela left, in her room we have found literature on poisons. And the same poison that our doctors were suspecting was underlined. In the whole literature, that was the only place they were.that was underlined.And there were literature how to kill people, how to make bombs. Now what this literature has to do with Sheela? Poison, bombs, killing. And then we started looking into everything, and we found she had bugged the whole hotel. She has bugged my own room. She has bugged Hasya’s whole house - six rooms. She has bugged my caretaker’s room. She has bugged every place she was suspecting that perhaps someday somebody may say something against her.FBI people accepted themselves that the bugging devices that were used are immensely sophisticated in comparison to what Nixon had done.Was there an internal power struggle going on here prior to the day Sheela left?No, there was no struggle at all.Do you know anything about a faction that press reports have called the Beverly Hills money crowd here in the commune? They say that Hasya and John and David and Kavisha and Anuradha - the president of the commune - are part of a close-knit group that ran a mansion in Hollywood for the movement for a while. Is this a close-knit group that’s taken power?There is no struggle. There was no struggle before. But she was afraid of these people. She was afraid of all intelligent people. She got rid of all intelligent people before. The vice chancellor of the university left. The chancellor of the university left. Many therapists left. Anybody who had some intelligence better than hers was dangerous.That is the political working of the mind: never allow anybody who is more intelligent than you.I am reminded of Machiavelli. He has written the best treatise for politicians. And all the princes of Europe were his disciples. When they became kings, he asked everybody to make him their prime minister. But nobody was ready. He was surprised. He said, “You are my disciples.”They said, “That’s why we are refusing. You are too cunning. You are too intelligent. We cannot have you as our prime minister, because if you are prime minister we are gone. It won’t take much time for you to take over the kingdom.”So every politician tries. So she has finished. Many sannyasins had to go away. Now I am receiving telegrams, telephones, that, “We are coming back. We had left because of Sheela. Now she has left; we are coming back.”This group - Hasya and her group from Beverly Hills - just came few months before. And they had come here to make a film. Hasya and her husband had made one of the best films in AmericGodfather. She wanted to make a film on me and the movement and the ideology. So I said, “That’s perfectly good.”So she came with her group to write the script, to prepare the background. And because I allowed them, Sheela was afraid. The whole group was more intelligent than her. The whole group was more creative than her, more educated than her.She is not educated. She has no university degree.So she became very much afraid of the group. But there was no power struggle from the side of Hasya. They were simply working on the film.But their house was bugged and they were given every kind of harassment, humiliation, by all Sheela’s group. Whatever they could do. They wanted somehow that they should leave.It had happened before, too. Another group of my sannyasins who make films in Hollywood - both husband and wife are my sannyasins - they had come three years before. And I said, “It is perfectly okay. You make the film.”They prepared the script, they worked hard for months, and then Sheela came to me that, “This film will become a worldwide success, so we cannot just give them like that. They have to pay ten million dollars to the Foundation.”I said, “This is outrageous. Those two sannyasins are not rich. They certainly make films. They are comfortably rich, but they cannot pay ten millions in advance. You can ask, ‘Five percent in your profit will be Foundation’s.’ That is reasonable, in the profit. But before the film is made you ask ten millions. It is irrational.”But in spite of that she wrote to them that, “You will have to give ten million dollars in advance, otherwise you cannot make the film.” So those poor people had to drop the idea. They wrote a very sad letter to me that, “We were so excited in making it, but from where we can give ten million dollars in advance?”This time I told her that, “Don’t talk of advance at all. These people are our sannyasins and whatever profit will be out of the film will belong to the Foundation. So you don’t bother.”Because I favored them and made it clear in front of them, she became more afraid that now a group has come who can replace her any moment.There was no idea in anybody’s mind, but sometimes it happens what you fear of, just because of fear you manage to happen it.She escaped. Naturally, that was the best group to replace her. And they replaced her.How has power been diffused with this change? How are you going to assure that this doesn’t ever happen again?It cannot happen. For thirty years I have been speaking, there has been a commune. If I am there, available to people, nobody can exploit them.The situation was simple. Because I was not available and she was my sole representative. And she was using my name in everything, that, “This is from Osho.” And there was no way for sannyasins to know whether it is from me or not, because any information has to come through her and any information they get they will get from her.And she was not bringing all the information. Now I am becoming aware. So many things were happening. She was not bringing the information. And so many things that I have said, she has not informed the people about that.Is there a danger for a person in your position of getting in a cocoon, isolated from the world?No. I don’t have any power. I don’t hold any position. The commune has several corporations, so power is divided. Every corporation has its own work field*. I don’t take any active part.My only active part is to answer my sannyasins’ questions about their personal growth, about their problems, about the commune if they feel there is some difficulty.If I am available then there is no question. And this time I will do everything.For example, I am withdrawing the book, Rajneeshism. It is not my book. Sheela managed to compile it according to her ideas. She has taken my sentences from other books, but the idea and the whole pattern is like a catechism of a Catholic.I am withdrawing it.I have dropped the word Rajneeshee. Nobody is a Rajneeshee. There is no religion here. People are trying to experience themselves; this is a simple science, not religion - and absolutely individual. No question of collectivity.It is the collectivity which is dangerous.And soon I am going to withdraw red clothes so there will be no distinction between the sannyasins and the non-sannyasins. I am going to withdraw the mala.Before I leave my body I will withdraw every possibility that any kind of fascist thing can happen.So are you saying that this is not a religion?This is only an experiment in religiousness. And there is a total difference between two.A religion is a fixed creed. A religiousness is a quality. A religiousness does not make you Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, but it makes you a different human being. It gives you different qualities: of love, compassion, gratitude. It is a religiousness.But it is difficult to explain to bureaucracy. With INS it was so difficult to explain to them. Now, it is a very subtle point. To me, in existence there are no nouns, no pronouns - only verbs.When are you going to allow the sannyasins to stop wearing red and their malas, and why do they wear them in the first place?There was need. There was immense need in the first place to give them a certain identity, to give them certain courage, to give them certain challenge in the society so they become more integrated.Soon I will withdraw everything that can be destructive in my absence.Are you expecting to leave soon?No, not soon.The people who live in Rajneesh or Antelope have expressed a lot of interest in your spirit of cooperation or reconciliation. But they say that they need to see that town disincorporated, to believe you are sincere. How do you feel about that?No. Why it should be destroyed as a city? What I am doing, I am giving it back its old name: Antelope. I am withdrawing the police force from Rajneeshpuram which we have lent to Antelope. We are ready to vacate Antelope.The Antelope people should purchase their properties back or - the whole Oregon was showing so much love and was so much favorable to them - now this is the time to show it. Purchase the properties, and we are ready to vacate it. And then if you want to destroy the city, it is up to you. It is your city, we have nothing to do with it.Most people say there’s no way they can buy that two million dollars worth of housing you have there.If they cannot buy, then they can sell there. We can buy. Anyway, we are ready. This is cooperation.If they cannot buy, then they should sell. That they can do. Or they also, they cannot do. They want without paying anything the whole land and all the houses and we should vacate and give them as donation?Have you heard of any evidence that suggests that any of this wiretapping or these other crimes occurred in Antelope?No. Antelope has nothing to do with it.Do you believe you are the reincarnation of a mystic who lived seven hundred years ago?I don’t believe it. I know it.How do you know that?Anybody can know it. Just there are few processes to go through.I’ve heard that you were, as a boy, fascinated with death. Why did death hold so much charm for you?It should be, because it is the only certain thing in the whole life. Everything is uncertain, only death is certain. It should be the central focus of every intelligent person.My understanding is, it is death which has created all the religions. Otherwise there would have been no religion.Who do you go to for advice?I don’t need.Do you ever get together with some of your followers and just sit around and have some wine and talk?No. I don’t have time.How do you spend your days?I am completely so busy without business.Six o’clock I wake up. Then two hours in my swimming pool and bathroom, which I love and I have always loved. Then my breakfast, and I go to my morning discourse.Eleven I return and take my lunch and go to bed for two hours. At two o’clock I go for a drive into the hills. At four-thirty I go again to my bathroom and the swimming pool for two hours. Then I take my supper, and after that supper any interviews, which continue up to nine or nine-thirty.Then I have to see my secretary for any work concerning outside communes in the world or here: one hour or sometimes two hours.And at twelve I go to sleep again.It is a simple life and the same every day.Why did you stop reading in 1980 and how do you stay informed on world events? I’ve heard that you enjoy movies. Is that true?Once in a while, because I don’t read any more. Otherwise I was perhaps the most educated man in the whole world. My own personal library was one hundred fifty thousand volumes, of immense value, and I was reading continuously.But then I got my own truth and all those books started seeming rubbish. Slowly slowly they became meaningless. Once in a while one book may turn out to have some significance, but five years before I stopped it. It was too much.You read one hundred books and one book sometimes turns out to be of any meaning. And that too is not going to increase my consciousness, my being.So for five years I have not read anything - no newspaper, no radio, no television. Once in a while if my sannyasins see a film which they feel has something significant, then I see it. But very rarely.For example, Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, when it became a film then I saw it because I consider that book to be far more valuable than holy Bible. It is so immensely rich with insights.So it happens once in a while that they bring something if they feel that it may interest me. Then I see it. But rarely.I don’t have time, either. I cannot cut my bathroom time, I cannot cut my drive time, I cannot cut from anywhere. Everything is absolutely set up minute to minute, so it is very difficult. Even to see a film I have to see it in two, three days, because half hour here, half hour there, but.Do you ever feel like getting into your Rolls Royce and just cruising out across the countryside on your own?Yes. I have my own road.Have you ever thought about just leaving the commune altogether and just going down to California or somewhere.?No. Not California. Never. That is the last place I am going to. Hell I can go but not California.Who do you admire in this country?I don’t admire anybody in this country.Is there anybody in the world that you have great admiration for?I admired one man, J. Krishnamurti. One man I used to admire who is dead was P. D. Ouspensky, an Russian who was living in London, a mathematician. I admired another man, George Gurdjieff, who was a Caucasian living in France, died in ‘50.Other then these three men, there was one man from Babylon, Michel Naimy, whom I had admired because of his book, The Book of Mirdad, has been my the most loved book. He shows tremendous insight, which only a mystic is capable of.But very few people - only one is alive: J. Krishnamurti.I admire him but that does not mean that I agree with him. I criticize him as much as possible. He criticizes me as much as possible. So there is only one agreement between us, that we disagree. But I admire the man just the way he admires me.What does it mean to be enlightened? Do you lose some of your normal human emotions?You certainly lose many things. And you gain only one thing. It is a very losing business.You gain yourself, and everything else is lost: anger, greed, jealousy - all is lost. But it is not a loss because you come to realize the ultimate ecstasy beyond which there is nothing, only bliss.How is your health?Fine.I’ve heard a lot of your discourses, themes of individuality, finding your own path, finding God in nature, capitalism. And these are themes that are as American as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Henry Thoreau. And my question is, how did an Indian guru become so American, and does this explain why so many Americans have followed you?In the first place, I am not a guru. That is a dirty word. Because all gurus have been just exploiting people in the name of spirituality. I don’t belong to that gang.And I am not an Indian in the sense that I don’t believe in nationalities. I simply believe that the whole earth is one.So Walt Whitman I love as much as I love Rabindranath Tagore.It doesn’t matter that Rabindranath Tagore is Indian and Walt Whitman is American. Both have something which transcends these stupid things: American, Indian, Christian, Hindu. Both have great flights into the unknown and immense power to express that which is almost inexpressible.Walt Whitman is one of my loved ones. We have here a Walt Whitman Grove.We also have something in the name of Emerson, something in the name of Henry Thoreau, something in the name of Abraham Lincoln. Anybody who has contributed in any way to human progress, to human growth, I have immense respect for it. It does not matter what race, what religion, what country he belonged.In The Goose Is Out, your book, you say, “And to disappear into the whole is the only thing of any worth.”You are a man with a very big ego. I see your picture everywhere, around all your sannyasins’ neck. And you certainly haven’t disappeared. Probably most people in the United States know who you are. So how do you explain this apparent contradiction?There is no contradiction.You are right. I have a very big ego, as big as the whole universe. That’s how I have disappeared.Soon you will see my pictures on all the stars.How could one follow your teaching in any case and find his own path, and yet come here and live in a commune and walk this collective path? That again to me seems like a contradiction.There is no contradiction, because there is no collective path here. Everybody is doing his own thing.Yes, they are living together for the simple reason because they are all doing their own things and nobody is interfering with them. That is the point that joins them into a commune.In the outside world they can do their thing. Everybody is poking his nose, interfering in every way.Here nobody interferes into anybody’s life, nobody condemns you, nobody makes you holier than others. There is no comparison. Everybody simply accepts you as you are. It is your business what kind of person you want to be. It is nobody else’ business to give you advice.That is the only thing in the world outside. Everybody gives it and nobody takes it.Here nobody gives it. The question of taking does not arise.Do you believe that human consciousness survives death? Is there a soul?I don’t believe in anything. I know.It survives.Only the body dies, not your consciousness. But don’t take my word. Don’t believe in me. You have to experiment on your own.What role does meditation play in this movement?That is the basis of this whole movement, the essential of my whole way of life. And it simply means becoming a witness - of everything - on three layers. Becoming a witness of all the activities of your body. Walking, you should walk consciously.I can move this hand consciously. I can move this hand mechanically, without knowing. And you can see the difference between the two, when you move it mechanically and when you move it consciously.When you move it consciously there is no tension, there is a grace, a beauty, a joy.So every act of the body has to be witnessed.When you become very accustomed of witnessing your body and seeing it as separate, as if somebody else is walking on the road and you are just seeing, sitting on a hill, then the second step: start watching your mind.Look at the thoughts without any evaluation, without any judgment, as if you are not concerned: a traffic passing by and you are standing by the side of the road.And a miracle happens. As you become more and more clearly a witness, thoughts start disappearing. Ninety percent a witness, ten percent thoughts. Hundred percent a witness, zero thoughts. And that is the point when you can move to the third step: now witness your feelings, moods, which are more subtle.And when you become a witness of your moods - that is, your heart - the fourth step happens on its own accord. You don’t have to take it. These three steps you take it; fourth is the reward.When the third is complete, suddenly one day you find a quantum leap in your consciousness. Everything has disappeared; you are conscious only of consciousness. You are aware only of awareness.And there is absolute silence. But that silence is not empty. It is full of light and full of bliss and full of fragrance. And this is what I call enlightenment.Meditation is the way; enlightenment is the success, the achievement.Have any of your disciples become enlightened? Have they reached that step yet?Yes, many.I know that you developed dynamic meditation. I’m just curious if you’ve ever tried it?I have tried everything.How does your teachings compare with those of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Transcendental Meditation?That is neither transcendental nor meditation. It is just an ordinary chanting which has been done in all the religions down the ages. You use any word or any mantra and you chant it inside, and chant it fast, and fast, and faster - so fast that there is no gap for mind to function, so fast that it creates a state of auto-hypnosis.It is a concentration. You are chanting Ave Maria, Ave Maria, Ave Maria and you go on faster and faster. You are concentrated on one word. The mind has no space left for any other thought. And this Ave Maria continuously - and it does not matter what. You can chant your own name. The result will be the same. You will become in a certain state of deliberate sleep. That is what is hypnosis.It is pleasant. It is healthy. But it is not meditation. It is good. It does no harm. But it is just an exercise of the mind. You will wake up after twenty minutes, ten minutes, fresher, feeling better, healthier.So if you are doing it for these reasons, good. But it is not meditation.In Come Follow Me you say that Christ is the very principle of religion, in Christ all the aspirations of humanity are fulfilled. But last month you called Christ a crackpot. You seem to have changed your view of him.I think for that you come again, because then we can talk only on Jesus Christ and it will be good. It will be more justified. Then I can say exactly what I had said before and why, and what I am saying now and why.The Soviets have said, at least in one article I read, that you work for the CIA and the White House. And I’m just curious how your movement functions behind the iron curtain. And whether there’s anything going on in this commune or in other parts of the world to get the message into communist countries.Yes, there is my people and they are being harassed, and CBI thinks that I am functioning with the Russian KGB. And KGB thinks I am functioning according to CBI. That is great!I would love to get from both something, but nobody is giving anything - except trouble.They are torturing my people there. Twenty people they have found up to now only, but they are interrogating, harassing. They have taken their books, their tapes, their videos. And they are harassing them to tell them about other people: who are the other people, where they are. But they are not saying anything.But there are many people.This is in the.Is this in the Soviet Union?In the Soviet Union there are people. In every communist country there are people. In East Germany there are many sannyasins. Even they wanted to make a commune. I had to stop them. I said, “It is becoming difficult even in democratic America. You don’t create unnecessary trouble for sannyasins. Just remain underground.”How many sannyasins do you have in the world now?Near about one million.Is the movement growing?It is growing. Certainly.You have said in the past that you would like to build a city of one hundred thousand sannyasins here.Certainly. I would like and I can.Do you believe the state will ever allow you to do that?Still I have the idea. Once I have finished with this litigation, the city is going to grow. This land is three times of New York. There is no problem. We can create enough water reservoirs, we can create enough food, we can make all the hills lush green. We can make it such a beautiful city that Oregon will be proud of it.But those fools are trying to stop everything. But fools are fools. Nothing can be done about it.So you’re confident that this city will endure all of this and flourish?It is going to.Was it your decision to come to the United States in the first place back in 1981?No. I was not going to stay here. But my health improved and now my people don’t want my health to be destroyed again back in India. They don’t want me to go.And moreover, now it has become a challenge. If they had given me green card early, in the very beginning, perhaps I would have gone. But now it is difficult.Is there room in this community for non-sannyasins or others from the outside to live or invest here?Yes. Soon we will create possibilities. But they are preventing everything. They don’t allow us to sell the land. We wanted to make plots, create facilities to sell those lands. But they don’t allow anything because the city is illegal. So we cannot do anything unless we are legal.We would like, because there are so many sympathizers, so many lovers, so many friends, who are not sannyasins but who would like and want to live here. And I would like all of them to be here. It looks so monotonous, just sannyasins. And my people are fed up with just sannyasins. They want new women, new men. Whosoever has courage can come.Have you any interest in dialogue with other religious leaders?No.In The Goose Is Out you write, quote, “Remember the fundamental law of all revolution. When the revolution comes, things will be different - not better, just different.” If you look at what’s happened here in this community in the last week as a revolution, are things better or different?They are better.They’re better. Why?Because this was not a revolution. This was evolution. And evolution always makes things better. Revolution only changes things, never makes them better.Isn’t the wisdom you express essentially that that western civilization has sort of sprung from: that of Socrates, his basic dictum, “know yourself” or “know thyself”? Isn’t that.?Yes, certainly. I agree with Socrates about that. Okay?Thank you.Great. I had to agree with Socrates.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Scott Miller, NBC, Channel 8, Portland, Oregon; Tom Paulu, Longview, Daily News, Seattle, Washington, USA; Scott Miller, NBC, Channel 8, PortlandThings you’ve been saying have meant a lot of changes for your sannyasins. Specifically: wear any color you like, don’t wear your mala if you don’t want to. You got any other changes in mind for your sannyasins?I don’t know.Nothing right at the moment?Anything is possible.Nothing you’d like to share with us right now, though?No.Why did you choose this moment? Why did you choose this moment when it would seem that you would need something to bind everybody together - like clothing and malas - to say, “Don’t worry about that any more, you don’t have to do it”?This was the right moment to do it. I want my people to be absolutely free individuals. I don’t want them to be Rajneeshees. They have to be themselves.While I was in silence, Sheela has compiled a book, The Book of Rajneeshism, which I am going to tell them to make a good bonfire. Then they burn it, they will invite you all, because with that book we are burning the whole idea of “ism”. I don’t want my people to be like any other ideology - communism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism. That was my whole standpoint from the very beginning. I want them to be on their own, individuals - free. no holy scripture for them, no system of beliefs for them, no god for them to pray, no messiah or savior for them to surrender to - because all these things have destroyed humanity in the past.But what about all the rest of your books? You’ve got lots of them.Those books are simply books, not holy books.How are they different?They are different. Holy books pretend some speciality; they are from God. Holy books are lies. They are just books as we are, just human beings. I am not a savior or a prophet or a messenger of God or the only begotten son of God; I am as human as you are. My books are simply books as other books; no speciality is claimed for them. But Sheela had created a book which is just her own creation. While I was in isolation she compiled it from here and there from my books; added something of her own, deleted something. And she was trying to create a religion - and this is not a religion in that sense. It is simply a way of life. A kind of religiousness is there, but only as a quality. you cannot label it, you cannot name it.So I am going to destroy every possibility that can again in my absence bring the same type of fascism into my peoples’ minds.Are you planning on going anywhere soon?No, I am not going anywhere - but I can die any day. About that there is no way to say.You said you don’t want your disciples to be Rajneeshees. What would you like us to call them?No need.you just call them by their name.Sometimes we need to refer to them as a group of people that live here?So it is just the Rajneeshpuram commune.Nothing shorter than that?No.There certainly has been turmoil and some confusion and some chaos in this community, as you would expect given some of the things that these people have had to digest in the last two weeks. Is that what you had in mind?Chaos is always good. Order is always dead. Out of chaos stars are born; out of order, only Adolf Hitlers.So I don’t feel any problem with chaos. But when there is everything in order, then it becomes a concentration camp.Chaos has a beauty. Freedom is just another name of chaos.Do you think there’s too much chaos, though, that the buses won’t run on time, the crops won’t get harvested?No. There will not be. My people are intelligent enough to live in chaos and live rejoicingly and do everything that is needed, but not to surrender to any fascist regime.Some of your sannyasins have told me here they have really been going through some anguish lately. How do you feel about that? Some of them have been going through enough anguish to leave this place.That’s natural. That’s absolutely natural. To rejoice in chaos one needs guts. Very few people have that much courage. To enjoy freedom, very few people are ready. That’s why a slavery exists in different names around the world.One thing Hasya was saying today when we were talking to her is that another reason for telling people to wear what you want around your neck and on your back and everything else, is so you can blend into society better.That’s perfectly right. I would like my people to drop all kinds of separation from the society.Would you like to see them go out into society more than they have, perhaps?No, only when they need to go out. But there is no need to create unnecessary divisions. There are enough divisions in the world. Why add one more?So I am going to destroy everything that divides man from man. And I want them to be just human beings, purely available to all kinds of societies. And wherever they go they can spread the fragrance that they have attained.This will open doors for many people to come into the commune, to become sannyasins. There have been thousands of people who wanted to become sannyasins; just one fear, that they will lose their job if they go in red and wearing a mala; they may lose their wife, they may lose their parents - and other human concerns.I have one million sannyasins, and perhaps five times more people would have been sannyasins. Now I am opening doors for the others who have up to now been only sympathizers.How come now? Why did you have people start wearing red in the first place?It was needed in the beginning. It has served its purpose well; it became a world movement, unique in itself. There was no comparison with this movement.Now we have made the mark, there is no need to carry it any more. Unnecessary.You figure you’ve got a million sannyasins around the world now?One million sannyasins are there.You expect most people to stop wearing red?I don’t expect; only few, not most. Mostly nobody goes out. And I have left it to them. It is their decision. If they want to go in red, that is their freedom. Who I am to decide for them?Do you need more sannyasins now?I don’t care about numbers, but there are going to be more.Is that good or bad as far as you’re concerned, having more sannyasins?It is perfectly good. I would like the whole world.But you don’t care about numbers?I don’t care at all, because I am not a politician. Politicians care about numbers. It is politics of numbers: how many numbers you have, that makes you that much powerful.Does it have anything to do with money - the more sannyasins you have, the more wealth your.We have enough wealth. And certainly more sannyasins will bring more wealth, but we already have more than we need.And I am not against wealth. I am not a worshiper of poverty. I hate it.The major bank that the various organizations deal with here cut you off, so to speak. You can’t have visa cards used here any more or there’s a good chance you won’t for a short time, at any rate at the First Interstate Bank. And your checking account may be canceled. What’s your reaction to that? If you’re so wealthy.It is not any concern of me. I have not even heard about it. It is you who are saying to me, so I don’t know anything about it.My people are enough intelligent, they will manage it. And not only one bank, many banks are asking to serve the commune. So if one bank cuts, they are cutting their own neck.How would you feel about starting your own bank here?That is possible.I’ve heard the idea brought up.Yes? Thank you!Anything new as far as you talking to the FBI? If there’s any hope that you will have a chat with them or another law enforcement body. One of the state police people that I talked to, who perceived to be perfectly honest, tolerant and friendly during this investigation, has said that he’s tried ten times to talk to you, not about crimes but just to try and get around some of the misunderstandings, and he hasn’t been able to do it yet.No.Any chance you’ll talk to him or the FBI?Just today, not ten times. Just one time.Will you talk to him?No. I said no, because what he wanted to talk, I said, “I can talk it in the morning discourse. You just write the question.”And he is every day present there. He is a nice man. Unfortunately, why he entered into the police, that I don’t understand. He does not belong there. He is not a policeman, he is a human being.Don’t you think it might ease some of the tension if you chatted with him?I have told him.because he simply wanted to inquire about my well-being that there is no danger to my life, which I’m not concerned with at all. With the crimes that have been committed. And he did not want to talk about them.I said, “These things can be talked in the morning discourse. These don’t need special interview.”You spoke about hijacking and about demonstrations at embassies and.I took it with a grain of salt, to be perfectly honest. But other people didn’t. How do we know when to take you seriously. [drowned out by a roar of laughter]There is no need to take me seriously at all. And I am amazed that why Americans lack the sense of humor so much? It is such a great quality. It is missing in Americans. They are too serious. I had never expected them to be too serious. Such a young country and too serious. They should be more sensitive towards humor. It is the quality of youth, quality of life. Only dead people cannot laugh, and only in graveyards no jokes are exchanged.Some people might not take such things as hijacking with a sense of humor I think.They will have to take, because seeing me anybody can understand that I am not going to hijack. I cannot even carry my cross on my shoulders. I am not a Christian. I don’t carry anything, have not carried anything for years. You will have to look at my hands.One of my friends from Russia came to see me, and when he touched my hand he said, “You should never come to Russia.” I said, “Why?” He said, “If you shook hands with anybody, they will think you are a bourgeois. You have never done anything; your hand is so soft!” And in Russia it is a condemnation to be a bourgeois.So I am not going to hijack anything. Neither I am going to protest against American embassies.I would have a lot of trouble seeing you out there with a picket sign.I just wanted to emphasize the fact that whatever FBI, state government, are trying is against American constitution and its values. Their effort is to protect the criminals, give them immunity, and charge innocent people. The whole idea is how to destroy the commune. That we are not going to allow. I have my ways how to stop it.Like what?The whole world, the whole world’s intelligentsia, will be against it. All the intelligent people in media will be against it. America will lose its credibility. And I don’t think they will be able to risk so much just to destroy a small commune in this desert which is harmless, which has not done any harm to anybody.And we are so happy that few people who could have been harmful have left.Does it bother you that this community still is, at least in many ways, cooperating with the investigators, even though you said you weren’t and you didn’t want them to?Because my whole teaching is that everybody has to decide for himself. I may say it; that I am not going to cooperate, and I may tell my people not to cooperate; still, they are fee individuals. My advice is not an order, and they will not be for that punished, condemned, expelled. No, my love and respect will remain the same. If they decide to cooperate, it is perfectly good.You talk about if you ever get your green card, taking a trip. What country would you most like to visit?Germany, in direct [inaudible]Germany? How come?Because they are waiting for me. The German politicians are so much afraid that - I am not in Germany - but continuously in the parliament they are discussing against me. I am not in Germany, I have never put even a foot on German land - and they have already started cases against me in the courts. That means they are really interested.Thank you very much, Osho.Tom Paulu,Longview Daily News, Seattle, WashingtonYou’ve indicated that you want to improve your relations with people outside the commune in Oregon and in the Northwest. Can you give us some examples of things you might do to do that?For example, I have advised my people to change the name City of Rajneesh back to Antelope, because that was an ugly step, unnecessarily hurting people’s minds and creating hostility.I have offered to the people of Antelope and their sympathizers in Oregon to purchase all the properties that we have purchased from them at the same price. Now, prices are almost four times more, and we have developed those properties, renovated the houses, but we would like to give them at the same price as we had purchased, just as a gesture of friendship.And we will vacate Antelope completely. They can have their city, they can have their city council, their mayor. We have enough land and enough houses, we don’t need to bother.Are you saying that in itself can be enough of a gesture to really change your image with people throughout Oregon?I am not interested in changing my image. I am interested that as far as we are concerned, we are not creating any hostility. Whether they change their mind or not, that is their problem.I have told to my people that they can use all colors, no need to use only red, so that they can mix with people more easily and the separation which their clothes create is no more there.Do you think some people might perceive that as a threat? They’d rather be able to say, “Well, there goes a Rajneeshee - look out!”Whatever they think, that is their problem. What is our intention, we are making it clear.We are ready to withdraw all the cases against the government, the governor and attorney general if they are ready to withdraw their cases against us. Our cases are secondary. First they have started, so it will be simply gentlemanly: first they move their cases and immediately will move our cases against them.And there is no need of any hostility. We have been telling them continuously that, “You can send your experts here. If we are misusing the land in any way, you tell us how to use it rightly and we will use it rightly.”In fact, for fifty years the land was not used at all and nobody was interested in it. It was for sale for fifty years and nobody purchased it because nobody thought that it can produce anything. It was simply a desert.We tried hard to make it an oasis, and now we are self-sufficient. Five thousand people’s food, vegetables, fruits, milk products - everything we are producing. And this they call misuse of the land.They can come and they can see what misuse it is. If this is misuse, then we would like to learn what is use. And we are open.All the ranches neighboring our ranch are poor, dead. In fact, they should tell those ranchers to come here and learn how to transform a desert into an oasis. On the contrary, they are just harassing us.Their land-use laws seem to be more important to them than real land use. It seems for them man is made for laws, and laws are not made for man.You commented that there’s a possibility you would patch things up with Sheela. A few days ago there was an interview in the German magazine Stern in which she was quoted as saying, “The hell with Osho.” Do you still do you still think that you could repair your relationship with her?No, there is no need. I can go to hell. I don’t see any harm in it. In fact, hell is full of the best people of the world. Only heaven is dull.If she had said, “Heaven with Osho,” then I would have objected because whom do you expect to meet in heaven? You cannot meet Byron, Shelley, Vincent Van Gogh, Picasso, Dostoyevsky, Walt Whitman. All these people you will meet in hell. And I love good company! So she was perfectly right. There is no problem.Are you taking more authority yourself in.?No. I have never had any authority, I don’t have any and I will never have any. My love is enough.Well, your love wasn’t enough in Sheela’s case to prevent her from trying to poison you.It was enough in that case too. Just because I was silent and in isolation.And whatever she did, I still feel that she was not intentionally criminal. The politicians of Oregon forced her, and when you have to deal with politicians you have to learn their language, and you have to deal accordingly. So she started becoming political, cunning, lying. She was not in my contact; she was in contact with the politicians, with the legal experts, with the courts continuously. All these people corrupted her. And when they were doing everything illegally, she started doing illegal things herself.There is a certain synchronicity. If you deal with criminals, sooner or later you will become a criminal.What’s to prevent her successors from eventually having the same problems, assuming that all these legal problems.And certainly there are a lot of police here today, and politicians making statements.First, because I am available now. I was not available in those three and a half years. In my presence nothing can go wrong. And I have suggested to my people to chose a totally different kind of group.For example, Sheela was uneducated - just a waitress in a hotel, must have suffered from inferiority complex. Was raped at the age of sixteen, became pregnant. In India abortion was illegal at that time, so she had to suffer an illegal abortion. All that made her mind crippled, and in some way against humanity. The man who raped her she used to trust just like her father; and since then she has never been able to forgive any man.Now I have chosen a totally different kind of group - well educated, coming from rich families, having no inferiority complex, very creative. Hasya with her husband created the best, one of the best films: “The Godfather.”And all the people that I have chosen now are mostly American, for the simple reason to make a bridge with Americans. Sheela’s whole group was non-American.Did you feel when all these revelations came out a few weeks ago that there was some lessening in the support you were getting from the sannyasins, that they felt let down?No, there is no question. There is no question. In fact I will be supported more, because every day messages are coming from sannyasin whom Sheela had driven out of the commune just because they were more competent, more intelligent, and she was afraid. She was continuously afraid that somebody who is more competent will take her place. So she drove them out. They all will be coming back: the vice chancellor of the university, the chancellor the university, many psychologists. All simply left because she was humiliating them.Now, those people are highly educated. Somebody has PhD, somebody has double PhDs, somebody has a DLitt. Those people cannot be humiliated by a waitress of a hotel who knows nothing.I had to teach her everything, even what to say on the television, what to say in an interview. I had to teach her everything; still it never came right.She was certainly much more.She could be very hostile on television, which is not your style at all.Yes, she was hostile. She misunderstood - I told her to be assertive, but to be assertive does not mean to be hostile. You can be very loving and you can be still assertive.So there is no possibility that the new group will do the same. Almost impossible.And I am now available and will remain available till I am alive.Do you think the group can hold together after that?I don’t even think about it. It depends on each individual. If they want to be together, good. If they want to disperse, then they can have a good celebration and say good-bye.There’s some speculation that maybe you’re going to go some place else when you can, because some people draw a connection between what’s happened here recently and what happened in India before you came here.No, I am not going anywhere, particularly unless my green card is given to me. If America wants me to go out and visit other countries and other communes and leave them for few days to rest, they should issue the green card. And if they don’t want that, then I am not going anywhere.Concerning your decision to tell people they could choose whether or not to wear red: is there any particular reason why that came today? Had you been thinking about it for a while? Did it come to you in a sudden flash?No. About me you have to understand one thing: I don’t think at all. Everything is spontaneous. I was not even aware that this will come this morning. It came. I was surprised as you, as others were surprised.Because some people on the outside might see this as a response, some image.What other people think, I never bother about them at all, because there are four billion people on the earth. And I am a poor ordinary man. Thinking about four billion people, what they are thinking about me, will be simply too much of a torture. So I simply don’t think at all; I go on doing whatsoever comes to me. I don’t think about the consequence. When the consequence comes, then I will face it. And I keep tomorrow always open.And I am not a very consistent man. Tomorrow I may change. So those who have purchased clothes other than that may be at a loss. Yes! I am not saying.yes. So tomorrow morning, who knows?

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Chicago Sunday Times; Jim Gordon, The Atlantic Monthly Magazine and the Washington PostOsho, I wonder whether you have considered the events of the last few weeks in light of the biblical story of the serpent in the garden - do you believe that a serpent came into your garden, and might it have the same results?Perhaps you do not know my interpretation of the story. God is the criminal in the story. In the first place, to prohibit Adam and Eve from eating the trees of knowledge and the tree of eternal life. He provoked the desire in them. This is simple psychology. Otherwise in that garden of Eden there must have been millions of trees - Adam and Eve would not have found even up to now - which is the tree of knowledge and which is the tree of eternal life. Indicating the trees, prohibiting the children, is simply giving them a challenge. And nobody who has any integrity is going to obey such a thing. More emphatically, when the order is absolutely ugly and against humanity, what is the fear if Adam and Eve become wise, if they attain to eternal life? The God must be jealous, because then they will be exactly of the same status as himself - and he does not want to do that. He wants them to remain naked animals.So according to me, the serpent is the first revolutionary and the first who brought humanity into existence. The whole progress, evolution, all science, all knowledge, everything is indebted to serpent, not to God.My question meant to get at the temptation to power that Adam and Eve were presented with.It was not a question of temptation for power. To be wise never makes anybody tempted towards power. Only idiots are tempted towards power. The wise simply laugh at the whole race that goes on for power, and somebody who has tasted the fruit of eternal life, what more is there to gain by power? The serpent was not tempting them for power; the serpent was simply telling them the truth - that God is afraid, he does not want anybody equal to himself. He remains to be in power.So to me the story has a totally different meaning: the serpent should be worshipped in every church, every synagogue, and God should be put behind the bars in every prison. He was against all that has happened, because of the serpent. The serpent in the story is nobody but devil himself, taking the form of a serpent.I want to emphasize the fact, because devil and divine come from the same Sanskrit root; they both mean God. Looking into this light, whom you are thinking as God must be something very ungodly, and whom you are thinking as devil is certainly divine. We need more serpents and less gods.So now you ask me - this is my interpretation of the story.So your position is that the temptations to power will not or have not corrupted and undermined your movement as they historically have damaged other movements?Every mind carries in the unconscious the lust for power. Unless you become totally conscious, awakened, you are bound to have in the darkness of your mind, the lust for power. All that is needed to bring it up is an opportunity.I was in silence, in isolation - that became the opportunity for Sheela and her group to exploit the commune. I was not at all connected with the world for three and half years - no newspaper, no television, no radio - and I have told everybody not to bring me any information; I want to be completely silent. Only Sheela was given the duty, if commune needs something urgent that she cannot decide, she can come and ask me. So what she was doing: anything that was non-essential, she was asking me, and anything that was essential, she was deciding herself. She was informing me only nice things that she is doing and she was keeping me in dark about every criminal act that was going on. But there is a limit to everything.Finally she became afraid that sooner or later I will come to know about it. So she tried to kill three persons who were also capable of approaching me - my physician, my dentist, my caretaker - that these three people are dangerous. They can inform me about things which she is hiding. And she tried to poison my caretaker, my physician. My physician she tried three times and just because he is a physician, he immediately became aware that something poisonous has been given to him, either in tea or in coffee, and then finally, I was made aware of it.The moment I knew that this is happening, it was certain, then many more things must be happening. These things are never isolated. If you need to kill three people, particularly those who are close to me, that means there is much which you want to hide from me. I started speaking.Could you tell us what moment was that? Describe the moment when you first became aware of Sheela’s activities.About dates and days I am absolutely useless. To me time simply does not exist. I use the watch only when I am giving an interview or giving a discourse in the morning, just so that I don’t waste your time or other peoples’ time. Without the watch I will not know how many hours have passed or how many days. I don’t have any idea of days, I don’t know what date today is, what month. I live in a timeless state. And I don’t need to know about, but it must have been something - seven, eight months before, when I became aware that it is time that I will have to come out of silence and start speaking again so that I am available to the commune and people can open their mouth.As I started speaking, she was the only one who was miserable. The whole commune was dancing and happy that I am again speaking, because they were thinking perhaps I am not going to speak again ever. She was trying hard convincing me, “Don’t speak, because it may destroy your health again. Somehow you have recovered.” I said, “What I will do with the health? Let it be destroyed.” But now I see, something is happening that I had to be in the open.The moment I started speaking she started traveling around the world into other communes. Mostly she was in Europe or in Australia or in Singapore or in India or in Japan, she will come for one or two day, and then she will go again. And the whole reason was: she did not want to face me and slowly, slowly, people started coming and telling what things had been happening.That a man has been killed, that the people who has been brought here in the name of Share-a-Home program were not really brought for Share-a-Home program, but for taking over of the Wasco county. And they were kept completely drugged. Gallons of drugs were imported from outside. They were not purchased from America, because then there will be a suspicion - for what gallons of drugs are needed? And all those poor people were kept drugged, so that whatever is told to them, they will do.One man was drugged, accidentally - perhaps a bigger dose than he needed - and he died on the spot. They simply threw his body out of Rancho Rajneesh. It is so inhuman.Then I became aware that they are taping every phone that comes to the Ranch or goes out from the Ranch - all phone calls are being taped. This is against human rights. It is interfering into peoples’ privacy.Then I became aware that not only they are taping; they have bugged, not.the whole hotel, so nobody who is staying in the hotel - officers were coming, journalists were coming and they were all aware what they are talking, what they are thinking.My own room was bugged. The same fear: that anybody out of the three persons may say something to me - they will know it immediately. My caretaker’s room was bugged. President Hasya’s whole house was bugged, because she was most afraid of Hasya. Because I was in silence, most of the intelligent and more educated people she simply by and by forced them to leave the commune, harassed them. The chancellor of the university escaped, the vice-chancellor of the university escaped, psychologists, psychotherapists, doctors - anybody who had some sense of dignity - simply escaped.So she has made it absolutely clear that people, only who are subordinate to her, totally surrendered to her - in my name - can remain here. These people all who have left, are now calling that they want to come back, because they have always loved me and they have not left the commune because their love for me has changed, but it became impossible to keep oneself free, individual, to save one’s self-respect.Just yesterday I became aware that the mayor of the Rajneeshpuram was punished by Sheela because he will not do something that she wanted him to do which was criminal. So he refused and he was punished. Now, to punish a mayor of the city, to dig trenches for many days - now anybody who has any self-respect will feel like leaving. He left. He has informed from California that, “I would like to come back. It was Sheela who forced me. There is a limit of patience.”Hasya came very late, and she came with a project. She and her husband have made one of the best movies - Godfather. She wanted to make a movie on the commune, on my movement, on my thoughts, so naturally I allowed her to see me. And I told her that she is absolutely welcome; she can come with her crew and be here. Because I have allowed her, Sheela could not do anything and she became aware of her intelligence, creativity; she saw certainly that she is going to be her rival. When her all crimes are exposed - and the moment all her crimes were slowly being exposed, she escaped from here with twenty criminals who were part of the gang. She has placed all her people on all the power posts in the commune. So they are all hiding in the Black Forest in Germany.This was simply an opportunity - it would have happened to anybody. And particularly to a woman, because women have not tasted power for millions of years. They are having really repressed desire to have power.Secondly, she was just an uneducated person - a waitress in a restaurant. Lower a person is, more is his feeling of inferiority complex, and the greater is the problem somehow, to prove to oneself and to others that, “I am not inferior. That I am superior - superior than everybody.”Jim Gordon,The Atlantic Monthly Magazine, and the Washington PostI’ve been waiting many years to sit here.I have also been waiting. It is never one-sided.I first saw your picture about twelve years ago when Shyam Singh was wearing a mala around his neck. I’ve been knowing about you for all those years and doing meditations.Good!Reading books. And I’ve been in Pune.And you’ve touched me a great deal over the years in many ways.That I can see.I’m here tonight as a journalist.Don’t be bothered about journalist. Just be a friend. Journalism is something.you can take care of it. It is far below than friendship and love and intimacy. You can explore more easily as a human being.than as a journalist. Journalism is not yet risen to the status of an art, because it has to feed the masses, it has to be sensational. It cannot be truthful, it cannot make good the news. It has to make everything in some way bad.That badness or that negativity has also been in my mind. It’s not even bad - there are doubts that I’ve had.Doubt is not bad. Negativity is a totally different thing. Negativity means you have already taken a position - against. Doubt means you don’t have any position; you are ready to inquire, with open mind. Doubt is the best point form where to begin. Doubt simply means a quest, a question; negativity means you have already a prejudice, you are bigoted. You have already decided. Now all that you have to do is somehow to prove your prejudice right, so you can choose from whatever I say and prove your prejudice right.Doubt is immensely spiritual. Negativity is something sick. So I love doubt.I have a lot of doubts to bring up.That’s perfectly good! You start!When I was in Pune, there were young girls, who in a kind of group mind.There was like of a cheerleader saying to them, “Go get sterilized.” and that made me very sad. I’m not talking about thirty-five year old women, but young, young people - sixteen, eighteen years old - some of whom later decided, whom I saw, because I’m a doctor also, who wanted to have babies.I felt like at times there was a group mind at work, even there, in Pune, and there was a pressure on people, and I wondered why you didn’t stop it.No. I was in favor of it, and I am still in favor of it, because the world is already overpopulated. And only an inhuman being, who has no respect for children, can give birth to a child, for two reasons: he will be giving his child this world, which is in a mess, which can end up in a, in a third world war any moment and you want your child to be burned into nuclear weapons - one thing; secondly, the world is so much overpopulated that in Ethiopia thousands of people have died out of starvation - one hundred person per day for almost the whole year - and the same is the situation in other third world countries.In India, fifty percent of people are undernourished. Even in America, which is the richest country in the world, thirty million people are undernourished. Do you want your child to be a pauper, a beggar? And that is what is going to happen, because you are not the only one who wants the child. Just in India, after the British left India, it has doubled its population - from four-hundred-million, now it is eight-hundred-million - Pakistan not included, Bangladesh not included. In forty-four-hundred million they were included. If you include those two also, it has passed one thousand million already.The country is dying and it is not only a question of people starving; when they are not nourished well, first their brain dies - their intelligence stops growing, they become retarded. Because intelligence is a luxury: a man can live without it, cannot live without the heart, cannot live without the blood, but can live without the brain - there is no problem.So when it is a question of under-nourishment, the first victim is the brain. Would you like your child to live a life without a brain, without able to think, without becoming conscious of beauty, music, literature, of all that is valuable, all that for thousands of years we have created. It is not for the poor man. The poor man has not the intelligence to understand Mozart or Picasso or Bertrand Russell. It is impossible.Fourthly, if the third world war does not happen, then man - because of the lunatic influence of all the religions - has created a disease, AIDS. In fact now politicians can relax: there is no need to go on piling up nuclear weapons - AIDS can kill the whole humanity without any difficulty. And there seems to be no way to prevent it. There is no cure for it.Would you like your child to be born in this world? I am still against my sannyasins having children. If you want children, adopt. Why be so fixated that it has to be your semen. Adopt! Why be so fixated that it has to be your semen? And can you recognize your semen? If ten samples are placed before you - you cannot - so what is the point? If you cannot recognize your child in its beginning, what difference does it make? It is better to adopt a child - there are so many orphans in the world.I am still for absolute birth control, at least for twenty years, so that the population decreases. We can live happily on the earth only if we can decrease the population to one-fourth of what it is today, then there is no need of any communism to create a classless society. We can create a super-capitalist world, and yet classless. We can have abundance of everything so there is no point of hoarding it. People hoard things only when there is scarcity. Now money, wealth, everything is so scarce, that people hoard it.In Russia, communism has failed. It is enough proof that the whole philosophy is absurd. They have succeeded only distributing poverty. They have distributed equally, but they have made the whole country poor. I would not like the world to be equally poor; I would like people to be abundantly rich so that there is nobody poor. Still I don’t want that anybody should force them to be equal, because that is against human freedom and that is against human rights.Create abundant of wealth, keep the population in control - there will be nobody who is poor, all his needs will be fulfilled, and those who are more creative, more intelligent, and can create more wealth, of course, they should create more wealth. So there is no need for equality. Richness is needed. Equality is unpsychological.But up to now richness has not brought equality.It has not been, because of these stupid religions who have been teaching against abortion, against birth control, against sterilization, against the pill - these stupid religions are the cause of all poverty.Don’t you there’s enough to go around in this country itself?No. There are reasons why this country still have poor people, because seventy-five percent of your national income is going into war. That’s why people are poor. Your politicians are responsible for it.Ronald Reagan should be brought before the supreme court - he is responsible for all the street people, for all the poor people. And this is not your country, not my country - except the red Indians, everybody is a foreigner here. Just become somebody has a green card does not make any sense. I can have many green cards - that makes no difference. Green or blue or yellow, any color, but everybody is a foreigner here. And the people to whom the country belongs, you have cheated them, you have deprived them of their land, you have deprived them of their property, of their self-respect. All Americans are parasites. And what you are doing with those red people? You are giving them pensions - that is a very psychological way to avoid any revolt - because those people need not work so what they will do with the money?They will gamble, they will drink, they will use all kinds of drugs, so they are rowdy, drugged - and who bothers about the country? And they will produce more children, because each children brings more pension. So you are helping to create the population become bigger of the red Indians. And here, seventy-five percent of your income is going into a very stupid kind of enmity with Soviet Russia.So what do you suggest to do here, now?America should be the first, because I respect the American constitution the most in the whole world. There is no constitution which has so many human values. It can become the constitution for the whole world, but it creates great responsibility on the people of America.Their first responsibility is that, “Now we are in a state where third world war means simply global suicide. Nothing can survive. Soviet Russia has enough, you have enough - both the powers have so much destructive energy that they can destroy every man seven hundred times. And you are not Jesus Christ, neither I am, so resurrection is impossible. And seven hundred times - even Jesus Christ will not be able to maintain, even he could not maintain one!But we’ve been trying over the years, to stop the nuclear war, and I don’t see that our efforts are doing much good.No. Your effort are not sincere, neither Russians efforts are sincere. The first sincere effort will be: create a world academy of sciences and release all the scientists from government services. And appeal to the Russian scientists to come and join the world academy. And there are scientists in Russia who would like to join, because they can see what they are being forced to do. Their best scientists who receive Nobel prizes have been thrown into Siberia.So just try to invite them and offer all your scientists - make them available to the world academy. And give all your nuclear weapons and everything to the world academy of sciences, which is no more under your control.I’m suspicious, because scientists have created a technology that’s totally gotten out of hand.They have created technology.but the problem is they can also use the same technology which is destructive in a creative way. Every energy is always neutral. It can create, it can destroy - the same energy. But because they are all employed by the governments, who are interested only in wars, and who are ordered to create only war material. And now science has come to a stage where nobody can make anything individually. Those days of Galileo and Copernicus are gone, when you could have a small lab of your own in the house and do experiments - those days are gone.Now science has developed so much, it needs billions of dollars for any new experiment. So individuals cannot afford it. Give to the world academy of sciences all the power, all the money that you can afford, and all your weapons, and invite Soviet Russia also - but you take the initiative first!How.What role do you see your movement - you and your sannyasins - playing in this kind of.?We can give our land - the whole land to the world academy - and my sannyasins can serve in every other way to the world academy. They will need cleaners, they will need food, they will need doctors, they will need restaurant, disco - everything they will need - and we will give our land free. There is no question of it, because it is going into the service of humanity.I would like this place to become the capital for the whole world. I am ready to offer it.and my people will help them. And we have a university for meditation which will be available to all the scientists, which can change their minds, can make them more calm, more quiet, more serene. And out of that calmness, serenity, destruction is impossible. They cannot serve death; they can only serve love, life, laughter. And they can see my people, that they are living so joyfully, so ecstatically - this is infectious. We will make them dance!And all the scientists need to dance, to play music, to sing, because then they cannot create destructive things. Their music, their dance, their song, will be preventive, will be a transformation of their being. And if they can meditate also, we are opening a totally new era in scientific investigation.This can be done by UN; American government can help UN. Take over all war material. Somebody has to take the initiative and somebody has to take the risk!As I think about it, my mind goes in two directions. One is, it’s beautiful and the other is, it sounds like a pipe dream.It is a dream.but it can become a reality. And a time has come: if you don’t make it a reality, then either dream or death - you have to chose. It is better to choose the dream and give it a try.The world needs one government. Nations of Leagues proved impotent, UN is proving impotent, for the simple reason because they don’t have any power. They are just debating clubs!I’m writing a book on new religions and I’ve spent time with different groups, and a number of the people, who are leading groups, have the same idea and are trying to approach it in their own way. The Maharishi is trying to approach it in his way. Even Reverend Moon has spent millions of dollars on bringing scientists together. What do you think the difference is between the way you’re approaching it and the way they’re approaching it?The difference is that I don’t consider their meditation at all a meditation. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi I know perfectly well - his meditation is simply chanting, and that is a method of auto-hypnosis. It is not harmful, it is perfectly good if you are doing it just for rest, relaxation - after twenty minutes you will feel good, better - but it is not meditation. It is just repeating a certain name - you can repeat your own name, so fast, that it does not allow any other thought to have any space in the mind. And your mind becomes focused only on one thought.The nature of the mind is to be constantly changing. If you focus it on anything, then the second alternative mind knows is to go to sleep. That is auto-hypnosis. It can be done by looking at the light, it can be done by any concentration method. So Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s transcendental meditation is just a joke; it is not meditation, it should be accepted what it is. It is good, it does no harm to anybody, so I am not against it.But I want to make it clear that it is not meditation and nobody can come to realize oneself through it. Nobody can reach to the deathless within you. And where is the source of life, bliss and ecstasy, well-being is just an ordinary thing - just a good sleep will do that, a good shower will do that. It is not much.And Reverend Moon is just another Christian, and what he can offer is prayer, not meditation, because in Christianity there is no place for meditation. Any religion which believes in God has no place for meditation. Only religions which don’t believe in God have place for meditation. This is a simple division.Jainism and Buddhism are the two religions which don’t believe in God. That’s why their whole emphasis is on meditation; prayer, to whom? - there is no God. All that you can do is to go deeper and deeper into yourself. And India for thousands of years have been experimenting and they have almost exhausted every method - there are one hundred twelve methods and I don’t think that anything can be added. They have exhausted all possibilities. Ten thousand years effort of thousands of people, they have developed the science to its completion.Reverend Moon can offer only prayer.I understand what you’re saying, but from the outside it looks similar.From the outside many things look similar.So how are you going to get across the internal change that’s possible?I am making it clear to the press, to you. My method is totally different. It is a method of witnessing. It is not hypnosis. It does not lead you into sleep. It leads you into more awareness, more alertness. You have just to witness three steps.First, all actions of your body; second, all actions of your mind - thoughts, imaginations, dreams; third, all actions of your heart - moods, happiness, sadness, and when you become completely capable of watching all these three, the fourth happens on its own accord. Two miracles happen: one, the more you become aware, in the same proportion, thoughts and feelings start becoming lesser. Ten percent awareness and there are ninety percent thoughts; ninety percent awareness and there are ten percent thoughts; hundred percent awareness and there is zero, no thought. You are simply alert, looking at nothing.When it happens totally, that on all the three steps you are simply alert - there is no mood, no thought, no action - a quantum jump happens. It is not within you; it happens as a reward of your witnessing. Suddenly you find yourself at the center of the cyclone. Suddenly you are in a space you have never been, which gives you immense insight into everything, which gives you twenty-four hours a tremendous blissfulness. Whatever happens outside you makes no difference to your center; it remains the same.Is why you didn’t act with Sheela. Why you let her become your secretary? -Somebody with very obvious limitations as well as strengths.It is my own insight that is decisive. It is not a question of thinking pros and cons. It is my insight and Sheela served her purpose perfectly well. Now she was going beyond it.Why not stop her before she goes beyond it?I stopped it. I stopped her in the right time.But she’s half-berserk. Or more than half.No. Nothing. She was needed at that time. Hasya or anybody else would not have tackled the problems that she managed to tackle. She was continuously in the courts, continuously fighting with the politicians, continuously fighting with the Oregonians, continuously facing all the hostility - and she managed it perfectly well.But she provoked a lot of it too.It is not really the case - provocation came from the other side. No minority ever provokes, but every minority is always condemned. Such a small minority of five thousand people - do you think any logic in it to provoke hostility? We wanted all friendship, but it was natural on the part of Oregonians to be hostile. Everybody is hostile to the newcomers, to the strangers - and we are certainly very much strangers.And somebody like Sheela was absolutely needed. So I did not stop her; I let her do till I saw that the commune is established - now there is no need for anybody to fight. I have changed the whole group. I have put all the Americans in all the higher posts, while with Sheela there were all non-Americans on the higher posts. Now this is a second phase for the commune, because four years is enough - Oregonians have understood one thing, that we are going to be here.In the beginning they were hoping that they will throw us out; at that time Sheela was absolutely essential and she did well, and the commune will always be grateful for it. And everything illegal that she did, Oregon state government, Wasco county, attorney general - everybody provoked her, because they were doing illegal acts against us.It is a very natural thing: you cannot fight when people are doing who have power and who have majority, and they are doing illegal acts against you. And they have courts in their hands. Then she started being illegal. That’s how she turned more and more into a politician. That was a natural course. It was to happen.If you deal with politicians you cannot remain non-political. You have to learn in the same ways same language, same strategies - and she learned and she did exactly what they were doing.Sometimes she did a bit more than what they were doing.Perhaps. It will be revealed soon, when Sheela is exposed with her, all the politicians and all the people who provoked her will also be exposed. That is my fear, that politicians, the police, FBI, CBI, they may like to make a deal with Sheela that, “We will protect you and we give you immunity. And you just dump all the crimes on innocent sannyasins.” So they can destroy the commune.For four times they had appointments with me and for four times they canceled. In fact they should have asked for an appointment with me, in the very beginning - that was the first thing to do, because I have announced all the crimes against Sheela.But they did not want to face me. And four times they accepted and they went on, at the last moment they will cancel. Then I told them, “Then I am going to call a press conference and make it clear that you cannot make a deal with the criminals.”The reason is that these are the peoples who did provoke Sheela to do things, because they were doing the same things, our phones were tapped by INS - Sheela learned the same strategy from them: she started tapping the phones here. So when Sheela is exposed, INS is going to be exposed with her. From where she learned and why? - it was just a self-defense measure.In Antelope we had the majority; still we were not interested in making the government. We have no interest in politics, but for small permits they will not give. Knowing perfectly well that you are a minority and you are refusing legal permits which are absolutely justified, to the majority, you are provoking the majority.But can’t you see why they would be nervous, particularly about so many strange people coming in, and about people moving so fast, when they’re coming here to be by themselves?If they are nervous, they should consult some psychoanalyst! That does not mean that they should not give the permit! They can give it nervously, but they should give it!So when it became clear that they are going to hinder everything, then Sheela had to take the step and take over - that became a hostility, but who created it?On the level of Antelope, sannyasins were in a majority - they had much more power, much more understanding of the world, much more ability to deal with things, and that was a time to show compassion.For what?For those people.Who are in the town.We have been showing compassion in every way. We have been showing compassion to them in every way. We have not harmed anybody. We have not refused any permit to anybody. They cannot make any complaint that we have done to them.It’s like a, if you’re going into an area where there’s a primitive tribe and where you’re infringing on their customs.Whatever their customs, how you manage to take the whole country from red Indians?It’s.Not my idea.Whose idea?It was basically arrogant Christians who thought they had a right to the whole country.So these people must have been your forefathers.Not mine. I’m a Jew from Russia.That is good! That’s why you can understand a little humor. To be a Jew is really great!They should think that they have taken the whole country from other people, forcibly, and we have purchased the properties from themselves; they should not have sold! We were not forcing ourselves on them. They were selling their properties, we purchased. At that very time they should have understood, that they are selling properties to these red people. Two-third properties belonged to us - they should have stopped selling!It is such a simple understanding: if you don’t want these people, don’t sell your properties. Once you sell your properties, then you have to give as much facilities these people want, otherwise they will take the government and have all the facilities that they wanted - and that’s what happened: we had to take the government and have all the permission that we wanted.But I have told, since Sheela left - because this all happened when I was in silence - I have told that change the name from City of Rajneesh back to Antelope, because it is not right, unnecessarily to hurt anybody. And I have invited them to purchase their properties back.They’re not going to do that.If they cannot do that then they can sell their remaining properties also - we can do that. We are absolutely fair, this way or that. If you don’t feel like living under sannyasins government, just sell your properties - and more people are not there, only twelve, not more than twelve - so what is the problem? We have one hundred sannyasins there - the problem is for us. To remove one hundred sannyasins and sell all those properties - their problem is small. And we are ready purchasers - they need not find anywhere. Just the market value and we will purchase them.So either they should purchase.and the whole Oregon was in their favor, so they should ask the Oregonians - if they cannot purchase, Oregonians can purchase!Make a museum.They can make a museum or anything! My own idea was this, that if they sell their properties, those properties are so rotten that I don’t want my people to live in those properties. We have made a new housing complex for five hundred people, so we will demolish all the properties and change the zone and make beautiful gardens, lawns, public park or farming and finish with Antelope completely. If they sell their properties, we can make it a beautiful spot for everybody to visit. Or they can purchase and do whatsoever they want: they can make a museum or they can a zoo.which will be far better, because all those twelve look like persons who should be in a zoo!That’s not very nice!It is right! Nice or not.You haven’t seen them all. Some of them are not so bad looking.No. I have seen their pictures on the television. Most of them look retarded. And the remaining will make a really good zoo. If they want, we can make it!But we are ready, for everything! We are ready to vacate, we are not interested in their property, in their town, in their houses - nothing. We simply want to move out of it, but they should cooperate in moving out.Why are you so snobbish?I am a simple person. I am not snobbish.It feels to me like you are, because.It feels because you are a Jew! It is a Jewish attitude, to feel anybody snobbish, because all Jews are snobbish. Their snobbishness is just on their nose! I am not snobbish; I am simply being straightforward.But they’re just country people. I mean they’re simple people.I’m not concerned with them. They may be Gods. They should purchase the properties or they should sell their properties, so we are finished with them. I am not a bit interested in those people. So there is no problem, but if they don’t purchase the properties then we are going to keep our people there, our police there.A while ago when we were talking, I could feel very much your interest and concern for people in Ethiopia, in India, who were starving because of lack of birth control - why are you not concerned with the people in Antelope?Because they have been very hostile, inimical, showing guns at my people, shouting that they will kill me. Still we have not done any harm to them. They are not worthy of any compassion. They look criminal people and we have to keep the police there simply for those people, because they all having their guns and my sannyasins are not having guns - what is the purpose of their having guns and moving with guns?It’s the American West - everybody here has guns.Then my people will have too guns!If it is America, then we are in twenty-first century. That way they will not get their city back. Certainly what we can do without any problem to change their name, that we are going to do. Then we will wait - we have invited them. If it doesn’t happen, we will change the name again!And it is the majority to whom the city belongs. It doesn’t matter who is the majority. But we are not in any way preventing them, having their city. We want to help them in every possible way. And they should appeal Oregonians who can purchase those properties - they are not many - and we will vacate. And then they can have their own council, their own town and whatever they want to do.We have raised taxes four times - about that they are making much fuss continuously, but they don’t understand that one hundred sannyasins are paying four times more and only twelve Antelope people are paying four times more! But if we want to develop that city, make the roads better, the water supply better, the fire brigade up to date, then money is needed. But we can give them certainty, that if they purchase all our properties before moving, we will make the city tax-free; then it is up to them - no tax at all.On the ranch, what developed here was a surrender of people, to people above them in the hierarchy. Couldn’t have done something.?No. I was not aware of anything. Now I am doing everything. And there is going to be no hierarchy, there is going to be no surrender, submission. In fact, I am changing their clothes and I have told them they can use any color, so they are not discriminated against, and just be as everybody else is, so you can mix with people and there is no barrier unnecessarily.I don’t want any hostility for the simple reason that we are not here to fight and waste time in fighting; we want our people to meditate, to rejoice, we want to be left alone, but they are unnecessarily poking their nose.If we do any harm to anybody, certainly we should be prevented, but we are not doing any harm to anybody.In my meeting Sheela, certainly one could see her intelligence, at least in very practical matters, in her cleverness about things, but you could also see the very oppressive side, the very mean-spirited side as well. You must have seen that being in contact with her every day?I know! But it was needed. For all those mean politicians all around, I could not give the commune in the hands of some innocent people - they would have destroyed it.But you didn’t see what she was doing on the Ranch itself?No. Because I was never coming out and never meeting anybody.Do you think it would have made sense to have other people coming to talk to you about what was happening?No. Nobody was allowed.But why not?I am decisive about myself - if I want to remain silent, it is nobody’s business to disturb me.But if you’re creating such a big experiment, don’t you think it would have been helpful to have had at least one other person coming to talk to you?No. The experiment means nothing before my silence. I am teaching everybody to be an individual and depend on his own insight. And if he feels that he is being forced to do something that he does not want to do, he is perfectly capable of revolting against it. There is no need to submit and many had left.Because now there will be a totally different atmosphere. But whatever happened, although it was not good, but looking at the world only bad people could have managed it; good people could not.It feels to me like you may have used those people.No. I have not abused anybody.Over the last year I thought to myself, when is he either going to get rid of Sheela or turn things around? And it felt like maybe you were just letting her go and do something.No. I will do only when I feel; when I saw the point to do something, I did it.How did you know the point to do something?When she poisoned my physician, that was the point when I started inquiring from my physician, from my caretaker, about the things and then I declared that I am going to speak and meet people. And then information started coming by and by and I started exposing her. Then I informed the government, the police, the FBI - they are all here.But doing almost nothing and we have given them every proof and they go on talking that we don’t have any solid proof. I don’t understand what solid proof they want - do they want Sheela murdering somebody, caught red-handed?This is America.Whatsoever it is, but what solid proof they had against Nixon?Nothing happened to Nixon.Nixon had to leave his presidentship. Otherwise he was going to be thrown out.Same with Sheela.No. But she has gone herself, and she has done more criminal acts than Nixon. Nixon has not killed anybody. Has not poisoned people to kill them. She was even putting poison in my milk.Why did you wait nine months or so?It was needed, because she was fighting so many cases - I did not want to disturb in the middle. I wanted to things, to come to a conclusion from where a new group can start. And this was the time, when many cases are finished and the new cases will start almost eight months afterwards, so these people within eight months will be perfectly prepared to take over and they will be able to fight - there is no problem.You play a very risky game.Certainly! I am a risky person. And it is a game. And I know the right timings. I am just a referee - nothing.Over the years there have been a number of very powerful people who have been with you - your sannyasins - a number of whom have left, or have been kicked out, like Shyam. Why do you think, that happens?No. Shyam has been kicked by me myself. Because he was a pain in the neck! And I don’t want him here at all then. I am allergic to perfume - he will not take a bath, he will insist to meet me, and his perfume will create asthma for me - for two, three days I will suffer attacks of asthma. And I had told him that, “If you come to see me, then you have to follow, you have to wash completely - you cannot come in the room with all this perfume. But he never listened; always he will come and he will insist and force that, “I am coming from England and just to see Osho,” and he was making me sick. Every time he came, he made me sick. And I never wanted any advice from him about my health, because he is a quack; he is not a physician or a doctor or anything.One day sitting just by my side he took my feet in his hand and started massaging. I said, “You don’t do that.” He said, “This is an acupuncture point. And massaging it is very good for allergy.” I said, “I never consider you a physician and I don’t consider acupuncture of any importance. You simply leave my leg.” But no - out of love he will have to massage and the only thing that happened, the whole night I had to cough and could not sleep a single moment, and next day I said that, “This is what you did, because sitting so close to me.” So.and he was deceptive, deceiving, and exploiting sannyasins.He had a center in London, but he was exploiting the sannyasins for his own work and I told him that, “There is no need. If you don’t want to wear the mala and the orange, then simply don’t wear them. You simply come as Shyam Singh - there is no need to come as a sannyasin.” When he will come to me, he will be in orange and in mala, and he was seen all over the world, from every place I received letters that, “Shyam Singh is neither wearing mala nor orange.”I asked him that, “This kind of lying and deception is not good. You simply give up the mala and just be straightforward. If you don’t have the courage to move in those clothes, then why just coming to meet me you change the dress and the moment you go to the airport, you change the dress again. Nobody knows that you are a sannyasin - this is not good.”Just now his telegram has come as he heard about Sheela that, “Can I come and I can help the medical center if there is any need?” I have told him, “No, and forever no, because medical center is a part - you will simply start treating me that I don’t want. I’m tired of your treatment.” So it was simply, he was a harassment to me. So nobody else has kicked him; I myself has kicked him.And if he wants to come back, he has to learn, because my sannyasins are taking every care, that’s why for four years I have not had a single attack. Every sannyasin is careful about perfume, cigarettes, they come to see me then they take bath that no smell is there, that they are not perspiring - that’s how they have been keeping me in health - otherwise just a slight smoke, dust, perfume, and I am in a danger.So Shyam Singh is, to me, almost like a disease: I don’t want him. You can tell him.Yes.Yes. He is.I love him, he is always welcome if he behaves.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Swami Videha, ItalyTranslated in English the name of the newspaper is “The Pleasures”, and it’s a magazine which likes to have many questions and short answers.You just start.So, we start from the idea of pleasure. Can enlightenment be the topmost pleasure, as a definition?It is not pleasure. Pleasure is always something opposed to pain. It is never separate from pain. So pain can become pleasure. That’s why there are masochists in the world who torture themselves and enjoy. Your so-called saints are nothing but people who know the art of changing pain into pleasure. Pain can become pleasure; vice versa is also true: pleasure can become pain. For example, it is a great pleasure to kiss someone you love.But if you are forced to continue kissing - a gun behind you - how long is the pleasure going to be pleasure? Soon the pleasure will become a pain. You eat something: it is pleasant, there is pleasure; but if you eat too much it becomes pain - otherwise you wouldn’t see so many obese people.Thirty million people in America are suffering from this disease. They cannot stop eating. The pleasure is so much that they go on eating, knowing perfectly well that it is going to become pain.So one thing has to be understood: enlightenment is not pleasure because it can never become pain. There is nothing opposite to enlightenment. The unenlightened person, his state of mind, is not opposite to the enlightened person and his state of mind. The unenlightened state is simply the absence of enlightenment - it is not opposed. It is like darkness. You just bring a candle in the room and there is no darkness. It has never been there; it has no positive existence of its own, it is simply absence of light.So the unenlightened person is simply asleep, the enlightened person is awake. There is no opposition. Enlightenment is the transcendence of all dualities: pleasure, pain; love, hate, life, death - all oppositions.Enlightenment is the situation where you have come to a point of witnessing all the opposites as complementaries and you are only a witness. So I cannot say it is pleasure - I can say it is bliss. And that is the difference between bliss and pleasure. Pleasure needs something; you are dependent.If you love someone, you are dependent on the person-that’s why you are always afraid to lose them; also suspicious, also jealous. You love a woman - she is your pleasure, but side by side all these things are growing in you: suspicion. You can never be certain whether she loves you or not, there is no way. She can pretend. She may be loving somebody else - if not now, tomorrow. What is the guarantee that she will love you always? There are more beautiful people around, more talented, more charming, more charismatic; hence there is suspicion, fear, jealousy. This is your pleasure!With all these things mixed in, what kind of pleasure is this?Bliss is absolutely pure.First, it is not dependent on anyone, it is your own. Its source is within you, it does not come from outside; hence, nobody can take it away. There is tremendous strength instead of weakness, instead of fear there is great fearlessness. Instead of feeling jealous, there is great compassion, because your bliss cannot be stolen, cannot be taken away.When Alexander the Great came to India he wanted one sannyasin to come with him as a guest to Athens, because his master, Aristotle, had asked only one gift: “Bring an authentic sannyasin with you, because that is the only thing the West is unaware of. We don’t know what kind of man is a sannyasin.” Wherever he went Alexander inquired, “Can I find an authentic sannyasin?” People said, “It is very difficult - you have come a little late. Three hundred years ago there was Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Sanjay Vilethiputta, Ajit Keshkambal and there were many people who were authentic, realized beings - but now it is very difficult to find such people. But you can go on searching as you go on invading the country; perhaps somewhere.”He came across a man who was a naked fakir standing by the side of the river early in the morning - a beautiful sunrise. Alexander approaches him with his naked sword and tells him, “You have two alternatives: one, be Alexander the Great’s guest, which is a rare honor - it has never been given to anybody, and I can promise you it will not be given to anybody else again, so you will be unique - but you will have to come with me to Athens. My master wants to meet an authentic sannyasin.”And the sannyasin laughed loudly and said, “First, you drop the idea of Alexander the Great. Anybody who thinks himself great is not great. One who is really great is not even aware of it. So first you drop that word. That is sick and shows inferiority. Secondly, put your sword back in its sheath; it won’t be needed. Thirdly, I am not coming. I am a man of freedom - wherever I want to go, I go. Nobody can force me, bribe me, threaten me. And you are trying everything: bribing me, persuading me, and with the naked sword threatening me.”Alexander said, “Then the second alternative, is I will cut off your head.” The Sannyasin laughed again. He said, “That you can do, because that does not matter: it will not touch my blissfulness at all. You can cut off my head, you can cut my body into as many pieces as you want, but you will not be able to touch my blissfulness, my ecstasy. That is beyond your reach. If it is your joy and if I can be of any help, I am ready: cut off my head.”Alexander in his notes writes, “There have been only two times in my life when I felt really inferior. Here was a man who says, ‘You cannot touch my blissfulness, nor can you kill my spirit. You can destroy this house, I will find another - a fresher one, a newer one.”‘Blissfulness is totally different from pleasure. Pleasure is of the body, joy is of the mind; bliss is of the soul. Listening to beautiful music you feel joy. Seeing beautiful architecture, sculpture, a painting, you feel joy. Seeing the Taj Mahal, listening to Mozart, you feel joy - that is of the mind.Bliss is absolutely beyond both body and mind.My teaching is not for pleasure, but for blissfulness. I am not against pleasure, remember. I am not against joy, remember. Have as much pleasure as you can, but don’t forget this is only the beginning. You have to go far. Unless you reach blissfulness, you have not arrived.You say that you know yourself. Now, imagine lying down on a couch and the Freudian analyst asks you the furthermost remembrance you have of yourself. Which one will it be?In the first place, I will put the Freudian on the couch! No Freudian can put me on the couch. What do they know? Even Freud knows nothing of any importance. He is full of fear, is afraid of ghosts, is afraid of death - so much that even the mention of death and he goes into a fit, his mouth starts foaming. This is your founder of psychoanalysis! These idiots.you think they know anything? If I meet Freud I will put him on the couch. He needs analysis. Do you know that he was not analyzed, ever? And many of his very close friends wanted to analyze him, but he refused. What is the fear? The founder of psychoanalysis should be available to his own methodology. The fear is that he is just as psychologically split, schizophrenic, full of fear, full of repression. He does not want, before his colleagues and disciples, to expose himself. He never told a single dream of his own. He is talking about others’ dreams, interpreting their dreams - what about his own dreams? He should begin with his own dreams.It is very easy to interpret anybody’s dream.For example, if you are in your dream flying in the sky. Many people have dreams of flying - Sigmund Freud will say that means ambition, that you are very ambitious. What about Freud, if he has the dream of flying? Then his disciples, friends and colleagues and students will interpret it: “You are very ambitious” - and he wants to pretend that he has gone beyond ambitions. He was one of the most ambitious people in the world, very afraid of anybody who was more intelligent than him.That’s why many people left him who were really more intelligent than him. Adler left him for the simple reason that he had found a better explanation for dreams. He said there are a few dreams which are sexual, but all dreams are not sexual, because all men’s desires are not sexual. And man goes on repressing all his desires, so his dreams cannot be only sexually interpreted. This is absolutely rational. He left the group and Freud condemned him, said that he betrayed him.But was it a religion? What is the meaning of betrayal? Science knows no betrayal. You have to argue with Adler, prove your thesis amongst your colleagues. And whoever comes closer to truth - it doesn’t matter who is coming closer - has to be accepted. But no, Freud was very dictatorial: he knows the truth.This is something which comes as a heritage with every Jew. From Moses to all the prophets, to John the Baptist, to Jesus, to Sigmund Freud, to Karl Marx, the same trend and the same attitude: “We are the only possessors of truth, it is our monopoly. We are the chosen people of God”. These are different versions of the same theme.Moses has contaminated the Jewish mind so much that even people like Marx, who deny religion, are unaware completely that they are still in the hands of Moses.Sigmund Freud was afraid of Jung because he was just next to him, and people had started talking about Jung, saying that he is going to be the successor. That made Freud very much afraid - successor? Jung was not agreeing with all his theories, hypotheses, and if he becomes the successor - he was young, Freud was getting old - he will destroy the whole of psychoanalysis and the movement. And it is not only a movement, it is a question of a Jewish business firm.Freud expelled Carl Gustav Jung from the movement while he was alive, so nobody could in any way change anything. His word was holy. This is not a scientific attitude. And he certainly created one of the biggest businesses of the century. But Jews are known to do this.Jesus created the biggest business of the whole history. Jews cannot forgive themselves. They unnecessarily crucified this poor carpenter’s son. They should have used him, and right now rather than there being millions and millions of Christians, there would have been millions and millions of Jews. Jesus created the biggest religious establishment. Sigmund Freud did the same, Marx did the same. Jewishness has something in it: the art of creating established businesses. So no psychoanalyst has the guts even to face me. If you have anybody, you can bring him.What about the farthest remembrance you have of yourself?That is very difficult, because I remember even my past lives. You mean this life?Any remembrance?But I remember many past lives! One thing is certain: even in my past lives, I remember perfectly well, I have never eaten spaghetti. That much is certain.I feel that an Italian will always project in you a father figure. And also for Germans you will be always projected as a leader. And if I look at a French lady, she can see in you a beautiful man to lie down with. Why is it so difficult to accept you as a simple human being? And why is there all this projection happening.Only a simple human being can see me as a simple human being - and it is very difficult to find simple human beings. Everybody has some projection. To be simple means: without projections, without conditionings, just a clarity, a silence, an understanding. But you are right, different people will see different things in me.I am just a mirror. You will see your own face, you will see your own desire. And if I don’t fulfill it, you will be angry at me. I receive many angry letters from sannyasins, and I simply laugh at their stupidity.They first project. I have never agreed to their projection, they have never even told me their projection. And when I don’t fulfill, and don’t act according to their expectation, then they simply freak out, they are angry. But what can I do? So many people.if I start fulfilling everybody’s projection and everybody’s expectation, then life will be impossible for me. And why in the first place should I fulfill anybody’s expectation?My whole effort here is that you drop all projections, and you be simple, just the way I am simple. Just two mirrors facing each other - nothing is reflected. And that state when two mirrors face each other and nothing is reflected, I call friendship.When I said this morning that my people are my friends, they should understand it is not an easy job. To be a friend is one of the most arduous challenges.And from now on, sannyasins are not going to be called Rajneeshees. They are going to be called only friends of Rajneesh. And they have to understand the meaning of being friends. It means no projection, no expectation.Neither I am responsible for you, nor are you responsible for me. I love you because I have too much to give; you love me because you are overflowing with love. There is no obligation on anyone’s part.To be a follower is very easy. You dump your whole responsibility on the leader, on the father figure, on the messiah, the savior, the prophet. It is human beings themselves who have allowed all kinds of exploitation. You want somebody else to save you. That is not right. If you have fallen into a ditch, try to get out of it - don’t wait for the savior to come; the savior never comes. The savior is like tomorrow, which never comes; he is always coming, coming, coming, but never comes. And you will die in the ditch, waiting - waiting for Godot.I want you to be absolutely free in spirit. I am not anybody’s father figure, so you cannot depend on me. And I am not your leader, so you cannot say one day, “You have misled us.” It was your joy to come or not to come. You enjoyed coming with me, that was your joy.I allowed you to come with me, that was my joy. I had never said that we are going to achieve something, I never promised anything, and you don’t have any reason to be angry. What a strange thing it is that for thirty years I have been telling people - and there are many sannyasins who have been for fifteen years with me, or even more, but deep down still some kind of expectation continues, and that is your dependence.And if I go against your hidden expectation immediately you explode. You start feeling shaky, your trust is lost, I simply wonder. I had never asked you in to be with me the first place.Just be a friend, with no strings attached. Is it not possible just to be friends, allowing the other his own being, his own way, his own life? Never trespassing - because that is the meaning of friendship, not to trespass. So it is true that a French woman will think just the way a French woman is conditioned to think. The German will think just the way the German is conditioned to think.But I am going to destroy all your conditionings: French, Italian, German, English, Dutch, whatever - it doesn’t matter: my function is to deprogram you. Only then can you be again as simple and innocent as a child. And out of that innocence is beauty, grandeur, love, fragrance.There is a rumor that you’re going away from here. Do you have any projects for the future?I have no future, and future does not exist. Those who have future don’t have the present. You can’t have both. If you want to have the present - which is the only reality - then forget all about future. Future is destructive of the present. You think of the future, you project on the future; meanwhile the present is slipping by.That which is real you are losing for something which is not real. And remember whenever what you call future comes it will come as the present, never as the future.And your mind by and by becomes habituated to projecting into the future. Future comes, but it comes as the present, and in the present you don’t have any interest; your whole interest is in the future.So always the future comes in the present and slips out of your hands and you go on thinking about the future. Future never comes. One day death comes. There are many people who realize only at the moment of death that they were alive, but they could not manage to live it - and now there is no future.In the present are you staying here?Yes.How long is this present?As long as possible. I don’t know about the next moment. You just forget the future and come to the present!You live surrounded by many gadgets which a western eyes don’t consider spiritual things. And the question is, why do you need them?What the Western people consider as spiritual - have I to fulfill their considerations? I am not born to fulfill anybody’s expectations, either Western or Eastern. I am living my life. Who are they to decide about me? I don’t care a bit about them, why should they waste their time about me?I am a contemporary man, I am not going to live five thousand year behind the times. I am going to use the latest gadget possible, and I don’t see that it disturbs my spirituality. On the contrary, it helps; it makes my spirituality contemporary, fresh, new. The people who are worried are the people who have created a split between materialism and spiritualism. They think that sitting on a beautiful, comfortable chair you cannot be meditative. They are simple idiots. What is the problem? Sitting on a comfortable chair is really helpful for meditation. The Indian way is to sit in a lotus posture, putting your feet in such a tortuous way that I don’t think you can meditate; you are continuously worried about your feet!Like those people there? [indicating the group in front of Osho]They are enjoying; and nobody is sitting in the lotus posture. You don’t know the lotus posture. Does anybody here know it? It means to sit - yes, that is the lotus posture.not perfect! Do you think that kind of torture is going to help spirituality?No. So there is an economic idea hidden behind the experiment you are doing here? Like people come, they invest everything in the commune, they work all the day; there is no money going around inside the commune and it’s quite difficult for the people outside who are earning money themselves to understand this idea of economy. Can you explain it?It is very simple, and they will have to understand it sooner or later. One thing: currency notes should be banned, should be made illegal. In fact they should have been illegal long before now, because a currency note moves in so many hands. Sick people, people who have tuberculosis, people who have infectious diseases - those currency notes are moving in all these people’s hands.Now, people even have AIDS. And in India I have seen - I don’t know what people in other countries do - when they are counting large numbers of notes, they use their saliva to count the notes with a thick bundle they use saliva so that only one note comes out, not two notes or calculation is wrong.With AIDS, people counting notes with saliva is dangerous. They can infect people who are absolutely innocent, who are not homosexual, who have never committed any kind of perversion, but who can suffer through AIDS. So the simple thing is the currency card. Every city should have currency cards, so you keep your own currency cards.And because of the computer, it has become so simple that there is no need for currency notes. This has to be done if AIDS is to be prevented. People have to be taught not to use saliva when they put a stamp on an envelope; or some other kind of envelopes have to be developed which do not need saliva. Otherwise people are simply just habitually licking them - but that saliva is carrying poison.Currency cards are the only way to prevent this unnecessary spread of disease not only of AIDS but of many other diseases. And the world sooner or later is going to be converted into communes. We are the pioneers, we have heralded a new age.Families are really out of date. Just think: we are five thousand people here. The average family, we can suppose consists of five people. That means one thousand families would be living here. Then one thousand families have to cook food, one thousand families have to think about cleaning the houses, one thousand families have to think about washing their clothes. One thousand families have to think about their children, sending them to the school, bringing them back home, all kind of things. They have to think of employment - and even in America, there are millions who are unemployed, what to say about poor countries?Almost half of India is unemployed. Half of India means four hundred million people have no jobs. How long can they survive? And these are the people who then finally turn into criminals. You are forcing them to be criminals, and then you will be punishing them for their crime. This is very strange. Not much intelligence is needed - if you keep four hundred million people unemployed, how are they going to feed their families, their children, their old parents? Then they will have to do something: smuggle things from outside the country, steal, sell drugs, manufacture alcohol, do any kind of thing which is not legal. And then they are caught and punished without any consideration of what is going to happen to their children. I don’t think this is justice.A person is caught because he was selling dope; he goes into jail. Now what about his children, what about his wife, what about his old parents who are sick, need medicine, need care? The court is responsible for taking care of all these people - but nobody even bothers. You have not punished one person, you have punished many people; and those people will turn into thieves. Those children cannot be educated, they cannot pay the fee, they cannot purchase books. In fact there is no food in the house - what is the point of purchasing books and going to the school? They will start stealing from the very beginning, or begging, or doing something which is not good. Girls will become prostitutes - there is no other way.So your whole legal system is creating all kinds of illegal things in the world. Your law is not protecting the society but is creating criminality. My suggestion is, why one thousand families. That is unnecessary wastage. Here we have one kitchen which can be managed by a few people. There is no need for one hundred or one thousand kitchens, one thousand women unnecessarily engaged. In their life they will not be able to read good literature, listen to music, meditate, sing, dance. There is no possibility - they are taking care of children and thinking of tomorrow’s bread. There is no need for this.In a commune we have reduced the kitchens to one kitchen. Everybody is free - just a few people prepare food. And then you can have better food, because all women are not great cooks. So why, when you can have the best cooks, why eat food prepared by a wife who is a third-rate cook? You have to eat it, and you have to praise it, and you have to say, “Great! I have never tasted such delicious dishes before.”All the clothes of the commune can be taken care of by one laundry; the experts can take care. And in the same way, cleaning can be taken care of by a few people. And the remaining people do not have to search for jobs; the commune provides them. All kinds of jobs are there: farming is there, gardening is there, vegetable greenhouses are there. Doctors can go to the medical facility, legal experts can go to the legal association, professors can go to the university, teachers can go to the school. Children can be taken care of in the hostel. All women need not worry about children. They can be loving to them, they can go to see them, they can have once in a while the children with them. But the children are taken care of by the commune.The family has to be replaced by the commune. So big cities should be divided into communes. For example, a city which is very big can be divided into ten communes, twenty communes, and they take care of the whole thing. And they are the sole masters of their commune. They should put everything that they can into the commune, and the commune will take care of them. This way we can create more wealth, more enjoyment, more nourishment, caring, for the patients, for the old, for the sick.And money is no longer a problem - money does not exist. This is a simple concept of a better society. And slowly, slowly, the whole world should be changed into communes. There is no need for nations, no need for states. Each commune should be an independent commune. No need for any hierarchy and bureaucracy; every commune should decide for itself. So we can dissolve nations and families. These are the two greatest diseases which we have to get rid of - and the commune is the medicine.You have in Italy three communes. Two of them have been closed, and other one is reduced now to twenty-six people. The reason was given by Sheela that Italy is a third-world country, economically. So it means Italy doesn’t fit your vision of communes?No, it was just Sheela’s idea. It won’t be so now. Italy will have its own commune, so tell Italian sannyasins that they should start commune. At least two communes in Italy are absolutely necessary, and then we can have more. The problem is that you have to teach Italian friends that their communes fail because they are lazy. And rather than taking responsibility, they become a burden on the commune. German communes are flourishing, earning money, living comfortably, for the simple reason that people are not lazy. So what has been done - I had suggested that those Italian communes were never going well and there were fights. And the money is not there, and every month the leader is changing, because the one who was taking care is tired, people don’t listen. I have said to send Italian commune sannyasins to learn how to work, to German communes. So each German commune can absorb at least twenty Italian sannyasins. They just have to get the idea how things work, and once they get the idea they are as intelligent as anybody else. It is just that their national heritage is of laziness, so they have to understand that nobody is going to baby-sit them, they will have to take their own responsibility.And if German communes can function well - not only can they provide comfort for themselves, but they are capable to help other communes which are in debt - I don’t see why in Italy it cannot happen. So you just send the message that all sannyasins first should move to German communes or Dutch communes - just for a learning period of two months, three months to see how things are working - then go back and start planning. There is no problem in it.For example, one commune has enough land.thirty sannyasins are there, but just dependent on one woman sannyasin who has given the land. Now she has to provide food and clothes also, so she is getting fed up. That is not the idea of a commune, that “I have given you the whole land - you can cultivate it, you can create - you don’t need to do anything. I have to take care about your food, about your clothes, and about your other needs.”That commune, Pratiti’s commune, is perfectly good, and she wants somebody to take charge, so that she is free; she is willing to give the whole property to the commune. So just tell Pratiti, “We will take care.” And if those lazy people are not willing to go, then tell them to leave the commune, to live on their own. Accept only people who are going to work - because “unless you work, who is going to provide all your necessities?” And I have so many beautiful Italian people who love me that it is just a question of a little understanding. The whole Italian economy may be going down; that does not matter. Our communes can remain high, can be more economically stable, and can prove to other people that “you are unnecessarily getting into a depressive economy. If we can manage, you can also manage.” Italy will have its communes, but something has to be taught to them. The people are good, loving, but lazy.You spoke a lot about the missionary position in making love, and also about French kissing, which are the only two things the Italian knows about making love. Since you don’t like them, you can give some advice also in this direction to Italians.You don’t know much! First, instead of kissing start rubbing noses - which is more hygienic and really more fun. You both will start laughing. In kissing only one difficulty is, you cannot laugh. In this way both things are possible: you can rub noses and you can laugh too, at the same time. AIDS is avoided and the experience becomes richer. Noses are very sensitive parts.Eskimos for their whole history have never kissed, kissing does not exist among Eskimos. It does not exist in a few tribes in the Himalayas too. And when the first time they saw Christian missionaries kissing, they could not believe that “these people have come to teach us, religion. They don’t even know how to make love!” This is so disgusting to Eskimos - and if you think impartially you will agree with them. Kissing someone is mixing saliva with the other, exploring each other’s mouth with your tongue. Just think of it and you will feel like vomiting. What are you doing? This is love? This is not love. Just traditionally because people have been doing it, you go on doing it.You talk out of experience of things?Yes. Everything I say, I say on my own authority, my experience.In these days there is a public opinion which is following you day after day with big headlines, new ones every day. And many are getting the idea that the story is built-up, everything that is happening. How much of this story is advertising?Not anything. Right now everything is absolutely true. There is no need of advertising. We don’t need any advertising, I have never needed any advertising. I am so unpredictable that I can make any statement which becomes immediately news.This is true!There is no trouble in it. And I use every media. If television is available and radio is available and newspapers are available, then what is the need? Jesus said to his disciples, “Go on top of your houses and shout loudly to spread the word, the message.” I will not say that to my people unnecessarily. Going on top of your house.and how much can you shout? And here for at least twenty miles there is nobody around. Who is going to hear you? Only sannyasins who are hugging somebody on the street. They will simply say, “Shut up! Don’t disturb us. You go somewhere else to spread the word - we are already practicing it.” There is no need.We have all the media, and I’m going to use it fully. Whenever I do anything, I do it fully. I squeeze the last drop out of everything, there is no problem in it. And if politicians can use the media, if businesses can use the media - if all kinds of lying advertisements are on the media - then why should truth remain behind? It has to come into the marketplace. Its presence only will be enough for many lies to die.If you write a book, somebody has to purchase it, first; secondly, he has to read it. The book has become out of date. If the person can see it on the television, without purchasing a book and without reading it. and remember always, seeing reaches deeper in you than reading.Reading is only words; seeing has a totally different effect, it is almost life - as if you are hearing me. My gestures will be missed in the book. My silent pauses will not be there in the book, nor my eyes, which say so much you may put the same sentence in the book, but it has lost almost eighty percent of its meaning, because that eighty percent was not in the sentence, but in things around it: the eyes, the hands, the personality, the man, the face; his emphasis, his way of saying a thing, his voice, his authority, which penetrates the heart.The coming days are the days of television. And television makes me available to the whole world. Buddha had to travel for forty-two years continuously, and then too he could not go out of his state, Bihar. Not even all over India; in forty-two years he could manage to cover only one state. India consists now of thirty states, and at that time, it was double what it is now. Sixty states - and he covered only one state. I can manage sitting in my chair to cover the whole world. And it is not long, soon scientists have to come up with a three-dimensional television. This television is not yet enough, it is flat. Once it becomes three dimensional - which is not too big a problem - then whether you are listening to me directly or listening on the television screen will make no difference, because both will be three dimensional.Do you think history will be divided into before and after Osho?There is no need, there is no need. You divided it after Jesus - let it remain divided with Jesus.The pope is worried about that, you know.He may be worried - keep him worried. But there is no need. But if my people decide, then it is their problem. I am not preventing either, I am simply provoking.There was a statement about AIDS which the pope didn’t like so much, when you said the Vatican should become an AIDS resort.Why should he like it? He is responsible, and all the popes before him are responsible. It should be made clear to him that if you have any compassion, change the Vatican into an AIDS camp. Make celibacy a sin, and let all your monks be married to the nuns. And for you we have chosen Mother Teresa.This can make the headlines of the Vatican! When you sit in the chair you transcend any sexual definition. But when you dance with a female disciple, you are real macao [macho?]-looking. Why such a difference?You think that even while dancing I should look as if I am sitting in the chair? Or vice versa - sitting in the chair I should look as if I am dancing? The change is bound to be there - sitting in the chair is a different posture, dancing is a different posture, eating at my table is a different posture. They have to be different. They simply show that man is not linear, that man is multi-dimensional. Dancing with a woman, certainly I have to be respectful to a woman. I am not a homosexual.Do you consider yourself a latin lover?Yes, certainly. I am a lover, and every gesture of mine shows that I am a lover. I love every beautiful thing in the world, and that is my teaching to my people: love everything beautiful in the world. Okay? Can we dance now?

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sandy Hill, America Show, Paramount TV; The Denver Post, Denver, COHello, Osho. I understand you’d like to know just a little bit about this broadcast. It’s so new that a lot of people aren’t quite sure. But it’s now syndicated across the country. It’s a joint project between both Paramount and CBS. You’ve grown weary of us already?Yes.So why do you keep putting up with us?I will continue.You have a story to tell, which is why you do.I enjoy.You do seem very serene, though, and very happy for a man who is in effect ending a religion which has been created totally around him.It has been created around me, but not according to me. I have been always against organized religions. They have exploited humanity. They have kept people in darkness because their whole logic is based on belief. And anybody who believes stops inquiring. Belief is a dead end.But do not the people who have come here and who surround you and who are devoted to you believe in you and your.?No. Nobody believes in me and I don’t have any system of beliefs, no ideology. They are here because they love me, and love is not a belief. They are here not as my followers, they are here as my friends. I love them.But they do follow you and follow your teachings.No. I explain.They don’t believe in what you say?No. They do whatsoever their intelligence, their rationality, feels right. I can explain my experience, then it is up to them to do whatsoever they want to do with it. There is no demand on my part that they should believe it.My only request is: inquire, doubt. Doubt until you come to a point where doubt becomes impossible, where you have stumbled in some indubitable truth. Then there is no question of belief; you know it.Either you know it or you do not. There is no third alternative.Belief is a trick. You don’t know but yet you behave as if you know.Why have you chosen at this point to end this belief, this religion, of Rajneeshism?Because it has never been there. Just I has been in three and half years silence and isolation. I was completely cut off from my people.You chose to cut yourself off.I have chosen it. For thirty years I have been speaking. I needed a period of rest, not to speak at all.So for three and half years I was completely silent, not reading any newspaper, not listening to the radio, not seeing the television. And I have given my whole authority to my secretary, Ma Anand Sheela.I have always respected women more than men, because I feel that they function more through the heart than through the head, because I can see that they can be more loving and caring about people than men can be.Sheela was perfectly right - very pragmatic, very practical - to take care of five thousand people in this desert, to make houses for them, roads for them, create enough food for them: vegetables, fruits, milk products. She made the commune perfectly self-sufficient. This was the good part.But on the other hand she started feeling - which is very human, a unconscious desire in everybody - lust for power. She has been just a waitress in a hotel and suddenly millions of dollars were in her hands. We have put two hundred million dollars in this desert, to create an oasis.And she was my representative. She had all my authority. And my people love me, so in my name they were ready to do anything.She started unconsciously taking advantage of the situation. She became addicted with power. Five thousand people following everything that she says because she is always saying it with my name, in my name.And then she created the whole idea that this is a religion. She collected fewof my sentences from here and there - I have four hundred books - and she managed to compile a small book: Rajneeshism.It is not my book. She has made it. I have not even read it.But it’s excerpts of speeches or teachings that you have made, is that accurate?I don’t know because even the name is against me. I have been always against isms, ideologies, religions. I want every individual to find his own truth. Nobody can deliver it to him. It is not a commodity.No savior can save you, and there are no saviors. All are pretenders. There is no God and there are no messengers of God. This existence is complete in itself and man’s intelligence is existence’s greatest point of evolution. To destroy it by repressing through some faith, through some belief, is against humanity, against truth, and certainly against me.But you have said that Christianity failed but that Rajneeshism was the first religion. And now it seems that it, too, has failed.What I had said simply means that language is always a problem. It.you have to use the language that is available. When I was talking to the INS, I insisted that I would like to call my philosophy a religiousness, but they said, “That is difficult because we don’t have any category for religiousness. You can apply only under the category religion. We don’t have any category for religiousness.”I explained to them that there is a difference. A religion is a fixed dogma, a fixed belief system. A religiousness is just a quality like love. It is not an organized thing. It has no priests, no priestesses. It is rebellion against all that destroys human reason.But they said, “We cannot accept the application unless You use the word religion.”It was just because of them. I said, “Okay. I will use the word religion just to fulfill to your stupid categories.”That’s why I used that word: that all religions have failed; Rajneeshism is the first and the last religion. And I meant really the new kind of religiousness. All old kinds have failed.But in these three and half years silence, Sheela managed to create it in a more organized, fascist fashion: a religion, a hierarchy.She corrupted your ideas?She corrupted my ideas, certainly. And she became the high priestess.As I started speaking again, she became very much afraid and very much sad because I declared that this is not any organized religion and this is not going to be just like Christianity, having popes representing Jesus and Jesus representing God. All that nonsense is not going to be repeated here.Before I leave my body, I will destroy every possibility that can give an opportunity to another Sheela to make a religiousness, a freedom, into an imprisonment.That’s why I have chosen this moment. She has fled from here out of fear, and whatsoever she has done in three and half years, I have to undo it.And removing the religion will undo it?Yes. Yes.Will there be substantial changes here as a result of it? Or is this merely a semantics game too? As you said, language is a problem.No, everything. And now I am going to fight against INS also. They will have to create a new category. Man is not for law, law is for man. And if we are creating a new kind of religiousness, then they have to create a new category. Otherwise we will fight up to the Supreme Court.[interruption to change film]Do you really feel comfortable with this temperature?I am comfortable.Is anyone from the outside going to be able to see any changes here? Is there something tangible about this?Yes, everything.Perceptible to an outsider?Yes. It will be perceptible to the outsiders too. For example, now there will be no uniform for sannyasins.Why not?Because that makes them separate from the whole humanity.Did you not choose that in the first place?I have chosen. It was needed at that time. It was necessary.Why was it necessary then and it’s no longer?It was necessary for them. They were Hindus, they were Christians, they were Mohammedans, they were Buddhists, and they wanted to declare that they are no more belonging to any old religions. They wanted to declare it twenty-four hours with their dresses.Now there are one million sannyasins around the earth and they are already made the point that they are no more part of any old, rotten system of thought. They are individuals and they are seekers on their own. They don’t believe in anyone, they don’t hope that any savior is going to save them. They have taken their life in their own hands. And they are perfectly contented, joyous.But also having difficulties throwing off those robes and the symbols that are a part of it, aren’t they?There will be a little difficulty, because you become identified. But I am here to make you free of all identifications. Unless you are free of all identifications, you are not free. You are clinging to something, thinking yourself special. And I want my sannyasins to be just ordinary human beings, not the chosen few of God like Jews, not the chosen few Nordic Aryans like Adolf Hitler.Every religion believes that they are the chosen people of God and everybody else is lower. They somehow tolerate you. I want my people to be absolutely ordinary. There is no question of being chosen and special. In fact, all those ideas are egoistic and against man’s growth.So it is going to be difficult for them, but every growth is difficult. And inner growth is the most difficult thing because you have to leave many things out as you move in. Finally everything is left: the body, the mind, the heart. Then only you come to the center of the cyclone. Then you come to know yourself. And that realization to me is religiousness.It does not make you a Christian, it does not make you a Hindu, but it gives you a certain quality which I call religiousness.I can call it godliness.Godliness?Yes. There is no God, but godliness is possible.If there is no more Rajneeshism.No more religion, will there continue to be a Rajneesh and a Rajneeshpuram?Rajneeshpuram is just the name of the city. It will continue.You’ll keep the name even though.Yes.Taken from a religion that no longer exists?No, it is not taken from the religion. It is the people who love me who has given it the name. And it does not have anything to do with religion. Otherwise you will have to change San Francisco. Then many of your names you will have to change because they belong to some religion.This is just their love. They love me and they want to call their place.But they can no longer identify themselves as Rajneeshees, is that accurate?They are no more Rajneeshees.But there is a Rajneesh.There.I am a Rajneesh! But I am not a Rajneeshee. They can love me, they can call their city if they feel calling it. They want to change it they can change it.I have already told my people in City of Rajneesh that, “Change the name back to Antelope.”And will they?They are. They will. “Because it is not your city. Why hurt other peoples?”When will they change it back?Soon. Whenever their council meets they will change.Have you also offered to sell some of the property back to.?All the properties. I have offered that.All of the properties?All the properties that we own. And we own two-third of the properties in Antelope. We have offered they should purchase them. And we will vacate because we have enough property here: one hundred twenty-six square miles. What do we need to hurt people unnecessarily?There are only twelve old residents and one hundred sannyasins. If they don’t purchase the properties, we have also offered: “You can sell your properties. We will purchase your properties.”This way or that, but finish it.But the city will be called Antelope. It has its own name, there is no need to change it.Is this kind of a peace offering to the community on your part?Certainly.Do you think they’ll accept it?That is their business. We offer. If they don’t accept it, that is their problem. We don’t have any hostility against anybody. But if they have hostility then they will suffer. Their hostility will burn their heart.We are not at all in any trouble, in any fear. And we are offering: whatever Sheela has done against them, we are changing everything.We have offered to the governor that, “We will withdraw all our cases against the state, but you have to be understandable that you withdraw all the cases that you have put against the city of Rajneeshpuram. You have put the cases first, so it will be gentlemanly to withdraw first. The moment you withdraw all your cases, we withdraw all our cases. But if you want to fight, then it is perfectly good. We will fight to the very end.”You said earlier that you really want your sannyasins to doubt, to be skeptical.Right.And many suspect that perhaps this series of bombshells that have been dropped, as a result of Sheela’s activities, might be part of a hidden agenda that you have and that perhaps you too intend to leave?No. I will not leave America.What if you lose the deportation hearing?I will fight, because on every grounds I have the right. You all are foreigners here. And foreigners pretending to be owners of a country which belongs to red Indians. On what grounds you can deport me? First deport Ronald Reagan.And these people - your forefathers, all Americans - have come into this country as invaders. And you should feel the guilt. You belong to the invaders.We have not come here as invaders. We have purchased the property and we have paid more money than needed.All your ancestors from Columbus onwards entered America without any visa, without any green card. So what right these people have to decide about me?You have [unclear] that you’d like to see this group, the Rajneeshees, become an intrinsic part of the state of Oregon, but haven’t the antagonisms really in this local area gone so far that is that approachable? Is that achievable?We don’t care.Did you not say you’d like to be?We, on our part, are offering peace, friendship. If they want to remain hostile, we don’t care. Whatever we can do to be peaceful, we will do. But if they understand only the language of hostility, we are not worried about it.America is the country of freedom, democracy. We can fight through the courts for our rights.I respect American constitution more than holy Bible. And American constitution is in our favor on each and every point.And this will be a historical event, that we will be fighting for the American constitution against Americans who are corrupting it.I’d like to just go back for a moment.You can go anywhere you want.To your decision now to end the religion: first of all, religion was not for you, but it had been corrupted by Sheela. Was that solely the catalyst for the decision to end the religion or were there other elements that came into play?No other element.Not reports of dwindling followers, not the legal battles.No. Nobody is dwindling. More followers are coming. Sheela has thrown many people. While I was in silence she threw all those people who were most intimate to me, of which, naturally, she was afraid. She threw all the intelligent people who were far more capable than herself. She is uneducated.What did she do with them?The vice chancellor of the university, the chancellor of the university, she threw them out by and by, harassed them, just for the simple reason because they can take her place any moment. And the commune would have supported them because they had been with me long before Sheela came to me. They understood me far more better than Sheela understands me.Do you understand how an enlightened man such as yourself, how all of this could have evolved without your knowing, with your right-hand person? It is extraordinarily confusing for many.It is extraordinarily confusing because you don’t understand the nature of enlightenment. You think the enlightened person is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. You think that the enlightened person is a godman. That is all bullshit.I don’t know if we can use that on TV.If you are honest you have to use it. And bullshit is nothing unspiritual. It is a simple word with tremendous meaning.Very graphic.Yes. So please use it.The enlightened man only knows himself and nothing else. Everything else is just projected by the followers.For example, I don’t think Jesus ever walked on water or he ever turned water into wine or that he raised dead back to life. Any man doing these things would have become a national hero in Judea.[Interruption for cameraman]Is anybody a Jew amongst you?How much in debt is the commune?Not at all.So she didn’t run off with any.?No, she managed the money that was to come to the commune during these three years slowly slowly from European communes, donations, small parts she started accumulating in a Swiss bank.How much.?In her own name. Forty-three million dollars.You can prove that through the books, that it is indeed forty-three million.?No, not in our books, because it never reached here. We know the figure from Sheela’s secretary.Who is still here?.who is dying by cancer in California. We have sent our man, because she has all the documents and all the proofs and she is willing. Sometimes it happens when death is close one wants to unburden any lie, any deception. She herself wrote that these forty-three millions are very heavy on her and she wants to give us the whole details.She’s got facts, figures, papers.?Yes, everything. But commune has not missing anything, because though that money never reached commune, so it is not in commune’s papers. So commune is not in debt.But Sheela has stolen that much money on the way, and she has done many kinds of crime which slowly are sannyasins bringing it up.Sheela has been quoted recently as saying that the accusations that you’ve made against her are “absolute nonsense” and that she had told you that your penchant for expensive things - watches, automobiles - were getting everyone into trouble.If she is correct, then we will pay her the ticket to come here and face me.You deny that?I deny it completely, because neither the watches belong to me nor the cars belong to me. And they both belong to the commune. They are commune property. And even if I have those ninety Rolls Royces, they don’t make up for forty-three million dollars.The people here adore you. I mean, you are their world. This has been an horrendous period for all of them, individually, and certainly for you. But do you almost feel as if you, by having taken that vow of silence, that was the catalyst that brought this on everyone, all of you?No. It helped. You see only one side. You don’t see the other side. And everything has two sides.My being silent helped the commune to settle, because I am an unpredictable man. Every day I can say something which can disturb the politicians, which can disturb the state, the government. The commune will never be settled if I had continued to speak.Now the commune is settled, I can start speaking again. So this is the other side of it. My silence helped the commune. Now I will be speaking everything the way I have always spoken. Whatsoever is truth to me, I cannot compromise on it.For example, just this morning I told them that the holy Bible is the most pornographic book. And I am going to take out all the pornographic portions, which are near about five hundred pages, and we are going to publish colored pictures of pornography, glossy with Bible quotations, and prove to everybody that “This is your holy book. And your courts are carrying it for taking oath. The Playboy is far more sensible.”So it was good. My silence helped the commune to settle. My silence certainly helped Sheela to have a power trip.But you have no regrets.But what harm she has done? She has simply destroyed herself and her whole gang. Now they are hiding in Black Forest in Germany like criminals.What about the accusations of the hobo who had been killed, and I understand now that there was a laboratory found where there were bombs being made.So everything we are delivering to the police. Any criminal should be punished, should be brought to the court. We are helping. The police is here, FBI is here, state police is here. Our police is working, and we are discovering everything that she did.And this could happen because of my silence. This is the other side.But one has to remember that you cannot make me responsible for Adolf Hitler, because why I was not born in Germany at that time? Otherwise I should have fought against him. You cannot make me responsible for Josef Stalin. Why I was not born in Russia at that time?You cannot blame me for my silence. It is my birthright to speak or not to speak.And I had come to America in silence. I did not begin it here. I began it in India. I had no idea of coming to America when I began silence. I came into silence.But both the things happen, the good things happened, the bad things happened. And both will have their effects.Whoever is responsible for bad things will be sooner or later caught, and whoever is responsible for all the good things will be rewarded. Existence is very fair.As far as my silence is concerned, it is absolutely out of both. Neither it has done good nor it has done bad. I was simply silent and absent and in isolation.And I have the right.When I am asleep, if something happens you cannot make me responsible for it, that, “If You had not been asleep then this murder would not have happened.”My silence has done good for me. My health was bad. Thirty year continuously in India traveling from one place to another place, talking to millions of people, fighting against every dogma and every stupidity. And India is so full of it that no other country can be compared with it. Naturally I lost my health.I was never sick. I was so healthy that people used to say that my body seems to be made of marble. And then slowly slowly these thirty years of continuous traveling and continuous fighting destroyed it.I needed a rest, and those three years have immensely helped me. Now whatsoever crimes she has done, she will be punished for them. And in America, where twenty percent presidents are killed, you think one hobo is killed is much of a crime?Do you?Just I am asking you. Where twenty percent presidents are killed who have all kinds of security, the most sophisticated security in the whole world. If a hobo is killed, I don’t think there is much to brag about it. She should be punished for it. She tried to poison three other people but fortunately they have survived. She has bugged hundreds of houses. My own room she has bugged.Will normalcy ever return to Rajneeshpuram?It has returned.Bill Harlan,Denver Post newspaperA sannyasin friend said to me, “I bet that Osho will get rid of the bullets.” and I want to know if you intend to do that.I am ready right now to get rid of them, but who is going to take the responsibility of the commune? If anything happens to the commune, then who is going to be responsible? Because we receive every day threats from Christian fanatics, from Hell’s Angels, that they will come and destroy the city and burn the city. So what do you want?I can get rid this very moment. But certainly you cannot take the responsibility. Ask the governor if he is ready to take the responsibility, or the president. If he is ready to take the responsibility, we will be more than happy.We are not people who want to fight with anybody. We are not fanatics about anything. And we have nothing to defend. There is no reason. In fact, we are simply wasting our energy and our people in carrying guns. Just ask the governor, the state government, the federal government - anybody should take the responsibility that nothing happens to the commune, and if anything happens to the commune then they will be responsible for it.The greatest threat right now seems to be from the government itself, from the INS or from Oregon authorities. Is it possible that these weapons would be used against the legal authorities of the state?No, because with legal authorities what these toy guns can do?In this morning’s discourse I heard you say that you’re nobody’s master, that you have no disciples. Yet - and it was very impressive, your entry into the Mandir, your very beautiful robes, your chair which is almost thronelike - these seemed to be the accoutrements of a master. Why all the trappings?Because of my health, my sannyasins have made everything. Whatever you see - my chair is made by my sannyasins according to my physician for my back, and it has proved right. My robes are made by sannyasins. Everything from my shoe to my head is made by my sannyasins. Even my watch is made by my sannyasins.What do you think about the watch?It’s much more beautiful than mine.Yes, but it is much cheaper.Cheaper?Yes. Because these are not diamonds. These are simple proletariat stones. And if my people lovingly bring simple things to me, I cannot refuse.I heard you say this morning that love is a state of being and that in a relationship love cannot exist, that a relationship will kill love. Yet it seems in watching your sannyasins with you, and you with them, that there is an incredible relationship.No. There is no relationship. You are an outsider, that’s why it seems so. It is a state of being so overwhelming that they all become part of one state, that my being and their being is one, that their heartbeat starts beating in the same rhythm as my heart.It is not a relationship. It is just what Karl Gustav Jung calls synchronicity, just as when the sun rises and the flowers open up. Do you call it a relationship? It is synchronicity. The sun goes down, the flowers close. Do you call it relationship?Again as an outside observer, to come to Rajneeshpuram and see sannyasins working quite hard, and albeit they’re enjoying it, they look happy at their work, but they’re working quite hard, long hours, staying in fairly simple accommodations. And then on the other hand to see you drive by in the very beautiful rainbow-colored Rolls Royce, and I assume that you have very nice accommodations.It looks as if the immediate conclusion to be drawn is that there’s some kind of exploitation going on here.Yes, that’s what the outsider will come to the conclusion.Well, how do you respond to that, or what are your thoughts on that?They have made the house. I have never.my house is made by my sannyasins themselves. No outside worker has been called for anything. They have made the roads, they have made the houses, they have made a house for me. They love me.They have made a beautiful garden because they know I love trees and they feel sad that I have to live in a desert. They don’t want me to see the desert. They have surrounded my whole house with so thick trees that I cannot see the desert at all from anywhere.They have brought peacocks - three hundred peacocks in my garden. When they all dance, then it is really something worth seeing.Why? Why do they do that?Just they love me! And love needs no why. Whenever you ask why, that simply means you don’t understand love.Getting back to another thing, I just remembered.No, just finish first it. Otherwise you may have to come back. First finish it. If this question is finished.Yes, I think this question is finished..then move.On death, I believe you said that the man who understands life does not fear death.Right.And yet I see warnings that two-thirds of the population will die from AIDS, and alcohol being used around the commune, and the security, and that looks, if not paranoid, at least extremely cautious. And there seems to be a contradiction there.There is no contradiction at all. As far as I am concerned, there is no fear of death. If you want to experiment, you can shoot me here, right now, and you can see whether there is any fear or not.But these people are not in the same state where they know that there is no death. They are moving to that point, but they have not reached.For their security I have to take every precaution. The security is needed, then they will need security and it will be given to them.If I see the danger of AIDS which the outsiders are almost blind - and they are being kept blind by their government, by their church, by their religious leaders, political leaders, by their doctors even. They are kept blind of all the dangers that are looming on the horizon.Doctors don’t want to do anything with AIDS because to admit a patient is dangerous to the doctor’s health themselves, because AIDS is not only infectious when you make a sexual contact. Just the saliva of the AIDS patient carries the virus. His tear carry the virus. His mucus from the nose carries the virus.So no hospital is willing to take the AIDS patient. The best way is not to diagnose the patient, that he has AIDS, and leave him in the society. Now, this is crime, because that man will be spreading AIDS in thousands of ways. Eating in a restaurant he can cause it, by anything he can cause it.I am fully aware of its dangers, and I don’t want my people to die an ugly death. I would like them to die in glory. But to reach to that glory they have to flower into their meditation.So every precaution is being taken. There is no paranoia about it. It is simple understanding.When you see a snake on the road and you stop, is it paranoia or simply intelligence?They have been told to use gloves, they have been told to use condoms while making love, they have been told that homosexuality is unnatural and they should try, go through psychotherapeutic groups so they can become heterosexual and natural. All six thousand people in the commune have gone through tests.I don’t think there is any city in the whole world which has gone through the test so totally.They are fast asleep about the danger.And when we went through this test we found two persons had it. But we have not condemned them as they will be condemned outside.So people outside are afraid going for a test. Who knows? If it turns out that they have AIDS, then even their wife, their children, their parents, will throw them out of the house. Their job will be gone. Their friends will turn their backs on them.But I have told my sannyasins that anybody who has AIDS is a victim, he is not a criminal. He is a victim of religious lunatic ideology about celibacy.AIDS is a religious disease. It has been created by monasteries and nunneries where you put only man in one place and women in another place and you don’t allow them to meet with each other and force them to remain celibate.Naturally, it is absolutely unscientific to be celibate. You cannot be, because your body has its own program and it does not listen to your ideology. It does not know you are a Christian monk or a Hindu monk. It does not know that you are taken the vow of celibacy. It goes on creating male sperms in your body, so what you are going to do with those male sperms? And they are in a hurry to get out, because their life is not long.What happened to the two people who were diagnosed as.?Yes. We have respect for them, love for them. We have made them the best houses available. The most scenic place we have given to them.Here on the ranch?Here on the ranch, but far away from the commune. They come to the discourses, and seeing the respect and love of the whole commune they are also careful not to be in any physical contact with anybody.And they.I have told them that, “You should use these two years - perhaps you may live at the most two years - you use these two years for meditation. Make a curse into a blessing. Even the richest man has not the guts to have a two-year-long weekend. Now you have for two year complete freedom from all anxiety - even from death because it is now certain, so there is no question about it. It is going to happen. You can meditate without bothering about tomorrows. And the commune will take care of you.”So we are taking care of them. Our physicians are going to visit them. And we are keeping them engaged so they don’t get bored. They are making beautiful gardens around their houses. Whatever they can do - typing discourses, writing books, poetry, listening to music, seeing films - we have made every arrangement for them so that these two lives.two years life is a beautiful experience.And if they can meditate - they are meditating - perhaps they may die enlightened.And the AIDS will not affect at all to their inner glory. It cannot reach to your innermost core.So it is absolutely stupid of outsiders to think that we have any paranoia. In fact, what we are doing they will be doing soon. If they don’t do it, they will see AIDS spreading like wildfire.Every day one man in LA is dying from AIDS. This is only LA. Around the world how many people are dying every day? Nobody knows, because governments are repressing information. They are afraid for their prestige. No government wants that they have so many people suffering from AIDS.It is a strange situation. Everybody is hiding it. From the person himself to the medical profession, the government, everybody is trying that there is no problem.This is really idiotic.It is better to face the problem and to see its danger. There is no fear, no paranoia.A sannyasin told me that this is a good time to be at Rajneeshpuram, that things are going to be happening. I think the word he used was juicy.Right. Really it is juicy, what is happening. A fascist regime has ended. People are feeling immense freedom, sense of relief. A great burden has moved away from their heads. Now they can say whatsoever they want to say. Nobody is bugging their houses, nobody is taping their phones, nobody is calling them like Gestapo and inquiring them about what they had said to their girlfriend in the night, what they said on the phone to their parents.So there was an atmosphere of great fear, which has suddenly disappeared as Sheela and her gang escaped from here. All black clouds disappeared. The sky is open and sunny.And it is juicy also because I am destroying everything that can repeat the history. I don’t want it to be repeated again.I cannot remain always here. One day I will have to die, but then it can be repeated again. Before that I am going to destroy all possibilities so it cannot happen again.Well, what will it mean to be a sannyasin in the future, from this day forward?From this date forward a sannyasin will simply mean that he is initiated into the meditation techniques here, and he makes a commitment to himself that he will follow the path.But it is going to be individual, alone. He will be responsible himself. It is not going to be a collectivity, a congregation.Will the nuts and bolts of the commune change? Will the system of volunteer work change? The common meals?Many things will change. For example. It will take a little time for few things to change. Work hours should be reduced. Sheela was taking twelve hours, fourteen hours, in the name of devotion, in the name of surrender. But it is ugly.People did it joyfully because they were doing it for me. They were doing it as part of their love, but if you work fourteen hours, then when you are going to rest? When you are going to love somebody? When you are going to go for a morning walk? When you are going to dance in the disco? When you are going to sit in the restaurant and gossip? It is not right.Six hours is perfectly okay, more than that is too much.So it will take a little time, because the work that she has left has to be completed before the winter. Once it is completed we will start reducing.A sannyasin said to me along those lines that - with a laugh, and almost with glee - “Now we can be negative.”That’s right.Have you noticed this?Yes.Is the quality of information you receive from sannyasins different?I am receiving everything, and I have allowed every corporation head - because there are many corporations. Only Sheela was coming to me. She was head of one corporation, the biggest corporation, Foundation. But there are many corporations, almost nine or ten. So I have allowed all the heads of the corporations to come whenever they feel like their people want to say something to me.Or they can write letters and they can receive the answers. They can write questions. I am every morning answering their questions if they are useful for all. Otherwise they will receive individual answers.It is true. They can be whatever they want to be.A forced positivity is not positivity. If it comes out of one’s own responsibility and freedom, it is beautiful. If it comes out of fear, it is ugly. Then negativity is far better.I think there are some legal clouds hanging over the.They are nothing. [unintelligible word] Those clouds I have been fighting for thirty years and have almost become accustomed. Without them sometimes I think, “What I will do?”If the decision at the INS goes against you and the supreme court rules against you also, then what will be the future of Rajneeshpuram?It is impossible. You should understand my strategy. They have six categories. I have applied on five categories. I am capable to receive the green card.Sixth is the marriage, which I can do any moment.Would you do it?I can marry anybody and apply for the sixth category also. Perhaps in the whole history of America nobody would have applied on six categories.And I will fight on each category separately, because I have applied separately on each category. If they refuse me on one category, I will fight for that category up to the Supreme Court. It will take at least twenty years. If the Supreme Court says yes, okay. Otherwise I start on the second category. Again from the lowest court it will take twenty years.Six categories will take one hundred twenty years. My followers, my lovers, my friends - whatsoever people call them - will have to fight, because I would have gone. And by this time all INS officers would have gone, all judges would have gone, many presidents would have gone. One hundred twenty years is a long time.That’s why they are not. In four years they have not been able to decide on a single category to say anything. Their problem is if they say yes, which they cannot say because the political pressure is on them. They cannot say yes, they cannot say no either, because the moment they say no I move to the courts. Then the case is beyond their jurisdiction. I will fight in the courts.And they have no reason to say no on any category.So I will see. There is no problem. I will enjoy it. It will be such an excitement.But I am going to be here. If they want me once in a while to go out of America, they should issue the green card as quickly as possible. Then I can make tours around the world and maybe off their neck for awhile. Otherwise I am going to be here.It seems that you’ve angered local people through some of your statements, and I know you have a tendency to make the outrageous statement. Would it be more politic to, perhaps, not mention Mother Teresa in the same breath as Hitler.?I am not a political person. I am not a politician. I simply call a spade just a fucking spade.What’s the purpose of all this, the religiousness, the commune, the state of being with your followers?What is the purpose of your life? Is there any purpose of your life? To take my interview is your purpose of life?There are things which have no purpose. Life has no purpose. Love has no purpose. Beauty has no purpose. Blissfulness has no purpose.Things which are in the category of purpose are mundane. Machines have purpose. Man has no purpose.What is the purpose of dancing and rejoicing and singing and painting and writing poetry? What is the purpose of Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci or Picasso?Once somebody asked Picasso while he was painting that, “I have been watching for two years.two hours but I can’t see what is the purpose of your painting.”Picasso said, “I was going to ask you, because you have been watching for two hours. Perhaps you may have figured it out by now.”And he said something really significant: “Nobody goes to a roseflower and asks, ‘What is the purpose? Why you are?’ And if the roseflower can dance in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, and nobody bothers him about purpose, then why people bother me? I am enjoying painting, that’s enough. More than that is not needed.”A purposive life is the life of a slave.A life without any purpose is playful. It has immense joy, moment to moment but it has no tomorrow, no end. It is not going anywhere. It is simply being now and here.I am enjoying myself. My people are enjoying with me. What more is needed?The people who ask these questions, the outsiders, are not aware why they are asking it. Their life has no joy, no song, no flowering, no fragrance. They are just dragging their life, so naturally the question arises in their mind: “What is the purpose?”A healthy person never asks, “What is the purpose of health?” A healthy person never goes to the doctor to inquire, just find out, “Why I am healthy?” Only the sick goes to inquire the cause of sickness.Health is natural. Sickness is unnatural.To live joyfully is natural. There is no purpose and no end. It is intrinsically valuable.Obviously you’re surrounded by happy people.That’s true.I understood you to say that none of your sannyasins are enlightened. Did I understand that correctly?They are on the way.Is it possible for a sannyasin to be enlightened.?Yes, certainly..And remain a sannyasin?That is up to him. I never interfere into anything.In this unusual environment that you’ve created just here in Oregon but starting back in India, one would think that in all that time that perhaps at least one or two sannyasins might have achieved that.Yes, few sannyasins have achieved.Are they here?Their names cannot be told for the simple reason that will create unnecessary seriousness in them, jealousy in others. And I don’t want that. It is perfectly good that they are enlightened and they are enjoying it. To make them serious is to make them sick. And to make them others’ objects of jealousy is also not good.So I am not going to declare anybody to be enlightened unless I am just joking about some idiot. That’s another thing.You mentioned in discourse that there have been no children born in Rajneeshpuram in four years.No.Why so few children in Rajneeshpuram?You can understand. It is simple. The whole world is overpopulated. People are dying of starvation, thousands of people every day. And soon more will be dying because nobody is taking care. Everybody is interested in creating nuclear weapons.Even a country like India where fifty percent people are undernourished is selling its wheat to countries from where it can purchase nuclear plants, engineers, experts. Half the country is going to die in the coming years and they are not concerned about it. They are concerned about nuclear weapons.I have sent a message to Rajiv Gandhi. Their family has been intimate to me. One of his friends was here few days before and he asked me that, “Rajiv has inquired, is there any message for him?”And I said, “Just tell him, ‘Don’t be stupid. You don’t need nuclear weapon. And even if you can create nuclear weapons, it will take three hundred years for you to be as big a power as Soviet Union or America. In three hundred years your whole country will die in starvation.‘And in these three hundred years, Soviet Union and America are not going to wait for you, that, “Let us India also come and become a big nuclear power, then we start ahead.” In three hundred years they will be three thousand years ahead of you.‘So you just don’t go into this race. It is not for a poor country. It is not even good for a rich country. Even in America there are thirty million people who are poor, hungry, on the streets. So don’t sell your wheat. Give it to the poor people. They produce it and they die hungry.”‘And you are asking me why no more children? I have simply told my people that, “You have to see. The whole earth is so overpopulated - four billion people already. By the end of this century there will be five billion people. There will not be even elbow room to stand. You need not go to any church, any meeting; you will be always in the church, in the meeting, in the congregation - always in the crowd.“And crime will increase and disease will increase. This is not the world to bring your child in.“AIDS is spreading, which will take two thirds of humanity in its grip. There are cases where even children are born with AIDS. So what you are going to give to your child as inheritance? This ugly world full of AIDS, hunger, starvation, nuclear weapons, the third world war always hanging on the horizon? This world you are going to give as a gift to your child?“If you love, you cannot do this. This is not possible.”And they understood it, that that’s certainly true. And not a single child has born in four years.And this should be the case all over the world. For twenty years no child. So for.within twenty years we can reduce the population at least to its half. One fourth will be the best, so everybody can live comfortably, peacefully, intelligently.This small planet has a certain capacity.I’m sorry, did you say reduce the total population by one half or.?One fourth.One fourth. So one fourth of the people, in other words, one billion instead of four billion.Yes. One billion is enough.How many people will come to Rajneeshpuram?It is difficult to say, but we have enough land: three times than New York. So at least one hundred thousand sannyasins will be here.How soon might that number be reached?That depends on your stupid politicians; how long they go on being stupid I cannot predict.What I’ve heard you say is that you’re not a prophet. Is that accurate?I am not a prophet.Are you a holy man?No. I am simply a human being. Holy man is simply holy shit. Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Richard Wagner, CBS Network; Scott Miller, KGW-TV, Channel 8, Portland (NBC Affiliated); Bob Chase, KEX Radio, Portland; Sally Hill, Associated Press, Portland; Mike Housical, The Globe, USA; The Daily Telegraph, Syndey, Australia; The Star, London, UK; Linda Kramer, San Francisco Examiner; Jerry Thompson, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; Mike Zeilinzinger, Night Ridder Newspapers; John McCoy, Seattle Post Intelligencer; Eric Follet, Stern Magazine; Bill Harlem, Denver Post, ColoradoOsho,The press understands you are going to make a statement first and then they could ask questions.Beloved Friends,I welcome you all on this historical event. For the first time in the whole history of mankind a religion has died. I have never wanted it to be born in the first place. But because I was in silence and isolation a gang of fascists managed to create it. It was absolutely necessary that it should be completely destroyed. I am against all religions, because they have done only harm to humanity. They have given you nothing except the disease AIDS - that is their great contribution. Their insistence on celibacy is the cause of all sexual perversions in the world.They have divided humanity into Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Judaism. There are three hundred religions on the earth. Because of these religions humanity cannot be one. No child is born Hindu or Christian. But these conditioned, forced, in every possible way to adopt a religion of their parents. This is a great crime against human beings, because they are not given the chance to inquire into reality: what is the truth? Even before they have asked the question they are being supplied with the answers, ready-made answers. There whole life they will go on carrying those ready-made answers like parrots and deep down their ignorance will remain the same - there will be no transformation.Belief is the enemy of truth. Faith is poison to every enquiry. Doubt is innocence and it is not given to you by anybody. You bring it with you, you are born with it. Doubt means questioning, it means quest, it means individual enquiry. All the religions are based on belief systems, that’s why they have crippled human mind. They have kept humanity in a retarded state. Science is based on doubt. Just within three hundred years science has given so much to humanity, that in ten thousand years religion have not been able to do anything comparable to it.I hate the word ism. And because I was silent Ma Anand Sheela managed to compile a book Rajneeshism. That was not my book. I have never read it - the question of writing does not arise. And today you have seen that is has been cremated. It is an event of great rejoicing, because I don’t want to belong to all those criminals who have given you holy books - no book is holy. All books are just books, either they are good or bad, well written or not well written. How a book can be holy. But once you call a book holy, you become blind. Just look in Holy Bible, there are five hundred pages of sheer pornography. This is your holy book. And this is the book kept in the courts; and you have to take oath on a pornographic book? I don’t want to add anything into this ugly literature. My books are simply books - just as I am simply a human being.I am not a savior. That is so humiliating to human beings. I am not a messenger; I am not a prophet. Nobody has ever been a savior. Jesus could not save himself even. And what guts, what nerve. He calls himself the shepherd and the whole humanity, sheep. And there are millions of people who don’t feel even insulted.To what degradation human mind has fallen? Don’t you have any pride of being human? I want to restore your humanity to you and the only way is that I should not be in any special category. I am amongst you, just like you an ordinary human being. With a little difference, very little difference: you are asleep, I am awake. It is my own fault. I am not condemning you. If I can’t sleep, whose fault it is? Not only that I am awake, I go on trying other people to wake up. The reason is: because I have known sleep and I have known all the sweet dreams and all the nightmares, but I have also known the beauties and the blessings of awakening. And I would like to share my experience to everybody.Hence I am not your leader, you are not my follower. Just being friends is enough, more than enough. Perhaps only in friendship something can transpire between me and you. Only in loving sharing perhaps you may wake up.I don’t have any catechism, no theology, nothing for you to believe in. I have taken away all psychological nonsense. I have taken away God from you, because that is nothing but a small child’s desire for the protection of the father; it is retardedness. Only retarded people believe in a God; only greedy people believe in heaven; only cowards, people full of fear and paranoia believe in hell. I have taken all those things from you: there is no God, no heaven, no hell.I want to share only one thing with you, which does not make you a religion, but it certainly makes you a new kind of man. I call that methodology, meditation. It is an inward journey. You have to go alone on it. The crowd cannot go with you. As you go deeper within yourself. Just by witnessing your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings a tremendous mutation happens: thoughts stop, emotions disappear, feelings evaporate, all that is left is pure awareness. And that awareness is your flowering, your ultimate reach beyond which there is nothing. You have arrived home.Certainly one who reaches to this peak he will have many qualities. Religiousness will be one of those qualities. So you will not be a religion, but you will have a quality of religiousness. What do I mean by religiousness? A gratitude to existence, a love affair with the flowers, with the birds on the wing, with the sunrise, with the sunset, with the trees, with animals, with people. This love affair I call religiousness. From this day you should not think in terms of being a religion, but in terms of being religious: a quality of love, gratitude, a sensitivity for beauty, for music, for poetry and all that makes you ecstatic. The dance comes on its own, the song arises on its own and it is an individual approach.You are not to follow somebody else’s footsteps, because you are not going outside, you are going inside yourself, where you will not find any footsteps, because nobody can enter in your interiority, in your subjectivity.Do this because just my silence and isolation gave Anand Sheela and her fascist gang to exploit you. I am going to destroy everything so history never repeats again. I will not be always with you - one day I will have to go. Before that I want to destroy every possibility. I don’t want any popes behind me, any high priestess, any Ayatollah Khomeini. No, I want to leave you alone, so content and fulfilled that you don’t need anybody between you and the truth of existence.Hence I have withdrawn red cloths. Now all the colors of rainbow are your colors. You can use any color, so you can mix with the wider humanity more easily. And when there are so many colors, why get addicted to one color? But if you love it and if you want to keep it, it is up to you. It is your freedom. You need not wear mala with my picture in the locket, no. You have to go inwards, the mala will be left out. Somebody may steal it, damage it, there is no need of it.But, it is up to you. I don’t want to enforce anything on anybody. You can use mala if you like, if you can use whenever you like, you can stop using whenever you like. The only thing that you have to remember is don’t forget that life comes to its fulfillment only when you have reached to your innermost center. That is the only truth. Everything else is nonessential. The only essential thing is to realize your being, your silence, your reality. And for that no belief is needed.Sheela has created a hostility. That’s a simple methodology of all fascist minded people. Create hostility in the neighbors, that makes you dependent on the leaders, because you are afraid. The leaders promise you they will protect you against the enemies. This becomes a great opportunity for them. Now we have to drop all hostility completely. Nobody is our enemy, we are not against anybody and anything that Sheela has done in three and half years, we have to undo it.City of Rajneesh has to become again Antelope. I have advised the council that, “Please change that name.” Antelope was perfectly beautiful name, and why hurt people who had lived there for generations? And I have offered to Oregonians that if they want they can purchase all the properties belonging to sannyasins and we will vacate Antelope completely, because we have enough land here, three times bigger than New York. So what do we need poor Antelope for?And just before coming to your press conference, I was delayed in an interview with Attorney General Frohnmeyer. I have told him that now, there is no point in your case against the city of Rajneeshpuram. His only argument was that religion and state are being mixed. Now there is no religion! So while you were burning Rajneeshism, the book, in the crematorium you have burned also poor Frohnmeyer. Now there is no point in it. If religion itself is not there, the city becomes immediately legal.Any questions?Richard Wagner,CBS Network.Could you explain why you make the statement that religion has given humanity nothing except the disease AIDS? I don’t understand that.You are right. It has given many more things too.For instance?It has given a divided humanity, it has given thousands of wars, bloodshed, murders, burning of living people, it has certainly given many more things.But specifically, how has religion contributed to AIDS?Two reasons. One, every religion propagates that celibacy is something spiritual, which is absolute nonsense. Celibacy is unnatural. And there has never been anybody who was celibate unless he was impotent. Your body functions according to its own program. It does not know that you are a Catholic monk. It goes on creating male sperms same way, whether you are Catholic monk or not. What you are going to do with those sperms? The natural repressed is bound to find some perverted way and religions managed monks to live together, nuns to live together, and they are not to meet each other. That was full opportunity for monks to be homosexuals. Homosexuality is a contribution of religions and AIDS is the ultimate outcome of homosexuality. So it is a long chain.What came first, religion or AIDS?Religion.But we all understand that AIDS is a virus. How can a virus be caused by a religion?Homosexuality can be caused by religion and homosexuality can cause the virus.Scott Miller,KGW-TV, Channel 8, Portland (NBC Affiliated)If in fact you don’t have a religion going here, how can your foundation still claim tax exempt status and won’t that create a problem for you getting donations in the future?The foundation is to spread meditation which creates a new kind of religiousness, although it is not a religion. It is far better than all the religions. It claims to be a charitable tax exempt status. In fact, no religion should be given any tax exempt status. Because homosexuality is not a charity.Does what you say include then your foundation here? Do you believe that you should be giving up your tax exempt status?It is not a religion; it is simply a religiousness. It should be given, it is charitable. It is not going to give AIDS to humanity.I guess I hear you saying that you are a religion or you are religious for the.It is totally different.You are religious when it comes to tax purposes.No!But you’re not religious when it comes to.No! I am not saying that.. Separation of church and state.. You are misunderstanding me.Set me straight then!So try to understand. I am saying that I am not a religion. We are meditators, we don’t belong to Christianity, to Hinduism, to any organized religion. And we don’t have any organized religion either. We don’t have any beliefs which make a religion. Meditation is a scientific method, but the scientific method can contribute to human growth immensely. It can give you more peace, more silence, more joy and ultimately a feeling of deathlessness.I call this experience religiousness. And I will claim tax exempt status for it.I grant you there is a very fine line there, do you think.I am going to fight for it.Do you think the Internal Revenue Service will see that fine line that you’ve just described to me?I will see. I will see how much brains they have.Bob Chase,KEX Radio, Portland.With regard to the investigation that is underway at Rajneeshpuram, I’m wondering if you have subpoenaed to offer any testimony with regard to the investigation?I have not received any subpoena. In fact I have asked the investigators that I want to be interviewed and four times they gave me the appointment and just fifteen minutes before they informed it is canceled. They seem to be afraid, just taking my interview. I have not received any subpoena. I would love! I want to see your investigators, because I also want to know what is their depth. I can also investigate them. I am waiting for their subpoena; I will enjoy it!Up to now they have proved very coward. Four times on my request they gave the appointment, FBI, state police, attorney general’s office, county police, all top people are here. And they could not take a single person’s interview. What kind of people you have got? And tell them, if they don’t subpoena me I am going to subpoena them!Sally Hill,Associated Press, PortlandAt a previous news conference I asked you whether Oregonians and your disciples could ever coexist peacefully and you answered, “never!” yet it seems that these overtures you’re making to Oregonians and those in the former city of Antelope seem to head along those lines. Can you speak to that please?That time you had escaped the moment I said, “never,” without even waiting that what I am going to say. “Never”: you thought you had understood my meaning. It was a single word, it has many implications. You need some lessons in journalism.First let me make you aware that I had said “never” for coexistence, because coexistence is a political word, and I hate politics! Secondly, coexistence means you remain hostile to each other but somehow because fate has managed you to be together, so you accept each other unwillingly, just the way America and Soviet “non-coexist.”I wanted to say that day also, but when I looked I saw you had already left.I went to get my notebook.I mean. Coexistence never, because I want one existence. Coexistence is between enemies. I want one existence. We are already four year old Americans, somebody may be hundred year old, somebody may be two hundred year old, we are the latest ones, the most fresh and young. We want one existence. I had refused the coexistence.How do you intend to go about attaining this one existence?Because I am withdrawing everything that Sheela has created as a rift. City of Rajneesh was one of the basic rifts. I am changing it again into Antelope, I am offering all the properties that we have purchased from Antelope people back to them, or to anybody who wants to purchase, and we are ready to move from out of Antelope. So Antelope belongs to Antelope people, it is their city and whatever they want to do they can do.We are ready to drop all the cases against the state if the state understands a simple thing that now there is no religion, they should drop their case of mixing religion with state. We will withdraw all our cases against them. These are the steps that we would like to take. We have put in this desert two hundred million dollars to change it into an oasis.If the state is helpful, and we don’t want any illegal help, we can change this whole desert into an oasis. We can make it one of the most beautiful holiday spot, a tourist center which will help Oregon’s economy immensely. We are ready to do everything.Mike Housical, The Globe, USA, The Daily Telegraph, Syndey, Australia, The Star, London, UK.Sir, you talked earlier about how you would like to leave these people when you finally decide to leave them. Have you decided if you’re going to spend the rest of your days here or have you plans to travel on?No, I am going to be here.Forever?Forever. Green card or no green card, I am going to be here forever!You don’t have plans to open any other communes in any other parts of the world?Yes, I have all over the world so many communes, almost in every country.But the people come here for three months, four months, to stay with me, and then go back. I am going to remain here. If Oregon or American government wants me to travel then they should issue tomorrow my green card. Then perhaps I may start thinking of traveling!But it is not a promise - I am saying, perhaps.Linda Kramer,San Francisco ExaminerRegarding your comments on AIDS, should practicing homosexuals leave the commune?We are trying, the whole commune, six thousand people, have gone through the vigorous tests to know whether they have AIDS or not. We have found only two persons and few homosexuals. Out of these two persons, one has died; only one remains. We are providing him everything, love, respect, because he is only a victim. The real criminals are there in the Vatican.And the homosexuals - I am telling them that you start dropping this habit and move towards heterosexuality. And they will do it, because they can see what is the outcome of it. Now no homosexual can say that they are more progressive then heterosexuals, that they are avant-garde, that they are far ahead intellectually, these heterosexuals are lagging behind just like animals. No, they cannot say that. AIDS has stopped all their mouths. It has proved that homosexuality is a degradation.So we will change them. And we have all kinds of therapies and those homosexuals have to go through all the therapies. We are going to deprogram them from their homosexuality.Would you discourage people who don’t wish to lose the habit from coming to you.Then they can leave! We don’t want homosexuals here because they are potentials for AIDS. Either they have to change or they have to leave. The choice is theirs. Okay?Jerry Thompson,Canadian Broadcasting CorporationI wonder if you could tell us what you know about where Sheela is now and the latest. We in Canada haven’t really heard all the news and the statements you have made about the attempted murder, the arson, wiretap, and various other things like that. So could you tell those in Canada who don’t know anything about this what the story is behind that, what happened and why?You are too late! That story is old. We create new stories. That story you can find in old newspapers and other places.Do you expect ever to see her again, or have you said your last words to her?I am perfectly willing if she is courageous enough, she should come here and face me before the commune. She is making allegations which are absolute lies and she is hiding like a criminal in Black Forest in Germany. Now if she has not committed any crime, why she has escaped? If others have committed the crime, they should have escaped. Her escape is proof enough.And the whole gang that has gone with her, they are all involved, because sannyasins are going and telling it to the police, to the FBI, revealing all the facts and they have found all the evidences. All the houses were bugged. And they have created far more sophisticated mechanisms than Nixon had used. Every telephone was taped. We have found all the mechanism that they were using; all that has been given to the police.They had left in their room, in Sheela’s room, literature on poisons, literature on how to kill people, and they had attempted three persons to kill. And one of them was my own personal physician. He suspected that this poison is a certain poison which is not detectable. So he was examined here, in Bend, and doctors said that, “There is no disease, but you are certainly sick and the only explanation is that some poison has been given to you which is not detectable.”When Sheela left we found the literature in her room. In one of the books the only poison that is underlined is the same which my physician was suspecting, the undetectable poison is underlined. That is the only poison that is underlined in the whole literature. So they were giving that poison to many people, now many other people have come because nobody ordinarily thinks is somebody offers you a cup of tea and you become suddenly sick, you don’t immediately think of poison. You think perhaps you are sick, you rush to the doctor and doctor cannot find any disease. He says, “Just rest.” What else can be done about it?We have found in their literature books how to make bombs and we have found chemicals and other material which makes bombs.They had killed one person, they overdosed him, one of the street people that they had brought here to take over the county. And three thousand people were keeping drugged completely for twenty-one days so that whatever she wants, they will do. They were like robots. And drums of drugs have been imported from outside America, because to purchase from here will become a problem, what you did with all those drugs? So those drugs were purchased from outside America and were brought in.One of the street people they overdosed; he died on the spot. They simply threw his body outside Rancho Rajneesh. The police has found the body, but they could not figure out what has happened to the person, who was the person, because he was a street man, no address from where he has come, no identity card, nothing. So they simply dropped the case. Now people are coming up and saying that he had died here in the city and they had dragged him out.They burned the planning office in The Dalles and now there is absolute evidence of one sannyasin who had driven the people who bombed, burned the office and she drew them back. She had gone with Sheela, afraid that she may be caught, but in Seattle she started feeling that it is better to be caught than to carry this guilt whole life and then to remain like a criminal in a foreign land. So from Seattle she came back and she confessed and she has confessed all other crimes of the group, because she was on intimate of the whole company.So every evidence is there now. If they want to catch those people, they should not wait long.Do you think that her intention was merely to take over and replace you, or did she have some other bigger plan in mind?No, certainly this was the. Because even my milk was poisoned. Not in such a dose that I will die, but in such a dose that I will not come out of my silence; so I became. Remain sick and I don’t feel like speaking. She was afraid of my speaking to the people again because that will certainly expose her. And that’s what happened. She wanted to become the chief priestess of the religion, controlling so much money, so many people. I have one million sannyasins around the world. To control one million people around the world, all the communes, all the money; she was almost in a position of a queen!And she has come from a very low class. She was just a hotel waitress.Are you making any attempt, is your organization making any attempt to track her down and deal with her own your own?No, we are not making any attempt, we are giving every evidence to the police. We don’t want to take law in our own hands. There is no need.Mike Zeilinzinger,Night Rider newspapersEven before the recent rift as you describe it, law enforcement agencies were already here, already looking at records. Not in the commune, but were already investigating this operation. now that they are here, now that many outsiders have come to look into the files and look into the books and look into the tape recordings that have been discovered, do you fear that whole process may destroy this place and destroy what’s going on here?No. They may try, because I don’t trust this attorney general. He may take the advantage to harass sannyasins. I have heard the rumor that he plans at least to arrest one thousand sannyasins which are absolutely innocent and he is not trying to take any action against the criminals. But as far as commune is concerned, there is no problem. We are giving them every evidence, we are absolutely open, we have given them space inside the commune and they are free to move and find whatsoever they want. And sannyasins themselves are going to them and giving information.But attorney general’s interest seems to be not to catch the criminals, but take an advantage of the situation and destroy the commune. I will not allow this to happen. The governor and attorney general both are in conspiracy against the city. The governor wants to bring emergency on the city. Strange, you are here, there is no riots, there are nobody who is murdered, killed, people are cooperating with the police and still he wants to create an state of emergency. For what reason?And attorney general has put the National Guard on alert. I want to know the whole world, that these dirty politicians are the ones who are destroying democracy in America. We will fight for democracy and we will fight for human rights. We are not going to allow them to harass innocent people.We are not taking the law in our hands, but if they do not do anything, then my communes in Germany will start suing them in the courts, because they have deceived the German communes also of money and not small amount, forty-three million dollars. If they move and hide in Switzerland, then my commune is going to reveal to the police that Sheela has committed bigamy. Her husband is here, American husband. He was also poisoned. Because he did not die, she went away and married a Swiss sannyasin, just to remain in Switzerland. She has committed bigamy.So we will see. If these people don’t do anything, still we will find laws. In India she cannot enter, because there she has committed many crimes. And now we are informing Indian government, ten million dollars, books she has brought from India and she has not paid back the money to the Indian foundation.Could you elaborate a bit on this conspiracy that you allege?Right now it is very difficult, what is in their mind, because they don’t open their mind. Even I have been just now in interview with the attorney general, and I said it again and again, that your case has gone down the drain. He did not answer that. You know politicians are very clever not to speak what is in their mind, what they want to do. But whatever is their mind, we are alert.John McCoy,Seattle Post Intelligencer.You said earlier that you were not the head of a religion, you were not a prophet, you are not a savior, you are a meditator among friends, among fellow meditators. Why then are you so remote? Why are you in the chair, you in the Rolls Royce, not available except at these discourses to your fellow meditators?Because I have achieved. They are on the way. And obviously so many people cannot be accommodated in this chair.How about the Rolls Royces? Many could be accommodated there!They all belong to these people; nothing belongs to me, I don’t anything.Will they ride in those cars?They don’t want. I had offered, I had asked the trustees who own the Rolls Royces that give them to the sannyasins. They are not willing. They say because I have used them, for them they have become immensely valuable and they will keep them as memorial. So they do not want to give and sannyasins don’t want to take either. And sannyasins have enough cars.The commune has almost more cars than any city can claim, hundred buses, five airplanes and nowhere to go!Eric Follet,Stern MagazineYou would like to make your friends here in the commune self-reliant in every way, material as well as spiritual, not dependent on you anymore.That’s right.Does it not mean that your final and most logical goal must be to dissolve the commune and leave it?My commune does not consist of idiots; it is an commune of very much intelligent people. And many intelligent people whom Sheela has driven out, out of fear, because they were more intelligent than her and she was afraid. Any moment they can take over and manage better. They are all coming back. The chancellor of the university, the vice-chancellor of the university, all old sannyasins with all the education possible in the world. We have geniuses, scientific, who can do miracles, who can start producing anything we want. We have best surgeons, one of the best plastic surgeon. We can have one of the best hospital in America, where people will have to come. We can open industries, we can open businesses. We have all kinds of geniuses, there is no problem.Money is not a problem at all. Money is the simplest thing in the world. I have lived without money my whole life and I have lived as richly as anybody can live. Perhaps even kings and presidents cannot live so richly. And I don’t have a single cent. I have not even seen how one dollar bill looks like. I don’t have even pockets, because I have nothing to keep in my pockets. But I have people who can manage anything.When Sheela left she told few sannyasins that, “Now it will be difficult for you to arrange more Rolls Royces for Osho.” The sannyasin simply laughed. And after she has left they dropped the regular Rolls Royce, they have started purchasing limousines. Now I have got six limousines. Soon ninety limousines will be there!Are these German limousines by chance, German cars?Yes, I love. Now I am chauffeur driven, I am not driving myself. You can see outside my latest limousine there. And Rolls Royce is making one special limousine which will take one and half year, which will be one of its kind in the whole world. It will cost half million dollars.My people can arrange anything, there is no problem. So don’t be worried about money. And I am not against wealth, I am not against luxury, I am not a masochist ascetic. If we can enjoy paradise here, then why wait for death?And I have not seen in any religious scripture that Rolls Royces are available in paradise. I think Jesus must be still moving on his donkey. Poor fellow, here was also moving on his donkey, in paradise the only Son of God still moving on donkey. Let them move, what we can do?The little book which you ordered to be burned today contains almost nothing else but quotes of you, which you use in quite similar form in your other books. Does that mean that you will burn all your books one day?No, those are simply books and this was Sheela’s effort to make a holy book. We have burned a holy book.Bill Harlem,Denver Post ColoradoThis morning you mentioned several requests from local people for peace offerings from you. I believe you mentioned a Methodist that wanted a Rolls Royce. You said that these people be offering peace offerings. Could you be more specific, what would you consider a peace offering from the local community?Just a rose flower will do. But they are not even that generous!Sannyasin told me at the burning this evening, I asked him what the deep meaning of this ceremony was, and he said, “Well, it’s all a big joke.”That’s right! That is right because I consider sense of humor as one of the most important religious qualities.Thank you, Osho.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Ted Knoppel andCharles Gibson, Nightline, ABC-TV[This is live TV coverage including an interview with Oregon attorney general David Frohnmeyer in Portland.]Can the Osho hear me? Are we coming through to the Osho? This is Charlie Gibson in Washington.Hi, Charlie.Osho,Is it true that you have not yet held this news conference?No, not yet. You have been delaying me.At your news conference you are going to tell your followers that you are no longer their guru but just their friend. Why are you doing this?I have never been their guru.Why are you not their guru, then?I was silent for three and a half years, and in that silent period the group of Ma Anand Sheela exploited the innocent sannyasins and tried to create a religion. And she became the high priestess of the religion.Didn’t you realize during that period of time that they were following you in a religious sense?They were told so, but I was not informed and I was in isolation and in silence so I was not aware of what is happening.What kind of a relationship did you have with her, Sheela, for those three and a half years?She was just my secretary.And she didn’t tell you what was going?She did not. And she exploited the situation, because she was the only source of communication between me and the sannyasins.There was a case in court brought against you and your followers for improperly mixing church and state. So you must have known.No..That your group was claiming church status.I had no idea of anything because I was in isolation. So you have to understand it clearly, that when I came out of silence, then only I became aware of what has been happening in these three and a half years.What does this announcement today do to your group for the future. What difference will it make?It makes tremendous difference. First, there is no religion and there is no master, no disciple. I am only a friend. And those who love me are living with me.Will this take away the tax-exempt status or your organization?I don’t care.As I understand it, it will cost you your tax-exempt status.It will not. It will not. Because our activity is still religious. We are not religion, but our activity is religious. And there is no need for one being a part of an organized religion. One can be simply religious. The quality of being religious is totally free from any organizational structure. I am.You claim Sheela left with a lot of money. How much money did she take from you?I don’t know. She has not taken from here, but the money that was coming from Europe to this commune as a donation, she stopped it somewhere in Switzerland and opened a bank account there. Her secretary has informed that it is forty-three million dollars.There are some people who think you are still cooperating with her and may go to Europe with her. Is that true?No.You’re going to stay in Oregon come what.I am going to stay here come what.[Here Gibson interviews Frohnmeyer, head of the investigation in Rajneeshpuram.]Your assistant, Sheela, has charged that there is widespread drug use in your Rajneeshpuram, and that many of your followers are in effect drugged most of the time. Is that correct?That is absolutely absurd.There is no use of this drug ecstasy at your commune?Not at all.Is it used at all?No.She has charged also the illegal use and procurement of weapons.All the weapons are legal.Isn’t a leader to a large degree responsible for the actions of his followers?I am not the leader and I am not responsible for anybody else except myself.Those people are followers of yours, they are there because of you.They are because of me. That is their responsibility and their choice.Well, they have contributed money that has wound up with you having ninety Rolls Royces.That too is their responsibility, not mine. I have not asked them.But it certainly would indicate that you were considered by them to be their leader. Doesn’t the leader at some point have to take responsibility for what his. I think you’ve called them disciples, have you not?When I am not their leader the question does not arise. I am their friend, nothing more, nothing less.[Gibson asks Frohnmeyer some questions. He then asks him if Osho’s status as a friend, not a religious leader, will change anything. Frohnmeyer says it doesn’t change the civil lawsuit that challenges the legality of Rajneeshpuram because of violating the constitution on church-state grounds.][interrupting] Mr. Frohnmeyer. Wait a minute.Will your announcement today change in any way what relationship you had with your group a year ago?First, let me say to Mr. Frohnmeyer that the whole situation changes completely. His case becomes bogus against the city. His case was that city is being mixed with religion. There is no religion at all here.Your actions today did have something to do with that church-state case that was brought by the.No, it had nothing to do with it. It is just a byproduct by consequence of it.Mr. Frohnmeyer, your response to that?[Frohnmeyer: Well, the response is not to debate a lawsuit over national television but simply to say that time and law will tell.]Are you saying.?He has no answer. That’s why he is depending on time and court and other things.But did you have that case in mind when you decided.?No, I don’t. I don’t have that case in mind. You have raised the question, that’s why I am saying there is no religion here. And that makes it clear that attorney general’s case is simply finished. It has no grounds at all.Osho and Attorney General Frohnmeyer: I appreciate both of you joining us tonight. It’s been very interesting.I’m Charles Gibson in Washington for all of here at ABC news. Good night.Good night, Charlie.[apparent break in recording, then Gibson’s voice]I’m still somewhat uncertain as to why he’s done what he’s doing tonight, but I most appreciate his being with us and I think this was interesting. Thank you.Now I am also thankful to you, because I am also very thankful to you, and glad that you have made this point clear to the whole nation, that now there is no religion here. And Mr. Frohnmeyer’s whole case is down the drain.I suppose this will be pursued in the courts and I hope we have a chance to do this again as this.We will. We will pursue in the courts, but it is finished. It is just a dead case. Thank you.Would you be interested in coming on and.?Yes. Yes.And talking to Sheela at some point?I am willing. Always, whenever you want.Well, we’ll be in touch and we’ll try to do it.Okay. Thank you.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Stern magazine, West GermanyOsho,You have read Sheela’s interview with Stern magazine, and my understanding is also that you would like to clarify some of the points.Yes.She claimed that a drug named ecstasy was used here in the commune. Did you ever use it or know that it was used here?She is simply lying. I have never used. I am constantly in ecstasy without any drug. What need I can have of Ecstasy? The drug can only create a hallucination and I have got the real thing.So do you have any knowledge that this drug was used in fund-raising?No, because in this commune drugs are completely prohibited. And if anybody could bring them it was only Sheela and her group, because they were in charge of the commune. I was in silence and isolation, never leaving out my room. I had no idea what is going on outside.If she knew that they.drugs are being used in the commune, why she did not inform me about it? Why she did not inform the government about it? And I have been consistently insisting that no drugs should enter Rajneeshpuram because every drug is against meditation. It gives an illusion which is dangerous. One can get addicted to it.So if she is right, then she is responsible for it.As far as my people are concerned, nobody is using drugs, no drugs are being allowed in the commune. We have kept a special dog to check everybody entering. If he finds any drug he immediately prevents the person.So the only way if any drug ever entered, it must have been through Sheela.And I have seen her pictures on the television. She looks drugged.She is absolutely lying. And if she is right, then she is responsible because I have left the commune in her hands.And why she does not gather courage to come and face me? I have never thought that she will prove such a chicken.She also claimed that you yourself use.Not drugs but a lot of medicine. May I ask you if you’re really using laughing gas twice a day and a lot of valium and tranquilizers?No. I use laughing gas when they are working on my teeth. That is once in six months or once in a year. Otherwise there is no question of using it.I had used medicines when I was coming from India because my pain in the back was too much and I needed some sleep. Perhaps she is still thinking. That was the time she was in charge of carrying me from India to here.But I am perfectly healthy now. Why should I use any drugs or any medicine? There is no point at all. And what understanding she can have about it? She is not my physician, she is not my nurse. She has no way of knowing that I am using any medicine. On what grounds she can say that?My physician is here. My nurse is here. My caretaker is here.Now she is trying to create any kinds of allegations just to cover up all her crimes that she has committed. But these won’t help.She said that she was around when your personal physician, Devaraj, showed you or recommended to you some medicine which is used to commit suicide. Did you ever plan to commit suicide?That’s absolutely absurd. I am a life-affirmative person. My teaching is based on three L’s: love, life, laughter. Suicide is for cowards, those who cannot enjoy life. Perhaps she must be thinking now of suicide. Suicide must be in her mind.And Devaraj is here. He never came in front of her and talked about what she is saying.She mentions the sixth of July as the day of your planned suicide. How she is so precise about it?I have told in the public meeting - that is not a secret - that whenever I leave the body it will be sixth of July. That does not mean that I am going to commit suicide. That simply means I know my body and I know what day is the possible day when I will leave the body. It will be the full moon, sixth July, the day of the master.Gautam Buddha was born the same day, became enlightened the same day, died on the same day. Do you think he committed suicide? Do you think he managed to be born on that day?There is a synchronicity. Sixth July I have declared my day, and they have been celebrating the day. So if I ever end, sixth July will be the best day.And I am capable to leave the body without all medical nonsense that she is talking. I can leave it now, but unfortunately it is not sixth July.I have promised my people that it will be sixth July.She is saying that you in a certain way blackmailed your people, because you said that the sixth of July and you could leave your body on this day, so.This is not blackmail. This is simply making my people aware that you cannot depend on me forever. It is an effort to make them independent. It is an effort to give them a push towards meditation. They cannot take me granted. They have to stand on their own feet and they have to realize the truth as soon as possible.It is not blackmail. For what I will blackmail them?To buy you new things like diamond watches and Rolls Royces?I don’t have a single diamond watch or a single Rolls Royce. I don’t own anything. Everything is owned by the commune, its corporations, trusts. I am not a owner of anything.And do you see the diamond watch? This is not diamond watch. These are just poor proletarian stones. This is the cheapest and the best watch you can have, and my own people have made it.Mostly I use watches that my own people have made. And when stones can do the work of diamonds, it is sheer stupidity. From Piaget’s it is half a million dollars. And my people can manage it in hundred dollars. And far better, more accurate.From my shoe up to my cap, everything is made by my people. And it belongs to my commune. I am as without possessions as I had come into the world, utterly naked. That’s the way I have been for thirty years, and that’s the way I will leave the world.I don’t have anything. Those ninety Rolls Royces belong to a corporation and I have persuaded the corporation that it is absolutely unnecessary to keep ninety Rolls Royces. I use only one; that too only for one and a half hour every day. Distribute them to the commune.But the commune is not ready in the first place, because commune has its own hundreds of cars, one hundred buses, five airplanes - and nowhere to go. And they said, what they will do with ninety Rolls Royces? There is no use for them. And my sannyasins refuse to take them because I have used them. To them they have become something of special significance. They want them to keep as memorials.And the trustees themselves refused. They will not sell them at any price, and they will not distribute them at any price. And there is no need in the first place.What can I do? Because I don’t own. If I had owned, I would have immediately distributed. Neither I own any watch - they are owned by another trust, and that trust has given hundreds of watches to the sannyasins. I use not more than one watch every day, and that too only when I am speaking in the morning or giving an interview. Otherwise I don’t have any need of it.I live in a timeless eternity.So she is simply being foolish.But why your people or your trustees or your commune do feel this urge or do feel that they have to buy you new Rolls Royces on and on?You have never loved. You are real German. If you love someone you want to offer something, knowing perfectly well that love cannot be expressed - not by a roseflower, not by a Rolls Royce. But still the heart yearns to offer something to the person you love.Now my people know that the only two things I use, one is a watch, another is a car. And because of my back only a particular car suits me.So anybody who feels like giving something to me, I have to say to the person that I cannot accept it because I cannot own anything. But you can donate it to the commune. And if commune feels fit, they can allow me to use it.I have never gone to the garage where ninety Rolls Royces are. They bring any car to me - and they are all same: the same model, the same car. It makes no difference at all, because the seat.I sit only this kind of chair. My physicians and my carpenters have made it perfectly to suit my back. A slight different angle and I start having strain on my back.I have tried many other cars. It was just a coincidence. First they had brought the most precious Rolls Royce, Cornice*. It didn’t suit. Then number two, Carmargue*. It did not suit. Then the third, Silver Spur - and it is just coincidence, its seat suited me.So all the ninety cars are nothing but one model: Silver Spur. And if my people want to give something to me, of course they will want to give something that I will use.I don’t write; they cannot offer me fountain pens, diamond fountain pens. They used to offer me. But now I don’t.They used to offer me hundreds of books, but I don’t read any more.So it is simple, that love always wants to give. Whatever I can give to them, I give. Whatever they feel like giving, they give. Why it should be a problem to anybody else?And in fact all my gifts are bound to be property, assets, to the commune.Sheela mentioned that you want to be the man in the world with the most Rolls Royces.I am already, so what is the point?If that’s true, what is the point to buy the new one for five hundred thousand dollars that she told us about yesterday?There is no point because the man is so far behind me that in many lives he will not reach ninety Rolls Royces. The second man has only thirty-three Rolls Royces. I have already ninety. Now what is the point? Whether I have ninety or ninety-one makes no difference. She is being simply silly.And she says in her interview that if they don’t buy a Rolls Royce for me I am going to commit suicide - a man who has ninety Rolls Royces. For one Rolls Royce he is going to commit suicide!And I am already having three times more than the second man in the world, so what is the point? Let him come up to ninety, then we will see.Sheela admits that she built or had built this hiding place, this tunnel, this way to escape. But she claims that it was your idea and it was for you.That’s absolutely wrong. I never knew about it. I was never told about it. It was only discovered when she left from here.She can also say that it was my idea to have all kinds of literature on poison, on murder, on arson. It was my idea to burn the planning office in Wasco County. It was my idea to kill my own physician, my own caretaker, my own dentist. It was my idea to poison my own milk!About the books she says - about the books on weapons and poison - she needed that because it was necessary to know something about these techniques, necessary to protect you. And she says, “As a murderess, would I have been so stupid to leave them behind?” That does make some sense to me.No, because she has to leave behind because everything was checked. They could not take them with them. They were criminals already, and none of them could take anything with them. That’s why they had to leave.But knowing they were criminals, why didn’t you stop them?There was no solid proof. It was just rumors. Only when they left people started opening their mouth, because they were afraid that these people can kill them. They have already killed. They have already burned houses. They have already poisoned people. So everybody was afraid to open his mouth. And if anybody disobeyed them, they simply sent the person to other commune far away in Europe. So people were simply keeping quiet.The moment she left, immediately - almost like an explosion - people started coming will all kinds of stories.Now there is a office here for FBI, state police, Wasco County police, city police, which is taking their statements. I have given it to the government that they should look into the whole matter.And why they could escape in the first place? Only criminals escape. If they were clean, there was no need to leave America. If they did not want to live in the commune, they could have left the commune, but why leave America?If I am the criminal, then I should have left. If my sannyasins are criminals, they should have left.And now they are hiding in the Black Forest, absolutely like criminals, and all their allegations are utterly false. And if she has any dignity of human being, you can bring her here. I promise no harm will be done from our side. We will not even inform the government or the police that she is here.You take the interview with her with me, and take her with yourself. Then things will be clear.I’d like to do that very much. She says she didn’t take any money, she returned everything to you.That’s true. She did not take any money from here. But she has stolen forty-three million dollars on the way, which were coming here.In my silent period she was whole and sole*. So any money that was coming from European communes, particularly Germany, she started accumulating slowly parts of that money into Swiss bank in her own name.Two hundred million dollars we have put in making this desert an oasis, and it needs more because it is a big desert. To make it all lush green, one hundred twenty-six square miles, immense money will be needed. It will be coming.So she has not stolen from here, she has stolen from German communes. The money that was to come here never reached here.So you cannot find here anything missing in the books. It never reached to the books. Forty-three million she has accumulated in some bank. Last day her second person in charge, who looked after the finances, she told me that, “Yes, we have a bank account. It is for you.”Everything was for me - poison to protect me, how to kill people to protect me, burning offices to protect me, trying to kill my own physician to protect me. This too was to protect me, that, “We have saved money in Switzerland in case You have to leave America.”I said, “There is no question of my leaving America. And without asking me, you have some nerve to accumulate money for me. In whose name it is?”It is in the name of Sheela and Savita. Savita was the second.I asked, “What is the bank? And what is the account number? And how much money you have got there?”She said, “I don’t remember.”Nobody forgets forty-three million dollars.And she said, “Tomorrow morning I will be bringing the whole detail.” And she promised to President Prem Hasya that she will give every detail and authorization, because the money belongs to the commune, but next day morning she escaped without giving any information. So we don’t know the bank, we don’t know the number.All that we know is from Sheela’s old secretary, who is dying from cancer in California. And it almost always happens, when a person is dying he wants to unburden anything that is heavy on the heart. She wrote a letter that Sheela has forty-three million dollars and she is trying to reach here before she dies to give us all the details that she can remember: what is the bank and what is the number and how much money exactly is there.There can be more money because she has not been Sheela’s secretary for long. If in her time it was forty-three millions, now it must be double the amount.We have informed, and once she comes she can give her affidavit to the police. Now it is their work. We don’t want to take law into our own hands. It is their work to find out and inquire.But she has not taken anything from here.What do you think will she do with the money? Will she try to open up or to build a new commune, and would you see that as a competition?What she knows about opening up a commune? She was a waitress when she came to me and she will end up as a waitress in some third-rate restaurant in Switzerland. She cannot open up a casino that she desires, because if she opens it, then immediately she will be caught: from where she got the money?She comes from a family who has not forty-three million dollars. She is uneducated. She has not earned any money. So she cannot use that money suddenly. Otherwise, immediately she will be in the public eye. So she will have to start as a waitress. That’s where she belongs.She said that there are only thirty thousand sannyasins all over the world.She is lying about everything. There are one million sannyasins, and now there will be five million sannyasins within six months because now I have opened the doors for sannyasins. Now anybody who is interested in meditation can become a sannyasin. Now there is no barrier.We have buried the religion. We have buried anybody to be my successor. We have buried the high priestess of the religion. We are finished with it. Now sannyas is a more open experience. Anybody can be a sannyasin. You can be a sannyasin and nobody will ever know. Sannyas has gone underground.There are a lot of rumors here in the commune. If I may ask, do you have any indication that you will be arrested or some other people will be arrested in the next forty-eight hours?There are rumors and I am excited. If I am arrested that will be the best thing, because that will prove absolutely that America is not a democracy but a hypocrisy. To arrest a man who has been in isolation. What he could have done as a crime?I never go anywhere. I never meet sannyasins. I never go out of this oasis. I have no contacts anywhere. I don’t have even a phone. I don’t write letters. I don’t receive any letters. Such a man, if he can be arrested, will be enough of a proof that there is no basic difference between Soviet Union and America. The difference is just superficial.And I will fight, because I love the American constitution because it has all human values and respect for individual, for freedom, for expression. So I will fight for the constitution against the dirty politicians who are prostituting it.So I will certainly want that the rumor is true. I want them to arrest me.[inaudible].to the whole world my handcuffed by democracy, that innocence is a crime. Crime is being protected and innocence is being arrested.And all of my sannyasins are going for voluntary arrest. If they arrest me, then they will have to arrest five thousand sannyasins too.How can you force these people to arrest all the others?Voluntary arrest. Everybody has the right. They want to be with me and they offer themselves to be arrested.British government was doing it in India. Even in Russia when Zakarov was sent to Siberia, his wife offered voluntary expulsion from the country to Siberia, and they accepted it.If it can happen in Soviet Russia, why it cannot happen in a democracy?So your reaction would be kind of a passive, peaceful resistance in a.Certainly..In a Gandhian way?Not in a Gandhian way. In my own way.What can you do to avoid a confrontation?No, I don’t want to avoid the confrontation.Is there not a certain risk that something will happen.?I have always taken risks, and every risk has proved a blessing. So my whole experience of life is for taking the risk.And this will not happen only in America. My sannyasins will be offering themselves for voluntary arrest all over the world, in Germany too, that either they expel the American embassy from the land or arrest all the sannyasins. They are ready. But we cannot tolerate an embassy of a criminal government.And this is going to be all over the world. In India fifty thousand sannyasins are going to march to New Delhi before the American embassy, that either no harm should happen to me - otherwise they are offering to be arrested.One million people have to be arrested. Perhaps more, because my sympathizers are more, my friends are more, my lovers are more than my sannyasins, and they will all feel that this is going to be a decisive moment.We cannot let American politicians - just pygmies - destroy a constitution which has all the aspirations of humanity. We cannot allow them to betray Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Emerson, Henry Thoreau. We will fight it - in our own way.And why they want to arrest me? Just last night I had an encounter on television with the attorney general. And he could not answer a simple thing. He has declared the city illegal because religion and state are mixed, and that is against American law. So I asked, “Now we have buried the religion. There is no religion any more. Your case is baseless. Now we don’t have anything to mix with the state. So your case has gone down the drain. Withdraw it.” And he had nothing to say.So this is the answer. They understand it, that if I am here then they cannot destroy this commune. But they don’t understand my ways of working.If they try to arrest me they will make this commune stronger and they will have to face my sannyasins all over the world. And they will destroy America’s image.So let them. They are taking risk. I am not taking risk.I am really excited, because that is the only experience that I have not had in my life. And this is my last life, so I want to have everything.What will you do when they arrest only the other people, or some fifty or a hundred people but not you? Will you make the same offer yourself? Ask them to arrest you?No. There is no need. I will fight for those hundred people. There is no need for me to offer for arrest. I will fight for those hundred people because they are all innocent.These people are so coward. I really am amazed; how they are going to face Soviet Union in a confrontation? They cannot face a small commune of five thousand people, harmless, without any nuclear weapons. It would have been absolutely right for them first to interview me, because I was the one who made all the allegations public.Now the police is here, FBI is here, all their topmost people are here. We have become their host and we are giving them all hospitality, but they have not asked me. On the contrary, I asked them that, “First you should take my interview. That will help you to find out the real criminals.”Four times they made the appointment and four times they canceled. Fourth time I told them that, “If you cancel the appointment, then I am going to call a press conference and declare that these people have something else in their mind.”And this is what is in their mind: they want now to make a deal with Sheela and the criminal group to give them immunity so that they can dump all the crimes on innocent people who have nothing to do with it. And this way they can destroy the commune.But they don’t know. It is not so easy.I am going to fight to the very end, and I am asking my attorneys, my advocates, to have a special permission for me that I will be fighting the case myself, directly. I don’t want anybody else to fight on my accord. He can assist me, but I will be facing the judges myself.What does it mean for your immigration status that you don’t see yourself as a religious leader any more? Or do you see yourself as a religious leader without a religion?It makes no difference, because I had told the immigration officers in the very beginning - and we have the tape, they have the tape - that this is not an ordinary religion like other religions. It is a kind of religiousness.It is not Christianity, it is not Judaism, it is not something fixed, dead, defined. It is an open and growing experience. It has no belief systems. It gives every individual total freedom, no bondage. So it is difficult for me to call it religion.But they said, “This is difficult. We have only the category for religion.”So I said, “Then you can put it as a religionless religion.”This is their problem. We are people - meditative, having all the qualities which religiousness should have except an organized and dead system of beliefs. So we cannot call ourselves religion but we can call ourselves a way of life, a way of religiousness. And if they don’t have a category they have to make a category for it, because the law exists for man, man does not exist for law.We will fight on every issue for every inch. And I enjoy fighting. I have been my whole life a fighter.When my fight is over here, then I am coming to Germany. You can tell your people there: Get ready.Do you have any information when these arrests are planned?No, just rumors. I don’t think that those cowards have guts to arrest me, because they will have to think what it will mean. They will have to weigh every pro and con. Arresting a person without any crime, without any illegal activity, they will have to think over that whether to take the risk or not.It is up to them. I don’t know. But looking at them and their cowardliness, I can say they cannot have the courage to arrest me. Otherwise they will find a worldwide turmoil against America. It will be peaceful, but it will be turmoil and it will damage their image.Anyway, they don’t have a very good image. Whatsoever is left will be gone with this.And many of my sannyasins are Americans.But actually, under these circumstances - them being cowards and all these kind of things - you would prefer to be arrested?I will enjoy.Thank you very much.Good.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Peter Weissbach, CJOR Radio, Vancouver, CanadaMike Zielenzinger, Knight Ridder Newspapers, United StatesGood evening.Peter Weissbach, CJOR Radio, Vancouver; CanadaHow are you?I’m fine.Osho,You’ve made recent statements that you’re prepared to sell back Antelope, or the City of Rajneesh, property to the former residents of Antelope. Now, is that an indication that you’re now prepared to compromise with your neighbors in order to seek a reconciliation?No, there is no question of compromise, no compromise of reconciliation, because we don’t have any hostility toward them. The people who had hostility toward them have left. We simply want to leave their homes, their place, their city - and we are going to change its name back. It is not a question of reconciliation, it is simply undoing what the fascist gang had done to the people around while I was in silence for three and a half years.Am I hearing you correctly then, you’re not called Rajneeshees anymore?No.What term should I use?Just friends of Osho.Okay. Your friends will be selling their interests in the City of Rajneesh, formerly Antelope, Oregon.Yes.Osho,Now, Margaret Hill, the former mayor of Antelope, said to prove your sincerity you should instruct the Rajneesh city council to repeal the city’s charter this year. Do you intend to do that?No, because she is just asking an absurdity. If we are friends, why should we destroy a city? We will change the name of the city back to Antelope, but the city remains. We are not enemies, and we will hand over the city to the people from whom we had got it. Then it is up to them if they want to repeal, decompose - that is up to them. That is not our business, and it would not be an act of friendship.Osho,You’ve always maintained that you’re simply a guest here in Rajneeshpuram.Yes.Since the weekend of September 14th, 15th, is that still the case now?I will always be a guest.Are you at all involved administratively or politically at Rajneeshpuram?No, not at all.But some of the statements that you’ve made during the past two weeks would indicate that you were involved during the time Sheela was here. You’ve indicated that Sheela consulted you about the plans for the Share-a-Home program, and you told her it was perfectly good to start the program “If money was available.” Is that an accurate quote?I was not involved. And to me, what she had said was not anything political: she had said it was a humanitarian program, and I am certainly interested in humanity. That is not politics. But she was deceiving me. I came to know only when I came out of silence and started meeting my people, that it was not a Share-a-Home program; it was just an effort to take over the whole county. It was an absolutely political strategy.But it would seem that in recent statements you’ve made since that weekend, you’ve pledged to decentralize the power in the movement’s corporate structure, and that you’ve said, quote: “It will take a few days, but I will make it diffused.” and you’ve also said, quote: “There will be several equal corporations, and several presidents of equal status.” Now reading that, to me, you must then have the power to say, “Go do this.”No, I don’t have any power. I have something more than power - that is my love. I can advise my people, whether they do it or not is up to them. But I love them, they love me, and there is an understanding between us which is not of power. I am not ordering them to do it. I am simply explaining to them that whatsoever wrong has been done, should be undone.So you’re there to give advice to your heads of the corporations.Just advice.But it’s advice, it’s not a direct order.No, it is not an order; it is just advice from a friend.Osho,It’s been said that your new corporate leaders have been referred to by some sannyasins as the “Beverly Hills money crowd.” and concern has been expressed that once again the power has passed to a close-knit elite group of favorites. Would you respond to that, please?Whosoever has been informing you is absolutely wrong. My own understanding is that the people who were in power all came from poor families, and I hate poverty. Whenever a poor person gets an opportunity he is bound to take advantage, to be rich, to be powerful, and that’s what happened. So this time I have advised my people, “Give power to those who already have enough money, and are not interested in taking money from you.” On the contrary, they will be putting their money into the commune.And secondly, the people who have taken their place are very creative people. President Prem Hasya, with her husband, had made one of the best movies ever made, The Godfather. She has a talent and a creativity and intelligence, and has lived as super-rich, so there is no question of inferiority and poverty in her.There must be examples of people who come from a similar background to Sheela - if that’s what you’re referring to - that still have compassion for the poor and don’t abuse their power.I have never seen a single person who comes from poverty and gets a chance to be rich, who has not misused it.Osho,These allegations against Sheela and the gang: now, they may have ordered these crimes to be committed, but there must have been a number of people that were involved in actually placing the bugs and the wiretaps, et cetera.Yes, there have been.A secondary echelon. Has any action been taken against those people?Those twenty people have fled with her.So those twenty people are the only ones that were involved in this massive plot of wiretapping and.Yes, other people have done only small things, of which they are absolutely innocent because they knew nothing about it. If they were told to dig a ditch, in which they were going to bug a house. Those people had no idea what they were going to do. They didn’t know anything about wires and electricity, and which wire was an electric wire and which wire was just a bugging device, so they simply dug the ditch. So, in a way they have supported, but they were absolutely innocent.The people who knew what they are doing, the people who invented the whole bugging system - and they invented a bugging system that even the FBI has accepted was far more sophisticated than used by Nixon. So, all those people have gone with Sheela. Only one person had the courage to come back from the middle journey.Who was that?A sannyasin, Ava. And she is going to reveal everything about the whole group, because she was the most intimate in the group, and she knows about everything that has happened.Is she the one that told you of the murder plots?No.Osho,Have you been interviewed yet by the FBI or the Oregon state police?They seem to be afraid of me. Four times they have - on my request. They have not requested me for an interview, on the contrary I have requested. Four times they made an arrangement and canceled at the last moment.Isn’t one of your conditions that the press be present during that interview?That was only the last time: when they canceled the fourth time, I said, “Now, this is too much. I am requesting you, not you requesting me, and you go on canceling, so what is cooking behind it? Why are you afraid of me?”So I told them, “Now, a fourth time you cancel it, then I am going to call a press conference, and tell everything to the press conference. You are trying to hide something. It seems there is a conspiracy against the commune - by both the governor and the United States attorney - to protect the criminals who have escaped and somehow involve innocent people. They are trying to arrest one thousand sannyasins who have nothing to do with all those crimes, just to disrupt the whole community.There’s a rumor around that the National Guard is being mobilized in Madras.Yes, they are keeping the National Guard on alert, and mobilizing it in Madras. I know it, I have heard about it. The governor is thinking of declaring a state of emergency in Rajneeshpuram - where everything is peaceful and no emergency is needed. Our sannyasins are going to the police on their own accord and revealing whatsoever they know.There’s also a rumor that you’re to be arrested tomorrow.Yes, I have heard that.How would you handle that? Would you.I would enjoy it.Why would you enjoy it?Because that is the only experience in my life which is missing and this is my last life. I’m not going back again; I will not be having another life. So I would like to have that experience too.You have now urged the residents here to take responsibility for the future. It’s up to them to guard against similar events. Do you share any of the responsibility for what has happened here?No, neither for good nor for bad; I don’t take any responsibility.One of your sannyasins in a letter to the Osho Times said, and I quote: “He should have known. He should have seen what a monster she was. He should have protected us. He should have done something” - referring to you.That is the projection of people. I have been insisting that I am not a savior, I am not a prophet, I am not a messenger of God. I am just a human being.I didn’t even know that my room was bugged, so how could I know? And I don’t see that there is a condition anywhere in any scripture that if you bug the room of an enlightened person he will know it.Let me take you back to a quote from a discourse you gave in Pune, India: “Whatsoever is happening here is happening with my knowledge. Not a single thing that happens here is happening without my knowledge, so you need not inform me about things. I know them already, and this you have to understand absolutely. I may not come out of my room. I never come out except in the morning and in the evening. I never go around, but whatsoever happens is perfectly known to me, and is happening according to me. Please don’t interfere.”Yes, that was a totally different context. But note the fact that it does not imply any esoteric nonsense. It simply means I was seeing my secretary in the morning, in the night, and at any time whenever she wanted to inform me about anything important. No decision was being taken without informing me.You’re referring to Pune now?Yes. It was a totally different context; I was actively participating. Every decision was my decision and I was responsible for it. But since I went into silence I dropped all responsibility and all active participation. So I didn’t know anything of what is happening anywhere.But from your point of enlightenment, with the clarity of vision. I can see someone like myself not being aware, distorting what I’m seeing, because I really don’t want to look at it. But surely you had a lot of contact with Sheela?Not a lot of contact. She was only seeing me each evening - that too, not necessarily every day.But you’ve known her since she was what? Sixteen?No, I have known her only when she came to me in 1970.Well, that’s 15 years. Did she indicate to you by actions or verbally that she was no longer happy here? Did you get any sense of what was about to happen on September 14th?No, that was - I was becoming aware that she’s not happy here.Had she verbalized that to you?No, I could just see it. Everybody was so happy because I started speaking again. They were ecstatic, and she was sad. She was the only person who did not want me to speak, because if I was speaking then she was useless. She had all the power because she was representing me, so it was natural. I could see that she was becoming sadder. And then she started traveling in Europe, in Australia, in other communes - any excuse and she would simply rush. And I knew the reason: there, she would still have the same power; she was representing me.I interviewed Sheela August 22nd. She was very clear to me at that time that she was not here for enlightenment at all. She was not into the spiritual aspect at all. She was here purely and simply because she loved you - whatever her definition of love was, be it conditional or unconditional. Now why would someone like that be your personal secretary? That’s the difficulty I have understanding.Yes, I will make it clear; your difficulty is very simple.She was not interested in enlightenment. She was not interested in any spiritual growth; I knew that from the very first moment I saw her. In fact, that was the reason she was chosen to be my secretary - because the people who are interested in meditation, who are interested in spiritual growth, are not on the earth; they are spaced out. And she was very pragmatic, very practical, naturally. And a secretary needs to be that. She was chosen actually for that reason, because there was no chance of her spiritual growth in this life. But she was capable of doing practical things, and she was very pragmatic at dealing with situations which the spiritual kind of person is not capable.But in your talks you have said that you’re looking to merge Western materialism with Eastern spiritually.Right.You have said that you want to merge Buddha and Zorba, to come up with the new man. So I have difficulty understanding when you say that everyone who is meditating is spaced out. So really what you’ve done is you’ve given a dichotomy again.No, I’ve not given a dichotomy.You are, because you’re saying that spaced out people cannot go get these things done, pragmatic people like Sheela can.I know it, because the people who are interested in meditation - in going in - are simply not interested in fighting in the courts, in fighting with the politicians. That is not their interest: they are not political, and they are not interested in unnecessarily wasting their time.Once they become attuned to their inner being, they will become settled, they will become centered, and then it will be possible for them to deal with those realities also.But at the moment when I came to America, I had only twenty people with me. Within those twenty people Sheela was the only person who had lived in America, who knew America perfectly well - the American mind, American politics - and she was the most practical person out of those twenty people. They were all significant in their own jobs. Whatever they were doing, they were perfect, but the job of a secretary was a totally different one. And I chose her simply because she was always going to remain a Zorba, she was not going to become a buddha - so, for the time being, let her be the secretary.Now, my new secretary is both: she has the potential of being a Zorba, and has the potential of being a buddha. But now the commune is settled, the work of the Zorba is finished.Osho,When did you receive Sheela’s letter of resignation?She just informed me.Verbally?Not verbally, through somebody - her second, Savita, who used to work in her place when she was not here. And mostly she was not here since I started speaking.So Savita was the one that informed you that Sheela was leaving?She informed me that Sheela was sending her resignation. So I waited for her resignation; it never came to me. She left, and left the resignation in the office.When were you told by Savita that Sheela was going to resign? Do you remember the day?Just the day before, and that too.Could that be Friday the 13th?Whenever she left, just the day before. And then too she deceived, because she said that she had a cold, which was why she could not come. So after three, four days when her cold was gone, she would come to see me and explain the whole thing.So you did not see her before she left?No I have not seen.She did write a letter to you.She did write a letter to me, in which she wrote nothing about leaving. She simply wrote, “I am not feeling so excited coming back here as I used to feel before. On the contrary, I feel more excited in Australia, in Europe, in India. I don’t know the reason.” That much was the content.And I told Savita, “Give Sheela my message: there is nothing much in it. The simple fact is that because I’m speaking again, she has to become an ordinary sannyasin again here. In those three and a half years her ego has blown up too much - that is what is hurting. And if she wants proof I can come to Europe, I can come to India, I can come to Australia, and then there will also be no excitement. This excitement is nothing but becoming a celebrity: being on the radio, being on the television, being in the newspapers. So, just try to understand that this is only an ego trip.”And she deceived me, saying that she was going to stay three or four days. The next day she left immediately.When did you start to become aware of some of the charges that you subsequently made about her about the poisonings*?Only when she left - because these simple people were so much afraid of the group: they had in these three years forced people who were intelligent, more capable than them, were not ready to surrender to any stupid order.She left on the afternoon of the 14th - Saturday.Yes, and immediately things started coming up - because not only she left, she left with the whole gang.And they started leaving between the 14th and 15th. But did the sannyasins start to come to you? Who started coming to you?Who? Nobody comes to me.But how did you find out about the wiretapping, the bugging?My physician comes to me, my caretaker comes to me, my new secretary comes to me, and from them I started getting all the news. They started - the whole day sannyasins were coming.Were you talking directly to the sannyasins that were making the allegations, or were you getting your information.No..through your doctor and through your personal secretary?I was not talking directly to sannyasins.So did you compile all of this information, then, on Sunday, September the 15th?Yes.And then you went public with it the following morning.Yes.But since you were dealing with what would be called in criminal law, hearsay evidence.Yes, it was hearsay. That’s why I’m not a witness to it.So you have no firsthand knowledge of these things?Not even third hand! But I wanted the government and the police to know that these were the rumors all over the commune, and they should come and look into the facts. And whatever I have alleged, they have found proof for everything.They haven’t said too much yet have they?No, they are not saying anything, because they are waiting for the governor and the United States attorney to decide whether they want to protect the criminals, or whether they want to protect the innocent people.There was some confusion in the reporting, in the research I did, in terms of drugs being administered or poison, and whether the drugs were being used in all restaurants and eateries in Rajneeshpuram. What were you saying, that selected dishes were being poisoned or drugged? What allegation exactly were you making? Maybe you could tell us.Perhaps the food was drugged.All the food throughout Rajneeshpuram?Not all the food. Not the food for the people of Rajneeshpuram, but the food for the street people must have been drugged. They were kept drugged so that up to the election day they didn’t escape. And they became almost zombies, so that on the election day they would do whatever was told to them to do. And so many drugs were ordered.What kind of drug? [Aside] What is the name of the drug?[Reply] Haldol.Haldol.Do you know what the effects of Haldol are?I don’t know, because I am not a druggist.You also said that as much as forty-three million dollars may have been sitting in a Swiss bank account in Sheela’s name. Has that been proved yet?Yes, the woman who has informed about it used to be Sheela’s secretary.She’s found it now? This bank account has been located?Yes, she has informed by letter - she is dying of cancer in California - she has informed. When she heard about this whole thing, she wrote about that forty-three million dollars. She knows the bank, the bank account number, and she is going to come to give us the full information about everything. And we are watching each bank in Switzerland: near one bank, one of Sheela’s gang is continuously moving around.Sheela, of course, denies this charge, as you are no doubt aware.She will deny, of course. Unless she is found guilty, that’s natural. But from where is she getting fifty thousand dollars to waste per week?I guess Stern must be paying her something for the interviews she’s giving now.Fifty thousand dollars per week? Stern can pay that?I don’t know. But back to the Swiss bank account.No, just inquire. If they can pay, then I can make many of my people lie and they will just pay. My people can lie about whatever they want!With respect to the Swiss bank account, are you aware that in The Oregonian of September 23rd, Maria Grazia Mori, formerly a sannyasin named Deeksha.Yes, she is also coming back.She said in an interview that she was present when Sheela discussed a Swiss bank account with you. And the conversation took place in Montclair, New Jersey. Mori said Sheela told you she’d deposited a million dollars for your benefit. To which you supposedly replied “One million?” giving the impression that the sum was too low. And Maria then said Sheela quickly reassured you that the one million was only a beginning balance. Can you comment on that?No, I don’t know anything. Deeksha is coming back, because Deeksha was thrown out by Sheela. Everybody who has been thrown out by Sheela has been telling the INS people all kinds of things. Now let them come here.So you were never involved in that conversation with Deeksha and Sheela?No, but I knew this: later on Sheela herself said, “Any moment you can be deported, so we are putting some money into a Swiss Bank. It is for you, but it is in my name” - Sheela’s and Savita’s names.I asked “How much is the money? What is the bank and what is the bank account number? If it is in my name, I should know at least this much.”She said “I have forgotten, I will have to look and find it out.” And since then she has not seen me.When did you ask her about that information, where the bank account was located? What date?This was just the last time she saw me. It must have been before she went to Mexico to commit bigamy. She has an American husband here, and now because she was planning to escape from here.This is the marriage to Dipo, is it?Yes. She got married to Dipo somewhere in Mexico. Both have committed bigamy, because Dipo has an American wife here and she has an American husband here. And this is something absolutely ugly; she was sleeping with Dipo one night, sleeping with Jayananda another night. That way it was divided. I came to know only later on that this was the division. She never wanted Jayananda, and a sannyasin has come with the information that first they wanted to kill Jayananda.So she went to Mexico somewhere - I’m not good at about dates and days.It was toward the end of November and I think..some time she went there. That was the last time she saw me.And spoke to you about it.Yes, she spoke about it, but she never gave any information. And Savita, on the last day - she was not going, that’s the impression she gave to me, that she was not going with those people. In fact, she was thinking to take charge after Sheela, because she was the second person. I was perfectly happy: I said okay, you can take charge if Sheela is going, and she wants to go - we don’t prevent anybody. You can become my secretary and you can take charge. I asked her about the Swiss bank account, “Because that money belongs to the commune and I don’t need it, for the simple reason that I’m not going anywhere from America.”So she said, “Tomorrow morning I will bring all the information.” She would not even say how much the money was - and I don’t think that you can forget that it is forty-three million dollars. It is impossible to forget that much money. And the next morning she also disappeared. She never came back because she was afraid that now she had to bring that information to me.Would you respond to some of the quotes that Sheela has given? She says, “I told Osho often enough that we could not afford to buy all those expensive items, autos and such forever, or I would have to take bread away from the people.”It is absolutely nonsense.She said that her disenchantment began with you a year and a half ago, when you asked her to get you a $2.5 million watch. Is that true?It is absolute nonsense, because I have so many watches and I don’t use those million-dollar watches. What I use are made by my own sannyasins. They are the cheapest watches you can find in the whole world, and the best! These are not diamonds, these are simple poor stones, and I’m not using any of her watches, which she has brought.Sheela brought those for you?Yes.She also said that you threatened to leave your body when she told you she would not buy you another Rolls Royce.What anybody would think - I have never even gone once to look at the garage where there are ninety Rolls Royces. And what I’m supposed to do with ninety Rolls Royces? I use only one Rolls Royce each day, for one and a half hours.I was going to ask you that.And I had told. No, my people had wanted to bring those things to me, and Sheela is wrong that I had demanded anything from her.So would Sheela have accepted those cars on your behalf? Or was it up to you to say yes or no?No, people have been bringing things. They know I use only two things, either a car or a watch. Otherwise I don’t use anything; everything is made by my sannyasins. And now I have informed everybody that nobody should bring watches - because my people are now making watches, so that is finished. Soon we will be making Rolls Royces, then that is finished!Whatever was being brought in my name - I don’t accept any gift, I don’t own anything. There are trusts for everything: cars go to the cars trust which belongs to the commune. It is a commune asset. Watches go to the jewelry trust, which is a commune trust. It belongs to the commune, and it is an asset to the commune.And I’m not the only one that they offer a watch to - for me to use in the morning and the evening, because I don’t need one for the whole day - they have given hundreds of watches to sannyasins who need watches, costly watches. All the sannyasins have cars available, buses available, airplanes available. And I have told to the president of the car trust, “It would be good that you distribute all these cars to different corporations, so other sannyasins can use. You can save one car for me, that is enough, because I use one, and only of one type.”Last night you renounced your Rajneeshism and the religion. By extension are there no longer sannyasins?No, sannyas is a totally different thing; it has nothing to do with Rajneeshism. Sannyas simply means they have accepted a way of meditation, and a life of joy and rejoicing. It is an acceptance of creating your life into a blissfulness. So sannyas is a totally different thing, it will continue. I have dropped all the outer symbols of the sannyasins. If they want to keep them, it is up to them; from my side I have dropped them. They don’t need a mala. They don’t need red clothes. All that I would like - my advice to them - is that if you are a sannyasin, meditation is the only essential thing that you should carry.But in our last interview you were saying that you had the only religion.That is true.Now you have no religion.That is true, because the only religion has done its work. Its work was to destroy all the religions, to cut their roots. In my four hundred books I have managed to cut every root of every religion, destroyed all their arguments - and not a single religion has come up to encounter me. So the function of the new religion is finished.So you are no longer a religious leader?No.What sort of impact is that going to have on your application for a green card?No implication.One of the grounds that you’re applying, as I understand it, was on the grounds of being a religious leader.I had told them also at that time that.Who is they?I mean the INS people - “I am not a religious leader in the sense you think of Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism. My religion is totally new, a religionless religion. It has no dogma, no creed, no catechism. It gives freedom to the individual, not bondage, not conditioning. It is really a program of deprogramming. And I am simply teaching my people methods of meditation.” And I still am a teacher of meditations.Osho,People are saying that things aren’t what they appear; there are three possibilities of what’s going on here.Go one by one.First one: you are trying to resuscitate a dying organization by making Sheela the scapegoat.There had been no organization before Sheela. She made the organization, I am simply killing it. I am not resurrecting any organization. I am against all organizations.The second is: this is all a smokescreen for your imminent departure from the U.S.That is absurd, because I am never going to leave U.S. The U.S. can leave me, but I am not going to leave the U.S.And the third was that you are naive about what has happened.That is true.Osho,Thank you very much. My hour is up and I appreciate the time.Good.It is good to see you.Come again.Mike Zielenzinger,Knight Ridder Newspapers, United StatesGood evening.Osho,Good evening. It’s a pleasure to be here, speaking face-to-face with you.If the mission of this new, “religiousness without the religion,” is to provoke an inward journey by your sannyasins, why the need for a community, and the organization that a community requires?To go inward is the most difficult journey in the world. It needs a certain atmosphere, a certain milieu. The commune creates it.But the commune is also a political entity in such that.No..people are brought together.People are simply here as individuals, not as parts of an organization.But you have a variety of organizations that take care of the various activities of the group here.Those are functional, just like the post office. It does not become a religion, it does not become a communist party; it is just functional. A few people take care of the food, a few people take care of the roads. That does not mean that they can become fascist rulers.Then how could this fascist rule grow up in your midst?Because I was in silence and isolation. That became an opportunity.You have often discussed the sense that doubt, and the absence of faith are very important. How could it be that so many of your friends could let this happen?It is one of the paradoxes of human life. The more I tell them, “Don’t trust me, don’t believe in me. Just try to understand me, that’s enough, every decision has to be taken by you,” - but the more I say don’t believe in me, the more they love me and the more they trust me. Now, it is such a problem that there seems to be no way out of it.So what do you do?I go on saying, don’t believe me, and they go on trusting me.It is something like, if you have heard about Bertrand Russell’s paradox:A great mathematician was working on a thesis to prove that mathematics is a complete science - the only complete science. And Bertrand Russell sent him a small puzzle, “Before you publish your book, please answer this puzzle.” The puzzle was that every library of the nation was told to make a list, a catalog of all the books in the library: make two catalogs, one will remain in the library, and the other has to be sent to the central library of the country.Now, the question arose in the mind of one of the librarians: “What are we to do about this one catalog that remains in the library, whether to include it in the catalog or not? - because it is a book in the library, and all the books have to be included in the catalog.” He was very much puzzled. He asked the central library what to do. The central library was itself in a great puzzle, because they were making two catalogs - one that was going to be in the central library and one that was going to the king.But we’re not talking about books, we’re talking about.Just wait a minute.The same question was there again: what to do with the catalog in the library. You cannot put it in the other catalog, because it is only a catalog. But you have to put it in, because it is a book also, and it is in the library.The mathematician who was working on the thesis was Godel, one of the greatest mathematicians of this century. Because he could not solve his problem, he did not publish his book.And this is my problem also. There are only two ways: either I have to say, “Don’t believe in me,” but the more I say it, the more they trust me. The other is, I should start saying, “Believe in me,” which all the other religions are doing, and they will believe in me. So what I am supposed to do?If the work here is ongoing, as it has been described to be in the past, and the conditions are continually in the flux of growth.It will be continuously in flux, always.How can you destroy something that has been created? Isn’t that the reverse - destroying this religion that you say grew up without your knowing?I have destroyed it.I don’t know how well understood that notion is, because you have said it. I see everybody is still wearing a mala today.That is up to them.And I understand you gave people an option about that.Not even an option - because if I give an option, that too becomes my order. I have simply made them free. Now it is theirs, whatever they want to do. If they are wearing a mala, it is no longer symbolic, it is only an ornament.Let me go back. If, as you said to the previous interviewer tonight, that it is important to have freedom for the individual and not a state of bondage, how could a state of bondage be created among your most devout followers? Does that not attack the very root of the belief?No, because nobody can predict the future of anybody. The future is unpredictable, and the future is open. Somebody may be very loving to you today, and may turn out to be just the opposite tomorrow. You would never have thought that this man could be so full of hate toward you, but love turns into hate very easily.Do you feel a sense of betrayal about those who’ve left you?No, because I don’t expect any faith in me, so there is no question of betrayal. Jesus felt betrayed because he was asking for faith. I am not asking for faith, so nobody can betray me.But even friends can feel betrayed.No, there is no question of betrayal because friends don’t expect faith. A real friendship is unconditional. I don’t have any conditions, so if somebody turns into my enemy, it is his freedom. It was his freedom to be a friend; it is his freedom to be an enemy. It in no way betrays me or disappoints me. I respect the individual, whether he loves me or hates me makes no difference.Osho,What was your motivation, if any, about breaking your silence, or was it just the right time existentially?It was because the only three persons who were capable of approaching me, other than Sheela, were my physician, my dentist, my caretaker - my caretaker was poisoned in a cup of tea in Sheela’s house. Then my physician was poisoned in the same way, in Sheela’s house, in a cup of coffee. They both told me, but the doctors and the medical center could not find any detectable poison in their blood, so it was dropped. They just rested for two, three days and became okay. Then my physician was injected.You were still silent at this point?No, I started speaking. After these two poisons, I started speaking.When the first two poisoning occurred you were still silent.Yes, that was a certain sign to me, “Something is going wrong somewhere, and I have to be in the open, and I have to see my people, and I have to be available to them.”And it was in a meeting where I was speaking - ten thousand sannyasins were there, and he was injected from the back. He immediately pulled up his robe and showed people the blood, the mark of the injection. And now, a sannyasin has testified before the FBI that he was a witness, that the person who did it was a woman sannyasin, Shanti Bhadra, who has also escaped with Sheela.After this accident, we took my physician to Bend Hospital. Also there they said, “There is no disease, the sickness is unexplainable. The only thing that can be said is that some kind of poison, which is not detectable, has been given.”When the first two incidents occurred did you believe what was said to you? Weren’t you surprised?No, I simply was shocked that anybody in the commune would think of poisoning our own people. And when Sheela left, literature on poisons was found in her room, and a particular poison which is undetectable, underlined.But there was quite a period of time between the initial report in your period of silence, about being poisoned, and Sheela’s departure.Yes. There was a quite.How come you didn’t either act sooner, or act more on your suspicion, your shock?Only this much was not enough; and there were no solid grounds. Even the doctors could not solidly say that it was poison.Did you assume at that point that Sheela was involved?I suspected, because Shanti Bhadra was her right hand.What would’ve been her motivation if you were still silent? You’ve said previously that as you broke your silence, Sheela could see her power ebbing away. Why do this even when you’re maintaining your silence, when she’s still the lead spokesman and awarded with all the television time?No, she had booked those things already before, and she continued. But once I started speaking, she started moving more to Europe, to Australia, to India, Singapore. She started avoiding me. But people remained silent still, because Sheela’s whole group was still here. They were in all the top posts, and people were afraid because they knew these people had even killed.They have burned the planning office in Wasco County. They have killed a Share-a-Home street person by giving him an overdose of poison. So they were simply afraid. But the moment she left, just within one day hundreds of sannyasins opened their mouths, and they started saying what they know about.Osho,You’ve already said that Sheela was not a meditative sort, but certainly there were others who were, that you could on the one hand be a devout sannyasin and on the other hand carry out these activities. Does this not make you question some of your own teachings, or how your teachings have been interpreted?No, because I had chosen Sheela, and she had done her work. This is only a small wrong side of her being that came into light. Otherwise, she had made the commune, which was not an easy job - to make a place for five thousand people. Houses - there was only one house when we purchased the place. There was no reservoir; now we have a reservoir, we have enough water. We have enough houses, all with modern equipment, all are centrally air-conditioned. She did much, and she did much good. For that, she should be credited.And you yourself looking back, have no personal doubts about yourself, or your role, or the way your teachings have been interpreted by others?No, it has nothing to do with my teachings, because she knew nothing of my teachings.She knew nothing of your teaching.No.She paraded around as if she did, and you never interfered.She was working well, and for that my teachings were not needed. She was making good roads, she was making good arrangements for food, she was making arrangements for clothes for five thousand people - and at the festival time for fifteen to seventeen thousand people. She was able to manage perfect well everything she did. Ninety-nine percent credit of the commune goes to her. Just that one percent that has come into light.But shouldn’t somebody have spoken up about that one percent? Shouldn’t someone have prevented this fascist gang - as you call it - from being created?It was difficult. She threw out the people who could have spoken, before they could have spoken or even thought about it. In the very beginning of the commune, those people were thrown out. She had chosen a group of all new people, who were devoted to her.But the hundreds who came to you after she left, why couldn’t they have come to you before she left?People have been coming to me in thousands.But only after the fact.No, even before Sheela. But in these silent years nobody was allowed to come, it was my decision that nobody should interfere in my silence. It is my freedom to speak or not to speak.Do you think that was, perhaps a mistake? - of being so silent and so removed for so long?No, it certainly gave her an opportunity, but it is not my responsibility. If it is my responsibility, then Adolf Hitler and Second World War are also my responsibility - because why was I not born there?You discussed before - and I don’t know if you were joking, but I suspect you were not - about sannyasins who are spaced out in their own meditation. Could it not be that this state of being spaced out would interfere with their ability to confront a wrong in their midst?No, there is no problem. They are working perfectly well, they are working totally, but they are not concerned with politics, ambition. They worked, they loved, they danced, they went to sleep. Sheela had this opportunity to create a fascist group, and she managed it so that everything was done by those twenty people. She did not involve many people in the crimes, because then there would have been a possibility of leakage. Only those twenty people - and because they were all involved, nobody would open his mouth, because he was also involved.So it became a situation in which you could not say anything, because you have also committed something. She managed for everybody to commit some sin, some crime, so that the group became solid and nobody was going to say anything about it. Only one woman, really courageous, has come out. She had also gone with them, but returned back from Seattle. She said that she could not live with all the crime and guilt her whole life, it was better that she went to the commune and said everything.But this was supposed to be an idealistic place, an idyllic place. Does not all this evil energy.It is nothing evil, or nothing special, particularly in a country like America where twenty percent presidents are assassinated. If Sheela killed a hobo, do you think it much of an evil in America? - where every day all kinds of crime are committed?Are ethics relative?What ethics exist in America? Do you have anything called ethics?I don’t speak for the U.S. as a country, but some individuals I presume have ethics, yes.So, I can present you thousands of individuals here who have ethics, but that does not mean - what Nixon did? Is not the whole America responsible for it? You had chosen him to be the president.We also forced him out; Sheela left of her own volition.So it seems to be she is more ethical!I’m confused about something else too. Is Sheela part of a fascist gang, or did she make one small mistake? Ninety-nine percent of what she did, you said was quite good. Which is it?Fascists also have done much good. I think we always try to think of somebody as completely white, and of somebody as completely black, and that is a wrong way of thinking. Everybody is a mixture. Even Adolf Hitler had done many things which were good. In fact, he had created a road in Germany for which he should be remembered in the whole history - just for that road, because no such road exists anywhere in the world.So it is a question of relativity. Relatively, Sheela had done much good to the commune, but that does not mean that we are going to protect her illegal acts. Whatever good you have done, we will give you the credit for it, but whatever wrong you have done, you will have to suffer for it.What prevents something like this from happening again? You’ve discussed the decentralization of power. Do you feel as if you need to be more involved in the running of this place?No, I don’t feel more involved. I can do more without involvement, because then I am more impartial and everybody can listen and understand me, because I am not in favor of anybody. I am just explaining a situation, they can find a way, and I can simply watch that things go right. And they have started going right.You will watch in a way that you weren’t watching before. Or will it be the same?No, in isolation I was not even watching. I was not here at all.Although parenthetically, we are told that you did have discussion from time to time with Sheela and perhaps one or two of your other aides, about activities and events.Only if there was something very important and Sheela could not handle it, or she needed my advice, only then. But only in emergency cases, otherwise not.But there’s no guarantee that this couldn’t happen again.No, there can never be any guarantee for anything.Do you fear that sannyasins - especially those who don’t live here and rely on media accounts - will become discouraged with what’s happened here, or abandon the religiousness?No, because more and more sannyasins are coming. And now they are feeling more freedom, more joy, and nobody is sitting on their heads. And the people who had left because of Sheela are writing from all over the world that they want to come back because they miss the commune. It was only because of Sheela that they had to leave.You said you wanted to root out all the evil that Sheela had created. Is that job completed, or is there still more evil that needs to be extirpated?I don’t think there is anything more.That job is done.It is done.And the formal abolition yesterday of the religion was part of that; or was a separate activity?It is a separate thing.Although Sheela was a part of that too, you’ve said.Yes, she was a part of it. But I’ve always been against organized religion.As a result of this crisis, a lot of foreign agents have come here: the FBI, and Oregon state police. Not only have they come here, you’ve welcomed them, you’ve essentially opened your records, your files, your books.Because there is nothing wrong. If there is anything wrong, then Sheela will be responsible for it.This community has had its disagreements with the authorities in the state. It doesn’t make your nervous that they’re here?Nothing makes me nervous; all the authorities are nervous.But haven’t you and your aides given them tremendous power to potentially destroy this community?No, they cannot do anything. If they try to destroy this community, they will be destroying the whole image of America in the world - because I have my friends all around the world, and I have informed them that if any harm happens to the commune here, then they have voluntarily to go into imprisonment and demand to their government that the American embassy should be removed from the country.And these people are also thinking of arresting me. If they arrest me, I will enjoy it. And with me, five thousand sannyasins will voluntarily ask to be arrested.What if they say no, we’re not interested in arresting you?Then they will sit around the prison and fast there unto death. So America will know something new![Laughter is heard]I gather you haven’t asked them about that yet!I suppose you’re always confident that your requests are always followed by your sannyasins, by your followers?I hope.You’re doing these interviews nightly. You did a national television interview yesterday. Do you like that?Yes, I like it.You enjoy not only the experience of being questioned, but the fact that your words are being transmitted to all these people?I love it, because I am not going anywhere. And I am a contemporary man, why shouldn’t I use all the media which is possible, to spread the word?It sounds to me as if you are hoping to offset any threat from the state, or from the federal government, or from the INS through the media.There is no question: the media should be for the Constitution of America. And if the government goes in any way against the constitutional rights, then the media has to help us.Do you ever watch your interviews after you’ve made them?No.Do you watch television from the outside?Once in a while, if something good.How do you choose your reading these days?No, my people choose. If a sannyasin sends me some film that he feels I would like - maybe a film based on Dostoyevsky’s novel, Brothers Karamazov, or Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, then I watch it; otherwise not.What’s going on now will involve a lot of lawyers and consultants, and.I’m not involved in it.Will you consult with them at all?No, this is the function of the corporations. We have almost a dozen corporations for different functions, and they should look after it. We have four hundred legal experts in the commune.But your most recent experiences don’t suggest to you that you need to take more direct control of any.?No. I have never been interested in any control - never.Although occasionally you are consulted.I am just a friend, available for any advice. To take it or not to take it is their freedom, but I don’t want to have any control in my hands.How did you choose Hasya, as opposed to anybody else? How was that process done, and how.?No, I have not chosen her.As your secretary, for the moment?I have chosen her as my secretary, because I have known her. She has been making a film on me and my philosophy, and the sannyasins and the commune. Because of that film she came in contact with me, and I saw in her a possibility of a very creative, loving woman. But as the president, she has been chosen by the corporation itself.Not by you.Not by me.How can you be confident that all the evil members of the fascist gang have disappeared, that some are not still here? Because there are many people who had positions of power before who are still here.The police are looking after it. They are searching everybody, they are talking to everybody. Now, this is their business to find out. Perhaps there are a few, but my feeling is the real criminals have disappeared. They can be caught easily - just if the government does not want to protect them, then it is another matter. Otherwise, we know their whereabouts daily.Why would the government want to protect them?Just to destroy the commune.Is that even possible? Is the commune in danger of being destroyed?From my side there is no problem. They can try, and we will accept their challenge.But I hear talk on the streets among people here, who say, “You know, I don’t understand what’s going on around here anymore,” and “Things are changing so quickly it’s uncomfortable.”It will be for a few days, because everything is changing. So, for a few days it will be difficult for everybody to figure out what is happening, because all the topmost people have disappeared, new people have come with whom they don’t have any acquaintance. It will take a little time. Then the police are there, continuously interrogating them.Then there is the possibility that I may be arrested, and there is the possibility that they are going to arrest a hundred more people - all the important people in the commune, so that nobody remains here to take care of the commune. But whatever they do, we are going to rejoice in the challenge. We have nothing to lose; they have everything to lose.But the community has spent millions to create a.It does not matter; money does not matter at all.Then you do feel threatened by all this activity.No, I don’t feel threatened. I simply feel excited.How do you mean?Very ecstatic.Do you feel as if it’s important to have an Armageddon-like confrontation with the powers of the state and the federal government?Yes. I would love to have.Is that inevitable, if not now, then someday soon?No, I think it will be now - because if they cannot confront us in this state, when everything is in change and in chaos, they will never again be able to. After two months they will never again be able to confront us. We are ready to confront them even at this moment. And I have been a fighter my whole life: I have fought with the Indian government; I would love to have a taste of fighting with the American government too. And as my fight is finished here, I am moving to Germany.I thought you were never leaving?No, only after my fight is finished. When my commune is established and my fight is finished, I cannot die without having a taste of fighting with the Germans. That’s my last desire!As a member of the media I have a problem maybe you can help me with: many people who know I have visited here - I’ve been here before - want a simple layman’s description of what you teach. So, for their benefit, how would you describe the process in oh, fifty words or less. [Laughter] I’m serious, because there is a certain point at which we need to talk about what average people understand. And part of this media process is to let the average people understand.My teaching is meditation. Meditation means to me, witnessing. On three levels: action of the body, thoughts of the mind, feelings of the heart. Once a person becomes aware of these three things, the fourth step happens on its own accord; a quantum leap, suddenly he is at his very center, which is his life, deathless life. You can call it his soul, his being, and it is the greatest bliss in existence. There is nothing above it.That’s close to fifty words. Thank you. I had to ask that because I’ve been asked that very often, so I wanted to ask the master.You said before, the work of the Zorba is finished. What did you mean by that, and what is the future work?Zorba represents the foundation, and Buddha represents the temple. Both can only exist together, and up to now there has been a dichotomy. The materialist, who is a Zorba, has denied the very possibility of any buddhahood, any awakening, any consciousness - anything more than eat, drink and be merry. And the people who have been spiritualists have been condemning the Zorba and all that is natural to man, his body. They have been creating a repressive human being, sick, schizophrenic.My effort is to bring Zorba and Buddha together. So, here you will find Zorbas dancing in the disco, and the same Zorbas in the morning doing meditation. And I don’t see there is any conflict between the two. In fact, both are complementary, not contradictory.I meant the question actually in more concrete terms. I understood it more to mean - maybe I misinterpreted it, so please explain - the logistical work, the building work, the physical labor of creating a community here, was over. Is that true?No, it can never be over. This community is going to grow, it can never be over. We will need more houses, we will need more food, we will need more of everything. So the Zorba will be working - and the Zorba has every chance to become a buddha. We have every facility for him: meditation places, therapies, the university which teaches how to meditate - all the methods of meditation which have been ever used in the whole history of man.But we are trying to make Buddha make the road, and Zorba meditate. And that is my conception of the new man, the new humanity - Zorba the Buddha.Sheela essentially ran this community for quite a long time. Sheela’s word was law. Do you not feel as if there are long term credibility problems or psychic problems among sannyasins if suddenly the person who has been in charge is all of a sudden discredited?No, because they are here for me; they were not here for Sheela. Nobody is missing Sheela.Do you think, therefore, that you will never again take a vow of silence? Do you think it’s too dangerous to the rest of this community?No. If Sheela wants to come back, I will welcome her. But she will have to confess all her crimes, and she will have to take responsibility for her crimes before the law. We will give her all the respect and credit for what she has done, but we cannot protect her crimes. For that, she has to face the law, and it will be really tremendously dignified of her, if she comes back and confesses everything. Even if she is punished, she will feel clean, and she will feel fresh, and she may start thinking of spiritual growth, which she has never thought about.Could you not designate someone to pay a visit to Sheela and suggest that?Right now is not the time. Right now she is giving interviews and telling absolute lies -I will just wait for the right time.But you would do that?I will do it.Your love would conquer all the hostility that might exist.No, my love does not change with anything.Would it be right for people here to hate Sheela?No, nobody should hate anybody; you can hate actions, but not persons. If she has done something wrong, that action has to be hated, but the person is far bigger than the action, and the person has also to be respected.Given what’s taken place here, are you likely to again take another vow of silence, or would you be afraid that more abuse could happen?No, I am not going to take a vow of silence again because there is no need. I needed it because for thirty years I had been touring in India, and it had destroyed my health immensely. I wanted complete rest for a few years. And right now I am feeling perfectly okay, so I don’t see there is any need.And I am not going anywhere to tour; I don’t even go anywhere in the city. I don’t know even where the hospital is, and where is the restaurant. I know only this place for my evening interview, and in the morning the auditorium where I speak, and my own house. Those three places I know, otherwise I know nothing. And I do not want to know either. Everything is going perfectly well.Thank you very much.Okay.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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John McCall, The Seattle Post IntelligenceJeanine Perrett, The AustralianPam Abramson Newsweek MagazineThis is John McCall from the Seattle Post Intelligence. In the news conference Monday night you said you are not a savior or a prophet or a leader. Do you want the sannyasins to stay with you here at Rajneeshpuram?They want to stay with me.Sheela has told us in the past that her father raised you for a time before she was born. And this morning you said that you were miffed that she had not even said good-by to you when she left. What type of relationship you had with Sheela?Just she was my secretary - no relationship.Did you love Sheela?No. I did not even like her.I would find it ironic that you would appoint her your personal secretary when you knew she was not a meditator, when she was a hotel waitress, and that you didn’t even like her - why make her your strongest aide?Those were her qualifications. To raise a commune, to change this desert into an oasis, a very pragmatic, practical, strong person was needed - and she was that kind of person. She was not interested in meditation, she was not interested in any kind of spiritual growth. These were his qualifications to be a secretary.Now the situation is totally different. The commune is established. Now a different setup of people is needed. Each step needs different kind of people. Now I need meditators, people who are interested in spiritual growth: they should take charge.But in the beginning they would not have been able to withstand with all kind of hostility that strangers are bound to face.So there is no contradiction in it. I did it knowingly.Did you expect what happened to happen?It was possible.You said also at the news conference Monday night you blamed religious requirements of celibacy, for instance in Christianity, for creating homosexuality which in turn led to AIDS. You have also said in the past that you have known many women, yet you give us the impression now that you are a celibate man. Are you?I am not.At the present?Yes, at the present. Just as you are not eating now but tomorrow morning you will have breakfast, I can have my breakfast any time! Right now, I am celibate, you are celibate, everybody here is celibate.In Seattle I have a wife. I wonder if you have a relationship with a woman.I have relationship with thousands of women. One woman is not enough. Nobody is satisfied with one woman or with one man, and you should look into yourself Because it is human nature to have change.about everything. Now you are here, you are celibate, but you cannot guarantee that there in Seattle your wife is celibate. She may be celebrating!The, the reason that I find it peculiar that you would say you are not celibate is because you have a great deal of health needs in terms of cleanliness, and the temperature of this room for instance. You do not, as we normally do, shake hands when you greet someone. And you’ve spoken very frequently of the danger that AIDS presents to the world. I wonder if you have a fear of infection?No, I don’t have a fear of infection. But my people have, that I should not be infected by anything. They would like me to be with them as long as possible. As far as I am concerned, my work is done. I am perfectly fulfilled, I have arrived home. There is nowhere to go. So if I die this very moment, nothing is left incomplete.But my people, they are still on the way. They need a friend who knows the way, who has reached the home. They need help, encouragement, guidance. They would like me to be with them as long as I can. And they have managed the whole commune according to my health needs.The precautions that are taken with sex - with the condoms and the gloves, the spraying the alcohol on hands and the phones - these are taken in consideration of your needs?No. They are not my needs. They are their needs.Their needs for your preservation though?Yes.I have been told that pregnant women are not encouraged to come here and that sannyasins are not encouraged to have children here.Yes.Why is that?In fact, the question seems to be very irrational. Seeing the world overpopulated, no rational man can ask the question why they are not encouraged. Thousands of people are dying every day with hunger and you want my people to produce children, to make the world more poor? Thousands of people are going to die and are dying with AIDS.Do you want my people to produce children in a world where the children will be getting inheritance of hunger, AIDS, nuclear weapons, a third world war?I don’t think anybody who loves will produce a child in this world. This world is already mad, and unless we change this world, every intelligent person should stop producing children.This world can be happy only with one-fourth of its population. It is now four billion. By the end of this century it will be five billion. And when this population will be five billion, you can conceive the situation.Fifty percent of India - that means four hundred million people - are not getting two times food, only one time at the most.I agree with you, but you said also the other night that you were destroying Rajneeshism as a religion.Yes..Because you didn’t want a system of beliefs, but you also wanted no leaders or no high priestesses telling sannyasins what a religion was after you were gone.That’s true.If the commune does not reproduce it’ll be like the Shaker societies of New England that had no children and vanished in fifty years.There is no harm. If the commune disappears, there is no harm. Shakers disappearing in England has done no harm.Any harm that has been done is by those who have not disappeared! If the pope and six-hundred-million Catholics have also disappeared, it would have been a tremendous relief.You have said that you wanted to return the town of Antelope to its original residents.That’s true..If they would buy back the property. They told me that they favor a disincorporation because they fear that even if the town changes its name back to Antelope the sannyasins will outnumber them and will still control the town government.First think of one thing: if they are incapable of purchasing the properties, then certainly the sannyasins will outnumber them. And it is a democracy.But I thought you implied this morning that you would ask all sannyasins to leave Rajneesh.I will. But they should purchase the properties as we have purchased from them.Only if the properties are purchased then?Unless, why we should leave? Those are our properties. And there are only twelve Antelope people and one hundred sannyasins - do you want in a democracy twelve persons should rule one hundred people? That should be simply stupid. And we are offering them that they can purchase back all the properties and we will immediately move. Then whatsoever they want to do with their town they can do. They can decompose it, they can destroy it, they can put fire to it - whatsoever they want. But we don’t want to do anything like that. That is not friendship. Decomposing, destroying a city, we consider an act of antagonism.And why they are asking that? We are ready to give the properties to them, then they can have their own council and decide whatever they want to decide. We will not be interfering at all. But if they cannot purchase the properties, then they should ask all the Oregonians who were so much helpful, being hostile to us, that, “This is the time to show your real friendship - you purchase the properties.”If they can gather signatures - one hundred thousand signatures they need to put a bill for destroying the city - they should rather ask people in Oregon. There are enough rich people who can purchase this small town very easily, and we will vacate immediately. Not even a second we want to be there!Those houses are just simply rotten, third-rate. And if they cannot purchase, then they should move out - they are only twelve people. We are ready to purchase their houses. Either way, they should decide it.Is it fair to say that aside from the allegations that you have made against Sheela and her group, that what the commune is experiencing now is sort of a cultural revolution, a whole change in attitudes in work?.That’s bound to be happening..And that if that is true, some would argue that without a hierarchy, without a power structure, that the society would become too anarchistic, that work wouldn’t get done, that there would be financial problems.No. I am here to see. For thirty years in India I was there and without any hierarchy, without any power structure, work was being done. I don’t have any power, but I have something more than power and that is my love.And the work will happen and will happen far more creatively, far more lovingly.And those who are basically slaves, they may find it a little difficult. Freedom is very difficult for slaves. They need somebody to goad them on. We will put them through therapies to destroy their program of slavery in the mind. We will deprogram them. And there are very few people who are so much conditioned for slavery, so there is no problem.And even if a little less work happens, freedom is far more valuable.Is the commune in financial difficulties?No difficulty at all.Even without the forty-three million that’s in the Swiss bank account?They were never here. They were to come here, but they never reached here, so in fact they don’t make any difference to us. And as far as money is concerned, we have enough creative people and we are not in any financial trouble.I’m told you take two ice baths a day. Why?I love it.So you like the physical sensation of it?I love.it is healthful to my body. Changing from hot to cold, from cold to hot, and ending with cold, it is immensely healthful for body - for everybody, because it gives the body a tremendous change. With the hot, every fiber of the body expands, with the cold it shrinks. It is the best exercise possible without doing any exercise.I know that you give the discourse in the morning and you meet the press in the evening. Could you briefly tell me how you spend the rest of your day?My life is very simple. Two hours in my bath and swimming pool in the morning, two hours in the evening, two hours in the morning talk.Two hours in the morning discourse. Two hours in the evening interviews. Two hours afternoon sleep. One hour for my secretary after the interview. One and half hour I go for a drive in the mountains - that is the only time that is for me. otherwise I am completely engaged from six in the morning until eleven or twelve in the night.It depends on the work, how much work the secretary has, because I have communes all around the world. So letters from them, their problems, everything I have to look after.Why do you not visit those communes?Just my health does not allow. And when I can manage from sitting here, giving an interview to you and to all kinds of media, there is no need. They are seeing me every day, morning discourse, evening interview. Tomorrow you will be all over the world, seen by my commune people.Your newspaper may be late but my video will be there tomorrow!Tomorrow?Yes. Immediately. They get everything that they need.So there is no reason for it. I have asked my scientists - I have scientists, psychologists, professors, doctors, every kind of people in the commune - I have asked them that the video should be three-dimensional. Why it should be flat? And they should work upon it to make it three-dimensional, then it is exactly as if I am visiting the commune and any moment I may come out of the screen.I believe after you experienced enlightenment you were silent for some years. Is that correct?Not silent, but I did not speak about the enlightenment for few years.And you were silent for three and a half years until last year?Yes.Would you anticipate another block of silence in your life?No. There is no need.You will speak from now until your.Now I am going to speak until my last breath.Some critics say that you are destroying your charisma by speaking too much. Would you comment on that?I am destroying everything!I want to leave this world as if I have never been here. I don’t want to leave any footprints, so that no idiot starts following the footprints. I will destroy everything.Other critics say that sannyasins for the most part are people of the sixties generation who are looking for spiritual answers, and that spiritual remedies do not have an appeal for seventies - people born in the seventies or the fifties, and that therefore you’re speaking to a very small and select audience. Do you believe that to be true?That is not true, because I am speaking almost every day to one million sannyasins around the world and two million sympathizers around the world.I have four hundred books. Most of them are being translated in almost all the major languages of the world. Millions of people have read them who have not heard me.And now I have opened sannyas for a wider public. I have withdrawn the red dress, the mala, because thousands of people wanted to be sannyasins but just because of the clothes and the mala they felt difficulties in the world - their job, their family, their wife, their parents, their friends - and it was too much of a trouble.I have withdrawn everything. Now whatsoever remains is something inner which neither the wife can detect nor the father nor the job nor the friends.So you would like to reach a wider audience? You would like all Oregonians to become sannyasins?I would like the whole world to become sannyasins - why just Oregonians? Oregon is just a small place. I don’t count it at all.The whole world - because I don’t want anybody to remain any more Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jew, because all these religions have destroyed so much in man that now it is time man should get free of them.Tell me, if you would, the meaning of the Rolls Royces?I am not a worshiper of poverty, as all the religions are. And because of their worship of poverty, they are responsible for poverty in the world.To me, wealth is as significant as any other creative act. Everybody is not a Picasso, everybody is not a Ford either. And I respect both.All the religions have created the idea that to be rich is something wrong. Jesus says, “A camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot pass through the gates of heaven.”Now these are the people who are responsible for keeping humanity poor. They are giving poor people opium, that “You are the blessed one” - while they are the cursed one.I do not agree with Jesus. I can see what he is doing, and that’s being done by all the religions in different ways. I am the only man perhaps who is not a hypocrite. Pope goes on worshipping Jesus and still he holds the biggest and the largest empire in the world: six hundred million Catholics and the Vatican is the richest.Maybe he agrees with you about wealth?If he agrees with me, then he should say so. Then the Polack should speak.Do you believe in reincarnation?I don’t believe in anything. I know. It is a truth.You know that you will live in some form beyond this life?Not in any form. I will live without form.Eternally?Eternally. I have been here eternally and I am going to be here eternally.Will you have consciousness beyond death?Yes, because death has nothing to do with consciousness.Will you have identity beyond death?No identity.I have no more questions. Thank you very much, Osho.Good. Come again.in this life, not in reincarnation!Jeanine Perrett from The AustralianYou didn’t know what was happening because of your period of silence; how can you be sure that there are not problems, similar things, going on in other communes around the world?There may have been going while I was silent, but nobody has escaped from any other commune in the world. And they are all happy that Sheela has left. They are happy that they have been harassed by Sheela and her group, so I don’t think anything was happening as criminal as Sheela’s group was doing here.You say you don’t think so, but you can’t really be sure, can you?I.how I can be sure? But soon it will come out if anything was happening. Once Sheela’s gang is caught up - and they are going to be caught up, because every evidence is being produced. Now there is no way for them to escape.But that’s in conflict with what your mayor said this afternoon, who said that the investigation is actually concentrating on immigration questions about yourself rather than on catching the criminals.They can concentrate on my immigration problem. It will take at least one hundred twenty years to decide. By that time I will be dead, they will be dead, their children will be dead.By the time they catch up with Sheela that could be the case?No. It’s different group is looking for Sheela’s. My question is in INS’ hands. Sheela’s criminal acts are in FBI, state police, county police, city police. These are two different sections, different agencies. They have nothing to do with each other.Then you’re happy with the way the investigation is going at the moment then?Yes. I’m perfectly happy.Then these reports in your newspaper about you being worried that they didn’t want to interview you - that’s not correct? You’re not worried that they put off those appointments?No. Once I made the statement to the press, they have come to their senses immediately and they have started investigating.This is why they put out seven search warrants today, then, you think?They are doing perfectly well. They have not interviewed me and I don’t think they have guts to interview me.That indicates you’re not quite happy with the way things are going?I’m quite happy, because the way they are doing.and every evidence is being produced to them.Do you think perhaps you’ve created something of a monster, bringing them in here now?No.You don’t mind them smashing windows, breaking down doors, taking whatever.Investigating, taking files. You don’t mind how far it goes, what they find?It cannot go any far, because there is nothing. Whatever we are giving them, that’s all. What they are searching, is just wasting time.You’re sure you’re happy with the way the investigation’s going?Yes.What was the reason for the three years of silence, Osho?In the beginning there was no reason. I just was tired of thirty years continuous speaking. And my health was bad, and that was the only way to rest.Well, you’re now giving three interviews a night and speaking each morning - how’s that affecting your health?No. Now it is perfectly good, because I have managed - my health has come right. And I have managed the whole commune in such a way because my sickness is not something that you can cure. You can only take precautions and it will not occur.For example, I am allergic to few things. If those things don’t come near to me, then my allergies remain dormant, I am perfectly okay.That’s the nature of your illness - allergies, is it?Yes.What did not speaking do for allergies?Because speaking, and thousands of people coming to listen. Somebody is wearing perfume and that is enough. So now I am speaking only with my sannyasins who know that they don’t have to wear any perfume.And people get upset if outsiders come and you tell them that “You have to take a bath before you can go into the discourse.” They get upset; they think they are being unnecessarily harassed.So in India it was a difficulty. Now it is not a difficulty. We have our own people who understand, themselves. There is no need to say anything to them.So one is my allergies, smoke - now this was difficult in India. How can you stop neighbors not burning something, creating some smoke? And if you try, then they feel offended.Now the nearest neighbor is twenty miles away. We have one hundred twenty-six square miles, complete space for ourselves, so no question of anybody creating any smoke. All our houses are air-conditioned for all five hun.thousand sannyasins, no dust.You’ve conceded that your three and a half year silence was one of the reasons Sheela was able to get away with what she did. You said again.It was not one of the reasons but it gave her an opportunity.Do you now regret that three and a half year silence?No. I don’t regret ever, for anything. Whatever happened was good. We got rid of the whole gang. Otherwise it would have been difficult to get rid of them.Was it worth the forty-three million they supposedly took with them?Forty-three million means nothing to me. If they had asked forty-three million, without doing all this nonsense, I would have told them, “Take forty-three million and get lost! There is no need to kill people, there is no need to poison anybody. If you need money, just take the money and get lost!”Money has never been a problem to me - I don’t have a single dollar. But it has never been a problem to me because I have so many lovers around the world that any moment any amount of money can be made available here immediately.What’s the ultimate purpose of the money? You said you don’t want anything to carry on when you’ve left. Where will the money go?The commune is going to expand every day. This is only the beginning. We have the land three times bigger than New York, and do you want in this vast land only five thousand people to live? One hundred thousand sannyasins are going to live here.This is after your death as well?No, now - before my death!So then what happens on your death when you don’t want people to follow your footsteps?Don’t care.I don’t care about anything even before my death, so after my death why should I care?To you I die; to me you all die. Death means double. It is not only my death; to me the whole world also dies at the same moment.Yes, but they don’t have a lot of money to worry about when they die.There is no question.You said earlier that you were destroying everything, you didn’t want anybody to follow in your footsteps. Is that why the press conference earlier this week to announce that the end of the clothes, the word Rajneesh? Is that the start of the dismantling of.?Yes.What brought it on now? Was it purely Sheela or have you decided the time has come to start dismantling the.?No, the time has come. People are mature enough. They have lived with me for fifteen years, ten years, and they are mature enough. They don’t need baby clothes. They are big enough.Why this week are they big enough? Why wasn’t it a month ago or six months ago? What’s prompted this?Any time you would have asked the same question.Your concern about AIDS, Osho. How did Sheela and you get so out of step on the AIDS question if she was the only person you were consulting with each day for three years?She was obsessed with sex because she was raped very early in her life. Perhaps she was fifteen or sixteen. And then she became pregnant. And the man who raped her was the closest friend of his father, whom she respected just as his father.That created a certain wound that has not healed. She is against men as such.And she is obsessed with sex because of that rape has never allowed her to have any orgasm. She simply shrinks rather than opening to the experience of orgasm. While making love she simply shrinks, becomes tight. Naturally, in that tense state you can’t have orgasm.She has changed many husbands, thinking perhaps somebody else will be able to give her the orgasmic feeling. She had had many boyfriends.Were you one of them?No.When you say she is obsessed with sex, there are some people who look at your commune and would say the same thing about yourself and your followers.That is up to them to say. I cannot stop anybody saying anything. I am not obsessed with sex. No woman has raped me yet. Do you want to try?No.Thank you.What about the AIDS question? If you were in a period of silence.Yes, yes, change the subject right now..For three years. I am not obsessed with sex!I have been seeing the journalists. They change the subject when I touch their nerve.If you would like to continue talking about it, I’m quite willing to. Is there anything you feel you can add?You just ask what you want.If you were silent for three and a half years and you only communicated with Sheela, where did your knowledge about the fact that AIDS was going to come down and destroy the world come from?Any information that I had was from Sheela. Sheela was my only source of all information, all communication with the commune.So it was Sheela who gave you the impression that AIDS was a problem, yet it was the same Sheela who also wanted to move aids victims into this commune?Yes.Isn’t there a conflict there?There seems to be no conflict. Whatever she gave - the information - after my silence I have found that it is perfectly right. But what she did, she never told me: that she tried two sannyasins, forcibly cheated them, perhaps changed their blood or mixed their blood with AIDS virus. She had a assistant, Puja, who is a trained nurse and a very criminal mind, who was experimenting in Sheela’s house how to create virus, how to manage slow doses of poison that a person dies in a long time, so you can never think of him as poisoned.So she forced two sannyasins who were not ready to do something that she wanted them to do. The whole commune was checked, and two persons were found having AIDS. And after she left they were checked again. One has died. The other has been found that he has no AIDS.So that seems the blood was changed.So you don’t think there’s a problem with AIDS or there’s any chance of AIDS creeping into this commune here?No, but there are, because from other communes where they don’t have any medical facilities eight or nine sannyasins have come. So there are eight or nine sannyasins who have AIDS, and we are taking care of them.We have made a separate faraway place for them, very beautiful scenic place, perhaps the most beautiful in the whole commune, the best houses, given them all facilities - books to read, to write, and whatever they want to do - gardening, carpentry or anything - sculpture, music. These two years are their last time. Perhaps from six months to two years they will be alive. And we can afford them their best. And this is a good chance for them to meditate.And they’re here in Oregon?They are here in Rajneeshpuram.And do you expect the number to increase?No, because I will not be accepting anybody who is not a sannyasin.And you don’t think AIDS can increase in.?No.So I suppose you think if most other people followed the example set here, AIDS wouldn’t be as big a problem?Yes, it will be helpful if every city follows the same idea the way we are doing. Every city should check every person in the city and find out the AIDS people and keep them in isolation. But do not humiliate them. Do not condemn them. They are simply victims.That’s a more conciliatory turn for you on AIDS, isn’t it? You’ve been quite outspoken.Because they are victims. The disease is created by all the founders of religion. Because they have been propounding celibacy. And celibacy is absolutely unnatural. And when you force monks to live together, nuns to live together, you are creating the situation for homosexuality, lesbianism. So the first source of homosexuality is religious, and it is going on still.Celibacy should be condemned as a crime and all monks should be married to nuns. And we have found even for Pope the Polack, Mother Teresa.You said before that you couldn’t travel to your other communes around the world because of your health. People in your commune have said that the reason you don’t travel to your other areas of the world is because you’re not going to leave the country until you get a green card. But once you get the green card, you’re quite willing to travel.I have told myself to the press conference that four years they could not decide. What kind of intelligent people you have got in America? The whole department of INS for four years is working out, and they could not decide yes or no for me.I am not leaving America unless they give me the green card, and that too is not a promise that I will leave. That simply means that I may think of visiting some other commune to see what is the situation there - if my health permits.Would Australia be one of those communes? It’s often been mentioned that perhaps you might go out there if you couldn’t stay in America any longer.No, Australia is not a very great commune yet. Germany will be my place if I go. Switzerland will be my place. Holland will be my place if I go. These three places I have the best communes who can manage for my health everything. Australia is new.Sheela’s not sort of setting up the way for you, is she? Sheela’s not there sort of setting up the communes and helping.?She cannot even enter a commune. She is hiding in a forest.Has anybody offered to make a movie of the last few months’ events here? Have you had any approaches from Hollywood?Nobody has offered. You can manage if you want. Okay?Pam Abramson from Newsweek.Good evening.I’ve spent about a week here last year and came away truly feeling the buddhafield, and my publication ended up writing a rather negative piece about the commune anyway. And, as it turns out, our negative piece sort of made this place look like romper room compared with what was really going on here.I just don’t know why we should believe what you’re saying right now, not necessarily about Sheela but about your not knowing what was going on. After all you’re the enlightened one.There is no reason to believe in me.Well, people are laughing, but what does that mean? Does that mean that what you’re saying is.?That simply means you are nuts.Well, in what way am I nuts?Because first you came here. You believed Sheela and you could not manage to write what you have seen here. And your directors and your owners of Newsweek simply turned the whole article negative. And you don’t have guts even enough to resign from that ugly magazine.You’re right about that.So that’s why I say you are nuts. So now there is no question of believing me or not. You ask the question. I answer you. You go to your director, and whatever they want to publish they can publish. Your writing makes no sense. Last time your writing was completely rejected by your directors.No, that’s not the case at all.That is the case because Sheela has told me that you are absolutely positive and happy, and when I saw your article it was absolutely negative.I mean, what we had to say about the place turned out to be nothing compared to what you’re saying now.That means your directors are prophets or something? So that’s good. You write it and take to your directors, and they can prophesy whether it is right or wrong. There is no question of believing me.Do you say the same thing to your sannyasins? Do you want them to believe?I have been saying to them, “Nobody needs to believe me.” They have to think on their own. Belief is not my number.Well, how about responsibility? I mean, do you feel in any way.?I don’t feel any responsibility about anybody.How about the people that were being poisoned? How about Hasya? How about her husband? How about the man who died?I don’t feel any responsibility about anybody. They are all mature people and they have their own responsibility. They are not dependent on me.Do you not feel any responsibility at all for the goings-on over the last.?For not knowing I have to be responsible.So you feel responsible for not knowing?So you mean to say that whatever Nixon was doing you weren’t responsible for not knowing it?Well he was responsible.No, you were responsible.No, I wasn’t responsible, but.Why?I don’t even know Richard Nixon.So then why I should be responsible if I did not know?Because this is your place.And this America is not your country?Not the same way that this commune is yours.No.People are here because of you, not because of me. Because of you.No, no. They are here not because of me but because of their love for me. It is their love they are here.So out of love shouldn’t you have been more on top of what was going on around here? What did you talk to Sheela about?You just ask questions.I do.You just give her some water.Some of these questions aren’t even mine. They’re what your sannyasins are asking.Anybody’s questions, but don’t waste time. Simply ask the questions. You give her first water.You’ve declared an end to Rajneeshism. What does that mean? How will things be different? What changes are in store?There has been never a religion before I went into silence. And I have been always against organized religion.Because I was in isolation and silence Sheela and her group created Rajneeshism as a religion, and she became the high priestess of that religion.The moment I came out of my silence, I saw that she has gone absolutely against my teachings. So the only way is to undo everything that she has done in three and a half years.She has written a book: Rajneeshism. I hate the word ism. It simply stinks. So I told my people to burn that book, and with it burn the very idea that you are a religion.I have a way of life. I have a way of spiritual growth, but it is not an organized religion.And I don’t want anybody to be succeeded by me. I don’t want another popedom and a Vatican.I have taken from the sannyasins everything that makes them distinct. I have told them, “Now it is not necessary to wear red clothes. All colors are ours. There is no need to wear a mala of my photo because I am not your savior or prophet or a messenger.“I don’t have any God to offer you. I can only offer you the science of knowing thyself. So you just have to understand that I am only a friend, not more than that. I am one amongst you, so no need of any adoration and no need of thinking yourself as part of a collectivity. You are all individuals.“If you are living together, it is simply because you are all searching into yourself. Everybody is searching within himself, alone; nobody else can go with you. But because your search is the same, you can create a commune which can be supportive. Alone, perhaps, you may not be able to go inside. It is the most arduous journey in the world.”“With so many people going into themselves, a certain atmosphere of encouragement - people becoming more loving, people becoming more silent, people becoming more serene - you can see their faces full of joy, rejoicing for nothing, dancing. You can also gather courage to go in, however difficult in the beginning it is.“Only the beginning is difficult. The first step is almost half the journey. And in the second step the journey is over.”How are you going to be able to convey to the IRS that this commune shouldn’t pay taxes the same way that it didn’t when it was a religion?Because it is a way of being religious. It is not a religion. It is a way of being spiritual. It is not an organized religion. It has every right not to pay any taxes to anybody.Because there are religious people here?Certainly. Anybody who goes inwards becomes religious. By going to the church you don’t become religious. But by going inwards you certainly become religious. By going to the church you become a Christian, a Hindu, a Jew, a Mohammedan. Those people should be taken away their tax-exempt status. They are not religious. They are pretenders, hypocrites.These people are mystics. They are trying to discover the mystery of their own being, and this is the highest religiousness possible to human beings.So what tax-exempt status? There is no problem.I will face those people. You don’t worry about them. You worry about your own paper.You seem to hint tonight that you were, indeed, ready to fire Sheela anyway. Is that true?It is true.So this would have happened anyway regardless? I mean, she would have lost her job as your private secretary sooner or later?That is certain.Why did it take so long? You’ve been talking for a year, right?I have been talking almost a year. But there were so many litigations in which Sheela was involved, and I was waiting that she cleans all litigations that she has created. And this was the time when all.she is free of all litigations. And she can be freed.If she had not escaped, she would have been a respectable member of the commune - unless her crimes were discovered. Then those crimes she would have to face the court and the law. We cannot protect any criminal.We will respect her for whatever she has done to the commune, but we cannot respect her criminal activities.So we would have even now accept her if she comes back. She will be a member of the commune, well respected because she has made four year work tremendous job. Just she slipped a little bit and got into a power trip. For that we will have to face the law.And it is better and dignified that she comes back here rather than hiding like a criminal. It is better to be back to the commune where she will feel nourished. And she can fight against the law. Or she can confess to the court that, “All these things I have done and whatsoever punishment is there I am ready to accept it.” That will be more dignified. And she will be unburdened spiritually.But this was certain, that she was going to be dropped from her position. Her work was done.Had you told her that?No. She has not even seen me before she left. For almost a month she had not seen me. She has been escaping for all these six months to Europe, to Switzerland, to Australia - for any excuse, that, “There is work.”The only reason was she was afraid to face me. And whenever she will come back she will say that she has cold, and because I have this allergy so she cannot come to see me, she will be sending her second, her assistant.So she was avoiding even to see me, to face me, because she knew that I am becoming aware of things that she has done. But there was no proof yet.Three persons she has poisoned, but the poison was undetectable. The doctors said, “We suspect, but it is only a speculation, that it is a undetectable poison. You can inject, you can give it in a tea, you can give it in a coffee, you can give it in food. You will feel sick, you will become weak. But there is no way to detect it.”So there was no solid ground on which. The moment she left, finally, just within twelve hours hundreds of sannyasins opened everything: that she has bugged my own room, my caretaker’s room, Hasya’s whole house, the whole hotel.Almost.one of the FBI persons said that she has bugged almost the whole city. And the work of bugging has been done with such sophistication that Nixon is left far behind.Every phone coming in or going out was taped, but we came to know only when she had left. All mechanism of taping phones was caught, has been delivered to the police.In her room, books on poison, how to murder people, how to create bombs, chemicals and other elements which need to create a bomb. And in the book of poisons only one poison is underlined: which every doctor was suspecting, because that is the only one which is undetectable. In the whole book that one is underlined. That means that one has been used in all the cases.Why didn’t you just let her go and be gone? She could have been gone and forgotten and, it could have been business as usual.No. I am not that type of person. I can forgive but I cannot forget. And if she wants forgiveness, she has to come here.Do you think that would ever happen?Her own soul will become a nightmare to her.You’ve already said she’s not a spiritual person, though.But she has a soul. Whether she is a spiritual person or not does not matter. I have never said that she has no soul. It will torture her. She will by and by recognize that the people who loved her, the people who trusted her, the people who did everything she said.because she was saying in my name everything, which I had no idea even.Only one of her gang, a beautiful sannyasin, Ava, has turned back from Seattle. She had also gone with the group, because she was also afraid.She was engaged in all criminal activities: arson, burning the planning office in the Wasco County, poisoning. All the Homes-Share program people, street people, keeping them under poison, drugged, so that on the election day they can do whatsoever Sheela wants them to do just like zombies.They did not purchase the drugs in America because they needed gallons of drugs. To purchase them they would have to satisfy the pharmacist, they will have to satisfy the government for what reason so much drugs are being purchased. But for three thousand people, to keep them for twenty-one days completely drugged, certainly she needed. So they were imported from out of America.And one man was over-drugged and died. And they simply threw him out of Rancho Rajneesh. His body was found, but the police could not manage to figure out.he was a street person. Nobody knew from where he had come. Nobody knew how he has died.All these things Ava knew: all the persons who have been injected poison - my physician, my caretaker. So she had gone out of fear, that she will be left alone. But she must have a better quality of humanity. From Seattle she came back. She said, “I am going to confess everything, and I am going to remain in the commune. The people love me. I love them. And whatever we have done, we have to face it.”Today she had given her testimony to the FBI. Her testimony is enough, because she is one of the chief in the Sheela’s gang. And whatever she says is supported by hundreds of sannyasins.Now it is up to the government to catch hold of these people.A very lovely sannyasin asked me to ask you. A lot has been said in your name. She wanted to know if you really wanted all the sannyasins from California to move here, or was that Sheela talking? And she really wanted to know if you banned kissing.Certainly I have banned kissing.That was your idea?Yes. Because kissing is one of the causes of infecting people with AIDS.And I have called the group from Hollywood because they wanted to make a film on the commune, on me, my ideology. I had told Sheela that they should be here and work out - and they were working out. And it is.that’s how Prem Hasya, who had made with her husband one of the best movies, Godfather, wanted to make it, came in contact with me.And I saw the beauty of the woman, the intelligence of the woman, the far different superiority to Sheela. So now Hasya is my secretary.think her question was, “Did you ask all sannyasins in California to come up to the ranch or was that Sheela?”No, not all sannyasins.Just the ones from Hollywood?Only Hasya’s group.Okay. So the bit about the earthquake and it was coming and they should all be here because it was safe, that was Sheela and not you?Nothing to do with me. I had asked only Hasya and her group who was going to work the film. So their whole group is here, and now their whole group has taken the place of Sheela’s gang. Now you are in Hollywood.Well, I like Hasya a lot and feel the same thing about her that you do.Good. But this time make your director understand.Hey, it’s not me! It’s the rest of the world that has a hard time believing and not.Not snickering and wondering whether you’re doing it maybe for publicity, which we know you like.I love it. Don’t say I like it, I love it!Thank you very very.And you can make that, too, part of your article.That you love publicity?Yes.Well, then, can’t you see how some of us might be wondering if all of this isn’t just to get.?Let them wonder! Wonder is something good. There is nothing wrong in it.Okay. I thank you very, very much.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Rainer Paul, Der Spiegel, GermanyMary Thornton, The Washington Post, USAI would appreciate short answers whenever possible. You declared the end of Rajneeshism as a religion and had the book on that religion burned in all your communes. Why did you do it this week and not last year, and not one year from now?That is a question which is absolutely illogical. Whenever I would have done it you could have asked the same question: “Why now? Why not before? Why not after?” Everything happens in its own time.I had no religion before I went into silence. I have never been in favor of any organized religion. The moment the truth is organized it becomes untrue. It is no longer spiritual, it becomes political. But because I was in silence for three and a half years, the people who were running the commune managed to create a religion which is a very human tendency. Man wants to be in some organization. Alone he feels afraid. He wants to be part of a society, culture, religion, nation, civilization, but he does not stand on his own. He cannot declare his individuality totally free of all conditions. And that is my whole teaching. So it was basically against me that The Book of Rajneeshism and the idea of Rajneeshism and the idea of sannyasins being called Rajneeshees was created.When I started speaking again, I became aware of everything that had happened in my absence, but I was waiting for valid proofs against the organization that had developed. I don’t hold any post, I don’t have any political power. My power is my love. I am not even a member of the commune. So naturally I had to wait, because if things have gone wrong.slowly they started coming to me, but yet there was no solid proof. People were poisoned, but the poison used was undetectable. Doctors said, “People have been poisoned but we cannot prove it. Efforts have been made to kill, but because it is undetectable there is no way to prove it.” So I had to wait, and as more facts started gathering, that every phone going out from the commune, coming into the commune, was being tapped, that every house was bugged, even my room was bugged - then it was time, because now there were solid proofs. And because those people became aware that now I was collecting solid proofs, the whole gang of twenty people escaped. And because bureaucracy everywhere is slow, we have given them space inside the commune: the state police are here, the county police are here, the city police are here, FBI top officers are here - but things are going so slow, as if they are giving time to the criminals.They have not asked for an interview with me - which should have been their first thing because I exposed the whole thing. They should have asked me, but they did not. I had to ask them, “Please have an interview with me.” Four times they gave a date, a time, and four times they canceled it. This way they delayed again one week. The fourth time I told them, “If you cancel it, then this evening I am going to call a national press conference. I am going to talk to them, and I am going to say it clearly, that ‘these people are not working to find out the criminals; their strategy seems to be to protect the criminals and destroy the commune’.” They would like somehow to arrest one thousand sannyasins who are absolutely innocent, who have not done anything; or even if they did anything they had no idea why it was being done. They may have carried some bags from one place to another place not knowing that the bags contained poisons. They may have dug ditches not knowing that those ditches were going to be used for bugging homes.These people are innocent, and all the people who knew what they were doing.they killed a man and threw his body out of Rancho Rajneesh; they tried to kill the three people most intimate to me who were a danger to them - because they were my physician, my dentist, my caretaker, and they might inform me about things that were going on. They even tried some kind of poison in my milk. They never wanted me to speak again. They didn’t have the idea to kill me; but they certainly wanted me to remain sick, weak, so that I could not come back into the commune and make Sheela’s image as high priestess that she has created in three and a half years disappear - because when I am present there is no need for any mediator between me and my people.She insisted in many ways, “Your health is not good, and it will be dangerous to speak again. Everything is going well - you need not bother, we are working perfectly well.” “But,” I said, “what am I going to do with my health if I have to remain my whole life closed in the room? My health has to be used for my people. If I live two years or four years less, it does not matter - but whatever I want to do, I should do.” That became a trouble in their minds, and they started arranging to escape, to get married in Switzerland. And they committed bigamy: Sheela was married here to an American sannyasin, she got married secretly to a sannyasin in Switzerland; the Swiss sannyasin was married to an American woman here - they both have committed crime.But this all went on secretly, silently; only now are things surfacing. As they escaped from here, thousands of sannyasins started coming to the office and informing us of whatever they knew. They were fragments, but those fragments indicated many things, and all put together, it became a bigger Watergate. Even the FBI people had to accept it, that this gang has used more sophisticated instruments for tapping the phones, for bugging the houses, than Nixon had used. And Nixon has bugged only a few places, they have bugged hundreds of houses. For each bugging, a five-year punishment.An American law?Yes. So if all these buggings are to be punished, at least one thousand years’ imprisonment will not be enough. And these people have done many more things.because one of them has returned. She did not go the full way to hide in the Black Forest, she returned from Seattle, seeing the point that rather than hiding her whole life as a criminal here and there, it was better to come back to the commune and confess everything that she had done and she knows. Perhaps today she is giving her testimony before the FBI. And she knows every single detail of how may people were poisoned, how many people were harassed so that they would leave the commune, for the simple reason that they were more intelligent, more independent, and they could not be enslaved. The chancellor of the meditation university left, the vice-chancellor of the university left, and hundreds of others who have been with me for years - very intimate - they all left. Not that they were against me. Now they are phoning from all over the word, “We want to come back. We never wanted to leave the commune, but we were harassed in such a way, humiliated in such a way, that we had to leave; there was no other way.”These people, because I was completely isolated and in silence, took advantage of the power. Sannyasins love me - in my name these people were telling them to do things, in my name they collected money. Two hundred million dollars have been used in the commune, but forty-three million dollars they saved in a Swiss bank in Sheela and Savita’s names. Her old secretary who is to reach here tonight - or perhaps she has reached - has revealed it, that forty-three million dollars what was to come here is waiting there. So they have done every kind of crime that was possible. And now they are lying to the news media.If they have any courage they should come and face me and face the commune, and I guarantee that we will not do any harm to them. They can come and have an encounter, and if they have any allegations they should put them forward. They had not even the guts to face me when they escaped - they did not even come to see me to say good-bye.Could you imagine a situation when you would need Sheela back, who after all was not a bad manager in building this commune? Do you expect her to be back?No. I will not have her in any way. But if she wants to come back, she can be just like an ordinary sannyasin. But she will not have any power post - never. And I will not need her. I have got so many intelligent people - she is just a hotel waitress.Do you have a job for her?Yes, in the hotel she can work. As a waitress she will be perfectly okay. But nothing more than that. Now I have got a better group of people - more intelligent, more humane, more understanding, more democratic. And I am allowing every head of all the corporations to approach me. There is no need for one person only to approach me - that was the danger. Now all the heads can approach me. Sheela had chosen all the heads, third-rate people who were below her intelligence. That is simple political strategy. Every politician wants people around him who are not competitors to him.Those twenty people have escaped with her, and they will suffer unnecessarily. I would like them to come back. I have love and respect for whatever good they have done to the commune, but I cannot protect them against the law. They have to face the law. And it is better to be in prison for two, three years and come back clean, fresh - we will be welcoming them, there is no problem - rather than hiding in this place, that place, like thieves, criminals. They will destroy their own being.Do you think they know that the door is open?They know me, that my doors can never be closed for anyone. If they don’t know, you make them aware that the doors are open, and we will accept them without any condemnation - that is the function of the law. We will respect them for all the good that they have done - they have created this oasis out of the desert - but for whatsoever crimes they have done they have to be responsible before the law. I cannot support anybody against the law. And it is good to go to the court and confess; you may get a little concession in punishment. And after the punishment you will come out far cleaner than after hiding. This hiding will make you more criminal.Now the forty-three million dollars are there in the bank, but they cannot take them out because wherever they will use them they will be caught immediately and asked where they got forty-three million dollars. None of them is rich. None of them can manage to show from where that money has come.But they are not that old. They can use it to the end of their lives.We will not allow that. My sannyasins are all over the world and they are watching their every step. The banks in Switzerland.my sannyasins are watching every bank, where these people go, what they are doing. We will not allow them.because that money belongs to German communes. It had come from Germany, it was to come here.So it belongs to you, or to this commune.Yes, it belongs to this commune or it belongs to German communes who had contributed, but it does not belong to any individual. This is theft, and we will not allow it. And we have our own means not to let it happen.You declared that mala and the red clothes no longer necessary, they served their purpose. What was that purpose, and what happened that they are no longer a must?The purpose was.in India they were significant, because in India for thousands of years red has been the symbol of spiritualism, and I wanted to destroy that idea. I wanted my sannyasins to be as materialistic as they were spiritual. The dichotomy, the division between spirit and matter, between this world and that world, is against my ideology. I don’t see any division. A man can live both dimensions fully. They are not opposed to each other; on the contrary, they are helpful to each other. A healthy man is capable of getting deeper into meditation than a sick man.What does fasting signify? - and all the religions have been teaching fasting. In India I have seen people who have been continuously fasting. In their eyes you don’t see any intelligence, in their answers you don’t see any genius speaking. In their faces you don’t see any aura of growth, any luminosity, that they have arrived at something beautiful within themselves. All that you see is a very crippled, sick person. But he is worshipped, because he is fasting for days together; then he eats one day and again fasts. All his spirituality consists of committing slow suicide. I don’t consider it spirituality.So I wanted my people to wear the same red clothes and destroy the old idea that red clothes represent one who has renounced the world. On the contrary, red clothes represent one who rejoices in everything of the body, of the mind, of the soul. He is an organic unity. So in India it was significant.But when I came to America I came in silence, and I remained in silence for three and a half years. I wanted this gap for my own health, and I wanted this gap also to get rid of those people who were only intellectually clinging to me. I have told them again and again, “I am not here just to satisfy your intellectual curiosity. That you can do in any university, in any library - I am not needed for that. If you want to go deeper than your intellect, if you want to go deeper than even your heart, if you are willing to reach to the very center of your being, then only be here; otherwise don’t waste your time.” But they became addicted to my words. Three and a half years’ silence helped them. By and by, seeing that I was going to remain silent my whole life, now there was no point. The people who were not addicted to my words, the people who were more in love with my presence, who were just happy to be with me - whether I was silent or speaking was not the condition - remained. This was one of the reasons.The other reason was that I was speaking before on Jesus, on Zarathustra, on Buddha, on Krishna, on Mahavira - almost all the founders of religion and all the great so-called religious people - for the simple reason that everybody is already divided into some group. You cannot find fresh people anywhere. Unless I speak on Jesus, the Christians are not going to listen to me. The moment I started speaking on Jesus, Christians started coming to me. Even Christian bishops told me that they have never thought that this much profoundness is there in the statements of Jesus. I was laughing inside, because it was just a strategy! Jesus’ statement was there, but all profundity was my creation. But that was the only way to get people who can listen directly to me.Now I have got enough people, one million around the world. And I want more people. That’s why I am withdrawing all discrimination, so the people who want to hear me and want to be near me need not be worried that they have to wear red clothes, that they have to wear a mala. That creates unnecessary trouble for them: their job, their wife, their children, their parents, their society.and they become unnecessarily a laughingstock. There is no need. I am opening all the doors to everybody who wants to have a communion with me. That’s why I have withdrawn every outer symbol. Now if anybody wants to keep it, it is his business. But from my side now there is no outer symbol. And everybody is welcome.How many disciples would you like to have?It is not a question of how many. The whole world. I don’t deal with small things.Can we expect similar surprises in the near future as far as the organization of the Osho movement is concerned? Do you have any grand vision, any plan for the future?No, I never have any plans for the future: I simply live moment to moment. So you can always expect surprises. If there is a plan, then there is no surprise. But with me, because there is no plan, every day you can have surprises.What is your answer to the rumor that Sheela only left to prepare a new nest for you in the black forest or somewhere else? So tell us, when will you leave?I am not going to leave America.Period?Really.The INS, on the other hand, is keeping the file alive in questioning the legal status of your stay in this country.For four years they have been keeping the file. Let them keep it! And I am waiting for their answer so that I can go to court - because all these Americans are foreigners in this country.Excuse me, sir, may I end my question?No. That trick won’t do with me.because I have been seeing that, whenever I touch something that touches your hurting nerve, immediately you start changing the question.No, I didn’t want to do that.Then why were you changing it?I would like to end the question with the INS.That’s what I am doing - ending it completely. I want them to decide, and those cowards have not decided in four years, for the simple reason that if they decide “yes,” the political pressure is too much on them, they cannot decide yes. “No” they cannot decide because they have no grounds for no. If they decide no, I go to the courts, up to the Supreme Court. And that’s what I was saying, that I am going to say to the Supreme Court that all of you are foreigners in this country, invaders, talking of democracy, talking of freedom, talking of freedom of expression. If you really believe in your constitution, give the government to the Red Indians. And the first thing is, go back to your countries from where you come, because you have entered America without a visa and you have never obtained any green card. Your forefathers were criminals and you have to suffer for it, because if Adam and Eve are sinners and every Christian is still born in sin, what about Americans? - only three hundred years have passed. And if you can sin for three hundred years.we have been sinning only for four years. So what is the point?I want to fight it to the very end. Unless I have my green card, I am not going to move out of America. Once I have my green card, perhaps I may come to Germany, because I would like to have some fight with the German politicians. I love fighting!I sense that.Yes!But you often named an elegant, simple and fast solution for the INS thing, so let me ask you: when will you marry an american girl?Not one.How many would you like to marry?I have asked them, that if one makes me capable of having one green card, it is simple arithmetic: I can marry one thousand American girls - that makes me capable of having one thousand green cards, the only man in the whole world who has one thousand green cards. Really, the color green I love, and just one card I wouldn’t like.If you were in the position to set up an educational plan for schoolchildren, what would be your values?First, burn all history books, because history is all rubbish, inhuman; it consists only of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Alexander, Napoleon, Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Nixon. Burn it completely!What about Ronald Reagan?He does not count at all - not even worth burning. He will not be even in the footnotes of a history book.Since Sheela left, there have been apparent changes in the mood and appearance of the commune. For instance, I didn’t see the gun placed in the window of the car following yours yesterday. Do you like to see the security force thinned out? When did you last receive a death threat?It is coming every day, so there is no question of the last time. And I would like the security completely dissolved - the government has to take the responsibility. If they take the responsibility that no nuisance is going to be done to the commune. I am not concerned about my assassination. In fact, out of many ways of dying that seems to be the best. Ninety-nine percent of people die on their beds. I don’t like that, it is too commonplace. In fact, I tell my friends, “Don’t sleep in a bed, sleep on the floor. A bed is dangerous: ninety-nine percent of people die there. Avoid it!”So I am not concerned about my assassination. I am concerned for my people, because when a security force was not there, fanatic Christians started coming and making a nuisance here, Hell’s Angels started coming and making a nuisance here. We are not creating any nuisance for anybody; our people are not even going to any other place. Then naturally we had to have the security force. And, strange, since the security force is here, those fanatic Christians have disappeared. They believe in the guns more than in The Bible. And those guns have not been used, and I don’t think we will ever use them. They are just to show up these idiots who call themselves Hell’s Angels: it is enough for them just to see a gun. The guns are not for use.But if the state is willing to give the guarantee - which they should give. But the reality is, the state itself wants to destroy the commune - a peaceful commune which is simply working hard the whole day, dancing in the night, meditating in the morning, having no concern with the whole world, whether it exists or not. We have completely forgotten about it.They have kept their national guards alert; not only that, they are accumulating their national guard in Madras so within an hour they can reach here immediately. All their vehicles are in Madras. For what? We don’t have an army here, we don’t have nuclear weapons. This simply shows them up as cowards, and these cowards are going to face the Soviet Union! A small commune of five thousand meditators - and they keep their army alert, they keep their national guard alert. I am simply amazed! I had never thought that American have no guts. Adolf Hitler made a wrong move: rather than moving towards Russia, he should have moved towards America. These fools would have fallen on their knees and worshipped him as the reincarnation of the Prophet Elijah. He made a wrong move - Russia is not the right place for anybody. If any other time Germany comes to that same strength again, America should be the target, because I am seeing here that they are such cowards.I have been asking the governor to come here “and see of what you are afraid. Be our guest. Just go around the commune and see the laughing, dancing, joyous people you will never see anywhere else.” Four years have passed: he hasn’t the courage to come here. And he goes on speaking against us without knowing anything about us. Just the other day I was encountering the attorney general on television, and I told him, “We are not a religion and we have even burned the holy book of Rajneeshism, which was created by a criminal group while I was in silence. So withdraw your case against the city” - because he has a case against the city, that religion and state are mixed. Now there is no religion, so there is no question of mixing. And he could not even answer. I repeated, “Your case has gone down the drain. Just come and see that there is no religion here, no church, no holy book, no catechism, no priest, no congregation, no baptism. Just come here and tell me: What is religion, that you find it here, which is mixing with the state? But - no guts to come here, and all lying, continuously lying.They did not allow journalists in the meeting where they decided to put the army on alert and the guards on alert. The governor said he would inform the press after the meeting, and after the meeting what he informed the press was absolutely unrelated to what happened in the meeting. Not a single word was in connection, it was absolute fiction that he said. In fact, contrary to what he said in his meeting, to the press he said that everything is calm and quiet and in control and there is no need to fear, then who is putting the army on alert? Inside they decide to put the army on alert, so that within three hours of any moment they can reach Rajneeshpuram. And then they alerted the national guards; not only that - that was not satisfactory - they are accumulating them in Madras. One of the journalists somehow found the confidential file of what had happened in the inside meeting, and he showed the file on television. From him we got a copy of the confidential file. These politicians are simply dirty dogs, not even worth being called human beings.They are very much worried because we have two or three dozen guns - which are not even automatic! And for four years nobody has used them, and perhaps if any time they have to use them I don’t think they will be able to - for four years they have been practicing, just to keep them. And what do three dozen guns mean to a country like America which claims to be the biggest world power? Seeing these people, I would like the Soviet Union to be completely aware that these cowards have no spine: don’t be worried. I am not favorable toward communism, but neither am I favorable towards cowards. To coward I prefer anything.So how do we get the message to the Soviet Union?That’s your job. Okay? Good![Mary Thornton of Washington Post, USA]Good evening, Mary.Excuse me if I ask stupid questions.No, I love stupid questions - you just start!With all the turmoil after Sheela’s departure, what will happen now to the commune, do you think?No problem is there, no trouble is there.You just go on as usual?No, there is no problem and no trouble.Are you not very disappointed in her?Not at all.Why?Why should I be? - because I had no expectations in the first place. Nobody can disappoint me. For that you have first to have some expectations. When they are not fulfilled you feel disappointed. I never expect anything from anybody, so I never feel disappointed.Did you not trust her?There is no question. These things - trust, distrust, love, hate - all these contradictions I have dropped far behind.You just said that you’re not a religion. What is this then?It is a mystic commune, a commune of people who are individually searching and seeking their inner being. It is a way of religiousness, but it is not an organized religion.What are you to these people now?I am a friend, a guide, a philosopher.You seem to be more than that.Certainly, if you love me a little bit, I look more than that! That “more” is in the eyes of someone who has love; otherwise I am nothing.Will you help the FBI in the investigation?I have invited them - they are already working.Do you expect that they will convict you of something?Whatever they want to do.they should just find the criminals, whoever the criminals are.Do you think Sheela committed crimes?Certainly.Do you understand why?It is a human trait. Everybody lusts for power, but everybody does not have the opportunity: she got the opportunity. Millions of dollars she had never seen; millions of sannyasins who were ready to do anything that she wanted in my name. And then she started thinking of herself as the successor or the chief priestess. These are just human frailties - nothing to be bothered about, just ordinary qualities of human beings.But it seems like something to be bothered about when you’ve got to have the FBI and eight law enforcement agencies.No, I am not bothered at all. I have got all these people so that they can find out if anything criminal has happened; then I want that to be in their hands. I don’t want to take the law into my hands, I don’t hold any power. And I don’t want my people to take the law in their hands. So give it to those.these are servants of the people; if some crime has happened here, they should clean the place. It is their duty, they are being paid for it.Some of the authorities here have not been totally fair in the past. Does it not worry you to have them snooping around?No, nobody is preventing them.But aren’t you afraid they might use this as an opportunity to come back at you?They can, because the people who belong to the FBI or the KGB are not different from people who are criminals. Their qualities, their minds, are similar. The only difference is that they are paid by the government, and the criminals are like free-lance journalists. They can use this as an opportunity, but we will try not to allow them to use anything against innocent people. If I have committed any crime, then it is perfectly good: they can arrest me. But no innocent sannyasins should be harassed by them. I have made it clear to them that if any innocent sannyasin is harassed here, then all over the world all American embassies will be harassed by my sannyasins. Theirs is not going to be an easy job.Sheela’s been accused of setting up an electronic eavesdropping network. Do you know what she wanted to hear, what it was for?Only from hearsay I can say.because I don’t come in direct contact with people, and for three and a half years I was not coming to any contact. I have just heard this, that one of our airplanes, a Japanese airplane, we returned. It was fresh, new, we used it for a few days, but many accidents were happening on that kind of plane all over the world. So before returning it.we have our scientists, and we told them to look at what was the reason why those accidents were happening only on that plane particularly. And it was a beautiful plane, everything perfect. Those scientists discovered that that plane creates a certain sound, and that sound stops the engine. That gave Sheela an idea that a machine can be created which can create the sound, and can stop anybody’s heart. This I have heard; soon it will come before the government and before the court. But this was the idea, to kill a person without even touching him. The scientist refused, he said, “I cannot do such a thing.” But he said it is possible. So Sheela may have been looking in other places with other people to find out how to create the same sound. And we have all kind of electronic engineers here, so it is not very difficult; they just have to know the exact wavelength of that sound, and a small box can be put by your side. But she had a very criminal mind. This is absolutely criminal.When did you first realize that?As I came out of my silence, she started to kill my physician.Do you know how?First she gave him some poison in a cup of coffee. Because he is a topmost physician, he immediately recognized that he had been poisoned. The medical center examined him - he was sick, he was weak, his head was going berserk - but they could not find any disease. They had only a suspicion, but no solid proof that he had been poisoned. Then the second time was when he was inside the nursing home, resting for three days. Puja, Sheela’s assistant - she is a nurse - injected him again with the same poison, and again the same symptoms started. But it is a slow poison; it does not kill you but it weakens you. It will kill you after six, eight months, so by that time it will look almost a natural death. The third time was when I was speaking in the morning discourse. Before ten thousand sannyasins, one of Sheela’s gang pushed a needle into him and injected him. He immediately got up, looked, pulled up his robe and showed people: there was blood, and there was a point showing a needle mark. And one sannyasin now has come up to say that he had seen exactly the same person whom my physician was suspecting, because she was just by his side at the moment he felt the prick. Shanti Bhadra is the name of the girl. He was taken sick immediately, but he refused to go to the nursing home here because again Sheela’s nurse would be there. He went to Bend. There, two doctors said that it was an undetectable poison. And when Sheela left the house, she left literature on poison, literature on how to make bombs, literature on how to kill people; and in the book on poisons the only poison that is underlined is the same that all the doctors were suspecting.What is that?I don’t know exactly, but that is the poison which is undetectable. And it kills the person; if you give it many times - it can be given in milk, in water, in food - the person will become weak, he will die slowly. This was the last straw for me, and I started looking for more evidence, because even this was not evidence. If it is undetectable, then there is no sound proof to call the police or give anything to anybody. But the day Sheela left, the sannyasins who were afraid of her and her gang.because certainly she was killing, she had killed one person and thrown his body out of the ranch. And people knew it, that she had been poisoning three thousand Share-A-Home people who had been brought here.What was she giving them?She had brought them - just now I have come to know - to take over the county, because you need to reside only twenty-one days in Oregon to become a voter. So for twenty-one days they were all drugged, so they became almost zombies: whatever you said they would do. One of these street people got too large a dose and died on the spot. And for three thousand people for twenty-one days continuously being drugged, she had to bring gallons of drugs from outside America - because if you purchase them in America then there will be the question: what are you going to do with them?Now everything is being reported to the police. The only problem is that the politicians of Oregon are more interested in destroying the commune than in catching the criminals, so they are delaying the process. One girl who has been a central figure in this Sheela’s group - she was the one who drove the two people who burned the planning office in The Dalles - knows everything that has been done, how they tried to poison the whole water system of The Dalles. Their whole idea was that on election day people would be so sick that they would not be able to go to vote. Sheela would have these three thousand zombies and three thousand sannyasins, and she would take over the county.Now this girl is really brave - her name is Ava. She has been saying, “I want to give all the details.” She had left with the group but came back from Seattle. She had some consciousness, some feeling, some humanity. She said, “It is better to confess everything rather than to carry this load all your life and hide like criminals here and there.” She said, “I am going back to the commune to confess everything.”She came to you?No, she came to the office. She is here, and she has been asking. They have been giving her appointments and canceling them. Today is her fourth day; perhaps they have kept her appointment - perhaps not. And they are not willing to give her her appointment here. Strange, because all their top officials are here. When you are taking everybody’s statement here, why do you want Ava’s statement in Portland? Perhaps you want somehow to change the statement, somehow to threaten Ava, or somehow to bribe her - anything you can do. But I am making it public to the whole world. I will not allow these politicians to destroy the commune or harm any sannyasin.They have done all kinds of crimes. All of the hotel rooms - I think there are one hundred and twenty? one forty-five rooms in the hotel - all are bugged.Who bugged them?Sheela and her colleagues.Why?Just so any officer staying there, any journalist staying there, anybody staying there.they were taping everybody, whatever was going on.But we’re all so boring!It is boring, but for them it was significant. She bugged Hasya’s whole house because she was afraid: Hasya was close to me, and Sheela was afraid that anytime I become aware of all the crimes I will tell her to resign immediately. Then Hasya will be the person to take over. So she wanted to keep all the tapes for some future use - tapes of whatever people were saying, whatever they were doing. She was tapping, bugging even my own room.Why?Now I can see the point. For example, she was asking for something.because she was meeting every evening just the way Hasya does - any secretary has to bring to me all the problems from all over the world communes, this commune. I see the point: she would be talking to me, and one in a while I was surprised that she would suddenly come very close to my chair; otherwise she was sitting as far away as you. Suddenly it was as if she was going to tell me some secret, but the reality was that near me was the microphone, which was hidden behind a switch.She was insistent that I should have this switch here for the guards: if any emergency was there, then this switch. But I said, “I will never see any emergency; all curtains are always drawn, and the guards are above my room - they will be seeing everything before I do.” But she insisted, so I said, “Okay, if you feel happy, put in a switch - there is no harm.” But the basic thing was, the switch had hiding inside it a very sensitive microphone, and outside in the guards’ bathroom was kept the tape recorder. Now I understand what she could do with those tapes. She could ask anything and I could say, “This is perfectly good - you do it.” She might be asking about the road, “Should we make this road?” And I might say, “That’s perfectly right - you do it.” Now those words would be on the tape - they could be placed in any context. Unknown to me, later she might insert the question: “One hobo has died. Should we throw him out?” And my answer would be used: “Yes, it is perfectly good.”Does she have the tapes still?She has all the tapes there with her. Even before she left - because she knew when she left she would be searched, everybody would be searched - the tapes were sent before she desired to leave or told her friends that she was going to resign. So now she will be managing - and those technicians are with her who had managed the whole mechanism of bugging, taping; now they can do anything with those tapes, they can put in my words for anything. It is simple, a very simple game, so she can blame everything on me - that was the purpose. She could say, “I want to kill Devaraj because he is dangerous to you and I have information that it is no good for him to be your physician. The only way to remove him is to finish him.” She can put in her question and take any piece from the tape where I agree with her. So she can manage to make it seem that all the crimes that have been committed were committed with my consent, with my awareness; that I knew that the Wasco County was going to be taken over and this was why all those people were brought here.She had told me that after our annual festival we had three million dollars’ surplus, so it would be a good thing to use that three million dollars for some humanitarian purpose. I said, “If you have more money than you need, then certainly use it.” She said, “My idea is to bring people from the streets and give them a feeling of being human, dignified, respected, to have them live with our sannyasins: ‘Share-A-Home’.” And I said, “That’s perfectly good - you do it.” Now I don’t know what she can put in front of that. She can put, “I am going to give these people drugs and keep them drugged for twenty-one days,” and after comes my statement, “This is perfectly good - you do it.”Did you talk to her about these crimes?For the last three months she had been avoiding me in every possible way. The more I started knowing, the more she was avoiding me. One way was her saying that she had urgent work in a commune in Germany, in a commune in France, in a commune in Italy, in England, in Holland. She was roaming all over the world - she just had no time to be here. And whenever she came she would remain here for two, three days, but she always had a cold. And because I am allergic, she would say, “Because I have a cold I cannot come to see you. When my cold is over, I will come to see you.” But before her cold was over, she was gone. So for three months she had been avoiding me. Even when she left for the last time she didn’t come to see me - again, a cold. And she was informing me, “I will be staying for three, four days till my cold is gone, then I can come to you and say good-bye, and I am going.” But next day she simply left, she didn’t stay for three or four days. She never wanted to see me, because to come to me she would have to answer about the bugging, she would have to answer about the taping of every phone, she would have to answer about how that street person died.I am still ready: if she has any courage she should come and just, before the commune, either she should prove that I am responsible for everything or she should confess that she is responsible for everything. But my feeling is that she is trying through the American embassy there to get immunity, and that’s why these people are delaying the whole process. And once she gets the immunity, by that time she will have arranged all those tapes, and she can produce those tapes. Then bugging is no crime because you have immunity, then tapping the phones is no crime - you have immunity - and everything you have done on my orders so I am responsible for it. But even that I will prefer to my innocent sannyasins unnecessarily being harassed; I can face the court. But their desire is somehow to create a situation in which they can arrest me and leave the sannyasins in a chaos. They are absolutely wrong. I have placed the right people in every place - they will take care of the sannyasins. The commune is going to remain here. America may disappear in the third world war, but the commune is going to remain here.Are you going to stay here too?Certainly. I am going to stay, and I am going to fight these politicians. I have always enjoyed fighting, because to fight for truth is such a joy. And I am telling my advocates, “Try to get permission so that I can fight myself. You can assist me but you cannot represent me. I am quite capable of representing myself.”I was going to ask about the financial stuff, too. Has she taken lots of money?No, not from here. From here she has not taken a single cent. But she has already stopped money that was going to come here, which was coming from German communes as a contribution for this commune. She had put in a Swiss bank forty-three million dollars, and she had put it in her own name. We are not going to leave it there - that belongs to the communes. Either it should go back to the German communes or it should come to this commune. But nobody can exploit sannyasins in such a way.So you’re still financially sound, there’s no problem?We are perfectly sound, there is no problem. In my whole life there has never been any problem. Financially, never, because I have loved so many people and so many people have loved me that finance is not a problem at all. If the people come to know that I have any financial problem, from all over the world money will start moving towards Rajneeshpuram. That is not a problem. Right now we are perfectly sound, so there is no question. And she has not taken anything from here.In her interview she has complained about Rolls Royces and things like that. What do you think of.?She is just lying. Those Rolls Royces sannyasins have presented to me, but I cannot accept any present for the simple reason that I don’t own anything and don’t want to own anything, so everything belongs to the commune. The commune has created a trust for the cars, so all those ninety Rolls Royces belong to the trust. All my watches that people have brought belong to another trust, but these are all the assets of the commune. And I have never asked her to bring anything to me.So she’s making that up? She’s just lying?That’s why I say she should face me. She is lying completely. And the only thing that she can do is play with those tapes and put things into them. I may have asked for something that I needed, any small thing might be needed - “So you find it.” She can arrange the tape and put “Rolls Royce” in it. And from the Jewelry Trust hundreds of watches have been given to the sannyasins, only a few watches are kept for my use. And when people bring new watches, then old ones immediately are given to sannyasins.I had asked the car trust that these ninety Rolls Royces also be distributed to different corporations so sannyasins can use them, but there were problems. The first problem is that nobody is willing to take those Rolls Royces that I have been using; they feel it is sacrilegious. The trust does not want to give them away; they want to keep them as a memorial. And, moreover, all the sannyasins have enough cars. The percentage must be the highest in the whole world. They have one hundred buses, five airplanes - and nowhere to go! If she wants, she should encounter me directly.How do you keep craziness like this from happening again?Now I will be speaking, and I will be available. If I had been speaking and I had been available, this thing would not have happened at all. In thirty years in India it never happened. There was no reason for it to happen here.Why did you stop speaking?It was just that I was tired. Thirty years of continuous speaking.four hundred books have been collected out of those speeches, and almost six hundred books must have been lost because some speeches have not been recorded. I don’t think anybody has spoken so much.So I was tired and I wanted to rest. My body was in a bad condition; my back was bad. Doctors, the best experts from England had come, and they all tried all their strategies and traction: nothing worked. They said that it is not an ordinary problem - that some disc has slipped, so they can put it back. It is just my chair that I have been using for my whole life.it has slowly given my back a certain curve. That curve cannot be changed, so all that can be done is that I should not sit in any other position, in any other chair. So the curve is supported, that’s why I am using only this chair everywhere - the same chair and the same car, because only this one car has the same angle. I have tried all the cars, only one car has the same angle.So you just use one car now?I use only one car. Those ninety cars are just one model, they are not different cars; that is just one model, the Silver Spur. And people who love me want to give something to me - I don’t have anything. I use at the interview and in the morning the watch and the car - these are the only two things. So with one million sannyasins around the world, ninety cars means nothing. Soon you will see three hundred and sixty-five cars. Many are on the way.What made you start talking again?This situation.So you knew, you began to see something was wrong?I started seeing it, because my caretaker was one day poisoned in Sheela’s house. Sheela called her just to meet her there, gave her a cup of tea, and immediately she went strange. Something in her head started cracking, stretching; she could not walk. To show love and to show friendliness Sheela drove her back to my house and said that something had happened. But my physician was certain, “This is the same thing that happened to me with a cup of coffee; the symptom is the same.” Then I said, “It is now time that I should start speaking and meeting people.”And that was enough: they escaped. They could not do anything; otherwise they must have had much in mind. When Hasya took over Sheela’s place, her room, she discovered an underground room, a hidden tunnel which goes directly out of the house, and through which you can reach to the airport directly. You can keep the plane ready and you can escape any moment. Even if the police are around the house it will not make any difference. So she had much in mind - because what is the need of keeping literature on how to make bombs? For what? One of our best pilots she suddenly sent to a German commune where there is no airport, where there is no airplane. It was a punishment. And the reason was - when she left he immediately phoned that the reason was, “She had told me, ‘Take our biggest plane, fill it with bombs and other explosives, and crash it against the Wasco County office. Before the crash, jump out with a parachute so you save yourself - but destroy the country office completely!” He said, ‘I cannot do that.” Immediately he was put on a plane, sent away so he did not say anything to anybody. Now he is back, and I have said that he should give now the whole report.She had in her mind many more things, it seems. If I had remained silent, then there would have been other plans also. But not much harm has happened, just a little bit which we will manage. There is no problem.Okay?Thank you.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Oliver Grivat, Twenty-Four Heures, Lusanne, SwitzerlandMa Viren, Playman Magazine, ItalyI have about a dozen questions to ask in one hour. My first question: with the Sheela affair and the FBI’s action, is your paradise in real danger? Your movement, is it in decline?No. The movement is increasing, not declining. The gang that was like a disease to the movement has been surgically removed. Now the movement is far healthier, far more open, available to more people. It is no longer a closed religion, but just a movement of seekers who want to find out the meaning of life, the truth of their being. And this search is individual, it has nothing to do with organization. So we have celebrated the death of the religion; and the death of the religion has saved the individual from dying. Organization is the death of the individual. The more rigid an organization, the less possibility of freedom from the individual. So now the individuals are free. We have taken away everything that outwardly makes them different from humanity. The difference will be only inward, which only they know. That will be their growing silence, awareness, consciousness, serenity, blissfulness, and ultimately the experience of eternal life, that there is no death.So Sheela’s going has been of immense help. It is in no way detrimental to the movement, it is immensely helpful. The commune is far stronger, because now every individual is responsible. There is nobody to take care, so you can just remain asleep and somebody takes care of you, and naturally exploits you. Now there is nobody to take care and nobody to exploit. Every individual is free, responsible for himself and for the people with whom he is living in love, in joy, in all kinds of ways relating to - in work, in silence, in dancing, in singing. So now this is how a real culture should be: individual-oriented. We are immensely happy. There is no problem for the commune.So for you it is not a sort of defeat for your movement?Not at all - it is a victory. “Defeat” does not exist in my vocabulary: it is absolute victory. The criminals have escaped without even facing me, and now they are hiding in the Black Forest in Germany and on some island. Their whole life they will carry the guilt and suffer. If they have any dignity and any intelligence, they should come back. Our doors are open; we will accept them, we will never ask them anything. But whatever they have done, they have to face the law. That is their problem. Our respect, our love, remains the same. But for their criminal acts they have to take their responsibility. And it is better that they take it sooner, and they go to the court and confess everything, whatever they have done, and ask the court for whatever punishment is necessary. We can tell the court that these people are not basically criminal, just psychologically sick, and the whole commune will ask that they should not be sent to jail but sent to a psychiatric hospital where they can be cured. That’s all we can do for them, and that will be the best for them. As far as we are concerned, we are perfectly victorious.About the FBI’s action - this morning you told about some manifestation at U.S. embassies. Will you really use this threat against the U.S. embassies in the world, or not?It will depend. I have made it public so that they should be aware before they take any action, because the politicians in Oregon are trying their best to protect the criminals and destroy the commune. This we will not allow. We may be only five thousand here, but around the world we have one million sannyasins and at least two million sympathizers.Sheela says you are only thirty-five thousand.She is lying. And that’s the nature of crime. Once you do something wrong, then you have to go on lying more and more. To protect one lie you will have to tell one thousand and one lies; still the lie remains a lie. If the Oregon government wants to see it, how many sannyasins are there, they should take the step: they should protect the criminals, against their own constitution, and we will show our strength around the world.So my statement was just to make it clear that it is not going to be an easy job. Just because we are a small minority here it does not mean that you can just bulldoze the commune and there will be nobody around the world protesting. In every country we have our people, and they will protest against all American embassies, against their own government, and force the governments to disconnect their relationship with America. This is not a democracy, it is simply a hypocrisy.So it is a clear challenge, and I am ready to fight with them in the Supreme Court. I challenge the attorney general of Oregon: Face me directly in the Supreme court. I am not a legal man, so why be afraid of me? But even law cannot help against truth. I will stand for the constitution of America against the Americans who are prostituting it. And we are really excited - if they do something like that we will enjoy the whole trip, every inch of it. I don’t think they have the guts to do anything. They are such cowards that against a small community they keep the army on alert, as if we have nuclear weapons here. America is the greatest nuclear power. What fear can you have of five thousand meditators? They have put their national guard just close by, in Madras.These cowards cannot face the Soviet Union. My experience in these four years proves it, that if any confrontation happens, America is going down the drain. These cowards don’t have any guts. If for a five-thousand minority you have to keep your army alert, and the national guard you have to keep close by - and we have only three dozen ordinary guns, not even automatic! And the governor and the attorney general are behaving like mice, not like men. We have been inviting them for four years, “Come here and see with your own eyes, and then decide.” They don’t have even that much courage, to come and see.So that was simply to make them alert that “before you decide to do any harm, remember you will lose all your honor around the world; you will lose what you have been talking about: democracy, individuality, freedom, freedom of expression. We are not going to lose anything. You will be losing so much that I want you simply to think and count how much you will be losing. And your case against the city is absolutely bogus when we are saying that we don’t have any religion.Their whole case was that religion is being mixed with state. We don’t have any religion, so how can we mix religion with state? And all these people are religions - and religion is not something that when you become governor or president you put it aside and you become impartial. If you are a fundamentalist Christian, you remain one, if you are a Mohammedan, you remain a Mohammedan. Being religious is something that you are twenty-four hours a day. Even in your sleep you are a Christian or a Hindu. So these people who are all Christians of different brands are mixing religion everywhere with state; otherwise what is the need of The Bible in every court for taking the oath? Certainly the court believes in The Bible; it accepts that The Bible is a holy book. All the Bibles from the courts should be thrown out. For the oath you can keep the constitution of America which is far cleaner. At least it is not Christian, not Hindu, not Mohammedan, not Jewish. And that rotten book, The Holy Bible, not even well written - for what reason do you go on keeping it in the court? Even in the Supreme Court you have to take oath on The Bible.Here we don’t have any religion, any church, any priest, no ritual, no congregation, nothing that you can point to as religious. I have been telling them, “Come and see. Watch for two or three days: see if you find any religion being mixed with the state - and then go to the court.” But they will not come here, and they have gone to the court. We will fight in the court; and we are absolutely certain of winning because there is no question: all my people are religionless. We don’t believe in any god, we don’t believe in any heaven and hell. We don’t believe in believing. We are scientific seekers. And they are not my followers, they are just my friends. They love me.Are you not a sort of state in a state?No, not at all, because the state followers exactly the laws and the constitution of the state. Not on a single point can they show that the city has gone against the law of the state. The police of the city follow the state police; they are part of the police of Oregon. So they have to be factual - just creating fictions won’t help. On no point, not a single point, have we gone against the law or the state or the federal government or the constitution. They have gone against them on so many points, betrayed their own constitution just to harass us. For two years they accepted the incorporation of the city as legal. For two years they themselves accepted the city as legal, they supported the city with finances; the federal government supported the city with finances. And suddenly one day the city becomes illegal because the Christian pressure is too much. Who is mixing religion?We have to see in the court how suddenly one day it becomes illegal. What have we done on that day that made us illegal? For two years it was legal, and your judges incorporated it. And if it was incorporated in any illegal way, does it take two years for an intelligent man to see that a city is incorporated illegally? If the attorney general takes two years to find that the city is incorporated illegally, he is disqualified already. He is not worth being even an ordinary attorney in a county. But we will say that we are ready to fight on every point.Could you imagine that you must perhaps leave Oregon? And where would you go?No. We are not going anywhere. America can go anywhere it wants; we are going to be here.A big part of your money is in our bank in Switzerland, some forty-three million dollars. Will you open an action in my country against the bank, or against the person who took the money?Yes, we are working on how to find out.because we don’t know which bank it is in, what the account number is. But we are working and finding out, and we are keeping our sannyasins on guard on each bank in Zurich so they cannot take the money out from anywhere; they cannot even enter any bank. We will not leave them this easy. If they had told us, “We want to create a small commune in Switzerland and these forty-three million dollars are there,” we would have willingly given it to them - there is no problem, because it belongs to sannyasins. Whether it is used here or it is used in Switzerland does not matter to us, we are world citizens. And the money was coming from Germany. But rather than doing that, they have stolen the money. We will not leave them so easily.And this is only one bank account. Who knows? - they may be having other bank accounts. One of Sheela’s colleagues - in India she was a friend of Sheela’s, when Sheela was nobody.this Italian girl, Deeksha, was an important figure in the Indian commune, and she had lived for years in Geneva, she had connections in Switzerland. Now she has informed us that Sheela was doing business in smuggling heroin and gold; and she must have earned millions, which must be in some other account. And the strange fact is, since that information we have been searching for Deeksha for ten days. her mother knows not where she is. All her friends we have contacted, nobody knows where she is. Either she has been killed by this gang, doped, drugged, kept a prisoner.but we are sending Swiss sannyasins to look in all possible places in Geneva to find out what happened to her. Just after her phone call - because she had phoned, “I am coming tomorrow” - she simply disappeared. but Sheela’s other secretary, who used to work in India as her secretary, reached here yesterday: she had all the information. Forty-three million - that is her information. And she has much more to reveal. We said, “You just rest” - because she is suffering from cancer. “Rest one day, and then by and by recollect everything, so you can give it to the police.”We will not leave them. We can leave them very easily if they come and confess; then they can become part again of the commune, and we will stand with them in the court and tell the court that they were just psychologically sick. Because they have done so much good work.the whole commune is their creation, they made this desert change into an oasis. So the whole credit goes to them, in spite of all the crimes that they committed. Those crimes are a very small part of their actions. And I am not angry with them, I understand human nature much more than that. It is very easy to be tempted when you have millions of dollars which you have never seen before. Sheela was only a waitress in an ordinary restaurant. Now having millions of dollars pouring in every day - two hundred million dollars we have put into the commune here. It is how the ordinary human mind thinks, and particularly the mind of a woman, to put some money here, some money there. It is not much.And then the pressure of the hostile forces around also has fifty percent of the responsibility for all the crimes that they committed. Ordinarily we think that a criminal has one hundred percent responsibility. That is never true. The Oregonians were behaving in a very hostile way, full of hatred; every day threatening messages that they would kill, they would destroy the whole commune, they would burn the whole commune. Naturally the people who were in power would start thinking how to protect the commune, what to do. And when you think about dealing with criminals, you start thinking in the same way, because that is the only language that criminals will understand. They started behaving like politicians and criminals - which are of the same category: if you are successful, you are a politician, if you are not successful you are a criminal.These politicians were harassing Sheela and her group in every possible way; she started learning their tactics. It is not good, because this is being manipulated unconsciously - but you need a better consciousness, a higher state of consciousness, not to be manipulated by a lower type of people. Because they were threatening that they would destroy Rajneeshpuram, Sheela’s group started purchasing properties in Antelope just as a counterattack. And when sannyasins were in the majority, she took over Antelope. She proved to them that she is a far better politician than they are: they have not been able to destroy this commune, but she had taken over Antelope. And then her ambition became bigger and bigger.And because I was in silence and isolation, unaware of anything.nor did I want to know anything. This was my instruction before I entered into silence, “Don’t disturb me about unnecessary things; if there is an urgent emergency you tell me; otherwise don’t bother me.” she started thinking to take over the whole county, and to take the whole county she needed three thousand more votes. she brought in three thousand street people, made a program, the Share-A-Home program, for street people to live in the commune for three months, in the commune’s houses with sannyasins, and have a taste of being treated with dignity, with respect as human beings, not as dogs on the street. There was nothing wrong, it was not against the law of Oregon. The Oregon law is that anybody who lives twenty-one days here is capable of voting, so she started bringing people twenty-one days before. But then one thing leads to another. Sheela had no idea that these street people are not easy people. They have been born in crime, they have been brought up in crime, they are rowdy, gamblers, drunkards, drug addicts - all kinds of people - murderers, thieves; they are not just poor people.When she had brought them in, then she found that these people are difficult to deal with. They started stealing things here, spoiling things here, fighting, and they had to be kept here for twenty-one days now. And in those twenty-one days they would create such a havoc.so Sheela and her company brought gallons of a certain drug to mix into their food, just to keep them silent and pacified. That is a crime, but the situation was such that there was no other way. What to do with these people? They will rape women, they can do anything. That’s what they have been doing all their life. So they were kept drugged for twenty-one days. They became almost zombies. Now whatever you said, they would do, so if you said, “Vote for us,” they would vote for you.One man died because he got overdosed with the drug. This is how things happen in life - one thing leads to another. Now, one man died; this was murder, so they had to throw his body outside Rancho Rajneesh. The police found the body, but they could not figure out from where the man came. He may have come from New York or from anywhere around America. He had no identity, he had no address; and there was no possible way to know how he died, who killed him. So the file was closed. But now sannyasins have started opening up, as Sheela’s company went away. All these crimes, by and by. People who saw what she can do were afraid: if she can just kill a person and throw the body without any feeling.sannyasins became afraid.She tried to poison people here - anybody whom she felt was a danger, who could open up his mouth or say something which may bring the crime out. She started thinking of poisoning those people, killing those people. She could not succeed. When she left we found in her room literature on all kinds of poisons, literature on how to murder people, literature on how to poison people very slowly so that they don’t die suddenly but die a “natural” death, slowly slowly, so you can never think that the person has been killed; literature on poisons which are undetectable so you can inject the person but there is no way to detect it through the blood. And they were using that poison; they used it against my own personal physician, my own dental surgeon, my own caretaker, because they were afraid: these three people were capable of approaching me, perhaps they might say something.Out of the fear that they may say something, Sheela bugged my room. She bugged all the rooms where she felt people may be talking about the commune. She bugged the whole hotel, one hundred and forty-five rooms - because journalists were staying there, officers were staying there, visitors were staying there, all kinds of tourists were staying there, and she wanted to know each of them, what kind of people they were. Now this is just paranoia. She started tapping phones - any phone call going out of Rajneeshpuram, any phone call coming in. They developed very sophisticated machines. Even the FBI people were surprised when they saw the bugging devices, they could not believe it. They said, “These people have outsmarted Nixon,” But this is how people become criminal.And this gives me an idea that perhaps either they have killed Deeksha - because Sheela was perfectly aware that Deeksha would contact us immediately, the moment she felt safe.because Deeksha was thrown out from here. In the beginning she had come here, but she was a very powerful and strong person, and she was more powerful in India. Sheela was nobody in India, and she did not want anybody here who thought that he was more powerful in any way. She threw Deeksha out. Sheela must have suspected that as Deeksha came to know that she had to leave Rajneeshpuram, she would contact the ranch. And Deeksha knows things about heroin, about gold, about Sheela’s bank balances, so there is every possibility. So we are looking - otherwise we are going to inform the police that they should look, perhaps she has been killed.But this is the nature of crime. It goes on leading you from one thing to another, and there is no end to it. Truth does not give birth to children; it is always a bachelor. Lies go on giving birth to children, because after each lie you have to lie again to protect it, to hide it. That’s why truth has a beauty - you need not even remember it. Lies you have to remember: what lies you have been telling, to whom you have been telling, to whom you have not been telling. It needs a certain capacity of memory. Truth is simple. Even if you don’t have a good memory, it does not matter; you can be truthful.But as far as we are concerned, I can understand the human mind and its workings. Hence I cannot feel angry, I only feel compassion. And if Sheela comes back, whatever we can do to save her we will do. We cannot guarantee it, because things will be in the hands of the law, but we will try to save her as far as possible. But if she goes on hiding here and there, then it is impossible. The police are here, the FBI are here; they are looking for all proof of the crimes and we have to give them all the proof. We are not to hide anything from them - and we are not, nobody is hiding anything. And we have to see whether there is still any sincerity left in politicians or not. On our side we are absolutely honest and sincere, telling everything as it is without any consideration of consequences. If they are still human, then they will not take this opportunity as an advantage to leave the criminals who have left, and start catching hold of innocent people and force the crime on these people. But that’s what is in the attorney general’s mind: somehow to give the criminals immunity so they can throw and dump all their crimes on innocent people. His idea is that at least one thousand sannyasins should be sent to jail. But if he does it, he will be doing immense harm to America, its prestige, its integrity; and he will be helping the Soviet Union immensely. He will be unconsciously becoming an agent of the KGB. Perhaps he is already an agent of the KGB.I have a question about the subject. You profess a capitalism sort of.Yes..But your sannyasins live not as capitalist people, but as sort of communist people, no?It is a little bit complex. My idea of capitalism is not similar to the idea of American capitalism. My idea of capitalism is that we are in a position, scientifically, technologically, that if we stop this stupid idea of a third world war there will be so much wealth, so much comfort and luxury available, that there will be no need for anybody to hoard it. Out of that abundance there will arise a communism - but out of abundance. That will be the highest peak of capitalism - not against capitalism, but an evolution of capitalism to its ultimate state, where there is so much richness that there is no point in anybody accumulating it, hoarding it. And everybody is rich. It does not mean that everybody is equally rich - because I am against equality. It is psychologically wrong. People are neither of equal height nor are people of equal intelligence, nor are people of equal health, nor are people equally creative, nor are people equally capable of painting or sculpture or music or poetry. Everybody is unique, so the question of equality does not arise. The question of inferiority or superiority does not arise, because each individual is unique. There is no other like him with whom he can be compared as superior or inferior. So people will be unique, but nobody will be poor.Karl Marx and his communism are out of date. And in Russia they have only been capable of distributing poverty equally; it has not become a rich country. People are equal, but people are poor. And because everybody is equally poor, nobody feels jealous of the rich people, because there are no rich people. But this is not the right kind of society. And it is forced, this equality is not natural; it is almost a big concentration camp. Just give freedom for two weeks and you will see all equality gone: people are again different, unequal.The idea of a classless society has not happened. Only the names of the classes have changed in Russia. Instead of the bourgeois and the proletariat, now there is the ruler and the ruled - because in a capitalist country the poor have the capacity, theoretically at least, to move upwards, and a few poor people do move. A few middle class people move, and can reach and become super-rich; many super-rich people go bankrupt and go down. So there is movement. In a Russian context there is no movement, society has come to a static stage. The rulers, the same group, have been for sixty to seventy years in power, and there is no possibility of any revolution and no possibility for the ruled people to become rulers. The movement has stopped.So I am against the communism preached by Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin. I have my own idea of communism, that’s why I call my place a commune. The word “communism” basically comes from “commune,” so it is “commune-ism” but from a totally different angle. I want wealth in such abundance - which is possible. Seventy-five percent of the national income of every country is going into war, into destruction; people are living only on twenty-five percent. If we can simply drop this idiotic idea of a third world war - which is not a necessity - and seventy-five percent of our energy, science, technology, becomes available to people, becomes creative rather than destructive. Right now it is in the service of death. If it comes into the service of life, we can have such an opulence, such an affluence, that there is no need for anybody to think of a classless society. Poverty can disappear, and people can have more than enough; everybody can live in comfort and luxury.There is no need to force people to be equal - that is a kind of monotonous society. I would like a more colorful, unique people, with different talents - the whole society becomes rich through them. So my commune is not poor. I am against poverty, I am all for riches. And there is no need to be poor. If we are poor, we are responsible for it. For example, for four years in my commune not a single child has been born. Now, this is simple intelligence. The world is overpopulated and becoming every day more and more poor. Don’t overpopulate it any more. At least this much contribution you can make: don’t produce children. If you cannot do any other service, you can do at least this much.But the society that has no children is a society that dies.No. I want for twenty to thirty years total birth control, so the society comes to one-fourth of what it is today, and then there is no need for birth control. But there will be a need, certainly, to say that unless the medical board gives you permission to have a child, you cannot. We don’t want blind children, we don’t want crippled children, we don’t want children who will remain sick their whole life. We don’t want retarded children. Why unnecessarily create misery in the world when we can manage very easily to produce geniuses? We can have more Albert Einsteins, more Yehudi Menuhins, more Ravi Shankars. Then why create these street people and Share-A-Home programs? So for thirty years complete total birth control, to let the old disappear.Right now there are four billion people on the earth. One billion is the right number which can live really in a paradise. Man also needs space. Man also needs gardens around his house, miles of greenery, birds, animals. By the end of this century if the same production rate continues, there will be five billion people. There will not be even elbow room, everywhere you be in a congregation. This is something stupid which has to be stopped, and this is the time to stop it. It is already late, but still not too late. Thousands of people are dying of hunger, and the real reason is that there are more people than the earth can support. So rather than having five billion people hungry, starving, sick, dying, why not have one billion people healthy, living for one hundred and fifty years, two hundred years, never becoming old, dying young and dying only when they want to die. Otherwise they can continue to live and still be productive, creative. Why not have a society which has space, greenery, rivers? And all this pollution and all this disturbance in ecology will disappear. One billion people is the right number for this small planet. Okay?[Ma Viren from Playman Magazine in Italy.]Good!Playman Magazine is a kind of Playboy but pretending to be for more intellectual people. The interview will come up in November, so if you agree I will move from this crime story to a love story.Um hmm! You can move anywhere!You said you are all for heterosexuality. Can you describe the different qualities of a mature man and of a mature woman?The first thing for both man and woman to be mature is to have as many sexual experiences as possible between the ages of fourteen to twenty-one. And that is the age at which children are taught by every society to repress sexuality. And this is something of immense importance: if sexuality is repressed, intelligence is repressed automatically. They grow together. You will be surprised to know that in the fist world war for the first time the mental age of soldiers was checked, and it was a surprising fact that in every nation the average mental age of a soldier was thirteen years, although his physical age might be thirty. What happened at thirteen years? That is the time, between thirteen and fourteen somewhere, that a man becomes sexually mature. If you repress his sexuality, you also repress his intelligence.The second thing to remember is that at the age of eighteen the man and the woman are both at the prime of their sexual power. They can have the best orgasmic experience as they will never experience afterwards. And every culture and society goes on forcing their children - up to twenty-five, you have to remain celibate. That is very destructive. On the one hand, it keeps the mind at the age of only thirteen, stuck, retarded. Secondly, the man who has not had an orgasmic experience at the age of eighteen will never experience it. Whatever he does is of no use. And to miss that experience is to miss something immensely valuable, the most pleasant, the most blissful, the most ecstatic possibility that biology makes available. People are miserable, suffering, tense, in anguish, searching for the meaning of life, but they never find it. They have lost something which would have helped them to find the meaning of life.So there is no chance after eighteen? I mean, if somebody doesn’t have this experience when he is eighteen, then it is lost forever?No, there is a possibility, but then it will not be just through nature; he will have to do something. That’s where meditation comes in. If he had it biologically, it was natural. He was not doing anything, it happened on its own. If it happened naturally, then meditation is very easy, because he knows the experience already. He need not believe in meditation, he knows that there is such an experience. It was attained through sex - in meditation it is attained, achieved, alone, through some method. But the man knows the experience, and as he starts any meditative experimentation he starts feeling he is coming close to that experience, the fragrance of it, the freshness of it; he knows that he is moving in the right direction. He can see the flame is there, just a little more and he will be there. But even if somebody has missed - and most of the people have missed - meditation can give them that experience. But it is a little bit difficult, difficult only because they don’t have any past experience to support them.That’s why I have created communes around the world where so many people are meditating. Somebody is ahead of you, somebody is behind you, somebody is far ahead. That gives you a tremendous encouragement, that there is no need to be worried: people are going, people are reaching to the point. And if you happen to have a guide who has arrived, then just his presence, his love, will keep you encouraged. There will be moment when you will think that it is futile, but he will go on encouraging you, “Don’t be worried, just a little more.”There is a beautiful story in Buddha’s life. He is coming to a village - they are very tired, the whole day they have been walking. His disciple, Ananda, asks a villager who is working in his field, “How far is the village?” The village says, “Not very far, just two miles and you will have reached.” They gather courage again and they start moving. “Only two miles? Okay.” The whole day they have been walking - two miles is nothing. they can do it. But two miles have passed and the village is not yet there.They meet another villager, who is taking his cows to the field, and they ask him, “How far is the village?” He says, “Very close, just two miles.” Ananda says to Buddha, “These villagers seem to be very strange! The other one was saying two miles, and two miles we have walked. This man is also saying two miles; but now I don’t believe that we will reach the village.” Now Buddha says, “Two miles will do.” Two miles they walk and again there is no village.They meet an old woman sitting by the side of the road, and they ask her. She says, “It is very close. I am just resting, but I will be coming - you go ahead. It is just two miles.” Ananda says, “This village seems to be completely full of lying people. Six miles we have walked, and it is still two miles!”Buddha says, “Ananda, you don’t know. I know, because this is all that I have been doing my whole life. Whenever any of my disciples ask, ‘How far?’ I say, ‘Just two miles!’“Now there is a joke going around in Europe: “Osho, how far are we from America? Osho, how far are we from America?” “Be patient and swim.”Hmm-mm, that’s good! Just tell them it is only two miles!So what about the qualities of a mature man and of a mature woman?The orgasmic experience is the basic quality of maturity. That’s why there are very few mature men and women on the earth.Just a simple method of meditation to suggest to latin lovers, so they may find their way?The simplest method for lovers is, while they are making love they should make it a sacred experience.All the religions have destroyed the sacredness of love. They have condemned it as sin. And the conditioning has gone so deep in the human mind that people are making love in such a hurry, as if they want to finish it as quickly as possible. Naturally, if it is a sin it is better finished soon. Their hearts are guilt-ridden, their minds completely full of sin. If lovers want to make love a meditative experience, then the first thing is to drop the idea that it is sin, that it is something wrong. It is something immensely beautiful, a tremendous gift of nature, of existence, for which you should not be guilty, you should be grateful! And to show your gratefulness you have to make a special place for it.Every house and every couple which can afford it should have a separate room just for love: no other vibe there - no fight, no argument, no throwing of pillows. They should enter the room after taking a bath, as if they are going into a temple. The room should be full of beautiful burning incense; there should not be glaring lights - just candles, dim light.And they should not be in a hurry, because the foreplay is immensely important, for the simple reason that the woman’s whole body is erotic. Man’s whole body is not erotic; his sexuality is local, just limited to his genitalia. But the woman’s whole body is erotic, and unless her whole body starts throbbing with joy, with ecstasy, she will not have any orgasmic experience. If the man plays enough with the woman’s body, the woman plays enough with the man’s body.and the meditation technique is: while you are playing with each other’s body, remain a witness, don’t get identified. So there are four persons, not two: the woman and the witness inside, the man and the witness inside. The witness is simply watching what the man is doing to the woman, what the woman is doing to the man. The witness has no judgment of good and bad; it is simply like a mirror, showing what is happening. This witnessing is nothing but awareness, alertness, consciousness. And particularly in the foreplay, if you are conscious, alert, then there is a possibility you both will know the exact time when your bodies are ready to make love. You will feel the bio-electricity of each other’s body.When you start making love, don’t be in a hurry. Let the woman be always on top. The missionary posture is the worst posture in the whole world. In the East nobody knew before the Christians reached there that the man can be on top of the woman. It is so brutal, it is so ugly. The woman is delicate, and a huge animal is doing pushups over her! In India it is called the missionary posture, because it was known only when missionaries came to India. They made India aware that this too is possible; otherwise, the woman is always to be on top. And scientifically it is right that the woman should be on top, because then she can be more active and the man can be less active. If the man is on the top, the woman cannot be more active, the man is more active. If he is more active, he comes to his ejaculation very soon, and the woman has not yet come to the point where she can have an orgasm. If the woman is on top and she is active, and the man remains inactive, there is ever possibility that by the time the woman comes to orgasm the man will be coming to orgasm. And if both come to orgasm at the same time, then there is a tremendous meeting and merging, as if bodies disappear and two souls are no longer two souls, two beings are no longer two beings. And the witnessing continues. That is your inner work of meditation that goes on: you are witnessing.After your orgasm has settled, slowly slowly disappearing, watch it. Watch as it is coming up, watch as it explodes, watch as it starts settling back again to the normal state of your bodies. Then don’t be in a hurry to separate from each other; remain together for awhile. In Tantra that is called valley orgasm. That is not known to millions of people. The first orgasm was peak orgasm. You had met together on a peak of your energy, now the peak has disappeared. But every peak has a valley by its side; without a valley there can be no peak. So if you can remain silently watching together, you will be amazed: there is another orgasm with a totally different beauty, a different depth, a different joy - the valley orgasm. Until the valley orgasm disappears and you come back again to normal, don’t separate. Meanwhile, all the time the witnessing continues. When you separate, don’t just start going to sleep. Something very essential is still there, and that is the afterplay. You have made such a turmoil in the whole energy of each other’s bodies, minds, that it is needed. You massage each other’s bodies, play with each other’s body, and have beautiful incense, flowers, candlelight, music.if you feel like dancing, you dance. But the witnessing continues.Why am I insisting that witnessing continues? I am emphasizing it because if you do it many times, then one day you can try just(ROM witnessing, without your man, without your woman - alone. In the same room, in the same atmosphere, with the same incense which creates the same memories, the same light, the same milieu, you start simply witnessing, sitting there. And you are in for a great surprise. All that has been happening with the woman starts happening just inside you, without the woman or without the man. You start moving slowly to the peak orgasm - the same experience with no physical, no biological expression - and you reach to the valley orgasm, the same experience. You have learned meditation through love, and you have also learned love through meditation; they will go on enriching each other.This will bring maturity to both the persons, and the maturity will release their repressed intelligence, awareness, lovingness, compassion. And it will destroy jealously, anger, hatred. it will bring tremendous changes in you. Those changes will be the proof that you are on the right track.It is reported you know reincarnation as a truth. Is there a way to recognize a past-life lover?It is very difficult. It is difficult to recognize a this-life lover! If the lights are put off and twenty naked women are there, it is difficult for the man to find his own woman amongst twenty. So ordinarily it is very difficult, but it is not impossible.If you can remember your past life - which is possible. There are methods to go backwards: first into your childhood, then into your birth process, then into your memories of the womb, then your memories of the death before you entered this womb. The methods are there, you can enter into your past life, and you can recognize from your past life who was your lover. But to find that person in this life still remains a difficult job: the big world is there. And what ordinarily is that if you are a woman in this life, then in my experience, experimenting with many friends who have been on the path for many years, if you are a woman in this life then it is almost certain you were a man in the past life. It is really through your being a man in the past life that the desire to be a woman has brought you in the form of a woman; and the man must have been a woman in his past life. The opposite is always attractive, and at one’s dying moment, the opposite remains in the mind, and that becomes the seed that drives you into a new womb.So the difficult is complex. For example, if you were a man in the past life, then a woman must have been your lover. Now you are a woman and you will seek in the man.but there you will not find, because the form has changed. Your form has changed; your woman or your man’s form has changed. But if you insist on finding your lover, then you have to go again and again back into the past life, so that the memory of the person you loved - the qualities, the characteristics, the gestures, the eyes, the way the person walked, the way the person talked, the way he reacted in certain situations - all slowly slowly become clear. The same will be still with the person, whether he is man or woman. So if you are aware and if you are searching, perhaps somewhere you may find the man or the woman who has the same pattern of behavior, structure of reactions, and there is a possibility of recognition from both the sides - immediately. It is not a question of calculation then; then it is not whether this is the person or not - no. If you have come across the person, then it is something immediate, and on both sides. You both will recognize it immediately, not a single moment will be lost. But it is a very rare thing.When you say - this is the last one - in this commune there are many geniuses, are you referring to past-life ones, too?In fact, if a person is a genius, he must have been something of a genius in the past life too, because the quality of being a genius is a growth of many lives. It does not die with death. Talent is one thing - talent dies. And that is the difference between a talented man and a genius. A talented man may look almost like a genius, but he has simply learned a skill; he does not have an insight into its workings. When he dies, he will be born again without the talent. That talent belonged to the body and the brain which has died. Genius belongs to your very soul, which moves from one form to another. For example, Albert Einstein will continue t be a genius wherever he is born.So when I refer to geniuses, certainly I am referring to this life, but in this life they can be a genius only if they have been preparing for many lives for this flowering. It is not one life’s effort, one life is too short to create a genius: it can create talent. It can create skill - it cannot create genius.You didn’t want to answer this one. The question was: You said in this commune, Rajneeshpuram, there are many geniuses. So they were geniuses before, right?Yes.Can you recognize that say, Mozart is here, Leonardo da Vinci is here, back here is Einstein?Yes.Can you tell me a few names?That is not nice of you! Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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John Tuttle, KGW-TV, Portland, OregonSwami Vishrant, Australian Consolidated NewsHello, John.Hello. Osho, what do your people tell you about Siddha and Prabodhi? Are they alive and where are they?My people here are almost reborn. They suffered for three and a half years under a fascist type of regime.The criminals have escaped on their own. This is a victory without fight, without a struggle. We have not said a single word to them, but they could feel the change in the atmosphere.The moment I started speaking again, the sannyasins felt a tremendous relief that now I am available, now nobody can enforce any kind of slavery on them. And the criminals understood it clearly, that while I am available to the sannyasins they cannot manage to go on committing the same type of things that they have been doing for three and a half years.They have committed all major crimes.I have not said them to resign or to leave the commune. I have not said a single word, but just my presence made my people feel a strength, a courage, a freedom that made them.The two people I asked about, Siddha and Prabodhi. Are you suggesting that they were part of these criminals?No. They were victims of the criminals.Many people had left, particularly those who were more intelligent than Sheela and her group.Sheela was afraid of more intelligent people. She herself was uneducated, not very intelligent. What you have seen on the television screen, each and single word I had to teach her.She was just a hotel waitress when she had come to me. She was neither interested in spirituality nor in meditation. But she was certainly deep down had a lust for power.So when I was in silence, she removed all those people, harassed them, humiliated them so they had to leave. It is not only Siddha and Prabodhi. Hundreds of other sannyasins have left. And now they are all calling back that, “We want to come back because we had never left Osho, we have never left the commune. We had left only this gang. Now the gang is gone, we can come back.”Siddha is not on the ranch?Siddha is not here, but I think soon he will be here. KD had gone but he is back.Have you had contact with KD?Not yet. Just I have heard that he has come back. He is a little afraid to face me because he has shown a little cowardliness. So it will take few days for him to gather courage to face me.You said that KD has sought immunity. Do you know who else? Who have you been told has sought immunity in order to testify against you and the commune?I don’t know. And anybody who testifies against me, no immunity can save him, because I have not committed any crime. To be silent is not a crime, to be in isolation is not a crime. So I don’t think anybody can testify against me. He will have to face in the court. If he cannot face here, how he will be able to face me in the court?Sheela did not see me before she escaped from here.Criminals are always cowards, bound to be.Their own crime destroys their strength. They don’t have the strength of truth. Lies are impotent.But many people who had gone are coming back. Sheela’s old secretary has come back two days before. Now, because of her I have been informed that she is telling things that we were not even aware of, that Sheela was dealing in heroin.When and where?In ’82, here in America. And not only a small quantity. A full load of an airplane.Where was it going?South America.Full details will be available soon, as she goes on telling all the stories that she remembers.She is the one who has told that Sheela stole forty-three million dollars from European communes. The money that was donated for Rajneeshpuram was prevented in Switzerland.She feels that she will be able to remember the bank account, the bank’s name and everything under hypnosis, because some government agency got hold of her, threatened her, hypnotized her and made her forget everything that she has told them. So now our hypnotists are hypnotizing him.her, and she is coming back.It is a simple process, there is no problem in it. To remove any hypnotic barrier is very simple. She can be dehypnotized. Then she will be able to remember everything correctly, exactly.Who else do you believe was involved in the heroin scheme besides Sheela?We have to see what comes out. There must have been few more people, because Sheela alone cannot do that. If an airplane goes, then there must be a pilot involved in it - perhaps innocently, not knowing what he is carrying. It is possible.There may be other people involved who were purchasing the heroin for him, who were selling the heroin for him, the people who were taking heroin there in Latin America. Things will come out. They are coming out. Solid proofs soon will be out.The only problem is the attorney general of Oregon. His effort is somehow to protect the criminals and destroy the commune. This is a great opportunity for him for which he has been looking for four years and could not find any excuse. Now this is a good excuse. He can give immunity to the criminals and they can point out to innocent people for all the crimes. And his desire is at least one thousand sannyasins should be imprisoned.The second possibility is, if he cannot manage to give immunity to Sheela, which is not easy because the federal agencies are working in a very cooperative way and sannyasins are revealing everything to them, and they are now in.every solid proof in their hands to catch hold of the criminals.The other thing is the attorney general can do: Sheela can be killed. Either she will be given immunity so that the crime can be thrown over innocent people; if that is not possible, then the easier way will be to kill her.Sheela has suggested that if she is killed, she will be killed by someone from the commune.Nobody from the commune will even kill an ant. Sheela is welcome home, there is no need. She can come back and she will have the same respect and same love. Of course, she will not have the same power. And she will have to face the law.But as far as her individuality is concerned, she has done much for the commune and the commune is grateful for it. And commune does not believe in violence.We are ready to take all those people who have gone, but they will have to face the law.We can do one thing: we can give them our love, our respect. But we cannot support their crimes. We will rather suggest them to go to the court and confess their crimes.It is better to confess the crimes and ask for punishment. It is far more spiritual, because if you get two years jail or three years jail nothing is lost. After three years you will come clean, unburdened.Otherwise your whole life you will remain a criminal, guilty, that you deceived those people who loved you, you tried to kill those people who trusted you. Your whole life will become a nightmare.I think you said Sheela was not a spiritual person. This is not a likely eventuality, is it?That does not matter. Even if you are not a spiritual person.If she was a spiritual person, she would not have committed these crimes. But once you have committed these crimes, you cannot avoid the prick in your conscience. You are human being after all.You said you had to teach Sheela the words.When we saw her on television. In Stern she said that you criticized her and you said that she had to be more vocal, to be obscene to appear on television, to get the message across.Obscene? That I have never said.Have you seen the Stern articles?No. I have said she has to be more assertive. And to be assertive does not mean obscene. She has to learn a little bit of language too.Did she do well when she appeared on television? Were you pleased with her performances?No, never.Why not?She was never assertive the way I wanted her to be. To be assertive does not mean to be hostile. There is a very fine demarcation line between the two.To be hostile is not the right thing. The person who is hostile simply shows that he is trying to cover up something through hostility.Should Oregonians have recognized that in Sheela?That I don’t know. That you have to ask the Oregonians. You are an Oregonian; you can answer.As an Oregonian I thought Sheela spoke for you, and I thought that she showed your temperament as you wanted it portrayed.No. Oregonians have no idea of my temperament.You should be assertive in the service of truth. But your assertiveness has to be very loving and very compassionate. It has not to be ugly and obscene.And I have never said to her to be obscene or to be hostile. I have certainly said to her again and again that, “Be assertive. But remain nice, cultured, humane. Your assertiveness is for the truth. If you are lying, then your assertiveness turns into hostility.”Do you think that Hasya is assertive enough to run this commune?Perfectly.Is any thought been given on your part, now that Puja is gone, to perhaps abandoning the extraordinary AIDS precautions that are used on this ranch?No.You’re confident they’re a good decision?It is perfectly right and they should be continued.How active a role are you taking now in the operation of the ranch on a day-to-day basis?No, I never take any active part in anything. There are corporations who function. My purpose is simply to give guidelines. To follow them or not to follow them is their business.You laid down a pretty hard guideline this morning at discourse, telling people essentially they have a seven-day deadline to shape up, start coming to work, doing their work.Certainly, because even seven days are too much. If seven days the people who run the cafeteria just start enjoying, going into the mountains, swimming in the lake, then even seven days will be too long. The whole commune will start dying.We talk to people here at the commune, and when we turn the cameras off and they can talk to us knowing their pictures are not going to be taken, their voices are not going to be recorded, not a few of them tell us they have enormous doubts now, there are big questions in their minds. They.These are probably the same people who are showing up late for work, and they’re asking themselves, “should I stay? What is this all about? Really, is it for me any more?”As outsiders, I think we hear or we see the signs of cracks in the commune for the first time. We hear things that make us think the commune could dissolve from withinside.No. These are signs of freedom. You have not seen them before because you can never see them in a fascist structure. But in a freedom.I’ve heard you make the point before at discourse, that these people have a certain amount of freedom and they want a hell of a lot more. They want more free time, they want to play their guitars, they want to sing and dance.Then they will have less food. They can play. Nobody is preventing. It is their responsibility. Then they will have less food, then they won’t have the same facilities that they are having now because others who provide those facilities will also want to work less.These people, some of them, I’m told they’re working as much as twelve hours a day seven days a week. You wouldn’t think about initiating, say, an eight-hour work week.No, I have been.Weekday.We will reduce their work to six hours a day but only when whatever Sheela has left incomplete has to be completed before the winter sets in. Otherwise all that work that they have done will be spoiled.For example, they are making a road. If they don’t put tar on it before winter, all the work that they have done for eight miles will be spoiled. In the rain, in the snow, all their work will be gone. They will have to do it again. So it is better to finish it and then there is possibility to have six hours a day.I think that some people may feel - as much as they love you - that there’s always another road that has to be finished, that there’s no point at which they can say we can stop now and we can enjoy what we’ve built.There is no other road to be finished.Only things that are unfinished have to be finished, and then we will take work only which can be finished within six hours time. And we will calculate how many people we have and how much work we have.Sheela was never thinking of that, never thought about people, how many work hours they can provide and how much work you are thinking to do. She never thought about the relationship of the both.That’s what I am telling President Hasya, that, “You have to remember before you plan for any work, the first thing to be considered is whether your people have time to do it. If they don’t have time to do it, then that work cannot be done. Then don’t start it.”Talk about freedom in the commune. How much freedom can they have? Sheela really served a purpose here. Sheela was great for this commune because she kept people working.Slaves can always be kept working. That’s how pyramids were made. No society which has freedom can make pyramids. But that does not mean that people should live in slavery and make pyramids.Those pyramids are ugly symbols of slavery. I don’t want any pyramids here.Just necessary human facilities are enough. We don’t want any miracles to happen. There is no need for people to work twelve hours. But because they have already done three-fourth of the work, if they don’t do the remaining work then the winter will spoil their three-fourth work, and again they will have to start from the scratch. That is stupid.And when they were working twelve hours without any complaint, just because there was a fascist regime, why they cannot work on their own responsibility? Why they cannot see the simple point that the work has to be finished? It is the commune’s work.And now onwards this will be our effort, to take as much work in hand as people can do within six hours per day, not more than that.What happens if seven days pass and people don’t show up at that cafeteria because they’re not working that hard? How do you crack the whip?I have told them, if they don’t take the responsibility then I can tell Hasya to be strict.And being strict would mean kicking people out of here if they don’t work?Yes. Get them out.You have people who would come in to replace them.Yes, there are thousands of people who want to come and we don’t have space, so it will be perfectly good that lazybones go on down the county road which goes directly to hell. We can get better people, there is no question about it.But they will have to work responsibly. And our effort will be that.it will take a little time to reduce their work hours, to give them more and more time for their own creativity or just for rest or just to sit in the sun, meditate. That’s what they have come here for.Would it have been better or would it have been possible to build this commune with six-hour days?It was difficult. What Sheela did was not all wrong. We tend to divide things into black and white. What Sheela did was mostly right.Most of the people who had come were hippies. They did not want to work at all. They did not want to take baths. They did not want to be clean. They did not want to have clean clothes. So what you do with these people? You explain to them - they don’t listen. They think they are very progressive. You are talking primitive ideas: cleanliness.So what Sheela did was absolutely necessary. She made it clear: either you do it or get out.And they did it.And she changed those hippies. They are no more hippies here.But if you leave them without any responsibility, they may fall back to their old habits.They were a.They were all addicted to drugs. And I am absolutely against drugs, that in the commune no drug can enter. And if you cannot live without drugs, then live somewhere else. This is not the place for you.Because drugs are the most hindering influences for growth of meditativeness. Drugs gives you a sense of meditation which is only an illusion. But once you become addicted with the illusion, so when just injecting yourself with a drug you can have beautiful experiences which are hallucinatory, who bothers to sit for meditation and work for years to get to those spaces which are not hallucinatory but a reality?So I cannot allow any drugs in the commune. And no freedom about drugs can be allowed here.So it is open for them. If they want drugs they can move out. If they want meditation they can remain here.It will take a little time for the change. Now they have become addicted with a fascist structure. Somebody has to goad them, continuously be on their neck, nag them and then they will do. Now suddenly they are free; nobody is forcing them to do it.[inaudible, sounds]Um hmm. You just tell me whenever you feel.Does it concern you that you are the person who is now doing the nagging and the goading?No. Neither I will do it nor I will have a second person to do it. I hate the very idea of nagging anybody. Either he understands or - the whole world is free - he can move and live with his misunderstanding, non-understanding, wherever he wants. But here we will not allow nagging, goading. No.And if you think that you can create a commune then try. And you will be surprised that except failure you will not get anything out of it.So many people have come to the United States and tried to build societies. And there’s a history of failures.The reason is that all those societies that have come here had an average life of three years at the most. None of them succeeded for the simple reason, first, they were all fanatics of some kind or other.Secondly, they were all dreamers, not realistic.Thirdly, they all worshipped poverty and thought that poverty has something spiritual in it.These three things were the causes of all those communes’ disappearance.I know the history of all those communes.I hate poverty. I don’t think it has anything to do with spirituality. In fact, poverty is the source of all crime and everything disgusting that has happened to humanity. I want my people to be comfortable, to be luxurious - not poor.Secondly, I am not a dreamer and I am not thinking of an Utopia. All those societies were Utopians. They were thinking of creating some Utopia. I am not interested in any Utopia.I am thinking only of a very human, real, society.Thirdly, we are not fanatics about anything. We don’t have any religious fanaticism, we don’t have any political fanaticism. We don’t have, in fact, any ideology to be fanatic about.So all the three ingredients which have been the cause of disappearance of all the societies are absent in this commune. So I don’t see there is any possibility of this commune disappearing.The only possibility is if the Oregonian government wants to make another Hiroshima, then it can disappear. But it will be a good, beautiful place. You miss a Hiroshima in America memorial for tourists, and good income.How would you feel if there was a minor rebellion here? For example, you’ve asked the citizens of Rajneesh to change the name of the city back. What if they don’t do it?They understand me. If they have any doubt they can ask, if they have any argument against me they can place their argument. I am ready for an open encounter with all the sannyasins who live there.In fact, because no sannyasin wants to live there, they want to live here, so I don’t see that they will disagree what I have said. If they want to live here, they can’t have the government of City of Rajneesh, then why not gracefully give it back to the people the city belonged? Why create unnecessary hostility?Why not have those sannyasins who don’t like living down in Rajneesh right now pack tonight, come down here and live where they want to live?Mm, then what about the properties that the Foundation has purchased from the Antelopians? Give them in donation?It was the corporation’s fault for buying it in the first place. What do they want with Antelope? You’ve asked the question yourself?No, this is sannyasins’ corporation. This is their property.The same people who bought that I believe bought that enormous man-camp that’s down there, that’s housing for another six hundred people? Another.No. The question is, the people who are living there, the property is theirs too. Right now it is theirs. And we have offered that, “You can purchase your property and we will take our sannyasins back.”Now, this seems to be very illogical of you to ask me to tell people that, “Just vacate.” Why don’t you go and tell the Antelopians, who are only twelve? And there are one hundred sannyasins. This will be more rational, that those twelve pack away. And we are ready to purchase their properties, so they will not be losing anything.People are more important than property, and those people would be a lot happier in this community. And the amount of money involved is not that great.The property is also important, because the people cannot exist without the property. People are important, and it happens almost in this way.For example, Jesus says man cannot live by bread alone. It looks certainly right: man needs some higher values to live. He cannot live by bread alone. But this sentence is not complete. Can man live without bread? Somebody should ask Jesus? I say man may live with bread alone, but man cannot live at all without bread.So the prop. Man is important and the property is for man, but without property the man cannot live.There’s probably nobody in Oregon who wants that land right now, and that means those sannyasins.If they don’t want, then we are going to remain there. Then all those idiots were supporting Antelope people, where all their sympathy has gone now?You’re suggesting that Oregonians should put together the money to buy that property.?Certainly, because if they supporting Antelope people all along their fight, and they were in their favor, this is a chance to show whether their sympathy is verbal or they mean it. If they mean it, then what is the problem? Oregon is such a big state. There are so many people with millions of dollars. They can purchase.just a single person can purchase the whole property.This is a very rich commune. This commune could forget that property and just bring the people back.I cannot forget anything. This way or that, either we will have Antelope or they will have Antelope. It is now for them to decide. We are ready to vacate if they purchase the properties. Otherwise they should sell their properties and get lost.Are you prepared to make offers for the remaining property in Antelope?We are ready to purchase their properties. At the market price we are ready to purchase.You confident that the books balance here in the United States, that that money that is missing was perhaps taken out of donations?No money is missing from here.I heard you at the news conference last Monday, I would like you if you could give me a yes or no answer.You are no longer a religion. Do you expect to keep a tax exemption?Certainly. Because we are a way of religiousness. We are not a religion, not an organized religion but a way of religiousness, a way of life, a way of spirituality.Our whole effort here is to create a school of mystics.This is higher than religion. If religion can have tax-exempt status, we are doubly qualified to have it.Have you talked to a lawyer about this?Yes. I know I don’t need to talk to any lawyer. I will talk to the income tax people. I don’t need to talk with lawyers, there is no need. I am enough intelligent to prove that the way of spirituality is far higher than an organized religion.In fact, all organized religions should be taken away their tax-exempt status, because whatever they have done to the world is simply ugly. They have created wars, crusades, murders, burnt living people. They have done all the crimes, and still they need tax-exempt status.And we are a commune of meditators, and meditation is simply a way of religiousness.This religiousness is just like.An organized religion is a dead corpse. Once perhaps there was a living school of meditation, of the science of going inwards, but that has disappeared long. Now only popes, Ayatollah Khomeini, Hindu Shankaracharya, Tibetan Dalai Lama - these people who don’t know even ABC of meditation. And I give them open challenge. They can come here for an open discussion. All that they know is a parrotlike repetition of scriptures.This is not a religion, but this is far more. It is exactly what religion should have been.The word religion comes from a root: religio. It is a religio. And religio simply means a way of crystallizing your being, making you centered, alert, aware, conscious, so that you can feel on your own accord the beauty, the benediction and the blessing of existence.So who can say that our tax-exempt status can be taken away? If it is taken away, I am going to fight up to the Supreme Court.There’s a lot of nice girls on this ranch. Why haven’t you gotten married, gotten the green card and gotten it over with?I can get married to as many women.I’m only suggesting one.No. In one I don’t believe. You know my ninety cars. I am going to have three hundred sixty-five. In one woman I don’t believe.It could save you a lot of problems.No, I don’t want to solve in so easy way. I love the hard ways. I want to fight tooth and nail and show to those people that four years the whole department is working, and they have not been able to come to any conclusion.I used to think that Americans have some intelligence, but now I cannot say that. Four years for the whole INS department, and they cannot decide. And I have applied on five grounds. They should deny on any ground and I will fight on that ground up to the Supreme Court. And I know perfectly well that every ground is solid. That’s why it is taking them for so long.Yes they cannot say because of the political pressure. No they cannot say because there is no ground for no. If they say no, I am going to move into the court. And then they will be unable to face me, because, “On what ground you have said no?”I will fight. It was easy, I know, to get married and get the green card. But who cares about green card? I am going to be here, green card or no green card.The green card could mean you could travel, though. You could be in Germany to.No. I would like to be here without green card.In fact, I want to show to the whole world that these Americans talk about democracy, talk about freedom of the individual, talk about freedom of expression, and actually what they have done: they have invaded somebody else’ land.They are all foreigners here, and their forefathers had no visa, no green cards. They all entered country without any legal status. Strange how their sons have become legal. Illegal fathers producing legal sons.I am going to see if the Supreme Court of America is really for the constitution of America - which is one of the best in the whole world - has any respect for it. Then the first thing should be: “Return the land to the red Indians. It does not belong to you. And ask for green cards from the red Indians.”My green card is not going to be a simple thing, It is going to be complex, and it is going to create a world turmoil around it.My sannyasins are going to fight it before every American embassy around the world, that, “You are invaders. You have committed a crime against a poor country, poor people. You have exploited them. And suddenly you have become masters.“Just because you came two hundred years before and I came four years before, what difference does it make? You have been tourists for two hundred years, I have been tourist only for four years. So who is more criminal - me or you? And who will decide?”All the green cards of the Americans and their passports are illegal, unconstitutional. They are holding a whole country into slavery and talking about freedom. They don’t have even shame.So I am going to fight it. That’s why I am not getting married. That was easy. I know it. But the easiest I have not chosen. I have chosen something which is going to test the intelligence of INS and the fairness of the Supreme Court and to show to the whole world that this is not a democracy, this is a hypocrisy.So my green card is simply an excuse. I don’t care a bit about it.Do you expect to be arrested soon? Has there been anything from your people, your lawyers, to indicate that you are in some danger of being arrested?I have been my whole life waiting to be arrested, because that is the only excitement I have been missing. I would love to be arrested and handcuffed so I can show my both handcuffed hands to the whole world, that: This is America.Bravo America.And this is the America who is going to save the democracy of other countries.And this is the America who is fighting against the dictatorial regime of Soviet Union.There is no difference at all. The only difference is that Soviet Union is straightforward. They declare they are a dictatorship of the proletariat. And America is hypocrite, talking about democracy and behaving in a dictatorial way.So I would love. Those two hands in handcuffs you have to show on your television screen to the whole world.Good, John.[Swami Vishrant, Australian Consolidated News]I’ve got twelve questions to ask you. The last one’s the most important one to me because it’s a bit personal. I’m taking advantage of the interview. But the first question: Osho, I’ve heard you say that you are an ordinary man. In Australia we have a lot of people who would consider themselves as ordinary people. What do you see as the difference between your ordinariness and their ordinariness?There is great difference. The difference is all the ordinary people of the world, without exception, deep down believe they are extraordinary. They are not ordinary.The thing that seems to come to mind to a lot of Australians I’ve spoken to who are anti-disciples is that you have the Rolls Royces and you have the watches which are lovely, and you still claim you’re ordinary. And they can’t seem to understand at all.You just wait. You have not listened my answer. I am saying that the ordinary man believes deep down in his heart that he is not ordinary. Just tell to anybody that, “You are ordinary,” and see the reaction.I say I am ordinary, because to be ordinary is the nature of things. And there is no desire to be extraordinary, no ambition to be extraordinary. In fact, because I am an ordinary man, I can enjoy diamond watches, I can enjoy Rolls Royces. No extraordinary man can do that.For example, Mahatma Gandhi is an extraordinary man. He will move in a third-class compartment in the train because he has renounced all comforts. He cannot move in a first-class compartment, he cannot go into an air-conditioned compartment. He will move in a third-class compartment. And because of that he will be respected as a great saint all over India.But nobody looks at the reality. The reality is, because Gandhi was moving in a third-class compartment, a compartment that is meant to carry sixty people is carrying one person.If he was going into an air-conditioned class, in which I have been moving, it is only four times to the third-class fare. Now his fare is sixty times more. My fare is only four times more. But he is a great saint. Nobody can call me a saint. Saints don’t go into air-conditioned class. They don’t have ninety Rolls Royces, they don’t have limousines.He will not drink even the milk of a cow because it is richer. Buffaloes’’ milk is even more richer in content. He will drink only a goat’s milk because that is the poorest milk in content. And he will be worshipped as a great saint.But his goat in those days used to eat cashew nuts, grapes, oranges, apples - worth ten rupees. In those days, ten rupee was the salary of a schoolmaster for a whole month. And Gandhi’s goat will eat ten rupees worth food in one day.And this is saintly.One of Gandhi’s most intimate disciples, Surojini Nayadu, is reported to have said that, “To keep Mahatma Gandhi poor, we have to waste fortunes.”But I am an ordinary man, and I will enjoy everything that ordinary man is supposed to enjoy.Osho, you’re one of the most controversial men in the world. You’ve upset the masses in Australia. What’s your reason for doing this?I love it.It doesn’t make you that popular, though. People tend to run rather than come.Nobody is asking them to come. Let them run - as far as they can go. But once a person starts running away from me, he is in my grip. The earth is round. Soon from the other side he will be coming to me. Where he will go? How far he can run?So I have a simple principle. Either a person has to love me or he has to hate me. I don’t allow any other alternative, because love and hate both are deep relationships. Love can change into hate, hate can change into love. It is very simple.So I create controversies. Those controversies create divisions in people: people who are for me, people who are against me. But they both are unaware of one fact: that I have become the focus of their attention of them both.They’re not unaware of that. And they believe it’s a publicity stunt for you to get them in.That’s perfectly right. Publicity is perfectly right. The sun rising early in the morning does publicity all over the world. Stars in the night do publicity. Moon and the full moon, they do publicity. Flowers spreading their fragrance into the wind, what they are doing? Publicity! I am also doing publicity.Your publicity is more a verbal publicity. It’s not something that comes up like the sun.It cannot come like the sun - not because of any incapacity on my side. It is because the sun cannot speak, cannot give an interview to the news media.Otherwise, the sun will do. He cannot speak; poor fellow is just mute. What can I do about it?I am not mute. I will speak. Those who can understand my presence, they will understand my presence. Those who can understand my voice will understand my voice. Those who cannot understand anything at least will understand hate, hostility, towards me. But I am not going to leave a single word.around the world a single man who can ignore me.No, it seems not. As a matter of fact, I’m heading this story ‘Osho: Madman or Savior?’That’s good. It is groovy.Are you a madman or a savior, Osho?I am a madman.When Sheela was in Australia, she said many rude things to Australians on and off the air. Was she acting for you or was she acting for herself?I don’t know what she did there. I have no idea. She was continuously using my name in everything, because sannyasins won’t listen to her. They are in love with me. So she was exploiting my name in every possible way and telling everybody that this is my message, this is what I have said. And I don’t even know what she was doing there, what business was hers there to be.In fact, since I started speaking, she started finding any excuse to run away from here, for the simple reason because she became more and more afraid that now I am speaking, two things are happening.One thing, her image from the television disappeared, her voice from the radio disappeared, her pictures and statements in the newspapers disappeared. That was bursting her balloon of the ego. In three and half years she has become a big ego, a celebrity. So this was one of the reasons she was running to Europe, to Australia, to Japan, to Singapore, to India - because there she had still the same image. I was not there, so she was my representative, my mediator, to the sannyasins.Secondly, she started feeling that sooner or later her crimes, which were confined only within a group of twenty people. Naturally, every criminal keeps the group as small as possible, otherwise it is dangerous. More people, more possibility of things getting into public. So only twenty major people in the commune she has placed on top positions knew about her crimes. But she was becoming alert, because the crimes that were committed - few were such that my physician was thrice poisoned, my caretaker one time poisoned.Now, these people started bringing all kinds of news to me, that houses are bugged, that phones are taped. Even my room was bugged. I asked Sheela that, “Is my room bugged?” And she flatly denied, “No. Why we should bug Your room? And if it is bugged, then we should have a checkup.”I said, “If it is not you, then who can bug it? There is no need to check.”Why would you suspect Sheela would bug your room, Osho?Just so that whatever anybody tells me she knows. And then I figured it out, that it is bugged, because I talked with Devaraj something and next day she brought the subject. I talked something to Vivek, and exact words next day she brought it up. She will bring it up in such a way that, “Last night I dreamt that You are sitting in the chair and Vivek is sitting in front and Devaraj is sitting in front and something You are talking, and they are talking, and they are talking that somebody is poisoned. I can’t exactly remember, but it was something about poisoning people. And,” she said, “not only I dreamt it, Savita dreamt it, Vidya dreamt it.” Exact same dream!So that was enough proof that - I was searching - that there is bugging or not. There was bugging, because she was repeating exactly.She became aware that sooner or later she will be caught.Do you think this could happen again.There is no possibility.Well, do you think that Hasya, your new secretary, is capable of mistrust as Sheela was?No.In July I heard you say, “Tell them to get ready. I’m coming.” That was referring to coming to Australia. Are you still coming?Just I have to see with this green card thing.So if you get a green card, you’re coming out and see us?Unless green card is in my hand, I cannot move out of America.They wouldn’t let you back in?They will not let me back in.When do you think that you’ll put that plan into action of getting the sannyasins to start picketing the American consulates with regard your green card?No, not about my green card. That I am not worried. But if they do any harm to the commune. They are keeping their army alert, they are keeping their national guard alert to attack Rajneeshpuram. If this happens, then I am going to tell my sannyasins.I am also keeping them alert.They have already got this message, that they have to be alert. Any moment any nuisance American government does, then you have to demonstrate, meditate, dance, do Dynamic Meditation before every American embassy.That’d be something to see, Osho.It will be worth seeing, because nobody has ever done meditation as a protest.In Australia we have two communes: one in Sydney and one in Perth, West Australia. Is it possible that now that Sheela and the gang have gone that we could have more communes in more of the towns?Yes, certainly you can have. Those people had this idea of keeping as small number of communes as possible. That is stupid. The idea was to control, because when you have many communes control becomes impossible.I don’t want to control. There is no need.I had given thousands names for centers around the world, and in these three and half year they destroyed those centers, forced the centers to close, told the people to move to one commune. Few moved, few have not moved. And they are not happy, because they were having their own place. Even if there was just twelve people, but they were happy and doing their work. So there is no question.Now again every center can start working. New communes should start. Every city should have a commune. If commune is too big, you can have a ashram, which will be a smaller place. If ashram is also too big, then you can have just a center where two, three sannyasins will be living. But other sannyasins can come, meet, discuss, dance, sing, meditate.But spread it wide. I want it to be completely decentralized.Their effort was centralizing, everything keeping in their hands. That is absolutely fascist idea.I would like every place to have my commune, my people. And now that I have freed my people from red clothes, mala, you will be able to have many more people available to become sannyasins. Now there is no barrier for them.These small things were unnecessary barriers. Red clothes, their job becomes difficult, their family creates trouble, their society, their culture, their friends - they become unnecessarily a problem, everywhere they feel embarrassed. No need any more.I heard you say earlier this evening that you were going to put a six-hour-day on for sannyasins in the communes. Now, there seems to be a situation at Rajneeshpuram here in Oregon where you’ve got some roads to build and you’re going to have to work the twelve hours a day until that gets done.In other centers around the world, which do follow exactly what the ranch does in their hours and everything, the thing is a lot of them won’t have the same problem, they won’t have the roads to build and that. Is it necessary for them to work the twelve hours a day?No, just whatsoever is necessary. If they can manage six hours and there is no need to work more, that’s perfectly good. If they can manage in four hours, that’s even better. I am not.But the question is, they should decide their economy, because they should not become poor. There were few communes which were very poor, eating just bread and soup. If you don’t create, then naturally you will become poor. They were not having good clothes. Their houses were dilapidated. Old abandoned places they had taken and were living. This is not good.So if work is needed to be done, do it, because you are doing for yourself. But if work is not needed and you are perfectly comfortable with six hours, then six hours is perfect. There is no need.Just tell everybody that, “You have to look to your need. There is no world standard that everybody has to work in this way. But one thing has to be remembered which is a world standard: that our sannyasins should not be poor, that our sannyasins should not look like paupers.“Our sannyasins should have good clothes, comfortable housing, heated rooms, air conditioning. Whatsoever modern technology makes available, our sannyasins should manage it. And work for it. Then six hours is perfect. The whole remaining time you meditate, you read, you discuss, you dance, you sing. And there are so many things in life to do, not just work.”But these people in three and half years had created an idea everywhere that work is the only thing. They were not interested in meditation because they never did themselves any meditation. They were not interested in any creativity. They were not creative people. They were not interested in music because they had never played. They were not interested in anything except work. Their interest was more and more money.My interest is that you should be comfortable. That much money is enough.You should not live for money, but you should be alert that enough money is always produced by the commune so you don’t become poor.Are there any enlightened Australian sannyasins?There are few.Could you name them for us?No, that.[words drowned out by audience laughter]Are there any on the ranch here?Yes, there are.Would you be prepared to name any of them?They will remain anonymous, because it is dangerous. Others will start feeling jealous. Others will start feeling that, “They are superior and we are inferior.” And I don’t want to create any classes in sannyasins.Somebody is enlightened, it is perfectly good. He should help others to be enlightened. But there is no need to declare your enlightenment. Let others feel that you are far advanced, and help them to advance farther and farther towards the goal - without declaring yourself.So I declare somebody is enlightened only when he is dead, because with dead people it is good. Nobody feels jealous.Have you got anything to say to your sannyasins that live in Australia?Just tell them that whatsoever Sheela and her company has done there was not my work.For example, I have heard they have put all their children in one place. Neither the parents are happy nor the children are happy. Remove those children back with their parents.They have closed many centers. Open them. Open in new cities.And because now sannyas becomes so simple and so available that you will be getting many more new faces, now we are absolutely in a position to take over the world. There is no problem.So tell them that all that Sheela and her company has done has nothing to do with me, so any litigation, any unnecessary troubles that they have created, get out of it. It is none of our business.And you go back the way you were functioning. You were functioning perfectly well. This turmoil was of no use. It simply made sannyasins discriminated from other people, as enemies. It is not right.So create again bridges rather than walls. Make friendship.Tell them that we don’t have any religion so there is no question of any competition with Christianity or Catholicism or Judaism. We don’t have any competition because we are not a religion at all.We are simply a way of living, a way of attaining consciousness, a way of religiousness, a way of spirituality.So anybody can join us. And there is no conflict with anybody else.So make friendship and make it clear that Sheela’s group has been thrown out of the commune, and commune is being cleaned of all that they have done which was not right. And the same is being done in Europe, in Switzerland, in England.In England Sheela did the same thing. She collected all the children of sannyasins from all the communes of Europe in England. So the whole commune became of children and the sannyasins - four hundred sannyasins who were living in the communes - she forced them to move to European communes.This is absolutely absurd. Parents are unhappy, children are unhappy. And the woman, Punem, who has made the whole commune, she got so disgusted with these peoples she left the commune. She went out to live in London, opened her own bodywork shop.Just last night I have informed her, “You take over the commune, send the children back to their parents, call all the sannyasins to the commune.”She was so immensely happy. She could not believe.she had tears. She started crying, I was informed, on the phone, that, “It was hurting so much, that I put my whole life in making that commune.”And she had made a beautiful commune, and these people simply destroyed everything and took over. And the whole idea was how to get power over their money, over their finances.This is absolutely ugly. We don’t want any commune’s finances. If they can manage themselves comfortably, we are absolutely happy.So just tell that to them.Thank you very much.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Ma Yoga Pratima, Rajneeshpuram, OregonOsho,You have often said that no improvement is needed; no goal is there to be achieved. And you have also spoken about how, in the buddhafield, a person can be helped by those who are further along the path who can help those who are a few steps behind them. Are there different stages of spiritual growth? And if so, can you talk to us about them, and how people in these different stages can be helpful to each other?In one sense, it is an indivisible reality. Because what it is on the first step, so it is on the last step. It is pure witnessing. But on the first step, you are witnessing only the activities of the body. On the second step, you are witnessing the activities of the mind. On the third step, you are witnessing the activities of the heart. And on the fourth, you are simply witnessing your witnessing itself.So if you look at witnessing, it is just the same reality - indivisible. But if you look at the objects of witnessing, then you can divide it into steps. The person who is witnessing only his bodily activities can be immensely helped by the person who has passed that stage and is witnessing his mind, thoughts, dreams, imaginations - all the activities that mind is capable of The person who is on the third stage can help both - the first stage person and the second stage person, because now he is witnessing very subtle moods, feelings, emotions - very fine, very subtle, very slippery. And the person who has come to the fourth and the last stage can help all the three.The help is a kind of encouragement. First he can explain to you that whatever hindrances you are feeling are natural. He has experienced them himself, so don’t be worried. Go on working on them, however hard they look. They may be rocks, and your witnessing may be as soft as water, but in the long run, the water wins and the rock simply disappears into sand. At the first glance it seems that there is no way for the water to win. How can it win over the rock? But finally, that’s what happens. Just somebody who has seen it happen has to help you, that “Don’t be discouraged by the rock and its strength. It is nothing before the water.”Lao Tzu used to call his way the watercourse way - a beautiful name, so soft, so liquid, no rigidity. You can put it into any form. It is always ready, gives no resistance. If you put it in a bottle, it takes the shape of the bottle. If you put it into a jar, it takes the shape of the jar, with no resistance at all. Such a non-resistant element finally destroys the rock. But somebody has to say to you, “I have faced the same situation. Don’t be discouraged. The rock will disappear, will have to disappear. That is the way of existence.”So as far as objects are concerned, you can divide the way into three steps: the body, the mind, the heart. The fourth happens on its own accord. Nobody can do it. If you can fulfill three steps totally and completely, suddenly there is a quantum leap. You find yourself at the very center of your being. The seer is there, but there is nothing to see. The awareness is there, but there is nothing to be aware of when awareness has nothing to be aware of, it turn upon itself. It becomes its own object. And this is what we call realization. You have known thousands of things; for the first time, you know your knowing. You have been conscious of many things; for the first time you become conscious of consciousness itself You have arrived home.So remember, whenever I say that it is indivisible, I mean witnessing. Whenever I say that people can be more advanced, less advanced, I mean that their objects of witnessing can be gross, can be subtle, can be very subtle - or, there may be nothing as an object. That is the moment of revolution; and that is the only revolution there is. It opens the doors of all the mysteries of existence. It allows you to feel deathlessness, eternity. It gives you the taste of pure existence. Yes, it is a taste - that’s why there is no way to say it, no way to explain it - one can only experience.Your emphasis has always been that every human being has the birthright to become enlightened, that it is nothing special. However, not many people claim this birthright, or are even interested in it. Why not? Is there some ingredient, some quality which makes some people more interested in the inquiry than others?Just because it is the very birthright of every human being, it prevents people. It gives no challenge. The ego has no interest in it. It is your birthright. It is not something that the ego can brag of It would like to go to the moon, which is not your birthright. Howsoever silly it will be, it would like to go to Everest. That is not your birthright, but the ego gets interested only in things which make you superior, higher, special, famous, celebrities.The ego is not interested in something which you are carrying with you from your very birth. It is interested in extraordinary things. The more difficult the job, the more the ego becomes interested in it. And enlightenment is the easiest thing in existence, the most natural. Hence, ego has no interest in it.This is how the problem arises. The moment a child is born, nobody is interested in the child’s nature, his potential, his possibilities of growth. Nobody is interested in the child’s birthright. Everybody is interested in making the child something very special - an Alexander the Great, a Beethoven, a Picasso, an Albert Einstein, a Mao Zedong - somebody who is going to be in history. Your mother, your father, your teachers, your priests, everybody is helping you to move away from yourself as much as possible. And this distance is the strength of your ego. The farther you are from yourself, the bigger is your ego.I remember.I was in a very beautiful place, Ajanta. The whole mountain has been cut out; it must have taken thousands of years, perhaps, and thousands of artists, sculptors. These caves are Buddhist, so Buddhists must have done that.I was looking for a small place to stay in the city, just before you go into the forest and into the caves. There are so many caves - and I am not a tourist who can go and come back within half an hour - so I wanted to stay for a few days. Each cave may take days for me. If the cave has taken hundreds of years to make - the carvings, the statues of thousands of meditators - then you don’t just go in and have a look and you are finished. It is not a tourist place. You have to be in that cave one day, two days, three days to be acquainted with its vibe. It must be still vibrant with those thousands of meditators who had worked for hundreds of years. Generations of meditators.and they have not just painted like modern painters; they have made those statues with a certain specific aim in mind, that they will convey to people something which cannot be said in words. Otherwise, there are so many scriptures, what is the need to carve these beautiful statues in different postures, lotuses, flowers? It seems to be sheer wastage of time.So I was looking for somewhere to stay, and I came across a small temple. I went in and I asked the priest, “Will you allow me to leave my luggage here? And it will be very, kind of you if you can allow me to sleep here for two or three days, because in your town there is no hotel.” The priest said, “But nobody stays here. People come and within an hour, or two hours at the most, they are gone.” I said, “I am not a tourist. I am one of those who have carved these statues.” The man looked at me as if I am mad! He said, “My God! Then it is okay, you can leave your luggage in the temple.”As I entered the temple, on the door there was a sentence - that’s why I had remembered it - a very famous quotation from the Vedas: “The king is respected in his own country, but the enlightened one is respected in the whole world. So strive to become enlightened.” I asked the priest, “Please remove this sentence from here. You have spoiled the whole thing. ‘A king is respected in his own kingdom.’ The emphasis is on respect. ‘The enlightened one is respected in the whole world, so strive for it.’ You are making enlightenment also an object for the ego. Who cares about respect except the ego? And ego is the only barrier which does not allow a man to become enlightened. So if a person is trying to become enlightened to be respected all over the world, it is impossible that he will ever become enlightened.”But I can understand; whoever made that sutra must be aware that unless you make enlightenment an object of the ego, nobody is even going to try. I can understand his idea, to make enlightenment so respectable, far better than becoming a world conqueror, that the ego becomes interested in it. But whoever made the sutra is a fool. He does not know that if ego is interested in becoming enlightened, then there is no possibility for enlightenment.The only barrier is the ego. Whether one becomes respectable or not, whether anybody knows or not, whether your name is written in golden letters in this history or not does not matter. Only then, when respectability does not matter at all and you are perfectly happy just being yourself, your very ordinary self.The phenomenon is very simple, that’s the trouble. It is your birthright. That’s why nobody seems to be interested in it. If it were far away, as the moon is, then many idiots would have been trying to reach there. But it is within you. You are carrying it day in, day out; wherever you go it is there with you, within you. Even while you are committing a crime, a murder, it is there. If you can witness your murder, you will become enlightened. It does not matter what you are doing. What matters is whether you are doing it as a witness. Perhaps as a witness you cannot murder, you cannot commit a crime. But that is a separate story.Witnessing you have brought with your birth. But the society, the educational system, the family, all are trying to make you ambitious.My father never knew - he had eleven children - he never knew which child was studying in which school, in which class, and whether he had passed or failed this year. He never inquired. Even for our progressive reports, we had to tell him, “You have to sign it.” And he would say, “You could have signed it yourself My signature is so simple. But I will sign.” And he would sign without reading whether I have passed or failed. Any recommendations from the teacher, from the principal, he would not read. When I topped the university, that was the first time I told him, “You will be happy to know.you know me, that I am good for nothing, but by some coincidence I have topped the whole university and received the gold medal.” He became very serious. I said, “This is not some crime that I have committed. You need not be so serious.”He said, “No, I am serious. Because that simply means in your whole university. If you can top the university then the people who are studying there must be far worse than you! That makes me serious. I was thinking you only are good for nothing. This proves that your whole university is just good for nothing. And you topped - that means you are at least better.” I said, “That is true. I never thought about it, otherwise I would not have told you. I thought you would be happy.”To get such a father is very difficult. He never imposed any ambition on me. If some of my brothers failed in a class and they came home crying and weeping, he would say, “Don’t cry and weep. What is the matter? It simply means that in two years you will become far stronger and far wiser than you can become in one year. And what is the loss? And what is the hurry? If you cannot come out of the school one year earlier, there is no problem. You can take your time, you can fail as many times as you want. One thing is certain, the longer you remain in one class, the wiser and stronger you will become. Nothing is lost. Don’t cry and weep unnecessarily.”The principal would come just to console my father. “It is not our fault that your son has failed, but he never pays any attention to the studies. He is continuously interested in games, and he is almost always absent. So you just tell him to be present. He is intelligent, there is no problem about it.” But my father would say, “But what is the problem? Let him play, let him not be attentive. Let him not be present, what is the hurry? I am still alive. He can take his time; one year, two years, three years, as much as he wants. He will become far more mature, and failure is also a great experience in life. In life, you cannot succeed in everything. So this is good; he will know some taste of failure and will be able to absorb it in his life. There is no need to be worried and no need to console me. Nothing has gone wrong.”But to find this kind of parent is very difficult. Ordinarily they are all ambitious people, and, because they cannot fulfill their own ambitions, they project their ambitions on their children. They wanted to become something special, but they could not; at least their sons will become.I used to know a very famous politician, Seth Govinddas. He had a very ambitious mind and wanted to become not less than prime minister of India. He and the man who became the first prime minister of India were both friends, and very intimate friends. Both had been together in jails, both had come from very rich families. In one of his speeches the father of Jawaharlal Nehru, Motilal, said, “I have two sons. One is Jawaharlal, the other is Govinddas.”Naturally, he was thinking of becoming the prime minister. If he cannot become the first prime minister, then his must be the second chance after Jawaharlal. But he could not manage even to become a cabinet minister. He could not manage to become even a governor, a chief minister of a state. He had tried everything, but basically he was not a politician. He was very simple, almost a simpleton. So the desire was there, burning his heart.He had two sons, and he tried hard that they should become what he had missed. And he had all the political connections, so he helped his first son become a deputy minister. He was hoping that the son soon would become minister, then move to the cabinet of the central government and then become prime minister.If he had not been able to become the prime minister himself, at least he can claim to be the father of a prime minister, which is far better. But the son died as a deputy minister in a state council. He was only thirty-six when he died.But ambition is such a thing that this old man tried to commit suicide, because with the death of the son all his ambitions had failed again. I told him, “You have another son. Give him a try. You have all the best connections in the country, from the lowest to the highest. It is just very easy for you.” And suddenly I could see his eyes shine again, as if life returned to him. He said “Yes, I had never thought about it. I was thinking simply to die, because what is the point of living? I missed, my son has died.” So he managed that his second son enter into the same post; he became the deputy minister. But neither of his sons had the ability to be politicians. They were his sons, just as stupid as he was, perhaps a little more.And you will be surprised that the second son also died. The man was now seventy-five or seventy-eight, and this was too much of a shock. Again he started talking about suicide. His wife phoned me and said, “You come. Last time you had done something and he dropped the idea of suicide. Now you do something because again he is talking of suicide.” I said, “Don’t be worried. People who talk of suicide never commit suicide. People who commit suicide are those who never talk about it. But I will come.”I went. He was sitting again in the same posture, and I said to him, “If you want to commit suicide, commit! Why do you harass the whole family by talking about it?” He said, “Everybody, the mayor of the city, the chief minister, all have come to console me. Indira Gandhi’s telegram has come.” He was sitting with a pile of telegrams from all the ministers and governors - India has thirty states and chief ministers - and he was showing them to everybody who was coming. I told him, “You don’t seem to be interested in the death of the son. You are more interested in these telegrams.”Just one man had not sent him a telegram, and about that he was feeling very much hurt. He was one of his old colleagues, but then later on they became enemies in politics. He joined another party, and became a chief minister. Only Govinddas had not, so he was continuously telling everybody, “Only Dwarka Prasad Mishra.his telegram has not come. And I have made the man.” And it was true, if you think that Dwarka Prasad lived in Govinddas’ house and was financially supported by him. But it was not true that he had made the man. That man was capable to reach the post, any post, on his own. He was a very ambitious, very cunning, very clever man. He used him, he used all his friendships with all the great politicians.And I said, “You are so much interested in telegrams, and you are not interested in the death of your son. Can you understand that you have lived your whole life in ambition? You failed, your first son died, your second son died, but your ambition - it continues. You are ready to commit suicide but you are not ready to drop the ambition. As if ambition is far more valuable than life!” And I said, “If you just want to project your ambition on somebody, then why not your son-in-law?” He said, “You are a genius, certainly! I never thought about my son-in-law.” He had only one daughter and two sons. And because he was so rich the daughter was living with him, and the son-in-law also.I said, “He lives with you. He is just like a son to you. Make arrangements, make him deputy minister in the cabinet somewhere and see whether he dies or not. Then we will think. Why did these two sons die? It seems they were not capable of withstanding the political pressures, challenges, worries. They were both young and there was no need to die so soon. There was no reason except that politics proved poisonous to them. Let us try this one.” And he tried. And this time things went well. The man became deputy minister and Seth Govinddas died!And the moment he died, his son-in-law was thrown out of the ministry, because he was just taken in because of Govinddas’s pressure, that he would commit suicide. All the politicians had known him for his whole life. He had been in the freedom struggle and he was known as father of the parliament. He was the only man in the whole world except Winston Churchill who had been a member of parliament so long, continuously from 1916 to 1978, without a break, so he was known as the father of Indian parliament. Everybody knew him and everybody was obliged to him in many ways. But the moment he died, the son-in-law was thrown out.I said, “This is far better, because. if you were thrown out before, he would have tried to commit suicide again.” And he was not capable of committing suicide, either, because still ambition was there, some hope from some corner.All the parents are ambitious. The whole educational system is ambitious. All the religions are ambitious. They are all promising and giving hope to people that their ambitions will be fulfilled after death. That’s why people are missing something which is very simple, which needs no ambition, which needs no ego, which needs no effort; which needs a simple, very simple understanding; just a little clarity, a little intelligence, and your whole life is transformed.The whole earth can become enlightened. We have just to change the educational system, to change the organized religions of the world, to change the political structures of the society. And we have to allow every child his way. Whatever he wants to become, let him become. Even if he turns out to be a beggar, he will be far more fulfilled. Forced to be a king, he will not be happy to be a king; that will not go according to his heart. Let something happen according to his heart. If he wants to play guitar, let him play guitar. He will not become Yehudi Menuhin - how many people can become Yehudi Menuhin? - but there is no need for everybody to become Yehudi Menuhin. He can play and enjoy. If he enjoys himself without disturbing the neighbors, there is no problem.I have heard that there was a man who was practicing Indian classical music. His neighbor came to him and said, “Tonight we are going to have a party. Can we have your harmonium?” He said, “There is no problem, you can take the harmonium.” Just after a few minutes the neighbor’s wife came, and said, “It doesn’t look good, but we don’t have a set of tablas. Can we have your tablas?” He said, “Yes, you can have. But when is the party going to begin?” The wife said, “What party?” The man said, “But your husband has taken the harmonium saying, ‘We are going to have a party so some music will be happening.”‘The wife said, “To be true, tonight we want to sleep. Music is happening too much! So when he had taken the harmonium, we remembered you may start playing on the tablas. I have come to ask for the tablas because what will we do with only the harmonium? - tablas are also needed. There is no party. Just for so many days we have not been able to sleep. Just once in a while, let us have sleep.”So if you are not disturbing your neighbors, there is no problem. You can play your guitar, your sitar. You can play anything you want, and even if you don’t become famous.I don’t understand what becoming famous is going to give to you. Twenty people know you, what are you getting? Two hundred people know you, you will be getting ten times more. But what are you getting with twenty? Two thousand people know you, then you will be getting still more, but what are you getting with twenty? Just think of that: the whole world knows you, but what will you be getting out of it? Just start with twenty and go on multiplying and you will be clearly able to perceive that it is simple nonsense.Ambition is a very stupid game in which there is no victory, only defeat. Only defeat because you will never become what you are born to become. And you will never know your birthright, the ultimate bliss of being enlightened.Often you have spoken about your rebellious childhood and how it gave you such freedom, how you insisted on discovering your own individuality. How did you know the need to rebel at this early age? What about those people who didn’t have the courage to rebel and who had a hampered childhood? Is a rebellious childhood necessary for enlightenment?No, not necessary. A man can become enlightened without having a rebellious childhood; but nobody can become enlightened without becoming rebellious beforehand. If one is fortunate enough to be rebellious in his childhood, enlightenment will be coming sooner. I became enlightened when I was twenty-one. Gautam Buddha became enlightened when he was forty-two, because up to his twenty-ninth year he had never rebelled against his father’s wishes.At the age of twenty-nine, he had to rebel. He could see that these twenty-nine years had gone just without any meaning. The astrologers had said to his father that he should not be allowed to see a dead body, a sick man, an old man, a sannyasin. He was the only son of his father, born in his very old age, so the whole kingdom belonged to Gautam Buddha. And the father was very much afraid because the astrologers had said, “If you don’t manage rightly there is every possibility that he may renounce the world and become a seeker of truth. If he remains in the world and becomes the king, then there is a possibility that he may even become the king of the whole world, he has such great potential. Either he will become the great conqueror of the world - in Sanskrit it is called chakravartin - or he will become an enlightened one. It is between these two.“And we cannot say right now what will happen, but if you can manage to keep these few things from his knowledge, he will never renounce the world. Bring the most beautiful girls of the kingdom. Keep him surrounded with the girls, with music, with dance, with wine, with good food. Make beautiful palaces for him for different seasons in different locations. In summer he should be in a cold region, in winter he should be in a warmer place. So make three palaces.”India has three very clear - cut seasons: summer, winter, rains. And the father was so rich he managed three beautiful palaces. The gardeners were told that he should not see even a pale leaf or a dead leaf No idea should get into his mind that things get old or things die. For twenty-nine years he lived almost a prisoner in utter luxury.The rebellion came because he was going to open the annual ceremony of the entire kingdom, some kind of Olympic games for youth. On the way in his golden chariot, he saw an old man for the first time in his life. He asked the charioteer, “What has happened to this man?” The charioteer said, “I cannot tell you a lie. What has happened to this man happens to everybody; he has become old.” Immediately Gautam Buddha asked, “That means it is going to happen to me also?” He was at his prime of youth, a beautiful young man. The charioteer said, “I would like that it should not happen to you, but nature cannot be changed. It is just the law of nature. One who is born will become old, it cannot be prevented.”And then came a dead man’s body being carried to the crematorium. And Buddha said, “What is happening?” The charioteer said, “This happens after old age. This is the last stage. After this nothing happens. This man is dead.” Buddha had not even heard the word death.And then he saw a sannyasin who was just following the dead man’s body. And he said, “This man looks strange. Shaven head, orange clothes, with a begging bowl in his hand. I have never seen such a type. What is his profession?” The charioteer said, “He has renounced all professions. He is a sannyasin. He is a seeker of truth. Realizing that life one day becomes death, he wants to know, ‘Is there something within us which does not die? Or does everything die?’ He is on a immense journey, a search for himself, his eternity.”Buddha said to him, “Return the chariot back to my palace. I am not going to open, inaugurate the function, because I have already become old. I am already feeling as if I am dying and suffocating. You just take me back home. I have been deceived.” And this was the first time a great rebellion was born in his mind. That very night he escaped from the palace. But twenty-nine years were lost. He could have become enlightened long before.But one thing is certain: whether one is rebellious in his childhood or not, nobody becomes enlightened without a rebellious approach, because he will have to fight against the conditionings of the society. He will have to rebel against the beliefs of the society. He will have to rebel against his own ego, against his own ambitions.Rebellion is certainly a necessary part. It cuts you from the ordinary social world and makes you an individual. Rebellion is the fire, passing through which one gains freedom, individuality, integrity. And only after that can one relax and be oneself, be simple, be innocent. It is a new birth. And then enlightenment is not far away. Hindrances removed, enlightenment is always there. It is your birthright.You have said that your sannyasins live individual lives in freedom. Doesn’t everyone live an individual life? What is the difference that makes a person a sannyasin? Is it meditation?There are many things that make a person a sannyasin. One is a deep frustration with life as it is available in the ordinary world, a sense of meaninglessness in whatever one is doing, a despair that one does not know even who one is, a deep anguish that “Life is slipping out of my hands. Death can happen any moment and I have not even started the journey yet.”These are the first circle of the necessary milieu that makes one seek and search for someone who may have a different quality of life, who may have found some meaning, who may have reached the oasis. While you are in the desert, somebody may have found the sources of living waters. And if one looks around, one is always bound to find someone.And it is not a question of any intellectual conviction. Just the meeting with such a person and there is an instant communion. One knows, one cannot give any explanation why, but one knows that this is the man. It is not of the head, otherwise reason could have been supplied. It is something of the heart, almost a love affair.Once you have found a man of whom you can think as one who has arrived - you can give it any name: who is enlightened, awakened, simply one who has no longer any problems, no anxiety, no anguish, no boredom - one’s every breath is full of joy, one’s every moment is a rejoicing.This synchronicity makes you ask and inquire about the way - call it meditation, the journey towards one’s own self, the search for meaning, for truth. This meeting is very significant. It ignites something in you. Something that was dormant in you suddenly becomes active. The presence of this man is enough; it is a catalytic agent, and you start flying with him into new dimensions of being.I had started alone, and then people went on coming and my caravan began to become bigger and bigger and bigger. Now everything becomes totally different, because now you are no more zombies. The whole world is full of zombies, sleeping people, somnambulists. Now something has awakened in you and that something is enough. As a seed, it will grow. It will come to fruition, to flowering.And when so many people gather around such a man, naturally a commune arises. All this happens without any planning. I had never thought of any commune. I have never even thought of teaching anybody anything. I was fulfilled and happy. But you cannot avoid - something like a magnetic force pulls potential people around you. And soon it is going to become a vast ocean.Then the work becomes very easy, because all these people are at different points in the journey and they start helping each other. They become sharers of my work, they relieve me of much work. They start helping each other. The commune becomes almost many bodies and one soul. Everybody’s growth somehow helps your growth. Everybody’s enlightenment is going to help everybody else’s enlightenment. It is a kind of invisible sharing of energies.So communes are immensely important, other wise it is very difficult: how can I help millions of people? And now the world needs more and more communes. People can come here, have a little taste of what it is all about, go back to their own commune and spread the fragrance. So this place has already become a world capital of all the mystics, of all the seekers of truth.It was for many reasons that I declared that it is not a religion, not an organization - because I want it to remain a very liquid, free, flowing energy; not solid, rocklike, but like a breeze. We can start these vibrations around the earth and all our communes can become both receivers and broadcasters.If we can create a circle of conscious energy around the earth, that is the only hope for the world, for the new man. Otherwise, this century is going to see the end of all life on this earth. But we are taking the challenge, and I don’t think that death is more powerful than life, that hate is more powerful than love, that nuclear weapons are more powerful than mystic experiences. We have to prove it. And I am certain that we are capable of proving it.No more questions.Good.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Naomi Menezes, Times of India, IndiaOshoHow do you plan to substantiate the accusations that you have made against Sheela and her group, of attempted murder and poisoning, conspiracy, espionage, grand larceny?Every accusation has been given to the police with all the evidences possible, eyewitnesses, and the people who were part in all these conspiracies have confessed. Not a single thing that I have said is without any evidence.All the rooms of the hotel were bugged. The FBI, the State Police, the Wasco County Police, the City Police - they all have been here for almost two weeks. They were surprised, they could not believe: one-hundred-forty-five rooms in the hotel - all were bugged! My own room was bugged, my caretaker’s room was bugged. My new secretary, Hasya’s whole house was bugged. They have bugged almost the whole commune. And the evidence is there; they have taken all the mechanisms, the wires, the microphones. Every telephone was being taped, they have found the machinery on which all the telephones could be taped simultaneously. They were amazed to know that how sophisticated instruments were being used - Nixon was left far behind.Three persons in the commune were poisoned. My own physical physician - who has been taking care of my body in India and has been taking my care here - she was afraid of him because he was too close to me, and he may disclose something to me which she never wanted. So the only way was, she first tried to convince me that we have better physicians. I said it is not a question of better physician; it is a question of knowing my body and he knows my body. For ten years he has been looking after it and I am perfectly satisfied so there is no need to change. When I refused completely, then she started thinking to kill him.First he was poisoned in her room, in a cup of coffee. Because he is a physician, he immediately could think of poison. Ordinarily, nobody would have thought of poison.My caretaker was poisoned few days before in a cup of tea, in the same manner, in the same place - Sheela’s room - but nobody even thought about it. Just we thought that she has fallen sick. The doctors could not find there is any sickness, so they simply suggested to rest.But my physician is one of the most intelligent physicians. He is the youngest man who has ever been accepted in the Royal Society of Physicians in England as their member. He has the highest qualifications possible. He felt immediately that this is a certain poison which is undetectable - but nobody will listen to him! Even other doctors in the medical center looked and they could not find any poison in his blood, no indication that he has been poisoned. And while he was resting in the care home in the hospital, Sheela’s nurse injected him again with the poison and he went through the same agony, the same trouble, the same sickness and the doctors could not diagnose it either that there is any sickness.Third time while I was speaking, ten thousand sannyasins were there, and one of Sheela’s.inner circle members injected him - in the meeting, while he was attentively looking at me, listening, she simply injected him from behind. Feeling the prick he just looked and he saw the woman, disappearing in the crowd. He pulled his robes, showed to the people - there was blood, and there was the mark of the needle and there was an eyewitness who has confessed before the police that “That woman, Shanti Bhadra, has injected the needle - I have seen it with my own eyes.” And that was my physician’s suspicion because he saw her disappearing in the crowd.Twenty people have escaped with Sheela; Shanti Bhadra is one of them. If she was not guilty there was no reason to escape. Only the group who had committed any crime has escaped. So for poisoning now we have an eyewitness, and when Sheela left, in her room, we found - the police has taken all the evidences - books on poison. Now what she has to do with books on poison? How to murder people, how to make bombs. And they have found chemicals and other elements which are needed to make bombs. And the book on the poisons has all kinds of poisons described, and only one poison is underlined - that is the poison that my physician was continuously telling that that is the only poison that is undetectable - and it is in the description of the poison, that it is undetectable. It will not kill the person, but it will go on weakening him.You go on giving.within six months, the person will die a natural death. You cannot be caught because the poison is undetectable. And the person will not die immediately - suddenly - so nobody can suspect; he will simply go on becoming weaker and one day he will die. You have just to go on giving at certain periods. And it can be given in food, it can be given in tea, in coffee, it can be injected, it can be given in water.She was planning to make bombs, because she told one of the pilots who is back now and has given his testimony to the police, that he was asked to carry a whole, whole plane load of bombs and other explosives, and crash the plane on the county office and destroy it completely, “And before the plane crashes, you jump out in a parachute, so you save yourself, but you destroy the whole county office - and all the people working there.”And the pilot could not think that it will not only destroy the county office; it will destroy many other houses by the both sides. So much explosives, so many bombs - the fire will be simply wild, uncontrollable. He refused. Because he refused, immediately he was sent to Germany, to a commune that “You are needed there.” And he was not needed there because there was no airport in the commune, no airplane - what need of a pilot? But he had to be removed from here, fearing that he may start telling others. He was not one of the group.And the problem was that none of the group was a pilot, so they had to use somebody outside the group. And the pilot even could not believe that this kind of thing should be expected of him.So as he heard that Sheela and her group has left he phoned that “I am coming and I have a story to tell to the police.” And whatever he has told, we have found all the literature - that how to make bombs and what chemicals have to be used for explosives. And this man is a very simple and uncomplicated man, and the best pilot.They burned the planning office of the Wasco county, for the simple reason that they had some papers there that Sheela did not want them to have; she wanted to destroy all those papers.The twenty people who had left from here, one of them returned from Seattle back - just a woman of some conscience. She said that “We have done wrong and now this will be doing even more. I don’t want to remain my whole life hiding here and there like a criminal. I had not come here to Osho to become a criminal; I had to come to live a simple, silent, meditative life, and you all turned me into a criminal. I am going back. I will confess everything.” And she was one of the most important persons in the group, so she knows everything that the group has done, had planned to do. Her coming has been of immense help. Her testimony is going on continuously for three days and it may take two, three days more.It seems they were continuously planning to do some crime, to kill somebody. She was the woman to take two sannyasins to the planning office. They burned the office and she was the sannyasin who drove them back. So nobody can be a better eyewitness than her. And she was present in all these meetings in which Shanti Bhadra was told to inject my physician in the meeting, and she was the one, when Shanti Bhadra did it - she was with Sheela in her room - and Shanti Bhadra came running, greatly joyous and saying “I did it, I did it!”She could not understand what she has done. Only later on she could find that the plan that was arranged last night, to inject Devaraj, Shanti Bhadra has fulfilled it.Now there are other, two more people, who had not gone with the group but who had been intimately connected with the group. They had not gone because they were working in Australia in one of the communes and they had no knowledge what was happening here. So while Sheela left from here, they came from Australia here, without knowing that Sheela has left.They were first wavering, whether to go to Sheela or to remain here, and I had made it clear to them that if you want to go to Sheela then you will go to jail, not to Sheela; then we are going to hand you over to the police. Otherwise, you remain here and confess to the police, whatever you know and whatever you have been part in, then the commune can fight for you, because you have been confessing and you have been helping the police and the law, to catch hold of the main criminals. So they have stayed and now they are ready that perhaps tomorrow or day after tomorrow, they will be confessing and giving their testimony.So whatever I have said, we have found enough evidence. There is no question now of Sheela and her whole gang to be brought to the court. The only problem here is that the Attorney General of Oregon, from the very beginning, has been against the commune, and he has not been able to find anything against it.Now, he wants to have the criminals to be protected, to have some dealings with Sheela and to give them immunity and catch hold of innocent sannyasins. The people of the police who have been here have been overheard that he plans to arrest one thousand sannyasins so that he can cripple the whole commune completely. And those who have left, they have left; one thousand key-people - doctors, plumbers, electricians, the people who make the food - if all these people are caught, then his desire can be fulfilled. But it is not so easy.That’s why I have been giving interviews to the world media and making it known to the whole world, that what is in the mind of the Attorney General of Oregon. Even the police, the Federal agencies are simply surprised that he seems to be more criminal than the criminals: his desire is to protect the criminals and destroy the innocent people who have not done anything, who don’t even know what was happening. Only that group of twenty people knew what was happening, what was going on.So it is not going to be easy and we are going to give them good fight - not only here, but around the world, in every country because I have almost more than one million sannyasins around the world. So I have challenged him that if any harm happens to any innocent sannyasin, then you have, are taking a risk. We are not violent people, we will not hijack your airplanes; we will not be taking over your embassies -we don’t want any violence at all. But we can silently be a world-protest against you.In America we will protest, and before every American embassy we will protest, and before every government in the world we will protest that “You disconnect your connections with American government. This is not a democracy. This is pure fascism. So if you want to wave your mask of being democrat, then keep off! And let the law take its course.We don’t want anything in our favor. Anybody who is found guilty should be punished. It does not matter whether he is here in the commune or there with those twenty people, but no innocent person can be in any way harmed, otherwise you will have to make another Hiroshima here!And I used to think that American government has some guts. It is not so. I have told my Russian sannyasins that inform your government that don’t be afraid of these cowards: a commune of five-thousand people, who have only three dozen old type guns for security - not even automatic guns - and a nuclear power who claims to be the greatest nuclear power, greater than Soviet Union, is afraid. They are keeping their army alert, they are bringing their national guard close to us, just so that within half an hour they can enter into Rajneeshpuram. They are gathering their vehicles in Madras. And they don’t have even guts to come themselves.I have invited the Governor, the Attorney General that you come and be our guest and you see yourself - what is happening, what we are doing. Without seeing you go on condemning. For fifty years this land was not used - it was just a desert. Nobody was ready to purchase it. The owner was stuck. It was for sale for fifty years and not a single buyer turned up. We purchased it because we thought this is a good challenge for our sannyasins: if we can transform it into an oasis, and if we can make our commune self-sufficient as far as food is concerned, vegetables are concerned, fruits are concerned, milk products are concerned - then it will be a great joy of creativity.For fifty years nobody bothered about the land and when we started cultivating it, so many law cases against us, from the Attorney General. First, that whatever we are doing is against their land use laws. And I told him publicly that first you should come here and you should see what we have done, whether it is against land. It may be against your land use laws, but is it against the land?We have transformed a desert and rather than helping us, rather than appreciating us, you are dragging us unnecessarily into courts. Just because twenty years away you had made some law and some technicalities, that we don’t come under it, then change it! We are not against the land - you have to come and see it - and for twenty years your land use laws have not helped the land in any way.Half of the Oregon’s land has been sold to the Federal government because Oregon’s economy goes on falling down. Still they are two-hundred-million in debts. Sooner or later they will have to give up their other lands also. So what kind of land use laws you have?But they never came here.Supreme court has decided in favor, in our favor. He has imposed, on a small matter. We had made tents with a little difference than ordinary tents, because ordinary tents can be used only in summer, but not in snow, in winter - and here it is seven months winter and heavy snow - so we had made them winterized, they can be heated, they can be air conditioned. Still they are tents, they are not permanent structures, because within ten minutes you can put them up or you can fold them up. Without seeing them, just hearing that they are different from tents, he declared they are permanent structures. And unheard before, he punished us one million-four-hundred-thousand dollars punishment, without even sending an officer to see what kind of tents they are. And the courts simply was amazed when they saw that these tents can be folded in ten minutes and can be put up in ten minutes, it does not matter with what material they are made - they are not permanent structures. He simply dismissed the whole case as stupid.But he goes on finding anything. Now he has declared the city illegal, because religion and city are mixed.We don’t have a god, we don’t have a temple, we don’t have any ritual. We don’t have any theology. My whole effort has been to create an individual who is not dependent on any organized religion.So I say that my people have a certain quality of religiousness, but they are not a religion. And this quality of religiousness is just like the quality of lovingness, friendliness - you don’t have to become a part of an organization to have lovingness.Religiousness is simply a gratitude towards existence, that it has given us so much and we cannot repay. So a silent gratitude and an inner search to find out the center from where we are connected with the lifeline - of the stars, of the trees, of the mountains. And there is a point in us which joins us to the smallest blade of grass, to the biggest star, millions of light years away.So this is a mystery school. We have explained it that it is not a religion, so there is no question at all of mixing religion with state. You are doing it: in your courts the oath is to be taken on the Bible - that is mixture. Your president wanted that in every religious institution prayer should be introduced. It was Supreme Court who rejected it. That is an effort to mix religion. Then the president wanted that all Christian schools - colleges, universities - should be given the same grant as it is given to public schools, public institutions. Supreme Court refused that, that that is not possible. A Christian college, a Catholic university, we cannot support. The government has to be above these religious creeds and cults.Jews have their institutions, Christians have their institutions - this is not possible. Government is secular.Politicians have their own way, so what he has done - because he could not manage the Supreme Court - he has decided to give money to the parents of the children, not to the institution but to the parents, and now it is up to the parents: where they want to send their children, they can send. That means, in a round about way the Christian schools, the Catholic colleges will receive the money but now it will come through the parents.You said “He has given the money” - meaning the president of the United States?Yes. That’s a decision. It will be given to find a way around the Supreme Court.Who will give the money, Osho?It is president of the United States, who is trying to support Christianity, who really wants, who himself is a fanatic Christian, a fundamentalist Christian and who wants the whole country to become Christian. And these are the ways: of indoctrination, enforcing.Now if institutions cannot be given, then give to the parents and the parents will give to the institutions.You have mentioned more than once how the Supreme Court has gone against various people. One of the greatnesses of this county is that there is due process of law.That is certainly. That is certainly true that there is a hope in this country and that is its Constitution, its law, its courts. And in fact that’s what creates the difficulty for the politicians. The Constitution has really great values and the politicians are always third-rate as everywhere. They cannot rise to the level of the Constitution, so naturally, American Constitution is more prostituted than any other Constitution in the world, because other Constitutions are very close to the politicians. They can manage with the constitution and still go on doing every crime they want to do.In America, even the president has to find out round about ways.so that’s what I have publicly told to the media and Ronald Reagan must be knowing, the whole America must be knowing, because it is every day on the news, that I am going to fight for the Constitution of America - against the Americans. This is a strange situation, but I am going to fight for the Constitution, because this is the best Constitution the world has. And it has a ray of hope.And we will win certainly, but just it destroys so much time which we could have used creatively. We have one-hundred-twenty-six square miles land. If we are not distracted unnecessarily, we can make the whole land luscious green. The Oregon will be proud of it. It can become the best holiday resort. Already in America no place attracts more people than Rajneeshpuram. Every year near about thirty thousand people are coming and going. In each festival there are at least fifteen thousand people coming from all over the world.We used to have a festival every year for four years, twenty-one days, annual festival, fifteen to seventeen thousand people used to come. Just to prevent it - I could not see the stupidity of these people because twenty-one days, if fifteen thousand people from outside the world remain here, they help the economy of Oregon! And there is no other place in America where people are going to stay for twenty-one days.America does not have a Jerusalem, neither a Mecca nor a Kashi. They have passed a resolution in Oregon’s assembly that no festival in Oregon can be more than five days - and we are the only people who have the festival. There is no other festival going on anywhere. To just destroy our festival, naturally, just for five days a person will think many times whether to come from Calcutta or from Japan or from Australia or from England, wasting that much money and just within five days, even he has not recovered, rested, and he is to go back.I’m sure you will find a way of making those five days so worth it that they will come.No, I have managed.You need to worry about that at all.We will manage.Do not be bothered by.Small-minded people are there anywhere in the world.No, no. We are not bothered, we are not bothered. I simply want you to make your readers aware of what is being done to a commune which has done no harm to anybody, which is simply trying to improve and which is trying to prove my arguments existentially.I do not want the world to become communist in such a way that only poverty is equally distributed. That is not my of communism. My idea of communism is something better than capitalism - so much wealth can be created that there is no need to hoard it, so much wealth can be created that there is no need to distribute it. People will be enjoying their wealth and it will be distributed. People hoard only because the wealth is so scarce. When wealth is so much, just like air, you don’t worry about it. If the air becomes scarce then only, of course, rich people will have air, poor people will not have.And that what I am trying to prove: we have created a commune which is self-sufficient, everybody is comfortable, everybody is immensely happy. The whole commune has all the facilities that modern technology provides. The whole commune is air conditioned, almost everybody can get a car any moment he wants. There are pools of cars, so nobody is without a car. The commune has one hundred busses, most of them air conditioned. The commune has five airplanes. And when we had come here, there was only one house, dilapidated, and just a desert - not even a single bird!When I came here I looked - I surprised: I have never seen such a place where not a single bird! Now birds have started coming. Life has a certain organic unity. Deer have come in hundreds - from all other ranches they have moved to this ranch - for the simple reason because in every other ranch they are killed!Only this ranch they are respected as people. Nobody can kill them, nobody can harm them. And I have told my sannyasins that make everywhere small ponds, this winter, in hundreds, so deer can have enough water wherever they want. And grow as much alfalfa grass which they like - the only grass they eat - fill the whole valley with alfalfa grass. So let the whole commune become a deer park.We have now three hundred peacocks, one dozen swans, and we are trying to bring other animals, other trees, and creating an ecological balance. We have made the dam.enough for commune’s needs. We have another lake for people to swim, to enjoy, and we are not using this dam either for irrigation. For irrigation we have a river, so this dam is also used for swimming. In festival time, you will see in the lake ten thousand people. The whole place becomes such a dance and such a song.All that I wanted these people that we are not asking any favor from you; we are putting money from our own sannyasins. We have not asked a single cent from you; just we want, please don’t waste our time! You know perfectly well that you are going to be defeated, but you can waste our time. So we - rather than creating - four-hundred legal experts are simply wasting their time continuously, because so many cases - on small things, on anything, and they start a case. And when there is a real case to start, they are delaying it as long as possible.We are asking them that why don’t you start it? When we have given you every evidence, we have given you open availability to enter any house, search any place - and they have searched whatever they wanted - and they have got enough evidence, then why you are delaying, for what? There must be something cooking behind the scene.And what is the answer, Osho?They are simply silent.Have you personally been served with a subpoena?No. They cannot even have courage to do that.Suppose they want to serve you with one, will you accept it?I will see it. They don’t have any reason.Here, when their police was here, it would have been absolutely proper for them because I brought all the accusations publicly, into the notice of the government. They should have asked for my interview; they did not. Today I waited, then I requested them that “I want you to interview me.” They gave a date, the appointment and then they canceled. This happened four times. They wasted almost ten days. They will fix a date, after two days, and then exactly fifteen minutes before, they will connect to the Attorney General what has to be done, and they will say that from the higher up it is canceled.But I don’t see the point - why it is canceled and who are these higher ups? You are here to inquire, you are on the spot - why you should ask anybody? And those were the topmost police officers, and fourth time I told them that “If you cancel this time, then by the evening I am going to call a national press conference and then I am going to tell everything to them,” and still, fourth time they canceled. They were thinking that I was simply threatening them. And I called the press conference - sixty people from almost every media inside America and outside America were present - and I told them that these people are trying something else; they are not looking for the criminals. We have provided enough proof, now the simple thing is just to inform the Interpol and catch hold of these people and bring them here back.And we are ready! Whatever is needed from us, we will supply. But just silence. They are afraid about my subpoena too, because I am going to raise that question that, “Why I have not been asked in the first place? I was the person to make it open - it should have been just natural to ask me - and I have to request you. And then too, for four times you go on canceling. So are you in the service of law or in the service of crime? Whom you are serving?They know perfectly well, because once they have taken my deposition in a case - and I chewed the guy perfectly well - since then they don’t ask for my deposition.Is it true, Osho, that if this matter comes to court of law, you are going to speak in your own defense?Yes. I am going to ask.my legal people are going to ask for permission are going to ask for permission. They can assist me but I will speak on my own.Do you think it is advisable considering the circumstances in which these people operate?It doesn’t matter. Because truth needs no defense. Only lies need defense. And this much I know: that I can argue with any kind of people - there is no problem in it.My whole life I have been arguing and doing nothing else! I may not know the law - that does not matter; I know that law is nothing but a branch of logic. I know logic, I does not know law; doesn’t matter. I know the father, I don’t know the son.Is it possible for someone of your enlightenment, of your knowledge of human nature - as you say of logic, of the way people act and behave - to have somebody in your midst for three years and not to be aware that that person was undergoing a fundamental change?No, the problem was that Sheela was never inclined towards spirituality, towards any inner growth, towards meditation.from the very beginning. If she would have been inclined, then I would have immediately detected the change. She was never a meditator, she never meditated. She has other qualities: she was very pragmatic, very practical, and very strong. And in the beginning days of this commune, particularly so because I was in silence and in isolation, I cannot give it to someone who was too much in meditation.Either someone who is enlightened could have been able to manage it or someone who has nothing to do with enlightenment, who is just earthly. A person who is in between would not have been able to manage millions of dollars, all these politicians, all these courts, all these legal affairs. A person who is just on the way is more inclined towards himself, wants to be left alone, wants to have peace and silence; he does not want to fight and struggle.I can fight because I have nothing to lose. What I have gained is something which even if I want there is no way to lose it. But a meditator can lose easily. So there were only two possibilities: either I have to do it myself - I was sick.badly, that I wanted complete rest for three, four years, until I am perfectly okay so that I can come back again.Sheela has lived in America almost her whole life. She was married in America to an American. She knew America, she knew the American way of doing things. The whole group that has come with me, none of them was American; only Sheela was the person who was not American but she has lived in America and was married in America - she was almost an American.and she was absolutely materialistic. These were the qualities that I had chosen her.As far as the future is concerned of anybody, one thing has to be understood, that it is not determined. Somebody may be absolutely loving this moment and next moment he may murder someone.You cannot decide what is going to happen in the next moment. And this is one of the man’s privilege, that his future is not determined - that means his future is free and he has a freedom to move. The sinner can become a saint, the saint can become a sinner.So I had no idea that Sheela - who has never done anything like that - will turn into a criminal. But she alone is not responsible for it. The politicians forced her; the Oregonians, their hostility forced her. She must have some instinct in her unconscious that became conscious, took advantage of the situation. But she was not alone. The hostility outside, the constant threat of those people - that they will kill her, they will kill me, they will come and bulldoze the whole commune - by and by she started functioning actually like those people. It is almost human and understandable.It has happened in the course of history - it’s not something unique.No, it is not unique.it is not unique. Sheela is not unique. It cannot happen with me. For thirty years people have been with me; it has never even occurred, not even an idea, that somebody has to be killed. Even though I have been attacked; attempts on my life have been made, then too it has never occurred to me, that I should retaliate. I had people who were really angry and wanted to retaliate, and when the person who had attacked last time before I left India and threw a knife at me - ten thousand sannyasins were eyewitnesses, twenty top police officers of Pune were eyewitnesses, because they received an anonymous phone call that somebody is going to throw a knife at me, this morning’s discourse, so you hurry up. So all the top police officers were there before they threw. They caught him red-handed, they saw him, they took the knife with them, they took the man with them, and still the man was released by the court, honorably, that this thing has not happened - the knife has not been thrown.Ten thousand people, my tape record, suddenly my stopping, the noise of the knife falling on the floor, that man shouting.and then I started speaking again where I had left, twenty police officers, and it was not our case - it was a police case. They had caught him red-handed. Still he was left, and the magistrate must have felt very bad.From a common friend - a doctor - he informed and asked my apology. He said, “Just forgive me, because that man belongs to a political party and the pressure is too much on me. The government wants him to be released, my promotion is due, and I am a poor magistrate - children are there, my wife is there, my old parents are there - and if I give him any punishment then my life is ruined, my children’s life is ruined. They will send me to some far off place and my promotion is finished - then it is not going to happen at least till this party remains in power. So please forgive me.”I told the doctor, tell the magistrate there is no problem in it - I can understand your position. The difficulty is how I am to make my people understand, because they are almost ready to kill the man, because this is too much. Every evidence.So it cannot happen with me, but with Sheela - just an ordinary human being, with no higher qualities, with no higher aspirations - she became ambitious, she became power-oriented, and suddenly she saw so much money she had never dreamt of: two hundred million dollars were in her hands. Forty-three million dollars she has kept in Switzerland - which were bound to come here, that is a theft - in her own name. But she is simply foolish.Now she is purchasing a hotel in Germany and once she purchases it - because that money was coming from German sannyasins and German communes.that money either belongs to German communes or it belongs to this commune, and she is purchasing a hotel, five-star hotel in Germany - she will be soon, if these people don’t catch in, then German sannyasins are going to put her into jail. From where she got the money?She is not rich, neither the other people in her group are rich. Forty-three million dollars - from where she got?Do you have evidence that it is with her in fact?Yes, because her secretary who left her two years before because she had cancer, she has come back. She is going to give her affidavit and her testimony, that she remembers the number of the account, the bank, how much money. And she also remembers that when she got this money, she started dealing in drugs, she started smuggling things from one country to another country - gold from this country to that country and particularly hard drugs.So forty-three is just from the communes, but she may have more than that. If she was dealing in hard, hard drugs, then she will get into more trouble. But nobody can, there is no way to predict what a man can do. The future remains always unpredictable and unknown.But in the life of a commune, Osho, how are you going to see that such a thing can never happen again?At least in my lifetime it won’t happen, because I am not going into silence again - just so that nothing like this happens - and I am making every possible arrangement that even if I am not here, it will not happen. For example, I am decentralizing the power. Sheela had all the power in her hands.Now I am distributing it into ten corporations so ten people will be equally powerful and they will all will be chosen from their corporations.Secondly, I am making it that the people should not remain long time in power. At the most, one year, six month to one year should be the longest term, then they should rotate. So nobody takes it for granted that it is his power.So decentralization and rotation of the people, so many more people have the chances to show their ability, their potentiality, capacity, and nobody becomes addicted that it is something that is his, nobody else can have it.Thirdly, I have changed. Now sannyasins will not be having any uniform, so that sannyas becomes available to many more people. Many intelligent people were simply prevented because of the red clothes - their jobs are there, their parents are there, their wife, their children, their friends, and everywhere they feel in a kind of embarrassment, the mala is no more needed - it is all optional. You can use any color, if you want you can use mala, if you don’t want you don’t need - only meditation remains the central core, which is something inner, which has nothing to do with outside.So I want it more wide, so more people can come in. What Sheela did, she removed all intelligent people from the commune: the chancellor of the university, the vice-chancellor of the university - both she harassed and they had to leave. She harassed so many people, particularly all the people who have been close to me, she harassed them because she was afraid: these people can be her competitors at any time. And she was almost always afraid that I can change her.She was asking me again and again that, “Osho, help me when you change me that I can gracefully become an ordinary sannyasin again.” And I said, “Certainly, I will help you.” But she escaped like a thief! That was not graceful. I had asked her to come to see me at least before you leave. I am not going to say anything to you - it is perfectly your choice, your freedom. If you don’t want to be here, there is no problem; you can go.But I had no idea, but she had every idea what she has done and she was afraid, perhaps, I have come to know. She was not here for one month, she was in Australia, so she was afraid perhaps within this one month I have come to know few things. She never came to see me.I reminded her, sent the message that, “Remember, you always used to ask that ‘Let me become gracefully an ordinary sannyasin, whenever you feel that somebody else can take over my place and do the work better.’ So don’t go without seeing me and remember that I am not going to ask any question. But she could not gather the courage and she escaped simply at the time when I always go into the mountains, just for one and half hour drive in, at two o’clock - two to four - I am in the mountains, at that time exactly at four, I saw the plane going. I had no idea that she is going. When I came back home, then I heard that she has left and she has taken twenty other people, all the topmost people, with her.You have been asked before that why is it that you have given women a chance more than men and the answer you have given is that you felt that with women there would be a better, more compassionate chance for people. Have the events of the recent past caused you to revise that opinion?No. Not a single Sheela can represent the whole womanhood. I have given it again to another woman.You announced the end of Rajneeshism, you say the robes, colored robes are no longer required nor the mala. Has there been any fundamental change in your way of thinking or lifestyle of this community.No. Just outer symbols have to be dropped, so that there will be no difference between outsiders and sannyasins, no discrimination, and anybody who wants to be sannyasin - because I know thousands of people have wanted and had asked, but were afraid about the robe and the mala, now there will be no fear for them. So I want it to become as wide as possible so more intelligent people, more intelligent, creative - musicians, artists - all those who are really not power-oriented, but have contributed to the beauty of life, become interested. They are interested and they would like to be part of such a commune.I have chosen Prem Hasya as the President, because of her very creative mind. She, with her husband, has created one of the best movies, Godfather, and she came close to me because she wanted to make a movie on me, on the sannyasins and my whole way of life. So she was working on it, that’s why she had come. And I saw in her intelligence, creativity, a very loving heart, and no desire for power.I have given again places to women. The commune president is now Anuradha who has been with me almost for ten years, doing any kind of work, comes from one of the richest families in England - so there is no question of that money can become important to her - and is ready to do anything. She was very friendly to Sheela, but Sheela could not take her into her group for the simple reason because her love towards me and to the commune is so much that she will not do any such thing that goes against my ideology, so she was left out.Just one woman cannot destroy my respect for womanhood. I will go on giving chances again and again, for the simple reason: for thousands of years women have not been given chance.So it is possible that when they get the chance - it is just like a hungry man who has been hungry for many days is bound to eat too much and is bound to become sick by eating. That’s what happened to Sheelshe had never seen so big money, she had never seen so much power, in my name she had ten thousand people who could have died or done anything. She was just a waitress in a hotel.and the mind has not changed - again she has purchased a hotel!You left India rather abruptly and came here. Many rumors have been floating as to why you left, why you came, what are the reasons. Would you like to tell us briefly, what were the circumstances that made you come here?No, there was nothing - really my health and no other reason. My back was very bad, I could not walk, could not sit. In my commune in Pune we had all kinds of therapists, massage people, bodyworkers, and very good ones - they all tried but there was no change. They tried traction, nothing worked. Then from England we had to call experts, the best one in the world. He was known almost as a miracle worker on the back, but within two days he also lost hope; he said, “You will have to live with it. All that can be done is, take care, but don’t hope that the back will be absolutely right, because it is not something that has gone wrong suddenly; it has gone wrong in a long period of time. Perhaps thirty, forty years, it has been going slowly, slowly, in a wrong state and you never became aware, and now it has come to a peak. When suddenly something happens to the back, it can be settled again, but this is not a sudden case. So when we push the bone back, it slips out again. It has become its natural state.”And then I was suffering from allergy - any perfume, any dust, any smoke and I will have asthma attacks. Then the whole night it was difficult to sleep.Thirdly, was my diabetes which is my inheritance. My great-grandfather had it, my grandfather had it, my father had it, I have it, my all uncles have it, my all brothers have it - it seems to be something intrinsic, so it cannot be cured. It can only be kept in control.And my allergy needed dry air and cool air, no humidity. That’s why I shifted from Bombay to Pune, because Bombay was more humid, Pune was less, but still it didn’t make much difference. I was asking Indian government to allow me to purchase land in Kutch, but Morarji has been my lifelong friend! When he was chief minister of Gujarat, he wanted to prohibit my entrance into Gujarat, but he could not do it because I said that “I will take you to the court - on what grounds you can prohibit me from entering Gujarat? Gujarat is not a separate country!” And he could not convince his own assembly either that they said, “It will be absolutely absurd. Before the Supreme Court what grounds, on what grounds? What wrong he has done against Gujarat?”But he was prime minister, so he made every effort that I should not get into Kutch, because now Kutch is part of Gujarat. Kutch was exactly the same climate as this place in Oregon - desert, dry - and the palace in Kutch, the father of the present Maharajah, had the same problem with allergies. So experts have explored all over Kutch, where the palace should be made, so it was exactly made as if for me. The palace was in such a place that the place was cool, dry, and immensely beautiful. And since the maharajah died, nobody has lived in that palace. And it was big enough for my commune; seven- hundred acres, and almost one thousand people could live, immediately, and then we could create more and we could purchase more, because Kutch is almost empty - nobody lives there.Morarji was creating trouble. He managed it because he could not do anything directly. The king was ready to sell it to me. He even took the advance of two lakhs. Morarji could not do anything, whether you are a prime minister or what that does not matter. The property belonged to the Maharajah and I could purchase it. But what he did: he convinced the army - they had army headquarters somewhere near the palace, fifty miles away, because it is the border of Pakistan - that if I am there, then thousands of foreigners will be there and that will be dangerous to the security of India because it is on the boundary.So army became the barrier. Army told the Maharajah, “You cannot sell it. It is a question of national security.”I tried in Himachal Pradesh, something similar, near Simla, but Morarji was forcing the chief minister of Simla - who was willing to sell it because it was a government hotel, thirty miles away, interior into the Himalayas and they were going in loss. Once it was a palace of the Maharajah of Mysore. The sheer maintenance of it was too much, and as a hotel, nobody was going there. So he wanted to get rid of it. He was willing at any price, because he said, “Nobody wants to buy it. Now there are no more Maharajahs, so who will purchase that palace? But Morarji is adamant,” and he said, “I cannot annoy him, he is fanatic, so you will have to wait.”And my health went on deteriorating and finally Morarji went away. Then the Maharashtra government became interested in another thing, that I should not move out of Maharashtra, because that brings their tourism finished. Thousands of foreigners are coming, they bring money and Pune has become world-famous, all the hotels of Pune are completely full. So the Maharashtra government was forcing that I should not be allowed anywhere to be purchased, any property. At that moment I got really frustrated and fed up that these idiots - how long I have to suffer and they are not going to change in any way - so I told that “I would like to go for few years outside.”I had not come to America with the intention to stay here. First, we had purchased a very beautiful castle, one hundred year old, in New Jersey.Montclair?Montclair. It was a beautiful castle and somebody who had made was himself a very creative architect. We made it completely new, renovated it totally. It became really a beautiful palace. But it was going to be just for the time being before we can find a place - because New Jersey was not the right place, it was humid, very humid. It was beautiful, it is really a garden state - the whole state is a garden - so I loved it, but my allergy was giving trouble.Then this place was found, and this suited me. Just as I entered here I felt a great relief, as if my heart and my lungs, both felt a burden removed. And for these four years, I have not had a single attack, otherwise it was almost three, four times per week. That means three, four nights per week sleep was impossible - just coughing, sneezing - and the pain with the neck, with the back was there, and this diabetes was there, so.I would have had gone back, but because they refused the green card, then I told the INS authorities, “Then unless I receive the green card I am not going to leave America.”But Osho, doesn’t the green card indicate your desire to be a permanent resident of this country?I can change my desire. I had come here as a visitor, I had come for my health, but my health got improved. So I want to be here forever. Nobody can prevent me from changing my desire or my intention. And I have told them that I had no intention of staying here. I had come here just for my health.And if you give me the green card there is every possibility I may go back, but if you don’t give me the green card, then I am the last person to go back.Do you have any plans at all for a visit or for the future to go back to India?I have forgotten all.You have severed all connection with India?No. My commune is there, my people are there, sannyasins are there, they come here - this festival two-hundred-fifty Indians were here - so there is no problem about that. But whenever something becomes a challenge, then I cannot move. I have made it clear: four years they have not been able to decide. They know perfectly well: yes they cannot say because of the political pressure; no, they cannot say because there is no ground for saying no. And I fulfill their five categories, not only one. Just only one category I don’t fulfill and I have told them that if you insist, I can do that too - that is marriage. I can marry as many women as you want!But green card or no green card, I am going to be here. And unless Rajneeshpuram is a legal city and my people are completely victorious over this fanatic attorney general, it is difficult for me to leave. And anyway, Morarji is no more in power, so.no joy of coming back! Okay?Do you feel concern and involvement with the future of India?I never think of the future.What is your opinion of the stewardship of Rajiv Gandhi as our prime minister?Something is better than nothing.Do you feel that the country is taking a new direction under this young, non-political leader?I don’t think.In the discourse you gave on September ninth you said that Rajiv Gandhi is India’s only hope.That’s why I said something is better than nothing because if Rajiv Gandhi is not there, then you can’t even think of another name. So he is just filling a space, but he will not be able to do anything, for the simple reason that already he has started doing stupid things. He is selling wheat to outside world, while fifty percent of India is almost on the starving point, and he is selling wheat so that he can make India a nuclear power - now this is stupid.It will take three hundred years for India to become a big nuclear power like Soviet Union or America, and in these three hundred years, what will happen to India? Seventy-five percent of its income you go on pouring into nuclear weapons and the country goes on dying - for whom those nuclear weapons you are creating? And in three hundred years America and Soviet Union will not stand still and wait for you, so that you can join them. In three hundred years they will be three thousand years ahead of you. So there is no point at all!He should stop all nonsense about atomic energy, about nuclear weapons; he should think of how all technology can be in the service of the country and how the country can be saved.For twenty years there must be a absolute birth control. Already you are eight hundred million people; by the end of this century, India will be one billion people. You would have crossed far ahead than China. You are going to create another Nigeria, far bigger and far more disgusting. If in Nigeria one thousand people were dying every day, in India ten thousand, twenty-thousand people will be dying every day.And there is no need for India to become an atomic power. Whatever atomic energy you are able to create, direct it towards production, use it for productive methods. But his mind seems to be the same: to become a great power. What India needs is to reduce the population and to become a comfortable nation. And right now, it is beyond your capacity to become a big power, so simply forget all about it - there is no need.So I can see that there is no other alternative. Rajiv could be of great help if he understands correctly that India does not need to become a war country. Make it just comfortable, happy, rejoicing, and don’t be worried about war, because war has gone so ahead of you that you cannot.And this need not make you afraid. It makes you afraid only because you go on continuing a stupid policy, propagated by Jawaharlal Nehru, of being neutral. The idea was that if you are neutral then Soviet Union and America, both will be friendly to you. The reality is: nobody trust you - neither Soviet Union nor America.The best thing will be, forget about creating nuclear weapons, become aligned to one camp.Which camp would you advocate?Whatsoever, whatever India decides - that is not for me. Whatever India decides, become aligned to one camp so you need not be worried about somebody attacking you - then what you will do? Make a treaty about with one big power and forget about creating yourself nuclear weapons, so that you can divert all your energy for creative purposes and the big power you become aligned, takes care. It is such a simple thing!This neutral policy has been one of the most foolish things that Jawaharlal imposed on India’s mind. For forty years India has been suffering under it. You can change the name: now he has started calling it “non-alignment.” It does not matter what you call. I say be aligned, whomsoever the country prefers. I am not giving you any preference. Whomsoever the country prefers - let the country decide - and then join totally with that power.My idea is so that you need not create any war, machinery, technology, big army, so you can drop that and you can divert your whole energy in creating better standard of life for the people.You have advocated that birth control should be enforced; at the same time you say people should be allowed freedom of self-expression and individualism. How can you reconcile this when you force people to do something that they are not convinced about? This has been the stumbling block of Indira Gandhi, as you know, during the emergency last time. Her son, Sanjay Gandhi, tried to enforce birth control and there was a violent reaction against it. In a democracy how do you enforce something?It was.it was not really Sanjay Gandhi’s fault; it was Indira Gandhi’s fault, to bring elections too soon. There was no need. Birth control has to be forced. Democracy is not something that you can simply have. First you have to deserve it. India don’t deserve it.What kind of people you have got who deserve democracy? Most of them are uneducated, they don’t know even the meaning of democracy. In fact, what you are doing for forty years is enforcing democracy on people who do not understand what democracy is!So what is the alternative, Osho?India does not need democracy. It is not in a situation to afford it. India needs simply a very benevolent dictatorship, and Sanjay was absolutely right and Indira unnecessarily was worried about her image in the world - that she is now condemned as dictator? So what!If they are afraid, I can come! And within twenty years I can settle every problem of the country, but it cannot be settled by democracy. So if you love democracy so much, then Ethiopia will be the result.Democracy needs a certain life standard, a certain education, a certain quality of intelligence in people. Where people can sell their votes in two rupees, you talk about democracy? Where people vote for the symbol: if cow is your symbol, then people will vote you, because you must be right; cow is the mother.holy mother!Nobody thinks that every kind of government needs a certain atmosphere. India is not in a position to afford democracy. It can be: Just twenty years of benevolent dictatorship, absolute birth control, alignment with a big nuclear power, all the efforts, energy, economy, technology, science, the whole intelligence of the country diverted towards production, and after twenty years you can have democracy.but not now!I am a very practical man. I am not a dreamer. And Jawaharlal was a dreamer, and it was one of the greatest mistake that India chose a dreamer to be his first prime minister. And still, India is suffering because of his dreams.India needs practical people.Don’t you think Rajiv Gandhi is bringing younger, practical people, giving them a chance now.Which was never done before? Fifty percent of the population is under forty and they are making their voice heard.He has the chance.just tell him that no more nuclear power and no more this stupid non-alignment, and no more talk of democracy. India is not in a state to be democratic.There was a recent Press Trust of India notice that I got two days ago, that five trustees of the ashram in Pune are being charged with trying to defraud the income tax authorities by producing a false letter of waiver - are you aware of this?No, I don’t know anything.You do not know about it because at the same time that this was happening here, this was happening in India. I was wanting to know what your reaction was.No. I don’t know at all.I thank you very much for your time.Okay. Come again.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Christ Keizer, The Boston Globe, Boston, USAOsho,I was noticing your calligraphy on the wall over there, the one that says the human heart is the most dangerous thing in the world.That’s true.Why?[laughing] Just listen to your heart, how fast it is beating.Every master is a dangerous person. To be near to a master you have to lose your ego, which is the most difficult thing in the world.What is dangerous about the human heart?About ego everything is ugly. But the whole society, education, religion - they all teach you ambition, and ambition is nourishment for the ego.The master’s function is to undo whatever the society, religion, culture, has done to you. It is a total deprogramming.The master brings you back to the innocence in which you were born. And that is the danger.Nobody wants to lose knowledgeability, nobody wants to lose his fame, his respectability.But dangerous for who?Dangerous for the ego.So when you say the most dangerous thing in the world, are you saying dangerous in the sense of threatening the world as it is? Society as it is?Yes. It has to be changed totally. As it is, it is sick, insane.You don’t follow any particular lineage or any particular tradition, and I wondered what you could say about that, because it seems to me that a lot of things you do are very traditional.I don’t follow any tradition. And anybody who follows any tradition can never arrive to know the reality.All traditions are dead. Don’t make the distinction that you are talking about: living traditions. Tradition means that which is dead. Once it may have been living.What about a lineage of spirituality, a lineage of students and teachers working together from one generation to another, such as your students here? Who knows what it’ll carry on to in the next generation? But hopefully if they have some kind of realization, it wouldn’t just stop with them.There is no possibility for anybody to carry my experience to another generation. In fact, it is impossible for me to express it to my own disciples. It is inexpressible. All that can be done is, it can be indicated, not explained.I don’t mean explained, I mean transmitted - by creating this type of a situation, for instance, for people to realize their minds or themselves.Yes. Devices and situations can be created, but when the person will realize the truth it will be his own. It will not be my truth.So I can help to create a situation in which he realizes his truth, but it is not my truth. And, hence, truth never becomes a tradition because it never becomes a theory, a philosophy, a theology.That student in his own way may create situations, may help people, but they will be realizing their truth.What I was speaking of was the fact that enlightened energy or enlightenment can continue from one generation to another.There is no way. It is not something that can be given from one to another as inheritance. That’s why truth always remains new, fresh. It never becomes old.Millions of people may have experienced, but it was their truth, their experience.Well, isn’t there something about truth that’s universal and timeless?There is something which is universal. There is something which is similar, but the more emphatic thing is its uniqueness.Now, let me say it in this way: the uniqueness of truth is universal so whenever one realizes it, it is unique, his own - yet universal because it is always unique and always fresh.So you don’t see anything valid in spiritual lineages, then, of people studying with master-disciple relationships?There is nothing which can be given.But there can be something that can be emulated.No. All that can be given, transpired, emanated, will be only very superficial and psychological. It will not be spiritual.Well then what about your students, if they became enlightened? Wouldn’t that have some connection with you?Some gratitude, not any relationship. Gratitude is not a relationship.But wouldn’t you have had something to do with that as an instigator or a creator of situation?I have nothing to do with it.Well then why do you have Rajneeshpuram?I enjoy it. To make the effort to create the situations in which people can become afire.Then you are creating a situation, you are connected with them in that way.Just in a very outside way. The flame is their own. It is already there. All the devices are just strategies to awaken you.But do you think that they would have been awakened or they might be awakened if they weren’t in this situation, if they were just like somewhere like New York City or something?There is every possibility they may be awakened. There is every possibility they may not be awakened here. It is such an unpredictable and mysterious experience. I had never a master.You didn’t study with anyone?No. Life itself was enough.But did you study different traditions?No tradition. I have studied all the traditions. But they are dead words. They don’t help you. On the contrary, they can hinder. If you become too much attached to those words, you become too much knowledgeable, you can become a scholar but you cannot become enlightened.But don’t you think that there is wisdom contained in the teachings of the Buddha and Lao Tzu and some other.I mean, all over the ranch here there is.Nothing. Lao Tzu begins his book - he wrote only one book and that to be under compulsion. His whole life he never wrote.Do you think the Buddha was awakened, was enlightened?Yes.Well then why aren’t his teachings valid today then? Why aren’t the teachings of the Buddha valid?No teaching is valid. Every teaching is bound to be far away from the true experience. The very nature of it has to be understood.You experience love. Now there is no way to say what that experience is. You may be very articulate, you may be a great poet, but still you cannot express the experience of love itself. Whatever you will say will be about love, it will not be love itself.But then why did the Buddha and Christ and all those other teachers go out into the world and teach, then?That was their device. I have been teaching for thirty years. That is my device, but it can be useful only while I am here. It is my device, I can go on improving upon it, changing it according to the disciple. So you will find thousand and one contradictions because it is not describing the truth, it is more or less creating a situation for different categories of people.So what you’re saying is that it’s valid to have a teacher while the teacher is alive, but that that teacher’s teachings cannot be put into some kind of structure and carried on to another generation.There is no way. Up to now, every effort has failed.Why do you think that’s so?The very nature of experience is such that it cannot be put into words. The experience happens in a state of wordless consciousness. To translate it into the world of words is a very long distance.Well, what if you had a major disciple that had a major enlightenment experience? Wouldn’t they be in a position to go and teach other people? And what if they had another student the same way?Unless they are enlightened. And there is no partial enlightenment. If somebody is enlightened he will create his own devices.But see, what I’m saying is that becomes tradition.No, it is not a tradition because he will create his own devices. He will not use my devices. He cannot.But he got that from you. He might have become enlightened because he was with you.No, not necessarily. He would have become enlightened anywhere. Once he becomes enlightened he understands that all devices were meaningless. It was just.A house is on fire. The children are playing inside. All the neighbors are around the house shouting to the children to come out, but they are so engaged in playing inside, they don’t listen.Then the father comes from the shop and he could not believe what is happening. All his children are inside, and the whole house is on fire. Then suddenly he remembers his children has told him to bring few toys: railway trains, small cars, other toys. He shouts that, “I have brought the railway train you wanted, the toy you wanted, the car you wanted! Come out!”He has not brought anything. The children, who were not listening to anybody that the house is on fire - because they were small children, they did not understand even the meaning of the house on fire - they suddenly came running out of the house and they started asking, “Where are the toys?”The father said, “I will bring the toys tomorrow. Today it was only a device to bring you out. The house is on fire. Look at the house.”Now the child.the children understand that the father has been lying, but his lying has saved them. They are grateful that he lied.All the teachers have been lying. There is no other way. Truth cannot be said, so whatever you say is bound to be untrue.But then why are you teaching?Hmm? Because those children have to be brought out of the house. Toys or no toys does not make any sense. And once they are out, they will understand.So basically what you’re saying is, you’re just creating a situation for them to realize themselves?Yes. And all situations are just arbitrary. In other words, they are all lies.Are you saying this is a lie?Yes. Only lies can be said. Truth remains silent, cannot be said. So you have to read the truth between the words and between the lines, but never read it in the words and in the lines. There you will find only lies - beautiful lies.When a man like Buddha or Lao Tzu speaks, even he is speaking a lie, he is a master-mind. He speaks a beautiful lie.So basically what you’re saying is, the fact of speaking it makes it a lie, the fact of expressing it.Yes. Certainly.In other words, you can’t express.Yes, there are experiences which cannot be expressed but people can be led to those experiences by creating certain situations.For example, you are asleep. I can go on telling to you that, “You are asleep, please wake up.” But a person who is fast asleep is not supposed to listen to you.It is better, bring ice-cold water and pour a bucketful on his face. Although that bucketful of ice-cold water has nothing to do with sleeping or awakening , but it will wake him up.In the beginning, perhaps, he may be angry. But soon he will feel the gratitude.The master’s work is really very strange. He has to continuously balance that he does not hurt the disciple too much that he simply escapes. And he has to hurt, certainly. So as the disciple becomes more and more closer, he hurts deeper and deeper.Is that what’s going on with your with your departed disciples, the ones that left?With everybody it is going on. Anybody who is a disciple of me is forever a disciple.Do you still consider Sheela and the other people who left here to be your disciples?Certainly they are my disciples.turned criminals, that’s another thing.Well, how come if they’re your disciples you call them fascist?Yes, my disciples are of various types. There are democrats, there are communists, there are fascists. It is a whole world.Do you think that your presence in some way is with them now or that they’re haunted by you or anything?They will be haunted by me wherever they go. They cannot forget me.Do you think they’ll have to come back to you in physical form?Yes, I will be certainly very happy.You think they will come back though?That is difficult to say. But my doors are open. My whole commune will be happy. It does not matter what they did. That is the function of law, to take care about it. That is not our business. We don’t take the law in our hands.As persons, we respect them, love them. If they come back, they will be in the commune. And I will suggest them that, “You go and confess your crimes before the court and ask for the punishment, and be clean of it. It is better to remain three years in jail and come out clean - the whole commune will be there to receive you back with garlands, rejoicing, dancing - rather than your whole life carrying a burden in the heart, hiding from one place to another place like criminals.Well, why did you decide to make all this public? Why didn’t you just try to take care of it within the community here? Why did you announce it to the press and to the authorities?It was absolutely necessary. No crime should be allowed. And particularly from people who are supposed to be meditators it is even more criminal. If other criminals get three years imprisonment, then these people should get six years imprisonment - at least double - because here they were to meditate, here they were not to commit all sorts of crime.But you don’t feel that any connection between you and them has been broken by all this?No, it cannot be broken. It is impossible. Once a person has received my love, knows that I will be loving always, whatever he does makes no difference. My love is unconditional. Your action is irrelevant. You have committed crime in the eyes of the law; to me you are the same person. If the law forgives you, I have nothing to say about it.Did you have some feeling that things weren’t the way they should be with, say, Sheela, for instance?Not about Sheela or her group. My concern is more about the attorney general of Oregon. He is more interested in destroying the commune rather than capturing the criminals and punishing them. So he is delaying the whole process. Even federal government agencies became fed up with him because he goes on delaying unnecessarily. The more you delay, the things will become more complicated.When all the proofs are there and every evidence has been given, eyewitnesses have given their testimony, now what is the reason that you are not trying to catch them while they are in the countries where you have connections, treaties that they will capture them if they are criminals?They can move to countries where you don’t have any treaty and they will not capture them. It is very simple to move from West Germany to East Germany. Once they are in East Germany you cannot do anything.You think that’s where they might be headed?That must be in their mind. If.but the attorney general has something else in his mind. His effort is somehow to give them immunity.His agents must be contacting them, because they are freely moving without any fear of being caught. His effort is to give them immunity, bring them back to America and dump all the crimes on innocent sannyasins so his purpose is served: he can demolish the whole commune.You must have seen Sheela day after day while all this was happening. Did you perceive a change in her state of mind?I could see only one thing, because for the last six months, since I started speaking, she has almost not been here. Either she was in Australia taking care of the commune there or in Japan or in Germany or in England or in Switzerland. She will come for one or two day but will not come to see me. And very easy excuse is, because I am allergic to very small things, so simple excuse is that she is having cold.Well, why didn’t you sort of depose her, take her away from her position of authority here?She was.while she was in power, nobody has said anything against her criminal acts. she has removed all people who could have been probable competitors. She has put in all powerful positions just her own people, a group of twenty people, and.You know her very well. Did you think that she was capable of ever doing something like this?Everybody is capable of doing something like that if that much opportunity is given. She was just a hotel waitress when she came to me, and suddenly she had two hundred fifty million dollars in her hands. Now, it can turn anybody’s mind.She was just an ordinary servant in a restaurant and suddenly she saw one million sannyasins around the world respecting her in my name, because she was my secretary and I was in isolation and in silence. So she was speaking on my behalf.So around the world she was being respected, that she had never dreamt of. Suddenly the very human nature, lust for power.So you didn’t think she was more capable of that than some other person? I mean, you didn’t think she had those particular tendencies.Everybody has it. Unconsciously everybody is full of the desire for power.A lot of people have it but would never act on it even if they were.Because they don’t have the opportunity.But even if they did have the opportunity.No, I have never seen a single person who has the opportunity and has not acted.So if somebody else from here was in that same position they could do the same thing all over again?Certainly, if the same opportunity is given.So you won’t let that opportunity be given again?No. I have decentralized the whole power situation. It is no more now in one hand. Now ten corporations’ heads have equal power. The power is distributed.The religion I have declared dead, so nobody is a high priestess of a religion, so nobody can create another Vatican.And I have told my sannyasins to choose people who are coming from super-rich families, so money does not drive them crazy, one thing. They know money perfectly well.Choose very educated people, intelligent, creative people, so that if they want to become famous they need not do criminal acts. They can be creative and be famous. A person who cannot be creative and wants to be famous, then there is no other way than to become a Mafia.Do you think that now, with Sheela and the other people gone who were negative influences, that Rajneeshpuram will grow and more people will come here?Certainly. More people will be coming here because I have withdrawn all outside hindrances. For example, now people can be initiated in any color of clothes they want to wear they wan wear. Mala if they want to wear.Why do you have your disciples wear a picture of you around their neck?It was necessary. In the beginning it helped the movement to become integrated all around the world.But doesn’t that encourage some sense of worship?No, because I am here to destroy that sense of worship. Now I have withdrawn that too. Now it is up to everybody else. Whatever color he wants, he can use. The only thing that remains is the method of meditation, which is something inner. Nobody knows what you are doing inside.Could you tell me about your method of meditation?I have one hundred twelve methods of meditation.Are they ones that you’ve borrowed from other traditions or ones that you’ve created all yourself?I have created my own. These one hundred twelve methods are used by all the traditions in the East - not all the methods by one tradition. One method is enough for one tradition. These one hundred twelve are exhaustive.If somebody doesn’t stick with one thing and they go from one to the next to the next, how do they ever get a chance to really discover what one in.?They are available. I have spoken on one hundred twelve methods - they are available - explained how they have to be done. And anybody can choose any method. And I have developed many methods of my own which are available in the university, which are being taught. People are meditating and choosing their own.One method is needed. Any can be chosen. The basic element running through all the methods is witnessing.What is witnessing?Whatever you are doing.For example, right now you are writing. You can write in two ways. The ordinary way that you always write. You can try another method: you can write it and you can also inside witness that you are writing it.Does that mean some kind of detachment?A detachment. You are a little distant, away, watching yourself writing.So any act, just moving my hand, I can watch. Walking on the road, I can watch myself walking. Eating, I can watch.So whatever you are doing, just remain a witness.But doesn’t that have a tendency to develop some kind of super-ego, a watcher, a watcher, a watcher?Not at all. If you have any ego, it will destroy it, because this watching is very much poisonous to the ego. It is not ego that watches. The ego is absolutely blind. It cannot watch anything. You can watch your ego.For example, somebody insults you and you feel hurt, and your ego feels hurt. You can watch it. You can watch that you are feeling hurt, your ego is feeling hurt, that you are angry. And you can still remain aloof, detached, just a watcher on the hills. Whatever goes on in the valley you can see.So all these methods are basically different ways of witnessing. I have condensed in a very simple way. First, watch your actions of the body. Second, watch your actions of the mind: thoughts, imaginations. Third, watch your actions of the heart: feelings, love, hate, moods, sadness, happiness.And if you can succeed in watching all these three, and as your witnessing grows deeper and deeper, a moment comes that there is only witnessing but nothing to witness. The mind is empty, the heart is empty, the body is relaxed.In that moment happens something like a quantum leap. Your whole witnessing jumps upon itself. It witnesses itself, because there is nothing else to witness. And this is the revolution which I call enlightenment, self-realization. Or you can give it any name, but this is the ultimate experience of bliss. You cannot go beyond it.So do you think that a particular formal meditation is necessary for this, or do you encourage people more to just do it in their everyday life?This is the simplest. And because it can be done without in any way interfering with your everyday life, because it is something that you can go on doing the whole day.Any other method you have to take some time apart for it. And any method that needs one hour or half an hour to sit and do it is not going to help much, because twenty-three hours you will be doing just the opposite. And whatever you have gained in one hour will be washed away in twenty-three hours.This is the only method that you can continue around the clock. While falling asleep you can go on witnessing, witnessing, that the sleep is coming, coming, coming, that it is getting darker and the body is relaxing. And a moment comes when you can watch that you are asleep. And still there is a corner, a space in you which is awake.When you can watch yourself twenty-four hours, you have arrived. Now there is nothing to be done. Then witnessing has become natural to you. You don’t have to do it. It will be simply like breathing - happening to you.This is my basic method. But there are other methods. If people feel that this is difficult for them, they can try other methods. All are available.Do you yourself believe in nonviolence?I don’t believe in non-violence. It is not a question of belief. I am non-violent. One who knows himself cannot be violent.Well, in that case, why do you think that it’s necessary to have guns to protect you?It is necessary because the people around are not non-violent.Isn’t non-violence something that, say, in Mahatma Gandhi’s case.?Absolute nonsense. Mahatma Gandhi was one of the most violent men of this century.I’ve heard that before.Yes. So don’t mention his name. And he.You mean violent in his own personal life?Yes, in his own personal life he was violent. He was violent with his family. He was violent with his disciples. He was in every way violent to the whole country.Do you think that India has a lot of problems now because of him?Certainly. He is the cause.This is cause of the partition and all that?He caused the partition, because Jinnah was a very intelligent man and would have agreed with any intelligent man. He was not in any way a fanatic Mohammedan. Gandhi drove him to become a fanatic Mohammedan, because Gandhi was a fanatic Hindu.It was Gandhi’s mahatmahood that created the idea in Jinnah’s mind that if India remains one, then Hindus are going to rule forever. And Mohammedans have no chance here because they will always be minority and Hindus will always be majority.And this man Gandhi is exploiting religion, and he is simply a politician. He learned the whole technique. He started exploiting religion for his politics.The division came because of Gandhi. After the division, almost one million people were killed because of Gandhi. This was the repressed violence that Gandhi has been repressing for thirty years continuously that exploded, because once British government was gone there was nobody to control.What do you think now is happening with the situation with the Sikhs in India? Do you feel that they’re being persecuted by that same type of Brahmanic cult, the Brahmin class of, say, first Indira Gandhi, now her son - the same type of thing that hierarchy.Sikhs don’t have any hierarchy.I know, but the Brahmins do.Brahmins are part of Hinduism. In fact, Sikhism is a revolt against Brahmins.But do you feel that the government now is punishing them for revolting against.?Certainly, because all politicians want their countries to be as big as possible because that gives them power.My own.because in India before it became a slave country - it has never been one country.In Buddha’s time twenty-five centuries ago there were two thousand kingdoms in India. All have their languages, all have their cultures, all have their different kind of clothes. India has never been one country.What the government’s doing now, talking about unity and national unity and clamping down on all the minorities. What is that about?This is all politics. Politicians always want more and more numbers. Gandhi and others very unwillingly became ready that Pakistan should be divided.It was their old age that decided it. Seeing it, that if they don’t decide then they are never going to be free in their life. They were all becoming old. Gandhi died, was assassinated after one year. Jinnah died after two years.Do you think India right now is worse off than it was under the British?Certainly worse. And Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy who divided India, who was sent to India to make it independent, did a real lousy job.You divide a country without even thinking that half of the Pakistan will be one thousand miles away. Half of the Pakistan will be on this side, in the West, half in the East. How they are going to remain one?Not long enough. And that’s what happened. Soon Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan.And before you divide a country you should make it certain that under your control the population moves.The whole point was that Mohammedans should move to Pakistan and Hindus should move to India. That was never done.Principally it was decided and Mountbatten simply left with his forces. Now there was nobody to manage both the countries. Mohammedans simply started killing Hindus in Pakistan. Hindus started killing Mohammedans in India. One million people were killed very brutally. Women were raped in thousands.What do you think’s the future for India, then?There is no future.Do you think India is under the Soviet influence?It is. And there is no way for it because Pakistan is under the influence of America. China is making friendship with America. And India is just between these two enemies. There is no way. These two enemies are forcing India to be with Soviet Union.So it’s all just a big mess.Yes.So does that mean you’re not going back there?I am not going. I am not going anywhere. I am going to be here because India has no experience of politics. For at least two thousand years it has been slave. It has no experience of politics. Suddenly politics became available and the people who were fighting for independence had no idea what you are going to do after independence.That happens in many situations. People fight for revolution and nobody bothers what you are going to do after revolution.Well, what about all your disciples in India? Do you feel they should get out or stay there?No, there is no need. They are perfectly doing well. There is no need. Just they are creating small communes in different places and sannyasins are gathering together in the communes.How many sannyasins do you have in India?In India there must be at least three hundred thousand sannyasins.All over the country?All over the country.How are they treated? I mean, how do people respond to them?People are afraid of them just as they are afraid everywhere. Here in America, a nuclear power, the world’s biggest power is afraid of five thousand sannyasins because they have thirty semi-automatic guns.What do you think is the most basic issue, basic question, in promoting world peace?It is very simple. Nations should disappear. UN should become a world government. All the armies of the world and all nuclear weapons and everything should be surrendered to UN.Just if the world is one the possibility of third world war can be avoided.And UN is impotent just as nations, League of Nations, was impotent, for the simple reason because they don’t have any power. Have all nations represented, but all nations should surrender their war mechanism, war technology, their armies, to UN.But given the fact that nations are super super super egos, super.Based on territoriality and so forth, that’s not going to happen anywhere in the near future.That will have to happen, otherwise there is the other alternative: global suicide. Compared to that, this is the simpler solution.If third world war happens, then all life as such disappears from the earth.Which do you think is going to happen? Do you think that life is going to continue or do you think we’re going to commit global suicide?I think it is going to continue. Life is always more powerful than death and it will always find ways to continue. And when it comes to such a critical moment, the nations will have to disappear - not life.The world government is the only solution. And the world government is not only a solution for war, it is also a solution for poverty, population and other problems - because it is a very insane state right now.Thirty million people in America are suffering from overeating. Now, there are countries - Ethiopia, one thousand people are daily dying because they don’t have to eat anything. Fifty percent people in India have only one meal a day, and that too is not going to last long. By the end of this year half of the India will be in the same situation as Ethiopia.You’re for redistributing the resources.Yes, if the world is one, then naturally everything can be easily redistributed, changed.India has immense labor power, very cheap. You can create great industries in India. And all that is so costly in America can be reduced to its tenth. Just because the labor is so cheap you can create everything in India. The poor will be fed, the unemployed will have employment, and you will have cheap things as good as you are having them now, unnecessarily paying so much money. And in the same way everything is.Just few months before in Europe, they drowned thousands of tons of oranges and other fruits into the ocean. At that very time, people were dying in Ethiopia. And they are drowning in the ocean thousands of tons of fruit, because to keep it in the market the price goes down. Just to drown them, they had to waste one hundred thousand dollars. But they were not ready to give it to Ethiopia.How do we go about changing things to make things more balanced, more equitable?Just people have to be made aware of the whole situation, that there is no need of nations, that we have come to a point - science has made the world so small that now there is no need to divide it into nations.And our needs are one.And we have enough, and if we don’t prepare - all the nations are preparing for war. And all the nations are putting their seventy-five percent national income for war preparations. If the world is one, the question of war simply disappears and seventy-five percent income of all the nations becomes available to you.All the scientists who are engaged in creating death to humanity can start creating something for life, for people’s comfort.This is simply a question of making a worldwide campaign of making people aware.But a lot of people would say you were a utopian or a idealist or something like that.Whatever they say, that does not matter. I am quite notorious, so nothing matters what they say: idealist, utopian. What I am saying is very realistic.Otherwise they can propose. If they have any more realistic idea that can prevent war and that can divert our energies towards making life more comfortable rather than creating death, they should propose some idea. If I am an utopian, an idealist, then some realist should come ahead. I have not seen any realist coming out.So it seems, whether you call me idealist or utopian, I am the only one who is giving a solution.But what I meant is that the powers that have control right now are in much more entrenched than Sheela was, for instance.They are all trembling inside, all those big powers. Things have changed totally.In the old days war was one thing. Somebody was going to be victorious, somebody was going to be defeated, and there was some joy in it. But now nobody is going to be victorious. All are going to be dead.So war has lost all meaning. War losing all meaning is a very great phenomenon. We have to change our whole structure, because our whole structure was geared around war.So do you feel optimistic about the chances of the world for survival and.?Certainly, because I can see that nobody is ready to die, neither America nor Soviet Union nor anybody else. If they don’t want to die, they will have to come to some negotiation that makes war impossible.And the only way is that UN becomes really the power and everybody surrenders to UN. Everybody has its representative there. All their problems UN has to solve.But that’s completely different from the way society has always been.Because the situation has changed, so old thinking and old ideas won’t work.Do you see this happening anytime in the next century, for instance?It will have to happen in this century, because already we have got so much nuclear weapons that we can destroy humanity seven hundred times. It is already gone beyond imagination and beyond all stupidity. Just destroying one time is enough, what is the point of preparing so much? Seven hundred times! And still they go on pouring all their energy in making nuclear weapons.I know you said you don’t believe in particular religious traditions, but what about cause and effect, karma?Every action has its effect immediately. It does not wait for another life. The Hindu idea is just cunning, and it is an effort to console the poor.To keep them enslaved in their condition?Yes.Well, how does that carry over, then, to what you were saying about the need for world government, one world government? Since.You know, I mean it’s great to say that that’s what we need, but considering the way nations are and the way - France, for instance, blows up some Green Peace ship to keep.Wants to keep them from doing just a test - that there’s that level of aggression in the world. Do you think it’s feasible to say that we really will.?It is feasible. Just few days before, twenty topmost scientists of America who had founded the whole nuclear plants, those twenty founders had signed a petition that now it is time that nuclear weapons should be stopped.If these scientists - just twenty scientists who are the foundation of American nuclear weapons - can be convinced and they can see it, it is clear that they are creating death. If they can be convinced and they can simply refuse, that, “It is enough and we are not going to do anything any more,” the same can happen in Soviet Union.Man has some conscience too. We have never appealed to it. Just the scientists in Soviet Union can be appealed, approached, that, “You stop completely. At the most it may mean your death, but you will save the whole humanity from dying. And you can force the government to come to a certain conclusion. This cannot go on any more.”So it is not such a big problem One need not be too optimistic about it. It is a very realistic thing. Twenty scientists here and twenty scientists in Soviet Union - just forty people have to be convinced.But what about the politicians?Politicians cannot do anything. If they don’t have nuclear weapons, if they don’t know how to use nuclear weapons, what the politicians can do? Ronald Reagan can go back to Hollywood.What the politicians can do? What do they know? Politics is only.the only profession where no qualifications are needed. The most unqualified, unskilled work is of the politician.They are exploiting our geniuses - and they are not many. Just one Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt that, “I can make the atom bomb,” and he repented his whole life. Just that one man - if he had not done, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki has not happened, there would have been no question of any nuclear energy.Before dying he said that, “If I am born again I would like to be a plumber. I don’t want to be a physicist again.”These people can be approached. They are human beings.And a world academy of scientists can be made by UN, so all the scientists from all the world can work and function together. There is no need for them to function separately in different countries.And only if scientists - which is not a very big group. Around the world there cannot be more than hundred scientists who are nuclear experts. These hundred people can be easily convinced. It is not difficult. Just it is a question of approaching these people.And UN has to understand that the days of just discussing continuously the whole year round and doing nothing are gone. Now something has to be done - and done quickly before any mad politician starts something, and then it will be too late.So what would you suggest that we do about all this?The modern media can do immense job. It is one of the most powerful thing today. The whole modern media should insist on UN, that, “You should take the responsibility of creating a world academy of scientists, and invite all the scientists from all over the world. And you make an effort to create a world government.”National governments can remain but they will not have any power - military power. They will be functional governments. They can manage everything else but not war. They can send their representatives, they can bring their problems to the world government and the world government will be decisive where things have to be moved, where food has to go, where labor has to go, where population has to move, where population has to be completely controlled.It is simple in a way. Just the whole media should become almost insistent continuously. From all over the world bombard on the UN that, “You are being simply impotent and it is time to act, not just to go on discussing unnecessary things.”And the most basic thing is a world academy of sciences so all the scientists are under the world government, not under national governments.Just we have to try. There is nothing to lose. If we cannot succeed, then the world goes. So what? But at least we will be dying with the satisfaction that whatever we could do as powerless individuals, we did it. At least that contentment will be there. We were not politicians. We had no power. But whatever we could do, we did it.If two journalists can manage and force the president, Nixon, to resign from his presidency, can not the whole world of media - television, radio, newspapers, magazines - if they all insist, they certainly can create an atmosphere in which change is possible.And there is nothing to lose. Either we save the world or we die with the contentment that we did whatever we could.So you don’t see.Well, I think a lot of people would think that a commune such as Rajneeshpuram, which is somewhat removed from the rest of the world, is reclusive or so forth, but you don’t promote that type of a lifestyle?We are promoting.I mean, you’re not telling your disciples to not get involved in the world.Yes, certainly. If the whole world listens to me and stops getting involved with the politics and politicians and just starts forgetting about them.It is time. They should not be given so much importance. Why they should be always on the first pages of newspapers, magazines, television? They should be put on the last page. First page should be devoted to musicians, artists, painters, poets - creative people. Politicians should be on the fourth page. First page is not for them. What they have done to be on the first pages except killing and murder and burning people, creating Hiroshima and Nagasaki?A single man, Adolf Hitler, killed ten million people. And these people are still on the first pages. And nobody feels even ashamed.Journalists have some duty to do.Unfortunately, it’s the editors who make those decisions.Just drop the politicians, the importance that you have been giving to them. That importance should go to creative people, people who enhance life, who make life more beautiful.These are the ugly people. They should be with the criminals, not anywhere else.It is in our hands, and that’s what I am saying to my people, that we are no more interested in politics, no more interested in their stupid games that they have been playing the whole history.We are living silently, peacefully, happily, and we are creating such small oases around the world just as models so other people can also see that these models can work and can work far better than the old type of family, old type of city.Here five thousand sannyasins are here. If it was a city, then there will be at least five hundred or one thousand kitchens. Just one kitchen is serving five thousand people so perfectly that it is sheer stupidity to have one thousand women unnecessary wasting their whole life in kitchens. Few people can manage it. Few people can manage the whole cleaning of the commune. Few people can manage the whole laundry of the commune. Just go and have a look, and you will not find a more clean place anywhere. More hygienic in every way.So do you see the commune as some kind of model for greater society?Hmm?Do you see the commune as a model for.?Yes, it is a model for society.Is that part of the reason why you were so outsp - well, so.Yes, use any word that you.I tried to find the right word, I mean in terms of this incident with Sheela and the other people. It seemed like you invited everybody to take part in it, almost. Like the whole.Yes.I mean, you invited the whole world press out here to.Um hmm.And you invited the law enforcement officers and so forth.Yes.You asked everyone to.Yes, I want everybody to see rather than just live on gossip. Just see with your own eyes, and anybody who has seen has gone immensely satisfied, feeling that something unique is happening - and very economical.People don’t have personal cars but they have pools of cars, so everybody can use from the pool. So everybody has a car available anytime. Still there is no need for him to bother about the car. That is taken care by the commune garage. They will keep the car in right order, everything ready, and you can use it anytime. And you can return the car to the garage.There are one hundred buses. Every ten minute you can get the bus from anyplace to any other place.The commune has five airplanes you can use anytime for any work. And it is easy, because five thousand people are putting their whole energy. It is so economical. It saves so much unnecessary wastage.But.Okay, like.I guess what I was trying to say is, you somehow made a public proclamation over what has gone on here with those people, and.But that also at the same time has opened the door to people who would like to see you out of here, such as the attorney general, to exploit the situation.That makes no problem. He can try, but he cannot prostitute the American constitution. We are going to fight for the values the constitution has.I guess what I was trying to ask is, do you feel that there’s a danger in what you’re doing being misunderstood by the general public?It is always dangerous, because any new thing people misunderstand. It takes a little time for them to understand. And that’s why I am giving interviews to all media, so people can understand and can feel that they are welcome to come here, be a guest and see with their own eyes, and perhaps they may think that this is far better arrangement than old type of family and old type of city.For example, in the whole world no city has been able yet to find out how many AIDS patients they have, how many homosexuals they have. But my commune has no problem. All five thousand people have gone through the tests and only two persons were found to have AIDS.And those two persons were not rejected, were not condemned, because they were simply victims. They have not committed any crime. And they are on a dying point: between six months to two years they will die.So we have given them the best place in the commune, isolated, away, but in the most scenic spot. We have given them literature, music, films. They can do gardening and they can meditate. They can come to the commune. They come every day to the discourse.Just they have to be aware that the people who are taking care about them - and with all respect. There is no condemnation at all. They should be also careful not to touch physically anybody. And they have been careful. And they have been grateful.Now this is the only place in the whole world where we have taken all precautions about AIDS. It cannot spread.But in every other place the situation is just the opposite. No state government wants to release the information how many AIDS patients are in the state. Neither they go for a general test for every citizen of the state. No hospital is ready to accept an AIDS patient because he is dangerous - to the nurses, to the doctors, to other patients. So they simply try to avoid.In fact, it has been known that they simply say that, “You don’t have AIDS.”Now, they are leaving that person into the society to spread AIDS, which is nothing but death because there is no cure.Every day in LA one person is dying of AIDS. But nobody knows how many people are suffering. If one person every day is dying of AIDS, then there must be thousands of people who are suffering. And there will be thousands more who are homosexuals. But nobody knows exact number.In Texas they made a law - a very stupid law - that homosexuality is declared criminal. One million homosexuals protested. This way we came to know that Texas has one million homosexuals. Otherwise nobody ever would have thought that Texas has one million homosexuals. Then what about California? How many times we have to multiply?And driving these homosexuals underground - because making them criminals simply means now they will be underground, they will not say they are homosexuals.But you cannot change just by making a law. You are making things difficult. Up to now they were aboveground. They could have been treated. They could have been checked. They could have been prevented, isolated. Now you have made everything a mess. Now you cannot find them. Nobody is going to declare himself a homosexual.And how many out of one million homosexuals are suffering from AIDS? Now there is no way to know.And AIDS spreads not only through sexual contact: by kissing - saliva is a carrier. Even by tears - tears are a carrier. Any liquid coming out of the body is a carrier of AIDS virus.People should look at it rather than coming to a decision without understanding.And whatever we are doing they will have to do sooner or later, but they will find it difficult because they will have to change all their values.Okay?Come again.Pardon?Come again.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 21 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Swami Videha, RIZA magazine, ItalyOsho,The magazine is a medical psychosomatic magazine, so we are speaking to professionals: doctors, physicians, and people dealing with medicine who like to know about the science of meditation. Can you introduce this to these people?The first thing - perhaps they may not be aware of it - is that the words “medicine” and “meditation” come from the same root. Their meaning is the same: to heal.Medicine heals the body, meditation heals the soul. Medicine is outwardly, meditation is inwardly. And man is whole only when medicine and meditation are together in deep harmony.It is unfortunate that the day has not yet arrived when they are in harmony. The people who belong to the world of medicine think meditation is something crazy. And the people who belong to the world of meditation think medicine is just part of materialism which has to be renounced to attain to spiritual heights. Both are wrong. Neither meditation is crazy nor is medicine something worthless.A deep synthesis is needed. A real man who is authentically a healer will always think of an organic unity between the body and the soul, between matter and spirit, between the visible and the invisible.Medicine will remain incomplete without meditation. And it is very apparent that it is incomplete.You can give medicine to a person, but if the person has lost the will to live your medicine is not going to help. Medicine does not cure, it can only help. If the person deep down wants to live, then medicine can be of immense help; on its own it is impotent.Meditation releases not only your will to live, it releases your experience of eternal life; it makes death nonexistent.If medicine is also supported by meditation, if each hospital, clinic - psychiatric, psychoanalytic - takes the help of meditation, then so many things which you go round and round and are never able to accomplish, can be very easily accomplished.But strange to know that even the greatest founders of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud; of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung; of another school of psychoanalysis, Adler and even also the man who should be expected to understand more than Freud, Jung and Adler - Assagioli, the founder of psychosynthesis - are not aware of meditation.They are all going in circles within the mind; but the real healing force is beyond the mind. The real life source is not in the mind. Mind, in fact, is the cause of all sickness.That’s why, in comparison to any other profession, twice as many psychoanalysts commit suicide. Now, in what way are these people going to help? Twice as many psychoanalysts are sexually perverted - and these are the people who are going to help? Twice as many psychoanalysts go mad - that is simply unbelievable!.Something is basically wrong; otherwise, the psychoanalyst should be the last to go mad. Even politicians are left far behind; even criminals are left far behind. Compared to any other profession, psychoanalysts are ahead in going mad, being perverted sexually, committing suicide.It only shows that something very fundamental is missing. And I point towards meditation. Unless meditation is incorporated the situation is not going to change.Meditation simply means a discipline that makes you capable of being aloof and detached from your mind. So even if the mind is sick, your consciousness is never sick. Even if your mind is going crazy, you are just witnessing it.Mind is only a machine. You are not.Meditation is the experience: “I am not my body, not my mind - I am the witness of it all.” This experience, this transcendental experience, immensely transforms the whole situation. Many things which were driving you crazy simply drop away.They were capable of driving you crazy because you were identified with them. Now you are no longer identified, you are just a watcher on the hills. They are something like a film on the screen. You need not be identified, although because of the continuous habit of identification you get identified.Even in a movie I have seen people crying - and they know perfectly well that there is only an empty screen and a film is projected; there is nothing to cry about. They have forgotten, they have become part of the movie.I am reminded of a very famous scholar in India, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar. He was considered to be the topmost scholar of the ancient tradition of the Hindus. And it is a long tradition, thousands and thousands of scriptures.Vidyasagar had a Sanskrit honorary degree, equivalent to DLitt. Even the viceroy of India was impressed with Vidyasagar’s wisdom and he wanted him to be honored by the British government. This man was world famous, his books were translated into all the important languages. His word was authority. And he was a very humble and simple man.He was invited to see a drama. In the drama the villain is after a very simple and innocent woman - but a very beautiful woman. And one day finally he gets the chance. The woman is coming from the forest where her father’s farm is, to the house; it is evening and this man catches hold of her. In the thick forest, darkness is settling, and he is intent on raping her.Vidyasagar was sitting just in front. He jumped on the stage, took off his shoe and started beating the villain. There was great silence. The villain took the shoe from his hand and said, “This is my life’s greatest prize. I had never thought that a man of even the wisdom of Vidyasagar would be so identified, and forget that he is seeing simply a drama - no rape is happening.”He refused to return the shoe. He kept the shoe in a beautiful glass case in his house as a memory, and he would show it with pride to everyone: “This shoe belongs to Ishwachandra Vidyasagar, the man completely forgot that this is a drama and became identified.”But this is our actual situation. What is happening in your mind is just a screen: thoughts moving, dreams moving. You can sit aside and see it all just as a spectator, a witness. You need not even judge, because the moment you judge you become identified. You say, “This is good, this is bad.” Then you want to keep the good and drop the bad.When you are absolutely a witness, there is no judgment. You are simply a mirror reflecting whatsoever is happening.Any man who can learn a little bit of meditation can get out of all mind sicknesses. There is no need for years and years of psychoanalysis, it is simply stupid. And there is not a single man on the whole earth whose psychoanalysis is complete; it can never be complete. There are people who have been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years, changing psychoanalysts, hoping perhaps if not with Freudians then with Jungians, if not with Jungians then Adlerians. But the problem remains the same.Great analysis is being done, it is one of the greatest profession today - and absolutely based on nonsense.There is no need to analyze anybody’s dreams. What is needed is to wake up the man so dreams stop. But that will go against the whole profession.If meditation spreads, psychoanalysis and other schools - differing in small details but not basically - are bound to disappear.The health of the mind is not to be sought in the mind itself. The mind itself is sickness.So there are degrees of sickness. Somebody is average sick so you don’t think that he is a mental case - just average sick like everybody else. Somebody is a little more; you think he is a little eccentric. Somebody is a little more and you start becoming afraid; he seems to be dangerous. He can do anything - he becomes unpredictable. He becomes afraid of himself too; he does not know what he can do. He can kill himself, he can kill somebody - he has no control over himself.Now the only way is psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, psychosynthesis. All these can help him to become average sick at the most. If they succeed they can bring him back to the level of everybody else.But if you watch people who are not psychologically sick, you will be surprised to know that they also have symptoms. For example, nobody thinks that smoking is part of a psychological sickness; because the whole world is smoking, nobody will think of it. The psychoanalyst himself, is smoking. But smoking a cigarette simply shows that the man has remained unsatisfied with his mother’s breast. A cigarette is the substitute; it is just like the nipple of the mother. He holds it in his mouth and just as the warm milk from the mother’s breast flows in his mouth, warm smoke from the cigarette flows into his mouth. It is harmful, he knows; there is no doubt about its harm. It is going to kill him two years earlier - perhaps it will create tuberculosis for him, perhaps cancer of the lungs.But it is strange.it helps him to relax. Knowing all this, whenever he feels nervous, tense, some strain, he immediately starts looking for a cigarette. The moment the cigarette is there in his mouth, he feels calm, quiet, collected, not nervous.What has happened? This is just a repetition of an experience. Whenever the child was hungry, was tense, afraid of death, hunger - where is the mother? If she never comes back, then what? A great strain is on the poor child. And then the mother comes and he finds the breast and the warm milk, and he is fast asleep on his mother’s chest - relaxed, no worry, no tension, no problem. This is the situation that the cigarette creates again and again.Now, this is average sickness so nobody thinks that you are mad if you are smoking. It is accepted sickness. But if you look at the psychology of it, then it needs to be treated. It is dangerous and it shows that the man has missed something in his childhood. Perhaps the mother was not willing to give her breast as many times as the child wanted. Perhaps the breast was not given up to the age the child needed it; the mother was afraid about her breasts, her beauty. She has created a sick mind.You will be surprised that many people I have simply cured of smoking by telling them, “This is the situation, so don’t be worried. Go into the bathroom, put one of your fingers in your mouth. Imagine it is your mother’s breast, and enjoy it as much as you want.”The man will laugh, he will say, “What are you saying!”I will say, “You just try. There is no need for anybody to know, there is no need even for me to be informed. But just give it a try. Lying down in your bed, just suck your own thumb. Children do. when they don’t find the mother’s breast, they suck their own thumb. They have already found a substitute. And you are stupid that you cannot find a simple substitute which the child finds.”Hesitantly, embarrassed, but they tried. And one day they had to accept that. Of course they were very much embarrassed taking their own thumb in their mouth. They were afraid if somebody sees it, what will they think - he is a professor of psychology and what is he doing? “If my wife sees me.so under my blanket, covered completely, I was enjoying my own thumb. And I really enjoyed it. I cannot explain to you how pleasant it was.”Then he keeps on sucking his thumb?Yes, people can suck their thumb. That is far better than cigarettes, because it will not harm anybody; the thumb has no nicotine, no poison, no smoke - nothing. And it costs nothing - it is free! Just don’t start sucking other people’s thumbs, suck your own thumb! If you start sucking other people’s thumbs, then it may create another psychological problem. And the professors smoking habit dropped.And there are thousand and one things that I can tell you that show that the average man is sick. But nobody takes note of them because they are common.Just look at the paintings down the ages. Why are painters so much obsessed with the breasts of the woman? And these are great painters! All great sculpture is bound to depict beautiful breasts, breasts which do not in reality exist, cannot exist. But man has been imagining.In Kajuraho in India, in Konarak in India - and in India there are thousands of other places where you will find the most beautiful sculptures of naked women. And you will not find such breasts anywhere else in the whole world.Why not in the rest of the world, why only in India - because the Indian woman hides the breast so much that the painter has to paint it, the sculptor has to sculpt it. Otherwise people will go mad - in fact, he himself is going mad. And when he sculpts, then of course he makes the breast as beautiful as possible. He does not understand biology, he has only an aesthetic sense. so very round-shaped breasts. But he does not know that if that round shaped breasts were really there, no child would ever survive, because on such a rounded breast the nipple will be in the middle and the poor child - if he drinks the milk, his nose will be closed, he cannot breathe. He cannot do both things together. For the child, a longer breast is the best, his nose remains free.But the artist is concerned with his own sickness. He is not worried about the child - for whom the breast exists, it is not for the artist.Strange, around the world all kinds of painters, sculptors, poets, are all so obsessed with breasts. And the breast is just a gland - what is the point in it? You don’t get obsessed with the breasts of a cow. It is the same gland, just a different formation because it is for a different kind of kid. If bulls were painters, do you think they would be painting women’s breasts? Never! It is just out of the question. They may be painting cows’ breasts, and they will make them as impossible for the kids as you have made them. This whole literature, poetry, painting, is out of the average-sick mind, so nobody takes note of it.Millions of people around the world go on worshipping God. Has anyone taken note of the fact that this is sickness, that this is simply a projection of a helpless child, a projection of a father figure?There is no God, there has never been. Man has created God according to his own image because it is something that is needed by the sick mind. The healthy mind has no need for a God, the healthy mind has no need for a prayer. The healthy mind has no need for churches, temples, mosques, synagogues.Someday in the future, when man may be more mature, he will be simply laughing at the whole history, thinking that people were simply idiots - what were they doing? But this is common sickness.Even if something looks absolutely mad if it is accepted by a group as a religious practice then nobody objects.For example, Jaina monks in India once a year just pull out their hairs - their beard, their mustache - because they are against using any technology. That poor blade is technology! Don’t use the rocket that goes to the moon, okay, but the poor blade. It is not much technology.And it is a symptom of a certain madness in madhouses that many mad people pull their hairs out. Everybody knows that when you are feeling crazy it feels like you would like to pull your hair out. Particularly women really feel like pulling them out, and sometimes they do it.Now these Jaina monks are simply behaving in a sick way, but because it is a religious ritual and they have followers, nobody can call them sick. They are respected for that! Thousands of people gather to see when a Jaina monk pulls out his hairs, and those thousands of people are in tears, throwing flowers over the Jaina monk in deep respect, gratitude. And all that he is doing is something for which he needs some psychiatric care, not flowers. He needs medicine, he needs meditation - both together.The Jaina monk lives naked. Now, anybody else moving naked on the street is bound to be caught by the police, it is against the law. And psychoanalysts say that he is an exhibitionist, that he wants to show his genitalia to other people. He is committing a crime. But a Jaina monk lives naked - nobody thinks that perhaps he is an exhibitionist who has taken shelter behind a religious doctrine and is simply enjoying showing his genitalia.In particular areas where , during the British rule in India , British people lived, they had their own areas; Jaina monks were not allowed to move in those areas. And if they were allowed to move, then special permission.and the followers had to surround them - two, three hundred followers surrounding a naked man so nobody else could see it, then they could pass. I think it was perfectly right.All the religions have done many pathological things, but because they are done by a religion they are accepted by the masses.In Russia there was a Christian sect which used to cut off genitalia, and that was considered the greatest act of virtue. Women were not ready to be left behind, but they don’t have any genitalia hanging out to cut; so they started cutting their breasts. They were also respected. Up to the revolution in Russia these people were worshipped as saints, great saints, and all that they had done was mutilate themselves. Do you think these people are mentally healthy? Is not something wrong?All the religions preach fasting, which is against nature. You are starving yourself, torturing yourself. But you are respected for it, your ego is fulfilled because of it. So there is competition among saints: who fasts longer? They become just skeletons.but their worshippers go on growing.This is something that cannot be called healthy. When you are thirsty you need water; when you are hungry you need food. To prevent your body from getting its needs means you have created a schizophrenia in yourself, you have split your personality in two. The body is the enemy and it has to be crushed, destroyed, tortured. The more it is tortured, the more is your gain in the spiritual world.This is sheer nonsense. This is violence, and these people think they are non-violent people. I have been constantly in argument with these non-violent people, and I told them, “You are not non-violent. Whom are you trying to deceive? Yes, you are violent with yourself, that’s why nobody takes objection.”I made it clear to these people - and they have never been able to forgive me, “You are eating your own meat. You say you are vegetarians - you are not, because if you are not eating your meat then where does your weight go on disappearing? Every day two pounds of meat is absorbed by your physical activities: moving, sitting, walking. You are eating your own meat - you are cannibals. And you are known all over the world as the most non-violent people! I cannot accept that.”If you look around, you will find the same kind of things everywhere - different manifestations, but some degree of mental illness. So I don’t see a division between the healthy, the so-called healthy masses, and the mad people in the madhouses. The difference is only of degrees.And the function that the psychoanalysts are performing is making that difference less and less, making the madman average-mad. He had gone too far and become unique. He has attained to some individuality, he has made his madness special. That is not allowed; your madness should be just commonplace, then it is okay. But more than that your psychoanalysis has not been able to achieve. Without meditation it can never be able to achieve it.So tell your psychologists, “If you really want to make an authentic science of psychology, then meditation has to become its very foundation. And if you can teach your patients to become detached from their mind, to be just a witness, you will be surprised that what ten years psychoanalysis cannot do, can be done within minutes.”The moment the person withdraws from the mind, the mind has no energy to go on into old routines. It is your identity with the mind that gives power to it. You have taken your identity back, you are no longer nursing the mind; it starts dying.The farther you go away from it, the more and more your mind dies. And to attain a state of no-mind is what I call health. That is the goal of meditation. Then your spirit is healed, you have become whole.And if your spirit is whole then your mind can never go crazy, because you don’t have any mind. You have a brain, you have a memory system, but you are separate from it. You can use it but you cannot be used by it.The ordinary man is being used by his mind. When it becomes too much, when the mind starts using you completely in a totalitarian way, we call it madness.In front of my house in my village there lived a goldsmith - a little eccentric. I used to sit in front of my house, reading, looking at him, and I could see what was his problem. He will be going to the market.he will lock his shop, check his lock two, three times, go a few feet, come back again, check the lock.Sometimes I will meet him in the market and I say, “Have you checked the lock?”And he will say, “My God! I am going back!” - and he will rush back. First he must check his lock.In the middle of his bath in the river, I will say, “What are you doing? Have you checked your lock?” His bath is incomplete and he takes his clothes and runs.One day I saw him on the station, he was going out somewhere. He had purchased the ticket and was just going to sit in the train and I said, “What are you doing? Have you checked your lock?”He said, “My God! You are something! Wherever I go, you are there. Now I cannot go even to this marriage. I was going, but now I cannot go.” He returned the ticket, went back to check his lock - but by that time the train was gone.He became very angry at me, because wherever I will see him I will ask him only one thing: “Have you checked your lock?”By and by it became known to other people and to other children, that there is something strange. Just say to this man, “Have you checked your lock?” and he rushes back towards his home, he does not answer. Strange.!His life became very troubled because the whole city was after him. Wherever he will go - he will be purchasing vegetables and the man who is selling simply asks, “Have you checked your lock?” and he has dropped the idea of vegetables. First he will run half a mile to look at the lock and check it!One day he came to my father and he said, “ This whole thing your son has done. He started it.”But my father said, “Don’t listen to these people. If they say, ‘Have you checked your lock?’ tell them, ‘Yes, I have checked it”‘He said, “That is the problem - because suspicion arises in me: perhaps.I may have checked, I may not have checked. Who knows? I want to say, ‘Yes, I have checked.’ But how can I say it, with that doubt inside me.”My father said, “Then what can I do? My boy is there; whatever you want to do, you can do with him.”And I said, “I have never done anything wrong to you. I have just reminded you in case you have forgotten. You should be grateful to me, thankful to me. And I had been taking such trouble. I go behind you to the river, to the railway station, to the market. I waste so much time just to remind you, ‘Have you checked your lock?’ And you are complaining against me! And I do all this out of compassion.”He said, “Compassion! The whole town is doing it now - out of compassion - and my life has become a nightmare because these people cannot let me do anything. I am milking my cow and somebody is standing there: ‘Have you checked your lock?’ Now I have to stop milking and run to check the lock.”There was nothing else in this man which was mad. If I had not exposed this idea, he would have known as perfectly normal. But now the whole village knew that he is a crackpot.If you watch anybody you can find where his weak point is. It is not that something special has to be found.One of my teachers was very friendly towards me and I was telling him about this goldsmith. He said, “That’s okay.” And where we were standing, just in front was a small shopkeeper, selling all kinds of things. He said, “Can you find something in this man?”I said, “I don’t know him, and he lives so far away from me that it will be difficult for me. But you just wait here; I will go and have a try.”I just went to that storekeeper and stood in front of him. He looked at me, waiting for me to purchase something, but I remained silent. He became a little nervous.He said, “What is the matter?”I said, “Nothing is the matter.”“What do you want?”I said, “Nothing.”He said, “Then why are you standing here?”I said, “This is strange: this is a street - can’t I stand here? Is it your property?”The man started looking busy just to forget me, but I remained standing there. It was all useless what he was doing, I could see that: putting some box here, some box there, and in between looking at me. And finally he again asked, “What is the matter?”I said, “I have told you, there is nothing the matter at all.”“But why are you standing there?”I said, “You can provide me a chair, I can sit. But this is a street - then others will start asking me, ‘On the street, why are you sitting in a chair?’ So better I should stand. You be busy with your work.”He said, “Very strange. I have seen you many times passing by here” - because he was just half way between my house and the school, so every day four times I was passing. “But you have never done such a thing.”I said, “But now I will do it every day.”He said, “What!”“Yes. And I cannot guarantee - others may start doing it too.”He became so afraid, he simply closed his shop and went inside. I came to my teacher, who was waiting. I said, “I have found it! You do only one thing: tomorrow when he opens, you just stand outside. Don’t move. He will ask you, ‘What is the matter?’ You say, ‘Nothing’ He will try to look busy; let him be busy. He will ask again, ‘Why are you standing there?’ You simply say, ‘This is a street, there is no question.”The teacher said, “But he closed the shop!”I said, “You can see - this is not the time for closing the shop but he has closed it.”Next day the teacher was standing there, and I was waiting by the side so the shopkeeper could not see me. The same conversation followed, and the same result - he closed the doors and went in. And then it became known to the whole school. One thousand students - morning, afternoon, day, night, anytime: “You just stand there.”My teacher said, “But this is strange. This man has always been absolutely sane - you have driven him insane.”I said, “But I have not done anything except stand there. There must be something in that man which may have been dormant - some fear, some paranoia; otherwise there was no need. I could have remained standing there. He should have waited; I would have gone - how long can I stand there? And now he will be in constant trouble.”Just within ten days he was in the hospital, hospitalized for his insane behavior closing the shop in the day twenty, thirty times. The other shopkeepers reported, “This man has gone crazy. He opens the shop, closes it immediately, opens it, closes.” Even his customers - as they will approach close to him, he will close the shop. He forgot to make the distinction, “These are my customers.”I went to see him in the hospital. And I was just standing by the side of his bed. He opened his eyes and he said, “My God! You will be coming here too?”I said, “Wherever you go you will find me. You will have to tell me what is the fear? Have I done any harm to you?”He said, “Harm? You destroyed my whole life. My business is finished, I am bankrupt. Nobody comes to my shop - they think I am crazy. And all kinds of hooligans stand in front of my shop and just make me a laughingstock.”But I said, “In the first place, why did you get afraid? I really want to help you because I started this whole thing. Trust me - I don’t want to drive you more nuts, you are nuts already. What was the fear?”And he said, “Perhaps I can say. I should say, it is time. If I don’t say it, then I don’t know what is going to happen to me.”He said, “My father was a very angry man, and he used to force me to stand where you were standing - for hours, sometimes for the whole day - without food, without water. Just a slight mistake on my part and the punishment was to stand there.“The day you stood there, you reminded me of my childhood, and I became as afraid as I used to be afraid of my father. I knew perfectly well that you are not my father, and I am a grown-up man and there is no problem, but something inside me started trembling. I was feeling that I was breaking down. Out of fear I closed the shop.“And then it became a daily routine. Every five, ten minutes I had to close my shop. How can I do business? - closing, opening, closing, opening. Even my customers started laughing, my neighbors started laughing, my wife started laughing, my children started standing outside. Now I am in the hospital, and I don’t know what is my future.”I said, “There is nothing in your future. Just my teacher, who lives behind your house - we were arguing that every man has some trait, some possibility of becoming crazy. And he said, ‘You try it on this man because he is perfectly sane.’ And I had no idea what to do, so I simply stood there. And then when I saw that you were becoming afraid, I thought, ‘I have got the exact point.’ And when you became too much afraid and closed the doors I knew something in your psychology is connected with the situation, and unless that surfaces you can always be made afraid by this.“So forgive me. But there is no need to be afraid. You come back, I will stand in the same place; you simply remain a witness, as if it does not matter. If I decide to stand there, that is my problem. If you can manage that, you will get over it; otherwise this whole town is going to finish you. I have started it, I want to end it.”He looked at me, he felt my sincerity. He came back home; stood on that spot - and we both laughed. He neither asked me why I was standing there, nor did he ask me why I was laughing; nor did I ask him why he was laughing. But with that laughter something disappeared from that man.And then people who had become accustomed to tease him by standing there, started looking stupid, looking silly, because he would simply smile and look at them and would not ask anything. They will stand there a few minutes and then they will be gone.I told him one day, “You do one thing. When somebody is moving away, ask him, ‘Why are you going? Keep standing here a little more!’ Because we have to finish it completely. If you start saying that, then that man will never stand there again.”He followed the advice, and soon, within fifteen days’ time, we cleaned away the whole crowd; nobody was standing there.And he was really grateful to me. Whenever I used to pass the railway station - years later, when I started traveling around the country - he used to always come with a packet of sweets or something to present to me.I said, “Why do you unnecessarily take this trouble, coming two miles to the station?”He said, “You have helped me so much. Since that day I am finished with fear, I am finished with my father. Now I can forgive him. Before that it was impossible, always wanted to kill him; now that idea never arises in me.”Every man is brought up in a society where it is impossible to keep him intact, sane. Hence psychology and other therapies have to do something for every individual. It is not only a question of treating the patients; the whole society is the patient.My idea is, treat the patient, but also every university, every college, every school should run classes, courses, three-month courses, for anybody to join - not particularly for sick people, for everybody - to become more healthy, to become more whole. And meditation should be their base.We can create a society which is basically healthy. Then these insane people will disappear. They are just extremes of the average human being.But I don’t see yet any psychology functioning in the direction of meditation.You have invented some techniques, meditation techniques, and you say that in India there are 112 techniques of meditation. So how to choose what is useful?They are all useful. One can just go through all 112 techniques - which one can do within half an hour, because each technique consists only of two lines. So just go through them, and any technique that strikes you “This is what will be suitable to me” - try it. Or if you find two, three techniques, then try them one by one. Give each a chance.Out of 112 there must be a technique - more than one; one is absolutely certain, but my experience is that more than one will be applicable to every human being. And the easiest way is just to go through, read them, and any technique that suddenly strikes you “This is it!” - give it a try, at least for twenty-one days.If it starts working, then forget everything, other techniques. Go on working on it. It does not matter how many techniques you try. What matters is that you try one technique to its very end, to its ultimate depth. And if you succeed in one technique, then every other technique becomes very easy.If the first technique took six months, the other techniques may take just one week, because now you have reached to the exact point. You know the place, you know the space that meditation creates. This is a different path leading to the same space. And as you try a few other techniques, the time will become less.I have tried all 112 techniques. After trying a dozen techniques, it becomes so easy - the first time, you reach immediately to the space.And then I have developed my own techniques other than these 112, because I saw that for the modern man there are a few problems which are not covered in those 112 techniques. They were written perhaps ten thousand years ago for a totally different kind of mankind, a different kind of culture, different kind of people. The modern man, the contemporary man, has some differences - over ten thousand years it is absolutely inevitable.For example, the Dynamic Meditation is not amongst those 112. It is absolutely necessary for the modern man, although it may not have been at that time. If people are innocent there is no need for Dynamic Meditation. But if people are repressed, psychologically are carrying a lot of burden, then they need catharsis. So Dynamic Meditation is just to help them clean the place. And then they can use any method from the 112. It will not be difficult. If they, right now, directly try, they will fail.I have seen many people trying directly - reaching nowhere, because they are so full of garbage that first it has to be emptied out.Dynamic Meditation is of immense help. All the techniques that I have developed are for the contemporary man, and doing these techniques he will be clean, unburdened, simple, innocent. Perhaps there will be no need to try those techniques. But just for curiosity’s sake you can try one of the techniques, and you will be surprised how quickly you enter into its very innermost core.So first thing is something cathartic, which is absolutely necessary for the contemporary man. And then those silent methods can be used.While you were speaking, this idea came! You say people have to be helped to be awakened, and basically, I think, none of the psychiatric or medical techniques are awakening the self. So how is it possible to create meditation courses if somebody is not awakened to lead those meditation courses?It is not much of a problem. Even a man who has no cancer himself can be an expert in cancer surgery. You don’t ask the surgeon, “Do you have any personal experience? Have you gone through cancer surgery?” No, he has just expertise, no experience, but his expertise can be used to give you an experience.So it is not a question. If somebody has gone into meditation it is tremendously helpful to help others, because they will bring many problems, and if you have no experience it will be difficult for you to solve their problems. But you can make it clean and clear to them, “I have not experienced anything but I know the whole method. I can teach you the method, you can try it.”The method can be taught even through a tape recorder, a cassette. Not even a man is needed, just a cassette can be played and people can meditate accordingly. Of course, the cassette will not be able to answer your questions, but in fact there is no need to answer any questions. If you continue to meditate, those questions disappear by themselves.So it is not an absolute necessity that only a man who knows meditation existentially can be a teacher.Teachers and masters are different things. The teacher is one who technically is an expert, who knows the method but has no experience. The master is one who has the experience, who can even create methods, who can change old methods, who can make new methods, who can answer your questions. To have a master is a benediction, but that is difficult: many will have to be satisfied with teachers. But even through a teacher you can become a master. This is the miracle. It has happened many times that the master was not enlightened but the disciple became enlightened. The master was simply an expert about every step in detail. He taught the method and the disciple followed it - and reached to that experience which the teacher himself was missing.The teacher only gives information: the master can give transformation. But if transformation is not available, then something is better than nothing. So even a teacher is good, rather than having no idea of what meditation is. Perhaps the teacher, seeing the disciples flowering, becoming blissful, silent, may start himself moving beyond knowledge into the world of existential experiencing. There is no harm anyway.Right now you cannot find so many masters, but one master can create thousands of teachers immediately. Masters cannot be created. It is something that is unpredictable. It may happen to someone., and even then, if somebody becomes enlightened it is not necessary that he will be able to become a master - or even a teacher. He may know, but he may not be articulate enough to lead others to the same experience. That is a different art.It was easy for me to speak because I started speaking before I became enlightened. Speaking became almost a natural thing to me before I became enlightened.I have never learned any oratory, never been to any school where oratory is taught. I have never even read a book on the art of speaking. From my very childhood, because I was argumentative and everybody wanted me to keep silent. In the family, in the school, in the college, in the university, everybody was saying to me, “Don’t speak at all!”I was expelled from many colleges for the simple reason that teachers were complaining that they could not complete the syllabus, the course for the year, because “this student leads us into such arguments that nothing can be completed.”But all that gave me great opportunity and made me more and more articulate. It became just a natural thing to me to argue with the neighbors, to argue with the teachers, to argue on the street - anywhere. Just to find a man was enough and I will start some argument.It was needed?I loved it - there was no question of need - just the way I love it now! So when I became enlightened it was not difficult for me. It was very easy.So everybody is not necessarily going to be a master or a teacher. That is a totally different art.For example, enlightenment does not make you a poet. There have been a few enlightened people who have written immensely beautiful poetry, but they were poets. Even if they had not become enlightened they would have been great poets; poetry was something inborn in them. They became enlightened - that was a different phenomenon. They used their poetic abilities to express their enlightenment.There have been painters who became enlightened. Then certainly their painting has a quality which no other painter can compete with. It is luminous with something mysterious. They have poured into the canvas something which only they can. Some enlightened people become.became sculptors. Their sculpture is something to sit silently and meditate upon. They were not just creating art, they were using art to express the inexpressible. The way I am using words, they were using marble, stones, paints.But thousands of enlightened people have lived on the earth and died silently because they did not have any talent to make their enlightenment available to other people in some way.And there have been teachers who were not enlightened but many of their disciples became enlightened. These teachers had the articulateness of expressing something which they don’t know, they have just heard about.You will be surprised to know that every Buddhist scripture starts with the words, “I have heard.” It is written by a teacher, not by a master - every scripture. Buddha has not written anything. He was a master. Ananda, his disciple, who goes on writing, is very sincere. He simply goes on writing every scripture with the words, “I have heard Gautama the Buddha saying this.” He does not say, “This is my experience” - he cannot say it. But he was very articulate. He managed to collect tremendous treasure for centuries to come. Many have become enlightened through Ananda and his scriptures, but he himself became enlightened only after Buddha’s death.And then comes a second surprise. When he became enlightened, he never spoke. Asked why, he said, “That will be ungrateful towards the master. I cannot say things the way he could. I cannot put the same fragrance in my words, the way he was capable of. It is better for me to remain silent now. All that is worth saying he has said, and I have collected it.”But when he collected it, he was not enlightened. And when he became enlightened he declined to write anything, to say anything, for the simple reason, “It will be sheer ungratefulness to the master and it will be cheap compared to him. He has showered such a treasure and I am a poor man: whatever I say will not stand any comparison. I know now what he knew, but he was he and I am I. I am still just a disciple.”Okay?Thank you.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 22 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Deva Bhaskar, Correio Brasiliense, BrazilOsho,Almost two months ago I made the interview too for Brazilian newspaper, and that interview has provoked a state of shock there. One week after the publication, the same newspaper made interviews with priests, intellectuals and homosexuals. All were against your statements. I brought some of the reactions and I would like you to comment.Father Domingos, one of the most important and progressive priests in Brazil, said, “Mr. Osho is proposing joy. Is it enough for being happy to have good house and good food? And how to liberate the spirit?”He is also saying that you don’t have good informations and that you don’t know the work of the church with the poor, and especially the pope’s statement which says, “Wherever is private property there is human misery, and the church have to fight against it.”There are so many things in that statement.First, the church has private properties. So what the nonsense he is talking about? The first thing the churches should do, they should disown private properties if they mean business. Otherwise this is bullshit.Rome has the most richest private ownership than anybody else, and pope is the head of the biggest private empire. What kind of service they are doing to the poor? They are creating poverty in the world. Being against birth control, being against abortion, being against the pill, they are creating poverty, more population than the earth is capable to support. This is the service to the poor?You create the poor and then you serve the poor.In the first place, why create the poor? There is no need for poverty in the world. If the church drops its stupidity against birth control methods, the poverty can disappear. But they would not drop that. Not that any spiritual thing is involved in it, but for the simple reason that if there are not poor people, whom they are going to convert into Christianity? Whom they are going to make Catholics?They need orphans, they need beggars, they need starving people because only they can be converted.In India I have looked for almost half a century for a single rich man who has been converted to Christianity. I have not found. All the people who have been converted to Christianity are the poor people.Poverty is their whole game - power game. Greater the number, bigger is their power. It is simply the politics of numbers.Secondly, service to the poor is very necessary for the Christian. If there is nobody who is poor, then you cannot go to heaven, you cannot be a saint. Your whole base of the religion disappears. The poor is a must. He should exist because only stepping on the shoulders of the poor people you are going to become a saint, you are going to reach to heaven and be rewarded by God.But if everybody is comfortable, happy, luxurious, who needs your service? And without service there is no Christianity. The whole Christianity depends on the idea of service: service is religion.If service is religion, then the poor, the sick, the old - they are absolutely needed. Without them the whole edifice of religion will disappear.And he is saying to me that I do not know.I have lived in one of the most poor countries of the world and I have seen how the poor people are being exploited by the Christians.They are exploited by the Christians, they are exploited by the communists. Very strange bedfellows, Christians and communists. Kremlin and Vatican together. Pope the Polack sleeping with Josef Stalin.The communist needs poor people. Without the poor his revolution dies. They both need the poor.I want to destroy poverty. And to destroy the poverty, the first thing is to destroy the idea that poverty is something spiritual. It is not.Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor because they shall inherit the kingdom of God.”I say to you, “Cursed are the poor because they have already inherited the kingdom of the devil.”Why give them hopes which cannot be fulfilled, promises which cannot be kept? All these hopes and promises prove only opium to the people and nothing else.So the first thing is that poverty has nothing spiritual about it. It is nothing blessed. It is a curse, because when you think poverty as something spiritual, blessed, God-given, how you are going to destroy it? It seems very contradictory.Mahatma Gandhi in India was telling that the poor are the children of God. That means God is looking very well after his children. And who are the rich? Children of devil? Then I think it is better to choose devil as your father than God. He is looking far better after his children.On the one hand Mahatma Gandhi says the poor are the children of God and poverty is something spiritual. And on the other hand he wants poverty to disappear.I see a contradiction there. Do you want spirituality to disappear? Do you want God’s children to disappear?And what Mahatma Gandhi is saying is nothing but pure Christianity. He was ninety percent Christian. In his life, at least four times he was on the verge of becoming a Christian. He was constantly thinking of becoming a Christian for the simple reason because no other religion teaches service to the poor.The first thing to me is to withdraw the idea that poverty has something divine in it.The second thing, the poor person has to be made clear that most of his poverty is created by himself.Rich people produce very few children. It is the poor who go on creating children by dozens. And the spiritual teachers of all religions help them to produce children by dozens.These people are serving the poor or creating more and more poverty, making the world more and more poor?So the second thing is that the poor should understand their responsibility. For thirty years, total birth control - no children. That will be true service.Thirdly, the poor are in the grip of the priests of different religions. They may give them different explanations. For example, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, they say, “You are poor because in your past life you committed grave crimes. This is the result of it. The theory of karma. You have to suffer it. It is better to be finished with it; suffer it silently, patiently, without any complaint and without any grudge so that in the future life you are not born poor.Now, this is a very great strategy to distract the mind of the poor from the social structure, the economic structure which makes him poor and give him a phony explanation for which no proof exists, no evidence. And a simple logic is enough to destroy it and its credibility.You put your hand in the fire. Will it burn now or in the next life?Action certainly brings its consequence, but it is connected. It is not disconnected and so far away that one death has to happen between. There seems to be no reason why.You do something good, you should be rewarded now. No. In the next life you will be reaping a great crop of joy, happiness, comfort, luxury - but in the next life.Strange. What is the connection? Why the consequence should be so delayed?Nobody knows about the next life. Nobody knows about the previous life. That gives the priest a good ground to deceive the poor.The reality is that he is economically exploited right now. So his eyes have to be taken away from the past, away from the future, and focused in the present. He has to fight for his rights now. He produces and somebody else enjoys the fruit. And the priests go on helping him to remain patient.No.I cannot say that. Enough is enough. Some impatience is needed. Some revolution is needed.And the poor has to revolt.And the church has been nothing but a protection for the rich. It is using the poor in two ways: making its number bigger by serving the poor, opening the hospitals, schools, so making his bank balance in the other world better, and, secondly, he is protecting the rich. And because he is protecting the rich, the rich are pouring their riches into the churches.From where all these riches have accumulated in the Vatican? From the poor people or from the God? Who gives all these donations to the Vatican? All these big cathedrals, churches in thousands around the world - who creates them? And for what purpose?The rich people bribe the church because church is a very great protection against revolution.I want to destroy poverty completely, but with the poverty the church will die together. It has no place at all anywhere.The poor should stop producing more population and should put their whole energy not in future lives in paradises but fighting for their right, because they produce and somebody else goes on becoming richer and richer. They go on producing and they go on becoming poorer and poorer.Strange kind of economy.This economy has to be changed.But the church has no place then, because whom will it protect? Revolution will burn this social economy and these churches and temples and mosques and all their bogus ideologies.I do not respect poverty. I respect wealth.And I say blessed are the rich because theirs is the kingdom of God - right now. It is not a question of tomorrow.And wealth has not been understood well. Wealth is a creation. Everybody is not a Henry Ford just as everybody is not a Picasso.You respect Picasso for his genius, because he paints in such a unique way that only he can do it. But you never bother to give some respect to Henry Ford. He also creates something which is far more important than Picasso’s paintings. He creates wealth.Man can live without Picasso’s paintings. Man cannot live without wealth. And Picasso’s paintings can be purchased. But wealth has to be produced, you cannot purchase it.If the population of the earth can be reduced to one-fourth of what it is now - and what it is now is the responsibility of all these idiots: bishops, cardinals, priests, popes.For thirty years I have been talking about birth control. It has brought me only condemnation. Stones have been thrown at me, poison has been given to me, knives has been thrown at me, efforts to kill me has been made. That was my reward because I was talking about birth control and the priests became alerted.In thirty years time India has doubled its population. When I had started talking it was only four hundred million. Today it is eight hundred million. If they had listened to me, they would not have been poor. Only fifty percent of the country is poor. That means these four hundred million people that have increased have made the country poor.But I was condemned in the name of morality, in the name of God, that I am teaching something immoral, that if people start using birth control methods then there is a possibility of immorality spreading.I had encountered Hindu priests, Jaina priests, Buddhist priests, and I asked them, “Then your moral people are not very moral. Then it is just the fear that if they make love to some other woman than their own wife and she becomes pregnant, they will be caught. They will be in trouble. So it is only the fear that is keeping them moral. This is not morality. If they are really moral, birth control methods cannot make them immoral. There is no reason.”And they had no answer to it.They were using the name of God, that God is giving birth to children. And I am teaching people to prevent children. That means I am against God.I had an encounter with one of the shankaracharyas, the equivalent of pope to the Hindus. I asked him that, “What are the basic qualities of God?”He said, “That is irrelevant for the subject we are discussing.”I said, “It is not irrelevant. If you are not courageous to say because you are afraid, you will be caught into it. I will say - that all your scriptures give God three qualities: that he is omnipotent, all-powerful; omniscient, all-knowing - past, present, future; omnipresent, everywhere present. If God has these qualities and he can make this whole universe from nothing.”Because there was nothing. In Hindu scriptures God makes the universe out of nothing. Naturally, they have to accept that position because if there was something already then God is not a creator. Maybe a contractor. If he has to be a creator, then there must not be anything: no matter. Out of nothing he creates this whole immense universe.“Do you accept it?”He said, “Yes, I accept it.”I said, “Such a God. Cannot he remove a small pill? If a man is using a condom, cannot he make a small hole in it?”Omnipotent God, just needs a little safety pin. And he is all-present, everywhere. Even in your bedroom while you are making love he is just between you and your beloved. He can make all your condoms punctured before you use them.“So why you should be afraid? He cannot even make a small hole in the condom. He cannot change the quality of a small pill. And you still want to call him omnipotent, all-powerful? Then drop these qualities. And if you want to keep these qualities, then drop your argument against me, that I am telling people to do something against God.“The other quality of God is that he knows everything. So whether the person is going to use birth control methods or not, he knows from eternity - before this person was even born. He knows that he will use birth control methods. It is not out of his knowledge.“And if he wanted, he could have prevented the scientist who created the pill. It is such a small thing. Just before he was going to create it, his heart would have stopped - and there would have been no pill and no problem.“If God has allowed the pill to happen, birth control methods to be manufactured, it is according to his will. You are talking against God, I am not talking against God.”But the problem is poor illiterate, uneducated people. They cannot understand subtleties of arguments.If they had listened to me, India would not have been poor now.If they still listen to me, India can recover from poverty. Otherwise, by the end of this century, India’s population will be one billion. It will have gone beyond China. For the first time in the history it will be the biggest, the largest populated country in the world. Otherwise it has always been number two. China has been number one.Poverty can be stopped, but not by service. How long Christians have been serving the poor? Two thousand years. And the poverty has been increasing. Strange kind of service, that you go on serving the poor and the poor go on increasing.A true service will be that the poor decrease and disappear.My suggestions are very simple.Create one world. Nations are outdated.Create one world government, because unless there is one world government the fear of war will always remain. And war goes on taking seventy-five percent income of every nation. Every nation is just surviving on twenty-five percent of its income.Just think if hundred percent income is available to the country, it will change the whole face. Poverty need not be there.One government, one world - then there is no need for nuclear weapons. Then there is no need for having big armies. It is sheer foolishness that millions of people are just sitting unproductively, doing nothing, just polishing their guns. Every morning doing the march: left turn, right turn, forward, backward. Polishing their boots.And it is not one or two person. Millions of people around the world.All these people should be working, producing.And they are given the best food, best clothes. They are given the best hospitals, the best doctors, best surgeons, best medicine. They are to be kept in perfect health because any moment they may be needed for war.So these useless people are getting the best and doing nothing.One world means there is no need for such big armies. Maybe a small police force is enough - just for hooligans, Mafia, small gangs of criminals. But there is no need for nuclear weapons, atomic plants, and no need for millions of people simply go on polishing their guns.The poverty can be so easily eradicated. If we can create one world government, then we can create the World Academy of Sciences. So all the scientists of the world, who are right now in the service of death, can be put in the service of life.There is no need to go to the moon. When the earth is starving, you are wasting billions of dollars to go to the moon - for what?Whenever I think the first man standing on the moon, I always think he must have thought, “What the hell I am doing here? It is good that nobody is seeing. Otherwise I must be looking silly. There is nothing to see.”And so much effort, so much science, so much technology for something utterly useless.A world academy of sciences will put all the efforts into producing better food, more food, better fruits, new fruits. In Soviet Russia they have done some crossbreeding between fruits: apple crossbreed with lemon. A new fruit which has never been in existence, with a new taste.You can create thousands of new fruits, new crops, new food.You can make this earth a paradise without any difficulty. All that is needed that the worship of death should be stopped. The possibility of war should be completely eliminated. The humanity is one, hence there is no question of war.National governments can exist, but they will be only functional because they won’t have any armies. They will be just like post office, railway board.Nobody cares who is the head postmaster general. There is no need to know about him. All that is needed is that you receive your post in right time. It is a functional thing.As nations lose their war machines, politicians lose their significance. They should disappear from the first pages of newspapers, televisions, radios. They have no need to be there. Those pages should be given to the creators: musicians, poets, people who have done something to make life more richer, more glorious - mystics, those who have opened doors of new mysteries of consciousness.Right now everything is simply insane.And it can be put right very easily. Only the intelligentsia of the world has to stand up courageously and say that, “Now it is time. That we don’t want any nations. That we don’t want any passports and we don’t want any visas. This whole earth is ours.”There are countries where people are dying without food. In America thirty million people are dying by overeating. Now, this is incomprehensible. These thirty million people in a world which is dying with hunger are simply psychologically sick.And they are also dying, because they are eating too much.You will find these people always near the freeze, always something or other. Either they are drinking something.if nothing, then they are chewing gum. Just mad people.I cannot conceive anybody chewing gum. And these people are educated people, have educational degrees, maybe professors in the universities - and chewing gum! They should be hospitalized. Chewing gum cannot be forgiven! I have compassion for all, but not for people who are chewing gum. Compassion cannot be stretched that far. Just their mouth has to continue, go on doing something.And they are perfectly aware that people are eating. They don’t have even water to drink. For four years there has been no rains in Ethiopia so all water has evaporated.In Europe they drowned millions of tons of oranges in the ocean - just few days before - because keeping them in the market was lowering the price. Just to drown them, they had to waste one hundred thousand dollars - just to throw them in the ocean. And nearby in Ethiopia people are dying with thirst.If the world is one, this cannot happen. Then wherever, whatever is needed will be moved. If there are too many oranges in Europe, they should be moved to Ethiopia. If there is too much wheat in Russia.There was a time when there was too much wheat, that they were burning wheat in the railway trains instead of coal. People are dying around the world, but in Russia they are burning wheat because that is cheaper than burning coal.In one world this will be absurd.There are countries where is so much coal you can take coal to Russia. Wheat can move to countries where it is needed.Now Russia is almost one-sixth land of the whole world, but the population is only two hundred million. More people can be absorbed there. Sixth part of the land, and the world population is four billion, and they are only two hundred million.They talk about friendship with India. They should take at least two hundred million Indians to Soviet Union.They have such a vast land. It is because of their vast land that all the conquerors who have tried to conquer Russia failed.Napoleon Bonaparte failed because the land is so big, by the time you reach Moscow winter comes - and a winter which only Russians can survive.The same happened to Adolf Hitler. The same stupidity he committed. And the same was the result. Russia simply was trying to postpone, playing hide-and-seek, waiting for winter to come. And once winter sets in, then nobody can survive. All your vehicles stop, your planes no more function. Everything becomes frozen. Your people have never seen such cold. Their blood seems to be frozen.You cannot win, for the simple reason, the land is so big that whatsoever you do. It spreads from one corner of Europe to almost the other corner of Asia. It covers two continents.If there is one world government, it will be very simple to divide population, to help people move, to make it possible for crossbreeding, to mix races - because better children are produced.Farther away are the parents, the best is the product. It is true about trees, it is true about animals, it is true about man. It is not good to go on getting married in the same small community. It gives retarded children, it gives blind children, it gives at the most normally stupid children - which make the majority of humanity. Just normally stupid.This whole scene can be changed. All that is needed is intelligent people of the world should stand up, because it is a cause for which no sacrifice is big enough.My idea of serving the poor is not the idea of Christians. They have served enough, and nothing has happened.And my people don’t want to go to heaven anyway. So that is no more a motivation. And my peoples understand it, that it is their responsibility. Why they have been continually producing children? For their responsibility.Why we are to destroy our own growth, our own silence, our own way of life? They don’t listen to us. They listen to the priests.Then they should ask the priests that, “Ask your God. He gives the children. Now he should give bread, he should give butter and he should give other things too.”Otherwise, hang your priests in every church.What is the need of keeping Jesus Christ statue hanging there? Hang a real priest in every church! These are the criminals.On the front of the Vatican, hang the pope, because these are the people who have been teaching you wrong things, and they have led you into this situation.My people want to live happily, and if you want to learn to live happily you will have to learn the ways my people are living. If these people can be happy, if these people can be without children for four years, then what is the problem?If for four years these five thousand people were also producing children, here also we would have been really poor. But we have understood that we don’t want to be poor, then don’t increase the population.It has been asked to me again and again, “Then how You are going to increase Your commune?”I said, “What is the need of increasing it? And if there is any need, we purchase ready-made clothes.”They say, “What do You mean?”I say, “There are ready-made people already all around the world. Others are producing. We can pick up from anywhere. There is no need for us to produce.If we need people, people are all over the world too much. We can invite. We can choose.When you give birth to a child, you cannot choose. You don’t know whether he will be crippled, blind, paralyzed - who knows what? It is better if our commune has more than its needs and feels that we can bring few children. There are so many orphans in the world - choose the best. Adopt them.But we are not going in the same way to serve them. Let the Christians do it. It is not my philosophy. It is not my responsibility.Still the same priest. He is asking if Mr. Osho has calluses on his hands. And more, he asks, “Mr. Osho, have you been hungry? Have you been crying your life? Did you love anyone in your life?”I have never been hungry. And I have intelligence enough to provide food for myself even though for thirty years I don’t have a single cent with me. But I live the way only an emperor can live.And my hands have done never anything. These are the most bourgeois hands in the whole world. But they are very expressive. All that they do, they speak.And there are many things which I cannot say, but my hands can say. That’s the only work they have done. And I think they have done it beautifully.And I am perfectly proud of it. It has been my creation. Every gesture is creative.As for loving, I have loved more people than anybody else in the whole history of man. And I have received love also in the same way, more than anybody else in the whole history of man.And I don’t see why people should be hungry. They are hungry because they have been following stupid teachings of Jesus Christ. They are hungry because they are following still the moral code five thousand years old written by Manu in India. All kinds of garbage they are carrying as holy and trying to follow it, which deprives them.For example, in India Mohammedans are the second biggest community after Hindus, but they are very poor. I was continuously wondering what is the reason that all the Mohammedans in the whole country - and India has the biggest number of Mohammedans than any country. Although it is not a Mohammedan country, but it has the biggest number of Mohammedans than any other country. Why they are all poor?And as I looked into their scriptures, I found the reason. The reason was that they have been prohibited by Prophet Mohammed that interest is a sin, so never give money on interest, one thing. Never take money on interest.This is the reason they are poor, because they cannot take money on interest and they cannot give money on interest. And the whole economy functions on interest. You take money from the bank on interest, you take loan from the government on interest, but they cannot take it. It is sin.Am I responsible for it? Should I go and serve them?If they are hungry and poor, this is one reason.The second reason, Mohammed has given them the opportunity that they can marry four women. If one woman marries four men, that will be very helpful in reducing the world population. One woman can marry as many men as she wants, there is no harm. It will not create more poverty because she can give only birth to one child. How many husbands she has makes no difference.But one man and four women is a dangerous thing. Now that man can have four children every year. So Mohammedans are having more children than anybody in India. Naturally, every man goes on dividing his poverty into so many children, they all end up almost like beggars.They cannot do anything, they cannot be well educated because the money is not there. They have to do very unskilled work which cannot pay much. Now who is responsible for this?And why Mohammedan priests go on telling them to marry four women? Because that increases the number of Mohammedans. That’s how they have become the second biggest religion in the world. Christianity is first, Mohammedanism is second. And if they continue creating children with four wives, any day they can surpass Christianity.Their only problem is how to find four women, because nature produces in a very balanced way: almost the equal number of men and women. They will rape some woman.Now, Hindus will not accept a woman back if she has been raped by a Mohammedan. Hindus think they are the purest race. Now that woman has fallen. The Mohammedan has to marry her.If a Mohammedan falls in love with a Hindu woman, she has to marry the Mohammedan.So they have to search in every possible way for as many women as they can manage. And because they have four women, the men become lazy. They start living on women’s labor.Now, the women are illiterate. What they can do? They can do cleaning or things like that. But four women can manage at least one lazy man. So men become lazy, women are burdened with work, with children, and poverty goes on growing.My approach is very simple. I trust in man’s intelligence, and if people put their intelligence together.For example, five thousand people are here. If they were living in the old way, the family way, then there would have been at least one thousand families. One thousand kitchens. One thousand women unnecessarily engaged in kitchen, cleaning, washing clothes, bringing up children.And naturally, a woman who has nothing else than just to keep up the house somehow together becomes irritated, annoyed, angry, because she has no scope for her own growth. She has no sky to fly. And her whole anger becomes arrowed towards the husband. So directly or indirectly she is nagging. She becomes a pain in the neck - literally. But she is not responsible.Every family is miserable. Children are a torture. They are a continuous nuisance. She has to keep up with those children the whole day. And the whole day she is burning, boiling inside. And this man, her husband, is responsible for this all. Naturally there is continuous fight, continuous quarrel. Life is not a joy, and poverty is bound to be there.In this commune families have dissolved.I am against families because family is the unit of the nation, of the society, of the church. If family dissolves there cannot be any congregation, there cannot be any nation, there cannot be any church.Five thousand people can be taken care of by one kitchen far more efficiently, in a far better way. And only very few people are involved in the work.Few people can take care of the whole commune’s laundry. There is no need for them to worry about it. Few people can take care of the cleaning of the whole commune.Economically it saves much. Economically money becomes irrelevant. In the commune there is no transfer of money. There is no need. Clothes we purchase wholesale for five thousand people. Naturally they are cheaper than anybody can purchase. Everything that is needed we purchase wholesale: medicine, shoes. It is cheaper.And whatever is saved can make the commune more comfortable.And because the family is dissolved, the barriers between people are no more there. Five thousand people feel almost as one organic unity.They work for themselves. They work hard because they know they are working for themselves. If they are making houses, they are making for themselves.In the outside world everybody is working for somebody else. That makes work a burden, a necessity, a slavery. You have to work because you need money.Here you work because you want your commune to live more comfortably, have all modern equipments available.The world has passed the family. It is unnecessarily hanging around and keeping people poor.Cities should be divided into communes, not in families, and every commune should look after itself. And everything should be common.It is just a question of little intelligence, not a question of service to the poor.And we have enough intelligent people around the world who can manage it. And they will have to manage it, otherwise we cannot survive. Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 23 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Swami Dharma Bodhi, Die Neue Zeitung, GermanyOsho,Somehow I feel that this rather intellectual magazine which I represent needs some fun. You are the only and first master with a chance to work on a planetary scale, using modern communication systems. Do you like scandals as a means of publicity?Certainly.This is the first community with a lot of fun and enjoyment, albeit even fascist fun. Is fun a better device for transformation than seriousness?Seriousness is sickness, it is not a device. It leads to death, not to eternal life. Life is playfulness, fun, because the whole existence is a tremendous circus. It is all fun - all the colors of the flowers, so many beautiful animals, birds, clouds, and for no purpose; they don’t serve any purpose. There is no goal to life. Life is a play unto itself. It is sheer abundance of energy, overflowing energy - existence goes on expanding.No God has created it, because whenever something is created there is purpose. Whenever something is created there is a motive, and when somebody creates it, the created can never be anything other than a machine. Existence has no use as such, it remains eternal, an eternal play of energies in millions of forms.Fun is the most sacred word, far more sacred than prayer. It is the only word that can give you a sense of playfulness, can make you again a child. You can start running after butterflies, searching for seashells on the beach, colored stones.In my own childhood, my tailor had much trouble with me. He was the best tailor in the town, but he said, “You are the worst customer” because I asked him to make as many pockets as possible. He said, “But people will laugh at me.”I said, “I am not going to tell anybody that you are my tailor. Make as many pockets as possible, because I have to collect so many things, so many shells, so many stones, so many flowers.” My mother had great trouble every night to unload my pockets, and she will say again and again, “Have you ever thought what is the purpose of all this?” And I always answered, I remember, that, “As far as purpose is concerned, what is the purpose of your giving birth to me? What is the purpose of getting married? What is the purpose of the whole day working from four o’clock early in the morning till twelve in the night? What is the purpose? So don’t ask the question about purpose. You enjoy what you are doing, I enjoy what I am doing. That is your play, this is my play. I love these stones, that’s enough. More than that is not needed.”Life has intrinsic value, there is no goal outside it. Hence my whole effort is to change everything into playfulness. To me that is real spirituality.What to give children nowadays, so that they can be as playful as you have been?It all depends on them. Nobody was allowing me, I took the liberty and the responsibility, and the consequences. I was punished, but I took the punishment as part of the play; I enjoyed so much that the punishment did not mean anything. And when my family started understanding me a little more, they stopped punishing me; they said, “It is useless.” When my teachers started understanding me, they said, “It is difficult to punish you,” because they will say, “Sit down and stand up for ten times,” and I will ask, “Can I do it thirty times?” And the teacher will say, “Are you crazy? I am punishing you for being late! It is not a reward, and you are asking thirty times!” I said, “I don’t care about your punishment; I can change it into a reward, you cannot stop me. In fact, this morning I have not done any exercise. Just be compassionate, let me do it thirty times.”They will tell me, “Go round the school one dozen times.” I will say, “That’s great. I love to run, to jog, for miles. So a dozen times is insulting.” They said, “What?” I said, “Yes, it is insulting. Tell me, ‘Go round the school the whole day.’ I love the field, I love the trees, I love the sun, I love the wind. And I hate your dismal class and your face and your blackboard.”Finally they stopped punishing me, because it was useless. If somebody takes punishment as playfulness, reward, what can you do with that man? Everybody has to understand that. But life will not allow you - by life I mean the society around you. The people who are purposive, utilitarian, always ask, “For what? What is the goal? What is the motive?” And if you cannot answer, then you are mad.Just doing anything for its own sake.Only a few artists have been courageous enough to say that art is for art’s sake, but nobody listened to them. They were saying something of eternal value. It is not only art which is for art’s sake: love is also for love’s sake, friendship is also for friendship’s sake. In life everything has its own intrinsic value, no ulterior motive. That changes you completely. You are no longer running for some goal; you are already there. Each moment you are at home. There is nowhere to go, nothing to be achieved, no ambition to be fulfilled. Each moment is a fulfillment unto itself.And I call this kind of life authentic, real, spiritual. The moment motive enters in, you are a businessman. You have lost track of the mysterious; you have fallen into the mundane, into the marketplace, where everything can be purchased and sold. But there is a space within you where nothing can be purchased, nothing can be sold, yet tremendous experiences are waiting for you - invaluable, with no price tag on them.When I say fun is the most sacred word in human language, all this is implied in it.But isn’t there in this place inside of everybody, and the fun - isn’t there this heap of unconscious fear? I feel when you were a boy, you were so awake, or so aware, that it’s difficult for the children now who, I feel even in this commune, are still full of fear, of violence, of difficulties. How can we get rid of this fear and have fun, and enjoy ourselves more?Fear is not natural, it has been created. It has been imposed on you by the parents, the priests, the teachers. Everybody you have come in contact with has been imposing fear on you, because fear is the antithesis of freedom. The more fear you have in you, the less is the possibility of freedom. The more fear is there, the less is the possibility of rebellion.The society, the church, the state, all want everybody to be in a state of constant fear: fear of the known, fear of the unknown, fear of death, fear of hell, fear of missing heaven, fear of not making your name in the world, fear of just being a nobody. Everybody around you from the very birth is creating fear. No child is born with fear. Every child is born with freedom, doubt, rebellion, individuality, innocence - all great qualities. But he is helpless, dependent.But when you are grown up, you can see - you can try to peel the onion layer by layer - how fears have been created in you, how gullible you have been, how people have exploited your innocence. The priest had no knowledge of God, yet he deceived you and pretended that he knows God. He had no idea of heaven and hell, yet he forced you to be afraid of hell, to be ambitious for heaven. He created greed, he created fear. He himself was a victim of other people. Now you can look back: your father was not aware what he was teaching, what he was telling to you.Everybody has been pretending to their children. All are hypocrites. But the problem is that when you are grown up, you have your children, you have your younger brothers, sisters, and now you are afraid that if you don’t play the game of being a hypocrite yourself, what will happen to these children?.Because that is the only game you know, and you don’t have the guts to say, “I know nothing.” The first thing, to drop fear, is to accept the fact, “I know nothing.”Just yesterday I received a letter from the president of the Atheist’s Association of America - she seems to be an old woman. She is very much impressed with my declaration that there is no God, that religion is dead, that man is mature enough and needs no religion, no God. So she has written in great praise: “You are the first man who has such courage. I would like to meet you. I want to come and share thoughts with you. I am an atheist, the founder of the atheist movement in America and in other countries, even in India.” She is the founder.I told my secretary to write to the old woman and say that, “You are welcome to come, but you must be made aware of a few things. First I am not an atheist. If there is no God, the theist is as stupid as the atheist. Both are idiots, wasting their time on something which is not there. And the theist can be forgiven; at least he believes that God is there. You believe there is no God, and your whole life you have devoted to preaching that there is no God. What have you gained out of it? If there is no God - finished! Why should you be an atheist?”Have you looked into the word “atheist”? It contains “theist”; it is only a reaction. Just think, if all theisms disappear, what will happen to atheists? They will have to die. They will lose all the excitement of denying God, because nobody is proposing the exists. I am not an atheist. The theist knows not, but believes. The atheist also knows not, but believes.Have you really searched every nook and corner of existence and found that there is no God? Forget about every nook and corner of existence - have you searched within yourself? Your atheism is just an ideology, a negative belief. I am not an atheist, so you have to come here knowing perfectly well that I will not support you. Thirdly, I teach the state of no-mind, so there is no question of exchanging thoughts. If you are willing to exchange silence, I am ready.”People are very strange: they move from one extreme into another extreme. If they drop fear of one thing, they will immediately catch hold of fear of something else. But they will not drop fear as such, for the simple reason that to drop fear as such means giving yourself total freedom. And total freedom is risky, it is dangerous; one does not know where it will lead. And freedom brings with it responsibility: only you are responsible, whatever you do. The man who fears God has a certain consolation that whatever happens, happens through the will of God; he is not responsible.In India they say, “Even a leaf of a tree moves only if God wants to move it.” So even the murderer is not really responsible, he is simply doing what God wants to do. That’s the whole teaching in the Gita of Krishna, and the Gita is worshipped by Hindus and even by non-Hindus, and one cannot believe.even people like Mahatma Gandhi, who pretend to be non-violent, call the Gita their mother. Gandhi used to say that Hindus and Mohammedans are one. I was not more than seventeen when I wrote him a letter and asked him, “If Hindus and Mohammedans are one, if the Gita is your mother, what about the holy Koran ? Is the holy Koran your father?” He was so angry - his son was my friend and he told me that he simply threw the letter out the window. Ramdas, his son, told him, “What he is asking is relevant. If you can call the Gita your mother, if you cannot call the Koran your father you can call it, step-father, uncle - but some relationship has to be there: otherwise how are Hindus and Mohammedans one?” I never received any letter. Ramdas informed me, “You will never receive any answer.”I wrote Gandhi another letter: “On the one hand you say you are non-violent, and on the other hand you worship the Gita, which teaches simply violence and nothing else.” The whole book is a teaching for violence. Krishna, to his disciple, Arjuna, is teaching, “You go to the war, fight, because that’s what is the will of God, because without his will nothing happens. So if this big war is happening, it cannot happen without his will.” Krishna tries in every way to persuade Arjuna. Arjuna argues, but he is not a great logician; otherwise, it was so simple.If I was in his place, I would have simply got out of the chariot and walked towards the forest, and told him, “This is what God wills. What can I do? I am simply following his will. Nobody can do anything against his will, so if I am going to the forest to meditate and not to fight, it is his responsibility.” There was no need for any argument. And the whole Gita is just an argument: Arjuna trying to argue or nonviolence and Krishna imposing violence because God wants it. His sole argument is, “You should surrender to God’s will and do whatever he wants.” Arjuna must have been stupid. I would have accepted in the very beginning - there would have been no need for the Gita - that “You are right, I surrender. And now I will do only that which God wants.” And I would have walked into the forest.I was amazed that Gandhi was reading this Gita every morning, chanting, explaining to his disciples the meaning of it - and it is nothing but an argument of a very stupid kind. Then Adolf Hitler is not wrong: if God wants him to kill ten million people, what can the poor man do?But if you have love for your master, don’t you then do what he wants you to do, especially in his presence?If you love your master, you will certainly let him do what he wants to do. But if he is a master he will not make you do anything that goes against your freedom, that goes against your growth. And if he does anything like that, that simply proves that he is a hypocrite, not a master.Krishna is a hypocrite, not a master, because what he is trying to do is just against the freedom of Arjuna, against the freedom of the whole existence. And he is telling him that some god far away in the sky decides everything, and he is pretending to be a mediator. On what authority? On what grounds? It was the same kind of thing as Jesus Christ was doing. He has no proof; nobody has any proof that he has been sent by God. At least these people should bring a certificate signed by God - but not even a certificate is there. And what he is telling the disciple to do is absolutely against the disciple’s heart, his feeling, his intuition, his intelligence.No, I will say he should reject such a master. He is not a master. A master is to give you freedom, not to enslave you. A master is to help you to become master yourself. A master has to give you insight, understanding, but he is not going to impose it authoritatively.Krishna has no argument in his favor. This is argument, you think? - that God wills that the war should happen, so you have to fight. This is not an argument, this is a very fascist attitude. I could have conceived Adolf Hitler praising the Gita, I cannot conceive Mahatma Gandhi praising the Gita. That’s why I see some similarity between both of them.Is not the freedom you give us sometimes rather painful for us?It can be - not sometimes, almost always. Freedom is painful. Slavery is very simple, there is no complexity. You have just to follow orders; you need not worry about the consequences, you need not worry whether it is right or wrong. But with freedom comes a tremendous turmoil. You have to decide each moment what to do, what not to do; each moment you are walking a razor’s edge. But only this fire of constant awareness, of keeping to the right, crystallizes your being. Soon freedom is no longer pain; it is tremendous release, relaxation. And then you can compare and see that slavery was pain. Somebody was sitting on your shoulders, he was goading you and you had become accustomed to it. Now a great burden is removed. Nobody is goading you; for the first time you can breathe on your own.Freedom is tremendous bliss, but between slavery and freedom there is a little gap which is painful. It is just like any surgery - it is surgery; slavery is a cancer - and whenever you go through surgery it is painful. But soon you will recover, you will be healthier than you have ever been before. The function of the master is exactly the function of the surgeon, but his surgery is very subtle, very invisible, so only the disciple knows. No instruments are to be used, but the master creates situations which are painful, which shake your very foundations. If you survive, you are free. If you don’t survive, you don’t lose anything; you will be a slave again.I see in myself and even in this commune so much unconscious fear of change. Is your approach not utopian? Will there ever be anybody willing to form one world government with all its implications?Anywhere, at any time, with any master, there is a utopia, because the whole effort is to transform man. You are accustomed to a certain way of life, and that way of life creates your bondage. Coming close to a master certainly creates fear. If you don’t see fear around a master that means there is no master. The fear simply shows that people know that being here they have to change - and change is painful.It is exactly like a child in the womb of the mother. The child has lived for nine months in the womb comfortably. He will never find such comfort again - no worry, no tension, no question of employment, no wife to nag, no children to harass, no neighbors whom you have to love, no boring friends. He is completely relaxed for nine months. Then suddenly one day he is being thrown out from his world, which was so comfortable. It seems to the child almost a death. And it is natural that it looks like a death. His world is being destroyed. His beautiful home where everything was supplied without demand is being shattered. He is being thrown out into the unknown. It is painful. The child resists to come out, that’s what gives pain to the mother. The child is not willing to come out - why should he have to leave his home? And he knows nothing about where he is going. In absolute darkness to an unknown, why should he go? He makes every effort to cling - that’s why it becomes such a pain to the mother. But there is no way to convince the child, “You are not dying, in fact, you are entering into life. Up to now you were only getting prepared. Now begins your real life, and you are entering into a vast, beautiful universe.” Yes, later on he will understand it, but by that time he has forgotten how it was in the womb.The same is the situation with a master. It is a new birth. Your whole way of life you have created cozy - comfortable in every way - and the master is throwing you out into the unknown again. It is painful; there is fear. It is only through the love of the master that you may gather courage, and you may take a jump.Immense love is needed from the side of the master because that is the only thing that can dispel fear. Love is almost like light, and fear is just like darkness. If the master really loves you - and there is no other possibility; an authentic master is nothing but love. His love is the guarantee that your fear sooner or later will be destroyed, that you will gather courage, that you will take a jump. And once you have taken the jump and attained a new, luminous experience of life, you will be grateful for the master, grateful for his love - because without his love it would have been impossible for you to get rid of the fear.And once you have experienced something that was just so close - but you were not opening your eyes, you were so afraid; once you take one step out of your fear, anxiety, anguish, then the whole journey becomes easy. Now you know on your own experience that on each step you are becoming new, that on each step you are gaining strength, insight, vision: that things are the same but you are not the same, that the same flowers have a totally different beauty, the same flowers have a new fragrance. The same sunset takes you into an ecstasy which you had never imagined before.You have seen the sunset many times, you have even told your friends, “How beautiful!” Now you know those words were phony, you have simply learned those words - because you have not experienced beauty, you were simply repeating words which are part of etiquette, part of social formality. Otherwise you had no contact with the beauty. Now you see what beauty is, and now it is so difficult to say, “How beautiful” because words fall short. The beauty is so vast, so immense, and the words are so tiny. You cannot put the sky in the small capsules of your words. Now you will be standing there dazed.That reminds me. Just today I was looking at a news. Somebody is telling to the attorney general about my statement, that “Either the attorney general wants to protect the criminals and give them immunity, and if that is not possible, then there is every possibility those criminals will disappear, they will be killed.” The attorney general was not shocked. I was watching his face. Even hearing this, that I am telling that I infer from all the delayings that he can kill the chief criminals and then destroy the whole commune, because then he can put all the crimes on innocent people, he simply said that it is lunacy. I don’t think he understands the word. But, I remembered it in this context.Lunacy comes from lunar. Lunar means the moon. The people who are moongazers were called in the beginning lunatics, and the disease of gazing in the moon was called lunacy. In fact, my name, Rajneesh, means lunatic. I can gaze at the moon for hours, as if time stops. So hearing the attorney general using the word lunacy, I said, “At least this idiot for the first time has said something right.”I can look at a flower for hours. Not even the word beauty arises in my mind, because that will be a disturbance. That will disturb what is transpiring between me and the flower, between me and the moon, between me and you. If a word comes in, it will be a disturbance. When you know beauty, you forget even the word beauty. When you know love, you cannot say so easily as people say, “I love you.” You know that what love is is so much, how it can be contained into these small words, which have been used for millions of times by millions of people? You have also used them when you had no idea of love. You just wanted to go bed with a woman, and you had used “I love you.” Now, to say “I love you” will be sacrilegious, because now there is no idea of going to the bed. It is something so totally different.Once you start going beyond your fear, your paranoia that the society has created around you, the whole sky is yours. Then even farthest stars are not far away. Your wings are small, but they are capable to reach to the farthest stars. Seeing the master is an encouragement. Loving the master makes your encouragement more and more strong. I have chosen the symbol for the seekers who have gathered around me of two birds. One is the master, the other is the disciple. Both are the same kind of bird. Both have the same wings. Just seeing the master fly, immediately the disciple gets the idea, “I have also got the same wings which I have not been using.” He tries. Maybe once or twice he may fall. Maybe once and twice he may get discouraged. But even if he starts fluttering, that gives him the first glimpse that what is today just fluttering, tomorrow can become flying. It needs just a little discipline, a little more training, a little more time. And to come to this point, you are already beyond fear. So you will find here people who are afraid, you will find people here who are not afraid, who have passed that stage of fear. You will find people on all steps of the whole journey. And that’s the beauty of a commune, that it gives you the whole panorama and you can see somebody is one feet ahead of you, you can be there. Then you see somebody else is one feet ahead of you, why you cannot be there? And these people on different steps of growth help immensely without helping anybody, just their presence creates the atmosphere of encouragement.A commune is a mystery school where people learn how to give rebirth to themselves. Okay? Good!

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 24 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Mary Catherine, Samya and Subhuti, Rajneesh TimesOsho,What is the difference between printing negativity and printing freedom of expression?There is no difference. It is man’s birthright to express whatever he thinks, whatever he feels, in whatever language he wants to express it. To interfere in it on any grounds, is to destroy democracy.The grounds may look valid. For example, the literature may be condemned as obscene. But who is going to determine what is obscene? If the act of making love is not obscene, then writing about it cannot be obscene. Then printing a picture or painting about it, cannot be obscene.Freedom of expression knows no limits. Any limit is an infringement on human individuality, on the grounds of morality, religion, ethics, manners, etiquette. These are all excuses, and these are the ways that humanity has been repressed. Anything can be called immoral, it all depends how you define it. There is no fixed definition of morality.One of the greatest thinkers of this age, G.E. Moore, worked for years on one book, Principia Ethica. And his whole concentration was to define what is good, because if that can be defined then morality can be defined, immorality can be defined, and many more complex things become easier. But the nature of goodness has to be first determined.Two hundred fifty pages, and he comes to the conclusion that the nature of good is experienceable but not definable. He accepts his defeat. And if you cannot define even what is good, how can you define what is bad? So all definitions are arbitrary.What is obscene?I have never seen anything obscene, and I have looked in the whole literature of the world. Things which have been condemned as obscene, even in the twentieth century, for example, books of D.H. Lawrence were condemned by courts as obscene, and banned, are one of the best, the highest quality literature that twentieth century has produced. But the problem is he describes intimate love acts in such depth that they become almost tangible.He could not defend himself. But if I was there, I would have fought for him. Because if you can love a woman or a man - and there is nothing wrong in it - and you can feel each other’s warmth, melting into each other, reaching to a climax, to an orgasmic experience - and it is not banned - then why it should be prohibited if somebody is capable to describe it in such detail that it almost becomes real when you are reading it?In fact, the man is doing a great service to humanity. It is easy to make love; it is very difficult to express it. The man should be rewarded; he is on the contrary, punished, because the churches are against it. They don’t want people to know the beauties of love. They don’t want people to know that something like orgasmic ecstasy exists. And this man is making people aware of something, which perhaps they may live without ever experiencing. This man is dangerous to the church.What he is writing is not obscene. What he is writing is very authentic and very real, and very poetic and very beautiful.But the trouble lies in the vested interest of the church, that is people start moving more and more into love, more and more enjoying the natural phenomenon of orgasm, then churches will remain empty, congregations will disappear, because people will be happy. Only it is the miserable who go to the churches. It is only the sad ones, the people who have missed life, who start searching for a paradise after life.If you cannot find paradise before death, what guarantee is there that you will be able to find it after death? There is not a single witness. The whole thing is just fiction. But to keep that fiction alive, man has to be deprived of his natural experiences of ecstasies.I am not against D.H. Lawrence. I will not say that his books are obscene. I will say his books are far more valuable than Holy Bible, because he is helping people to know some fragment of bliss.And once they know that fragment then their longing to have more of it is bound to arise, and that’s what leads people to meditation. That’s what leads people on an inner pilgrimage to find the source from where comes this joy, because it does not come from the woman, it does not come from the man. They both are in it, but both can see it; it is not coming from the other. It is happening to both, but happening from some inner space.Once it is realized that it happens from your own inner space, then it is very simple arithmetic, that why it cannot happen without the woman? Why it cannot happen without the man?And a little effort, and it starts happening in your aloneness, and you are freed from the dependence of the other. You can share your joy still, but it is no more a dependence, because in your aloneness you are as blissful as in your togetherness.So D.H. Lawrence is making way for me.I consider him to be the most important creator as far as literature is concerned. But the courts were against it, the churches were against it. They condemned his literature.I have never come across anything which is obscene. Either something is real or unreal, but there is no question of obscenity. It is only in the perverted minds that things become obscene. And the churches create the perverted minds. It is a very strange game.For example, in the Middle Ages in Europe, ladies were covering their dogs with valuable coats when they were taking them out, because a dog is a dog. If he meets some beautiful girl on the way. He does not believe in Christianity; he simply believes in nature. He may start moving towards the girl, and it will be very embarrassing to the lady.And if the dog is naked, he may have erection - that is obscene. But obscene only to the perverted mind, otherwise what is wrong in a dog having a erection? It simply shows the dog is healthy. It simply shows the dog is interested in the girlfriend. It simply shows the dog is not dead yet.The dog is not a monk, he has not taken any vow of being celibate. He is not a homosexual; all the monks are.Just few days before one of the monk in Vatican created an electric device for masturbation. And just to test it, he tried it, but something went wrong.short circuit, and the monk was dead. This is obscenity.But why the monk should create such a device? He is forced to remain celibate, and his biology has no idea of his celibacy. The biology goes on functioning in the same way. So he has to find some way. Now homosexuality has become dangerous.Homosexuality was born in monasteries. I give the whole credit to religions for homosexuality. All the religions are responsible for homosexuality. And they should accept the responsibility for AIDS, because it is the ultimate outcome of their mad attempt of going against nature and forcing celibacy on people.So this poor monk was trying how to avoid homosexuality.This is obscene.So either things are natural, real - then there is no question of preventing any expression.If somebody is bringing unreal, unnatural things to people’s mind, then he is a pervert. He should be prevented, because the freedom of expression does not mean that you can poison other people’s minds.The priests should be prevented from preaching celibacy, because that is the root cause of all the perversions. But no court rules against celibacy.And anything that can be expressed in words can also be printed, painted, sculpted - there should be no limitation on it. The only thing that should be prevented is anybody creating in people sick ideas.You are free to express, but you are not free to vomit over people’s mind. You are free to express, but you are not to create people nauseous, sick. That will be a crime.So, it may be a holy book, but if it creates sickness in people’s mind and perversion to their natural beings, it should be prohibited.And you will be surprised that almost all the holy books are worth being banned. They all carry unnatural, idiotic ideas. And because they are thought to be holy, those ideas become conditionings in people’s minds.And people like D.H. Lawrence, who are simply representing the truth of life, they should be rewarded, respected. Their books should be read in the universities, in the colleges. They should be made available to all the people, so that they can understand that what they are missing, what is possible but they have never tried it. They have never tried to reach the highest star which was within their reach.I am for absolute expression, only with one expression: that sick people, psychologically neurotic people should be prevented.Then how would you make the distinction of who is sick and who is neurotic? Do you mean the person that is writing? We have to make sure that he’s not sick or neurotic? How would you make that distinction?It is very easy.Anybody who is not going against nature, who is normal, natural, is acceptable. And anybody who is trying to go against nature, writing things, preaching things which are not possible, which will drive anybody crazy if he tries to do them, which will be destructive. The criterion should be whether they are according to nature or not, and it is very simple to decide.For example, celibacy - whether it is natural or unnatural. Now, no scientist can say that celibacy is natural, no doctor can say that celibacy is natural. Nobody who understands the nature of physiology, biology, human chemistry, can say that it is natural.Then those who are preaching it should be prevented. They are creating a diseased society, a sick culture, and that sickness will bring thousands of perversions.No animal is celibate - that is very decisive. No animal in natural, wild state is ever homosexual. But animals in zoos, where females are not available, become homosexuals, start masturbating.Nobody has seen animals masturbating in the wild, natural state. So it is very simple to decide that it is just a unnatural state; zoo is not their natural world. The female is not available, only male are available, then naturally homosexuality. And sometimes even males are not available, a single male animal is there - then masturbation.What do you suppose from the animal to do?And your religions have changed your whole society in a zoo. These are the real criminals.But strange, these criminals are respected. They are the popes, they are the Ayatollah Khomeiniacs, they are shankaracharyas. They are great saints, sages, wise people. And nobody bothers that these people are responsible for driving the whole humanity into perversion, into sickness.So it is very simple: anything unnatural is sick. And nature is available, there is no problem to decide whether it is natural or unnatural. When you are hungry, you know what is natural - to eat. But to fast is unnatural.All the religions teach fasting. No religion teaches feasting. Why fasting? In fact, religions depend on turning human minds into unnatural directions, because those are the directions which will make you dependent on the priest, on the God. Those are the dimensions will make you hate yourself, because you cannot fulfill them.For example, in Jainism fasting is one of the most spiritual acts, but you are not even allowed to dream about food. Now, this is expecting too much. If you have not eaten the whole day, it is absolutely certain that you will dream about food.But Jainist scriptures say, that if you dream about food, the whole value of the fast is lost. You have eaten, although it was simply a dream, but it was your dream, it was your mind. It shows your desire, it shows your reality. So somehow you managed the whole day not to eat, but you wanted to eat - that’s why the dream.Now you are asking something impossible, and because it is impossible the man will become self-condemned. He will hate himself, that he is a sinner, he cannot fast few days without dreaming about food. He cannot remain celibate without thinking of women in night. So he thinks of himself as the worst quality of human beings, the most third-rate.So they do two things. They give to humanity things which are unnatural and impossible, so man becomes humiliated in his own eyes, loses integrity, loses self-respect. And on the other hand, they raise their saints to fictitious qualities. So the difference between the common man and the saviors becomes almost unbridgeable.The Jaina prophet, Mahavira, does not perspire. Now, that is simply stupidity. He lived naked, and he lived in the hottest part of India. He walked - he never used any vehicle - for forty years continuously teaching, moving from one village to another village, and you think he will not perspire? The only possibility is that his skin is made of plastic.But the reality is, that if all your pores in the body are closed, even though you breathe you cannot live more than few hours, because you breathe from all the pores of your body too. Your whole body is breathing. It is not only that your lungs needs fresh oxygen, your each cell of the body needs continuously to be refreshed. Those pores are for many purposes. They breathe, and when there is too much heat around you, they have glands which collect water for emergency purposes, they release water - that is your perspiration. That is a protection, very necessary protection to keep your body at the same temperature.For example, if it is ninety-eight degrees, normal temperature, if there is too much heat around you, you cannot remain at ninety-eight permanently. Soon you will become hotter and hotter and hotter, and your life span is not much, only twelve degrees. By one hundred ten you are finished. From ninety-eight to one hundred ten degrees - twelve degrees is your whole life span. So your body has to be kept permanently at ninety-eight degrees. That’s the function of perspiration.When you perspire, the sun rays become engaged in evaporating the perspiration, so they don’t heat you. They evaporate the perspiration and they are finished in that evaporation, and you remain intact at your normal body temperature. It is a great natural mystery. That’s how you can remain continuously at the same body temperature.When it is too cold - for example, in this room - you will start shaking. That shaking is a device; it is a device to keep your body warm. By shaking you are doing a certain activity, and that activity keeps you warm. Except me, it is cold for everyone here.Saviors are put on fictitious grounds - you cannot reach them - and you are even degraded from your natural status. You see, they are raised from their natural status to something higher, which is not possible, which only idiot can believe, and you are degraded from your natural status. The distance becomes so big that all that you can do is worship, touch their feet, pray, and hope that in some future life perhaps you may be able to fulfill all the demands that can make you an authentic individual. But following these ideas, in no life you are going to become an authentic individual.So the simple way of deciding is, anything natural is good; anything that goes against nature is bad. And freedom of expression means everything natural you are absolutely free to print, to say, to paint - use any medium - and you will be serving humanity. But remember always, don’t do or say anything that can create a sick mind. Then you are not capable of having the freedom of expression. It is a great responsibility.You have said that freedom of expression is the foundation of democracy, but this newspaper is in the unique situation, because it is part of a community that is being guided by an enlightened master. In the past, anything that was said criticizing the commune, the city and the corporations here, or simply offering an alternative viewpoint, was censored by Sheela and her group on the grounds that it was against your vision. Is there a role for criticism and freedom of expression here, now?This newspaper is certainly not an ordinary newspaper. It is not just that you are collecting news and printing it. It has a certain purpose behind it. It has a message, and you have to keep in mind that whatever you do, whatever you write, it does not go against the message.This paper is not a mere newspaper; it is a messenger. So you have to keep alert that it beats with my heart, that it keeps in tune with me, that it does not lose contact with my vision.If you simply want it to be a newspaper, then my name should be removed from it. Then you can collect all kinds of stupid things that are happening around the world - murders, suicides, wars, and certainly you will be selling better. You can make it sensational - which all the newspapers of the world are doing. They don’t have a vision, they don’t have a message. They are only a business in search of sensation. If they can get sensation, good; if they cannot get, then they have to create, because it is sensation that sells. And the motive behind those newspapers is earning. That is not the motive behind your newspaper.We are not concerned whether we sell to millions of people or not. Our concern is not sensational, but to spread the message. And anything that you can find in the world happening which supports the message, choose it, but the message remains your criterion.So your freedom of expression is absolutely there, but you have accepted a vision. Now, you have to use your ability of expression to make that vision available to as many people as possible. That will be your creativity.But if my newspaper starts writing something against my own message, and you call it freedom of expression, then you are not being a gentleman, then you start a newspaper of your own and use your freedom of expression.My newspaper has to be my freedom of expression, and you have to give it form, reality, relevant context. Your work is more difficult, because you have to constantly remember that it is not going to be against my message. And my message is your message. If it goes against me, it is going against you! Freedom of expression does not mean suicide - that would be suicidal.So you have to be alert, then there is no need for anybody else to prevent you from doing something. But if you are not responsible, then somebody else will interfere.And now that Sheela is gone.she herself was not fulfilling my vision; she was trying to do her own trip in my name. She was taking an advantage which is absolutely ugly.So now your responsibility becomes even bigger, because I never read, I never read your newspaper, so I don’t now what you are doing in it. I trust you, and I have lived my whole life on trust.So you have to be alert that somewhere you are not letting me down - that’s what Sheela did.She did things which were absolutely against my idea. She used my name without asking me. And in fact, how she could have asked? If she bugs my own room, then how she can ask me? And what is the fear of bugging my room? The fear, perhaps, I may say to someone something which does not go with her doings. I don’t know what she is doing. She is afraid also, that somebody, particularly.not many more people were saying me - only my physician, my dentist, my caretaker - three persons were there. But they may say something to me: that this is going on. And she had to know what information I have been given, so even before I ask her any question, she comes prepared with an answer.That’s what gave me the idea that the room is bugged. Because I will say something to Devaraj, who had just come to check me, and next day when Sheela will come to see me, the conversation with Devaraj was bound to come up.And she was really stupid in that way, that she will say, that “I had a dream last night that you are talking with Devaraj, and this conversation happened. And not only I had the dream, Vidya also had the same dream, Savita had also the same dream.”I told Sheela, “You don’t know about dreams at all. Three persons having the same dream has never been heard in the whole history. You are just ignorant. You don’t know about dreaming anything. It would have been enough that you had dreamed. There is no need for two more evidences. Those two more evidences make your dream suspicious.“And do you think I can accept that you all are - all the three - intuitive? That you have some super-sensory powers? Then you will have to give a proof.“I can open a book, and you are sitting there, you just tell me what page is open and that will prove everything, whether you have any intuitive grasp of things. Or I can mark it and keep it here on my table, and you all three dream tonight, and tomorrow you report me what page. Otherwise, this room is bugged. You tell me exactly right. It will be easier.”And she flatly denied. “No, how we can do this thing to you?!” And she started crying, and.I said, “This crying, et cetera, will not help. You simply say whether the room is bugged or not. I can forgive you, but you have to tell the truth.”That was the last time I saw her. Then she started avoiding me.Then she was here for three, four months more, but she was always going to Australia, to Singapore, to Mexico, to Europe, to Switzerland, on any small excuse: that the commune needs her there.And even when she was going on all these tours, she will not come to ask me. It is very easy with me: you can just send a message that you have a cold or a sore throat, and you don’t want to infect me, so you are unable to come.For four months continuously, she was having sore throat, colds, whenever she was here. Even the last day she left, she did not come to see me, because she became more and more afraid, because I was becoming more and more aware of things that were going on.When I became aware that my room is bugged, then what will be happening to others?Then Vivek was poisoned, then Devaraj was poisoned four times.And just today my mother came to see me.And this is the ugliest thing of all. She has done many ugly things. Laxmi had operations, major operations, in which her ovaries are removed, and some other parts of the stomach are removed. And she was sick few days before. She was hospitalized. Since then she started getting better. She came back to her place, and she was feeling very good and recovering.Last day, when Sheela left, just one hour before, Prateeksha, Sheela’s sister, came with a glass of juice - and she had never come. All this time Laxmi has been here, Prateeksha had never come even to see her.And she drank the juice, and immediately became badly sick. And she is already in a dying position. Now to poison her?They must have thought that to leave Laxmi alive is dangerous, because as far as coming from India is concerned, they have committed many crimes. But they thought because they are never coming back, so who cares? Just once they are out of the country, and governments and bureaucracies take time to find out.But Laxmi knows everything, so she may be dangerous. It is better to finish her.It seems killing became to them just an ordinary thing. Nothing even to think about. Very casually.So as I started becoming aware of all these things, she started becoming afraid to face me. She had not seen me for months. And whatever she was checking, and preventing, must have been something that was going against her.Now, your responsibility is greater. Nobody will be checking you. Nobody will be preventing you. I never read what you write. Even if you write against me, I will never know.And remember, this is not an ordinary paper. It is a message, and you have to use everything that is happening in the world to help the message. That’s the whole function of your Times. If it was simply just my words, there was no question. We have another paper, Newsletter, that simply reports what I say.Your function is different. Your function is whatever I say, you can report a little bit of it, but you have to support it, that what I am saying is actually happening.For example, if I say something about AIDS and its spread, or how it can be prevented, what measures should be taken, then you have to work out, with our medical people, find out everything supportive, because I don’t read, I am not a medical man. You have to look all around the world. One day, every day, is dying in LA because of AIDS. You have to find how many people in the whole world are dying, and if one man every day is dying, then how many people must be suffering from AIDS in LA? And why is the LA. corporation silent? Why don’t they give the information?You have to collect all these things - what I cannot do. I can give a statement. You have to arrange all supportive data for it.Now, I hear that many people in the commune, as Sheela left.Some people started creating the rumor that the whole idea was Sheela’s - of creating preventive measures - so now there is no need. And people are kissing again, and they are not using condoms or gloves or any precautions.You have to put what is happening, and what is going to happen, to make our commune aware that this is the only place where we are taking precautions. And if you don’t want to take precautions, then you will have to understand well those ten people who are positive AIDS I will bring back into the commune. Then what is the need to separate them? That was part of the preventive measures. Then why keep them in Desiderata?Either you take all the precautions, or drop all the precautions and go to hell. And bring all those people from Desiderata and leave them into the commune, so within two years you are all suffering from AIDS.You have to use your paper to support whatever I say, and to find out all relevant data. Every day there are new things coming out about AIDS. You have to keep update our people, so they don’t go into such foolish things. If they go, then they should understand perfectly, that they if they want to cheat, then they will have to suffer, and suffer badly. I will bring all those ten people. Why they should be isolated unnecessarily, when you are not taking any precautions?Just yesterday, two more people have been found having positive AIDS, and you were not taking precautions. Now, should I send these two people to Desiderata, or let them live with you? They were living with you.And this seems so unintelligent, that you cannot even use small measures to protect yourself and your commune.So your responsibility is great about everything. And I am saying so many things which you have to bring to the light, to the public.For example, I said that this Attorney General is not interested at all in catching hold of the criminals. His interest is somehow to give them immunity and force innocent commune people, that they have done it. His desire is at least one thousand sannyasins should be imprisoned. Only twenty people have committed crimes. But about those twenty, they are completely silent.So your function is there: to make it as strong as possible that Attorney General cannot protect the criminals. And the second alternative that he had is to kill them. So all criminals are erased, but crimes has happened, so he can start picking up whomsoever he wants. And he had his informers in the commune, who can say, that “These are the people who have done it. We are eyewitnesses.”So your newspaper is not an ordinary newspaper. It has to bring my vision to the world. It has to bring the problems of the commune to the world, the challenge that the commune has to face, and expose any government authorities who are trying to go against the American Constitution, against law, and are just being as fascist, or even more fascists, than Sheela’s gang was.So it is something you have to remember, and now nobody will be sitting on your head, so your responsibility becomes total and absolute.How can we as journalists inquire into the truth, or what might be the truth, without creating confrontation within the community? And is it possible to be objective in doing that?It will be difficult for you.because you are part of the commune. It will create unnecessary confrontation, antagonism. You cannot do that kind of inquiry in the commune. That will look suspicious, as if you are serving somebody else.What you can do is: rather than inquiring in the commune, you should start inquiring the Oregon police officers who have been investigating here, the Attorney General, and his office, the FBI - and they have been the most sympathetic and most helpful people.They were very angry at the attitude of the state, because the state was trying to delay everything in every possible way.So your inquiry should be, on the part of the commune, with all those Wasco County police, attorney, state attorney, state police, FBI people, and find out what exactly are the crimes that you feel have happened. And what are the possibilities of those people to be caught? And what do you think about delaying matters? Because there are countries which have treaties with America, that if America wants their criminals, they will catch their criminals and send them to America.But there are countries with which America has no treaties. And it is so easy to move from West Germany into East Germany - just a question of minutes - and the road is open now. And then America has no hold on.They can take refuge against America. So why you are delaying? Are you giving them chances so that they can take refuge somewhere where you don’t have any reach?Or you don’t have enough grounds? Because we have provided every ground. We have provided eyewitness. We have provided all kinds of testimonies. Now for what you are waiting, and you are silent?That should be your inquiry, rather than confronting poor sannyasins, who are unnecessarily already harassed by police, by FBI, and you start harassing them too. And that will not look good. You leave them alone. You go after these people, and force them that act quickly.There has been murder, there has been arson, there has been attempts on many people’s life. There has been smuggling, of which just now reports have been coming that Sheela was doing smuggling of gold since India. And she continued it from here too. And she was doing great smuggling of heroin - and not in small quantities, full plane loads.So what these people are doing? We can, at the most, give them information. We can give them testimonies of people.The woman who informed about heroin, next day she disappeared. It seems she has been killed, or she has been taken to some place and imprisoned. She was partner with Sheela, and for fifteen days we have been trying every place, because she has told on the phone that she is coming with all the proofs. That one plane is already.is in Latin America, which has been left there. Heroin was sold, but the police became suspicious about the plane, so they could not take the plane out from there. The plane is lying down there still.She was coming. She never reached, so we started phoning all the possible contacts: her mother, her boyfriend.They are all simply surprised that she simply disappeared. And she was in Geneva, in Switzerland, where Sheela is, and the whole company is. Perhaps she must have thought about her, that she will do something like that.So you have to enforce these people. Approach these people, harass them, ask them harassing questions. Make them do something. Write articles against the bureaucracy and the slow work, which takes years, and by that time the criminals can be out of your reach.So don’t bother commune, and inquiring commune. People will not feel good about you. And inquiry has to be harsh. Howsoever sweet you make it, inquiry is bound to be harsh. You have to ask questions which are embarrassing. You have to ask questions which the person does not feel right to answer. Don’t do that kind of work. That will simply create a hostility.And you represent the commune. So you represent the commune and go against all the agencies that have to catch hold of the criminals.And if there are any criminals in the commune, we are ready to hand over the criminals to the police. I don’t want any crime to be committed here.So make it clear to them. And I don’t want to take the law in my own hands. But if they delay too much, that simply means they are forcing us to take the law in our own hands. The responsibility will be theirs.We can catch hold of all those within minutes; there is no problem. Our sannyasins are all over the world. Wherever they will go, they will be caught immediately. But I don’t want to take the law in our hands. Why we should take? That is their business. They should do it. And we will force it for them to do it.Their delay has a meaning. The meaning is somehow destroy the commune in some way or other - and this is a good opportunity - and we have to protect the commune.I am against crime, and this will be a greater crime if we allow them to destroy the commune.We have put so much love and so much labor, they have no right. So you go against them, and be a real journalist with them. A journalist has to be just a nagging wife.Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 25 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/the-last-testament-vol-3-25/

Ma Yoga PratimaOsho,What is the difference between religion, religiousness and religio?The difference is simple, yet very vast. The difference is that of a dead rose you find in a Holy Bible. It has lost its color, lost its fragrance, lost its life. It is just a rose for name’s sake. Otherwise there is nothing of the rose in it. It looks like a rose.Once it may have been a rose, may have danced in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. It may have released fragrance without any conditions to anybody, to strangers or if there was nobody, even just to the winds. But now it is just past, a memory, faded. Religion is like that, a dead rose found in the Holy Bible.Religio is a living rose: fully alive, totally alive, intensely alive, with immense glory, expressing the beauty of existence, very individual and unique.unrepeatable, irreplaceable, radiant. It is full of juice and full of fragrance, a miracle. It is a mystery from where it comes, because it is not in the roots, it is not in the tree, it is not in the leaves. And yet the living rose is surrounded by a mysterious aura of fragrance. It stands in the sun with great pride. That pride is not of the ego, it is authentic. It is true. He is what he is showing to existence - his color, his aliveness, his fragrance - these are not pretensions. It is his reality.Religio is the living flower, and religiousness is the fragrance. You can experience it, you can smell it, but you cannot catch hold of it. You cannot catch hold of it in words, in explanations, in definitions. It defies any kind of imprisonment. It is pure freedom. That’s why I say the difference is simple, but vast, like the difference between a living man and his corpse. Simply: The living man breathes, loves, dances, sings, rejoices: the corpse does not do anything. It goes on deteriorating, it starts stinking. It is the same corpse whom you may have loved, whom you may have desired, whom you may have respected, honored. Now all that you can do is take it to the crematorium.Religion is a corpse. Religio is a living being. And life has love, laughter, the possibility of all kinds of creativity., It can give birth to songs, beautiful, transcendental songs which can bring into words that which is almost impossible to express, songs which can be given live to a living audience from a living singer. Between the singer and the listener something can transpire which is not in the words, in the song, or in the music, but something by the side - on the margin - invisible, yet it reaches to the heart. The living man can dance. His body can rejoice in a thousand and one ways. That is religiousness.So the difference is simple, but vast , tremendously vast. And the time has come when there should be no religions in the world, because their corpses have been carried for thousands of years. They are all stinking. They are all rotten. And under the load of those rotten corpses, living beings have completely forgotten how to live.If you go on living with corpses, worshipping corpses, you will lose contact with life and its sources. You have become a worshipper of death. All the religions are teaching death. That’s why they all say that their paradise is beyond death. First you have to die, then everything else is possible. But the first step is death in every religion.No religion teaches you the art of living. They teach you hope, promises, but all hope and all promises are after death and there is no guarantee because no dead man ever returns.It is time that religions should be taken to the place where they belong, the graveyard. They have been turning human beings into graves. And once we can get rid of religions, then we can start searching for religio. Religion prevents the search. You think you have got it, hence there is no need for any search.Religio is an individual growth; it is not an organization, but a mystery that you have to unfold. You have brought it with you from the very birth, but you have not opened it. You have not allowed it to see the light. It has remained like a seed which has not been sown in the right soil where it can become a living plant, can grow, can come to fruition and flowering.Religio is the search for truth within yourself. Finding it is the most glorious and the most ecstatic experience possible. And one who finds it is surrounded by fragrance, by an aura, by a subtle quality of love, compassion. That is religiousness. I want to destroy religions so that religiousness can become possible.Religio is the bridge. Deprogram yourself from all religions and start moving into an individual search. Truth has always been found by individuals, not by collectivities, not by clubs, not by churches. Have you heard of any congregation in the whole history of humanity that has found truth? It always happens to an individual. Then why waste your time in congregations? They are just a religious type of rotary clubs. And a rotary club is not so dangerous, because you know it is just a club. But your churches, your synagogues, your mosques, your temples are dangerous because they are pretending to you that they have the truth. You believe in it, that’s all that is needed to be done. A man who believes in religions remains unaware of religio, and remains absolutely unconscious of all the religiousness that was his birthright. He lives and dies, but without splendor, without glory, without fulfillment.What is the difference between RIMU, Rajneesh International Meditation University, and RA, Rajneesh Academy?Let me say a few words before I answer your question, because without them the answer will not be complete. I would like to change the name Rajneesh Foundation International. Sheela and her fascist gang have contaminated the name. I would like it to be Rajneesh Friends International. It remains RFI.RIMU and RA are two wings of RFI. RIMU is educational, intellectual, scholarly. Both are totally unique experiments because the degrees that you will get will not be of any use in the world. They are non-utilitarian. There is no university in the whole history which was non-utilitarian. They were all serving some utility, and the moment you serve some utility you are no more a master. You become a servant.All educational systems of the world have been supportive of the status quo - the state, the society, the church - all that is the establishment. They were supporting the establishment. They were dependent on the establishment. They were preparing people how to serve the establishment to their best capacity. They were non-rebellious, they were all reactionary, anti-revolutionary.RIMU and RA are both non-utilitarian. Their degrees won’t help you to serve any purpose. They will serve you, but not anybody else. They will help you, but not the state, not the church, not the society. All those things have to be destroyed. They are the accumulated poison of centuries.The function of RIMU is to deprogram you intellectually through therapies, through courses, through meditations. The whole intention is to clean your mind completely of all that the establishment has forced upon you. You have to be unconditioned. All the degrees will not be given by any examination.I am against examination because an examination is not a criterion. It may be just a coincidence that you can answer five questions, but life is not five questions that you have answered. In fact, life never asks those questions that are being asked in the examinations. That’s why you will be amazed that people who are tops in the universities get lost in the crowd and you cannot find them. Where are those gold medalists? Where have they gone? They should prove their mettle in life. In the university they were on the top, but what happens to these people when they enter life? Nobody asks the question because it is embarrassing. But I am very particular about raising questions which are embarrassing.The people who were doing great in the universities prove phony in life for the simple reason that what they are being taught has nothing to do with life. Life has no examinations at all like the examinations they have passed. Life never asks questions like the questions they can answer. Life asks strange questions, and they don’t know anything about those questions. Their textbooks don’t know anything about those questions. Their teachers don’t know anything about those questions.It is a very strange phenomenon. Universities are supposed to prepare you, but they don’t prepare you for life, for authentic existence. They prepare you for service to the church, to the state, to the culture, to the society, which are all fossils. They are not life.You may have a gold medal from the university, but you don’t know what love is. A gold medal will not help you to understand the real problems of life. In fact, your education has deceived you, and almost wasted the first third of your life, which is the most precious time when one can learn easily. One is fresh and capable of learning. They used that time and what they have taught to you is of no use.When you become angry, can you find any answer from your education what to do about it? When you fall in love, has your university given you any clues, any idea what love is and what its implications are? - That it is not just a bed of roses, that every rose is surrounded by thorns? Have they made you alert how to avoid the thorns? No, they don’t prepare you for life. They prepare you to become a clerk, a stationmaster, a postmaster - any stupid thing - but they don’t prepare you for real life.You will be becoming a father, but you have no idea that there is an art to being a father, to receiving a new guest in the world. You are going to become a mother, and no university has bothered to teach you that just to produce a child is not enough. In fact, after producing the child, the real work starts.So nobody knows how to become a mother, how to become a father, how to be a wife, how to be a husband. Life’s real problems are simply ignored.I was in constant trouble with my teachers, professors. Certainly, I was creating embarrassing situations for them. One of my professors used to teach English poetry. The very first day I asked him, “All this poetry is about love, how much love do you know? How many women have you loved? And is your wife aware of it?” He said, “What has that to do with this poetry?” I said, “It has everything to do with this poetry. Is your marriage a love marriage or an arranged marriage?” In India almost ninety-nine percent of all marriages are arranged. He said, “Of course it is an arranged marriage.” So I said, “You have not fallen in love ever! Or do you think it can be arranged, that the astrologers and the palmists and the chart readers can manage to find the right woman for you, and you are bound to fall in love? Do you mean to say that?” He said, “You are strange. I have come here just to teach poetry, and you are raising strange questions.” I said, “I am not raising strange questions. Next period I am coming here with your wife. I have talked to her. So either you be true and authentic, or next class you will have to face your wife, too, here in the class.” He said, “My God, you have met my wife?” I said, “Already, because I do everything perfectly. Before asking you, I have asked your wife everything, and she has told me. She is far more sincere than you are. You please tell me how many women you have loved.”He said, “This is too difficult a question. Yes, one woman I used to love before my marriage.” I said, “That is not true, because I have gathered every information about your love life.” He said, “Who else have you met?” I said, “That woman that you are talking about. She lives just by your side. She is your neighbor. And you still love her; at least, that’s what you say to her. If you want, I can bring both women, your wife and your mistress. If you won’t want trouble-because this thing is going to end up in the court.” He said, “I had come just to teach you poetry.” I said, “You can teach poetry, but first you have to be sincere, otherwise what is the value of your teaching? How can you say the truth? And you don’t know any love. Neither do you love your wife, because she is not contented, nor do you love your mistress, because she is very angry that you have been promising all along that you would marry her and finally you married another woman. You have betrayed her.“And what do you know about love? What is love? First we have to clarify definitions about things, then we can enter into the poetry.”The man simply disappeared. He resigned. He never came back, knowing that it was going to be difficult, impossible, and I may create trouble. He simply changed cities. But it was not his fault. Education avoids life.RIMU is to teach you life itself in all its dimensionality: love, anger, hate, jealousy. It has to make you aware of all the possibilities and how to get rid of all that is going to create misery for you and those you love.It is an experience to pass through RIMU. There will be no examinations, but your tutors, the professors in the university, will simply suggest to the vice-chancellor, to the chancellor, who should be given a certain kind of degree.Those degrees are not of any use in any service, and we don’t ask any recognition from any government or from any university, because we don’t recognize them. We deny their authenticity. They are just slaves. They have sold themselves in the service of the establishment; we don’t want their recognition. We don’t want any recognition from any government, because all governments are corrupt. Unless the world is one and there is only one government, corruption is inevitable, and we don’t want any recognition from any source of corruption.RIMU is the only university which denies any recognition. Its degrees are not given for examinations, because examinations can only know your answers about a few questions. Its degrees are given to you by the teachers of the university, who watch you day in, day out, seeing changes in you, and when they feel some radical change has happened, it is on their recommendation that you will get the degree. And there will be no first class, no second class, no third class, because I don’t want to create classes in any way. I am for a classless society. These degrees will all be honorary, because you have not passed any examination, you have been honored by the university. You have been recognized by the university, that you have passed a certain state of mind. It is an honor.These degrees cannot be taken back. There is no way that you can lose your degree. There are MM, Master’s Degree; DPhilM, Doctor’s degree; and DLittM, the highest honorary degree. These three will be just on the recommendation of your teachers. And there will be a fourth degree, PhDM, which will be given on a thesis written by you about meditation - its psychology, its philosophy, its literature. That will not be given by the recommendations of teachers, but will be earned by you, by your thesis. That will be the only degree which will not be honorary. That will be your earnest labor. Of course, for that degree there will be three teachers. Unless all the three agree, you cannot have the degree.I don’t believe in a majority. I believe in unanimous decisions and I want to teach you to come to unanimous decisions about everything. Ordinarily, if two teachers are in favor and one is not, in any other university the degree will be given. But not in this university. All the three teachers have to agree. If they don’t, then you have to write it again according to their recommendations.That will become a literature on meditation. There is not much.Perhaps I am the only one who has spoken on 112 methods of meditation. There is no other literature on those 112 meditations, and I have developed many new meditations which are not included among those. There is great need for literature on meditation from different angles, because there are meditations which you can do while doing anything. It is just an inner process. There are meditations which need specific times. There are meditations which you can do only while making love. There are meditations which need a certain kind of a structure. So much possibility is there for writing theses on meditations.Narendra Bodhisattva, one of our sannyasins, has an MA. in psychology. Because he has been connected with me for so long, from his very childhood, he wanted to write his doctoral thesis on the psychology of meditation. But no university was ready to accept the subject. “Where are we going to find the guide for you? Then the examiners for you? There are no professors in the university who can claim that they are guides of meditation, and who will be examiners of your thesis? And on what grounds will they examine it? Because that is going to be the first thesis on meditation.” Strange. For ten thousand years the world has been meditating, talking about meditation, and nobody has even written a thesis. So I have a separate section, PhD, which will be only for doctoral theses.The university’s work is more intellectual, more theoretical, more scholarly. The Academy is something higher than the university. Both are wings of Rajneesh Friends International. RIMU is intellectual, academic, scholarly. RA is more experiential, more existential. It is really the mystery school I have been talking about.It is the Academy which will initiate people into sannyas, which will help people to go into their past lives - existentially, not intellectually. It will guide people for meditation, not to he head but to the heart.It will also give titles. They will not be called degrees, they will be titles: siddha, arihanta, acharya. These titles can be withdrawn any moment. It depends; if you fall from your experience you lose your title. The degrees you don’t lose; they are merely intellectual. But when you enter into experience, you can fall back; you can become afraid, you can stop moving ahead. So these titles are not to make you clergymen, which is an ugly word.Two small children were discussing how many types of human beings there are. One was saying two, the other was saying three. The child who was saying two said, “You seem to be crazy. Three? I have never heard, I have never seen the third type!” He said, “You see the third type every day, but you don’t understand. Man, woman, clergyman. That is a totally separate category. It is neither man nor woman. It is a very strange category.”We don’t have any clergymen. It is not a religion, so these titles are not to make priests, these titles are simply indicating your states. A Siddha is one who has experienced deep meditation - just one step more and he will become enlightened. But then that one step is the most difficult, because even without becoming enlightened, one feels so blissful in this deep meditative state that one cannot imagine there can be more. This is the difficulty. One cannot conceive that there is any possibility of any more bliss, so what is the point of going anywhere? Now sit down and rest.Siddha is a special category, because he never speaks. He never says what he has attained. He keeps it to himself. He cannot find any words to convey, he cannot find any people to convey, he is not articulate. He is a tremendously beautiful person, but just like a statue. He does not share. He does not know how to share. That is a different quality.If you know how to share, then when you come to this moment you will know how to share this experience, too. But if you have never shared anything, then this experience is so great that one feels simply dumb, as if everything has stopped - time, breathing, heartbeat.We give a separate name to Siddha, because he is as capable as others, but he is not articulate. Only eighty-four siddhas are known in the whole history. There may have been thousands. Why were these eighty-four known? Because they happened to be disciples of some enlightened person who declared them as siddhas. Otherwise they would have died unknown. Many have died unknown. They have never written anything, there is no writing of any siddha. They have not created anything, but they are as valuable as anyone else.The second category is arihanta. He is also in the same state as siddha - just one step more - but he is articulate. In fact, he is too articulate, just the opposite of siddha. He is so articulate that he completely forgets that his journey is not yet complete. He becomes interested in teaching, in propagating, in writing. He is so overflowing with experience that he wants to share it, and in this sharing he forgets that one step is still to be taken. So these are the two polarities, the siddha and the arihanta.The third category is the acharya, which is a very balanced category between the two. He knows how to be silent and he knows how to be expressive. He is the most important of the three, although all are in the same state. But he is the only one who is aware that his journey is not complete, that he has yet to go a little more. So he continues going in. He speaks, he explains, he shares, he remains silent. Whatever the situation demands, he does it. He is capable of being a siddha, he is capable of being an arihanta, and he is capable of one thing more: because of his balanced attitude, he is aware that there is still a little gap before he becomes enlightened.These three titles you can lose, because none of the three is yet enlightened.The Academy’s purpose is initiation into sannyas, then initiation into different mysteries of life - meditation, reincarnation - making people clear where they are, and also making them clear that there is still some journey left. What you have attained is great, but it is not the end. Even something greater is waiting for you.So the function of the Academy is religio: intuitive, spiritual. And the function of the University is intellectual, academic. Both are needed, because humanity is incapable of understanding anything from heart to heart. First it needs its intellect to be convinced. The University will be doing that function. And once the intellect is convinced, the function of the Academy starts. It is a higher function. Now the person is no more interested in intellectual questions. He really wants to experience.The Academy has another section: mahasattvas, sambuddhas, bodhisattvas. Their number is fixed, and each group will have a fixed number. That is part of the Academy’s secret work. Mahasattvas are bound to become enlightened before I leave my body, but there is one condition - they should be in the buddhafield. On their own they may be able, they may not be able; there is no guarantee. Bodhisattvas, if they remain in the buddhafield, are certain to become enlightened before their death; but if they leave the buddhafield they cannot become enlightened. It is almost impossible. Mahasattvas perhaps may become enlightened even outside the buddhafield, but it is only a probability. About bodhisattvas it is a certainty that they cannot become enlightened outside the buddhafield. All sambuddhas are almost enlightened; but remember the word almost. They can become enlightened any day, buddhafield or no buddhafield. They are so close to enlightenment that it will be a strange thing if they don’t become enlightened. It is just within their reach. They have almost arrived, they have just to know at the door and enter.So that is part of the Academy. People from these three groups can be on some post, president of RFI or president of the commune or other corporations, but while they are functioning on any post they cannot be part of the group. The moment they resign from their post, they will be part of the group. Otherwise, their seat will remain empty. This is to avoid the conflict of interest. When I am not here these groups will be decisive on every important issue, anybody on a post should not be part of the group. They can be on the post, but they lose their membership for as long as they are on the post.And any conclusion arrived at should be unanimous. The most important conclusion will be of sambuddhas. The second in importance will be of mahasattvas. Third in importance will be of bodhisattvas. They all three can meet together, but then too, they have to come to a unanimous conclusion. I don’t want any party politics in the commune, ever!!You have said that your sannyasins’ hearts beat in the same tune as your heart is beating. Can you talk to us more about this phenomenon? How does a disciple move from the head to the heart? Is it that sometimes a disciple is in tune with you and sometimes not? And, if so, what makes a disciple move away from you, and what helps a disciple to come back?It’s a little difficult to understand. Things of the heart are always difficult to understand. There are a few disciples who are, day in, day out, in a deep harmony with me. There is no gap. In fact, only they deserve to be called friends.Here I would like to say something which I have been keeping a secret my whole life:One beautiful morning, Gautam Buddha had gone for a walk with his caretaker, disciple, Ananda. It was fall time; the trees were getting almost naked and all the leaves were on the path. The wind was fluttering the trees, and the leaves were making beautiful sounds. Walking on those leaves, Buddha was immensely happy.the music of the dry leaves.He took a few leaves in his hand. Ananda asked him, “Bhagwan, I have always been thinking to ask one thing, but privacy is so difficult. You are always surrounded by people. Today you are alone in this forest, and I cannot resist the temptation. I want to ask you: Have you said everything to us, or have you kept some secrets? Buddha said, “Do you see the leaves in my hand? And do you see the leaves all over the forest?” Ananda said, “Yes, I do see, but I don’t understand that that is the answer.” Buddha said, “You will understand. I have said only this much, and I have kept secret all these leaves that are in the whole forest.”My situation is just different. I have said the whole forest; only one thing I have kept secret, just one leaf. Buddha declared before his death that he would be coming again after twenty-five centuries, and that his name would be Maitreya. Maitreya means the friend. Buddhas don’t come back; no enlightened person ever comes back, so it is just a way of saying.What he was saying is of tremendous importance. It has nothing to do with his coming back; he cannot come back. What he meant was that the ancient relationship between the master and the disciple would become irrelevant in twenty-five centuries. It was his clarity of perception - he was not predicting anything - just his clarity to see that as things are changing, as they have changed in the past and as they go on changing, it would take at least twenty-five centuries for the master and disciple relationship to become out of date. Then the enlightened master will be only the friend .I had always wanted not to be a master to anybody. But people want a master, they want to be disciples; hence, I played the role. It is time that I should say to you that now many of you are ready to accept me as the friend. Those who are in tune with me continuously, without any break, are the only real friends.There are people who are sometimes in tune with me and sometimes not in tune with me. You are asking why it happens. The reason is - perhaps you may be surprised to know - sometimes they are in tune with me because I am in tune with them, because whatever I am saying is in accordance with them. They feel, “This is perfectly right.” They are not in tune with me. On the contrary, they feel they are in tune with me only because I am fulfilling some of their ideas, some of their expectations. That is illusion.Once you are really in tune with me, you cannot fall out of it. But if somebody falls out of it, that simply means that I have said something, I have done something, which is not in accordance with you. You remain the judge. You have not dropped judgment. Your ego is still there.I used to go for a walk every day with one of my professors. One day when we were coming back, another professor met us on the way. He was going for a walk; we were returning. He knew me but he did not know my professor. My professor was very new, he had just joined the department two, three days before. So he asked me, “Do you come here every day?” I said, “Yes, I come every day. And for three days my professor has also been coming with me.” My professor looked annoyed. I asked him, “What is the matter? You look angry.” He said, “Certainly. You come with me, and you said that I come with you.” I said, “That’s really right. How can a professor come with a student? It is always the student who comes with the professor. So forgive me. But this simply shows that you are an idiot; and from tomorrow you are not going to come with me.”People are strange. I had been there for two years. He had been there only for three days, but he wanted to hear that I was coming with him. Just the ego wants fulfillment everywhere. So it happens that when you feel that I am saying something which fulfills your expectations, you are with me, your heart is beating with me, you are in tune with me. No. Please forgive me for being straightforward - only I am with you. Soon something happens - I say something, I do something - and your heart is no longer beating with me.So remember one thing: when you are with me, then it is a continuum, without any gap. What I say, what I do, does not matter, because you are not a judge. You love me the way I am. I don’t judge you. I love you the way you are. And if it changes, then remember it is a judgment, and rather than going with me, you are trying to drag me with you. And that is not very loving.I can come with you, but you are in darkness and you will lead me in darkness. I have no trouble in coming with you. You cannot destroy my light; I can destroy your darkness.I cannot lose anything by coming with you. You will have to lose many things by coming with me. And when you love someone, you are ready to lose anything, everything, even yourself. The moment you are ready to lose yourself, the friendship is complete. And then there is great beauty.It is exactly twenty-five centuries after Buddha’s death that I am changing the name of the Foundation so that it becomes Rajneesh Friends International. It is not only just a change of the name. It is going to change the very flavor of our whole movement. And you have to rise up so that what I want the movement to become, it becomes. So that the dream is realized.Don’t let me down. Okay?

https://oshoworld.com/osho-audio-discourse-english-l/

The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 26 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/the-last-testament-vol-3-26/

Jeff McMullen, 60 Minutes Australia TVMa Yoga PratimaYou were right about one thing, Osho. I did come back. One early prophecy that was correct. Osho, as you are the world’s greatest showman, maybe you would like to assist us in promoting this performance for Australia with a little national greeting to Australians. What we say is, “Good day mate! It’s good to be back on 60 Minutes!”Just start. I am twenty-four hours ready for any show.You told me that you love Sheela, and Sheela said you were the man of her eyes. So is this the end of a great love affair now?Love affair never ends. It can turn into a hate affair. From my side, never, but from her side it has become a hate affair.It does sound to me it has turned to a hate affair from Sheela.Yes. From her side it has turned. She did not prove to be a woman, she proved to be a perfect bitch.Would you like to have a look at what she has to say to you?I know her mind. I can see, but I can say without knowing.Recording of Sheela’s voice: It’s time that you let people know who you are, the way I have come to know you, which is that on one hand you’re a genius and a beautiful man, and on the other hand you really exploit people by using their human frailty and emotions.She is drugged. She is on hard drugs. It is true, I exploit people. I exploit them because that is the only way to wake them up. Exploitation is not necessarily evil. I exploit their stupidity, their idiotness. I exploit their conditionings, I simply want them to be utterly nude, naked, as they were born. So it is perfectly true. And I am a genius in exploitation, but that exploitation turns out to be finally the transformation of man. About that transformation she cannot understand even the ABC.We are only going to inflict one more bit of Sheela tape on you. What will you do if Sheela turns up? What would you say to her if you meet again?I will accept her. I love her. I love bitches, many of them. If she comes back, she will be welcome. But she will not have any power any more, because she has misused it.Will she ask your forgiveness?No there is no question, because I am not angry. It is her problem to forgive herself by doing something to help this community which she has betrayed. I am simply out of it. If I was angry I could have forgiven her, but I never became angry. I simply accept people as they are. She was the type, she proved it. She killed her first husband by depriving him of oxygen, and he was a block. She killed him for this other man, and then she came for some work to America and fell in love with another man. She does not know what love means.She says in this second tape that it was you who forgot how to love, that you robbed her of her dignity.I will say about that.Recording of Sheela’s interviewer’s voice: He might be watching. He says that it you ever meet again, you will throw yourself at his feet and beg for mercy.Recording of Sheela’s voice: Would he wish. That’s his dream again. Not true, Osho. No. One thing I have is my dignity, and that was a problem for you, you know it too.She has no dignity. All dignity that she thinks she has was given by me. She was just a hotel waitress, and I made her almost a queen. And now she is just a criminal, and will be soon behind the bars. What dignity she is talking about? And a person who kills the husband for a lover, and then within weeks married another man, destroying the lover and his heart, and now she has married third man without even divorcing the second. The second man is American. She married him because it was useful, convenient, now he is no more useful. Now she needs a Swiss husband, so she has married a Swiss husband without even bothering to divorce the American. This is love!She does have an appetite.Hmmm?She does have an appetite.Just the appetite of a bitch, not of a woman.[Conversation between interviewer and cameraman]And she has done every crime that a human being can do. She has done arson, she burned the Planning Office of Wasco County. We have the witnesses. The police has all the evidences, all the testimonies. She taped all the telephones going out of the commune, which is against human freedom, human privacy. She has taped almost all the houses in the commune, even my room was bugged.You had never approved that? Any of that bugging?I will approve bugging in my room!Not your room, no.She has bugged the whole hotel, one forty-five rooms. I would have never come to know about it. She herself made it clear to me, because I was talking to my physician one evening and tomorrow morning she came and she said she has a dream, and in the dream she saw me talking with the physician. Am I not feeling well? I said, “Sheela, I don’t think you have any intuitive powers.” She said, “Not only I have dreamt it. Savita, Vidya, all have dreamt the same dream.” I said, “You don’t know even about dreaming. Three persons dreaming the same dream have never been heard in the whole history. So don’t be stupid. Simply tell me that this room is bugged. And I had specifically talked to the physician so that I can catch hold of you.” She simply denied that, “No, I have not bugged any place, not this room, not any other room.” And that was the last time I saw her. Again she never dared to come before me. For three months more she was here, but continuously going to Europe, to Australia, to Singapore, to Holland, somehow avoiding facing me. Even on the last day she did not come to see me.The FBI says this place was bugged worse than the CIA. What was the reason for that?Certainly, because we have better engineers, better electronics experts, better electricians. And she used them. And she used them in my name. They all have confessed with tears in their eyes, because she used them that, “It is for Osho’s protection.” So they did everything. I was in silence for three and a half years, and in isolation. That gave her an opportunity. So much power, so much money, so many people with whom she could tell to do anything in my name, and she was my only connection with the people, so I will know only what she wanted me to know, and the people will know only what she wanted them to know. She used the opportunity.As I started becoming aware that my place is bugged, then I became aware that few people, particularly my physician, my caretaker, my dentist, had been poisoned. When it became a certain proof that my physician has been poisoned four times, then I said, “It is time that I should come out of my isolation, out of my silence.” And the moment I came out of my silence, the whole commune was rejoicing and dancing except Sheela, because my coming out of silence means her power is finished.And what will you testify about Sheela when you appear before the federal grand jury?I am not a eyewitness for anything, because I was in isolation and silence. Whatever I can say is just hearsay, whatever I heard from my caretaker, from my physician, from my dentist. These were the three people who were able to approach me. So all that I have heard is hearsay. But when I started speaking I called a press conference and exposed everything that I have heard, and invited the police and the federal agencies to investigate. And now whatever I have said, they have found proofs for everything.But aren’t you going to have quite a hard time convincing those authorities that as an enlightened man you didn’t know this was happening?There is no reason for an enlightened man to know these things, that they are happening. It is not part of enlightenment. People have strange ideas about enlightenment. Enlightenment simply means I know myself. It does not mean that I know that my room is bugged. Enlightenment and bugging has no relationship.So you didn’t know Sheela, even though you have known her since she was nineteen?I started slowly, as I started hearing the stories. Something was wrong. And when she disappeared and started moving into other communes in the world and became afraid facing me because I will ask about things, how it happened, how the Planning Office in the Wasco County was burned, who burned it, how Dalles reservoir was poisoned - to kill the whole city.Are you saying she tried to kill a whole city?Yes. She killed a man here. She has brought three thousand street people. To me she said, “This is just a humanitarian gesture. We have.”How did she drug them?She imported certain drug Haldol.That’s a tranquilizer?Yes. Drums of Haldol. And with every food - tea, coffee, everything - they were drugged, for twenty-one days, so they became almost like robots. The whole idea was that they will now do whatever she wants them to do. They will vote for her. One man was overdosed and died. She simply threw her body out of Rancho Rajneesh, without any feelings. As these stories started slowly coming to me - because it was difficult for people to reach me, I had prevented them not to reach me, otherwise what is the point of being silent? I was not reading newspapers, I was not seeing television, I was not reading books, I was simply relaxing into my silence.Have you told the police?A:.and for everything that I have said I am not a eyewitness. But there are eyewitnesses for everything. They drugged another street person, thinking that he is an informer. Gave him a good beating whole night, so much that he became unconscious. Then drugged him so that for three days he remained unconscious, and just left him unconscious in Portland. Now we have found the doctor who did all this under Sheela’s direction, and we have informed the police just yesterday.But bureaucracy is so stupid. Yesterday we have informed; they have not turned up yet, and the woman doctor is trying to escape to Germany to meet with Sheela’s group. And we have informed that, that she is trying to escape. We don’t want to take law in our own hands. It is your duty to catch her. They have not turned.Now I had to inform the FBI that if state government is not taking any step, then to let her go to Germany - and she is German, she will not return back - then it seems you want to protect the criminals. And that is my assumption, that they want to protect the criminals, and all the criminals have escaped. Twenty criminals have escaped with Sheela.Those few who have remained - for example, this doctor was not suspecting that she will be caught. But from the pharmacy those drugs are missing. From the record those drugs are missing, and they are in her name. Where those drugs have gone finally she had to confess. Now we are giving criminals to them, and they are not even ready to catch hold of them. Their idea is to protect the criminals and to destroy the commune, so that they can catch hold of the innocent people.Osho, it’s funny that you mention drugs, because Sheela says that most of the time you’re high as a kite. She says you live like a rock ‘n’ roll star behind those closed doors, that it’s sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. That’s Sheela’s portrait of you at home.Sheela seems to be really getting insane. I have never made love to her, that much is certain. Perhaps that is the jealousy. She always wanted, but I have made it a point: Never make love to a secretary. And I have kept that rule.That’s a record a lot of other bosses would be proud of.Yes. So she seems to be jealous. I love women, I love everything beautiful. I am not an ascetic. I am against celibacy. It is celibacy that has driven the whole humanity into all kinds of perversions. I am not a monk. I am a natural human being, and I want to live as naturally as possible, not going against nature in any way.Sheela says, Osho, that you are not interested in the natural state, that in fact you live in a very unreal world full of drugs?For her it may seem unreal. For me it is the reality. And can you see in my eyes that they are drugged? Are you.?An honest answer?Yes.I often wondered what was in your eyes.Yes, in my eyes there is something, but it is not drugs. It can drug you!Not my bag, not my bag. You haven’t given me an answer, though. I mean, I said like a rock ‘n’ roll star. A rock ‘n’ roll star reaches for any drug he can get his hands on to get high.There is no way for me. I remain in my room. I never go out of the room. I never go to the pharmacy, I never go to the commune, I never go out of the commune. Unless you believe me, like Jesus, I am turning water into wine, water into LSD, then it is a different matter. Otherwise, from where are those drugs are going to come to me? She was the only one coming to me. Was she bringing all those drugs to me?Well, speaking of miracles, Sheela tells me that she is going to buy a hotel in the black forest for four and a half million dollars. Where is she going to get that money from?She has stolen money from the commune.A lot of money?Forty-three million dollars.That’s a lot of money.Not lots.Not when you have ninety-one Rolls Royces.Nothing much. If I had forty-five.forty-three million, just in one day I will spend it. It is not a lot.You do love the rich, Osho.Certainly!Are the rich as easy, are the rich as gullible? Do they hand over their, all of their, possessions to you as easily as the poor?I am a poor man. I don’t possess anything. Those Rolls Royces are not my possessions. They belong to the commune. Everything that I use is loaned by the commune to me. I am the poorest man on the earth. Just me people love me and want me to live like an emperor, and I live like an emperor. But I know I am poor as far as things are concerned. But as far as my being is concerned, I am the richest man that has ever been on the earth.And the rich people you are asking about are more capable of understanding me than the poor people, for the simple reason that a poor person, uneducated, illiterate, hungry, starving - an Ethiopian - will not be able to understand Mozart’s music, will not be able to understand Van Gogh’s paintings. He is not in a state where Mozart’s music or Van Gogh’s paintings or Nijinsky’s dances can be understood. For that you need a certain culture, a certain sophistication, a certain well being, a certain standard of life, a certain education. And having all the things of the world, still feeling unsatisfied.That is the basic point to understand.Well, that is your basic product, isn’t it? In Sheela’s word, it was an intangible product that you are selling: enlightenment. But she says that really was, in her phrase, a con.Anybody who cannot experience it, it will look like a con. But look around my people and you will not find more rejoicing people anywhere, more happy, more loving, more gentle than anywhere. And they are yet only on the way.Rejoicing even as they hand over their millions?Yes. Still rejoicing.Is that enlightenment?My enlightenment has nothing to do with it.It’s enrichment.I am enlightened thirty years. And anybody who is discontented is bound to find some way to find contentment. I sell contentment. I sell enlightenment. Sheela could not get it, because she has a very third-rate mind. I have never heard any bitch becoming enlightened. [Long pause]Let me make the point clear. All the religions of the world have taught poverty. Naturally, the world is poor. They have raised poverty into something spiritual, which is sheer nonsense. Poverty is the source of all crimes. It is not spiritual. I am the first man in that sense who is against poverty and against its being declared spiritual. I want to destroy poverty, and it can be destroyed only if wealth is respected.And wealth can be created, but it should be given the same respect as a painting, as a poetry, as a dance, as music. Everybody is not Henry Ford, just like as everybody is not a Picasso. The wealthy man has also a genius, and I want the world to be so wealthy that there is no need for communism; the wealth is so much available that there is no need to distribute it and no need to hoard it. Capitalism at its highest peak is bound to flower into a new type of communism, which will not be enforced. There will be no dictatorship of the proletariat.Your empress, Sheela, seems to admit rather brazenly that she presided over a confidence trick, that people handed over their money thinking they were getting enlightenment, but in fact, she says, you were not terribly interested even in enlightenment. She paints a picture of you as a spoiled Osho.She simply is trying to hide all her crimes. You can ask my people whether I am interested in their enlightenment or not. I was interested in their enlightenment till she was my secretary. And just within a week, when she escaped like a criminal from here, I am no more interested in people’s enlightenment. You should ask the people. Who she is? What she knows about enlightenment?Some of your people now seem confused as to what’s happening. I mean, is this.For a few days there will be confusion. That is natural. But after few days that will be gone and there will be more fresh air. It is already felt, that we are getting rid of a fascist regime that she had created here.And what will happen to the Rajneeshees in Australia and around the world?I have withdrawn.Rajneeshism is dead. There is no religion like that, and there are no Rajneeshees. They are individual seekers. They love me. They are my friends, not my followers. Even I have changed the name of Rajneesh Foundation International. Now it will be Rajneesh Friends International.I don’t want anybody to follow me. I simply want to share my experience if they are ready to open up. It is up to them. I don’t want to impose any belief. I don’t ask their faith. My teaching is based on doubt and skepticism. And for three and a half years she was telling my people, that “You have to surrender and you have to believe.” She completely spoiled, so I am cleaning the house: spring cleaning. Completely, whatever she has done, I have to undo it.Then you probably won’t like what she says about the end of Rajneeshpuram. She says in fact that you plan to sit in that chair and take a very long ride, not in a Rolls Royce, but to take your life.She is just going more and more insane before she goes to imprisonment. You just wait. Either she will kill herself out of the very burden of all the crimes that she has done or she will have to suffer her whole life in imprisonment. Just for one bugging, five years imprisonment, and she has done so much bugging that one thousand years will not be enough. So now whatsoever she is saying is simply nonsense and meaningless, and if she has guts she should come back here. And she should face me directly rather than hiding there and telling anything that comes to her mind. Fictions won’t help.Osho, you ask people to be skeptical. How do we know that you aren’t in cahoots with Sheela? How do I know that some months from now you won’t be sitting in a hot tub in Sheela’s chalet in the black forest?Try to find out! Be skeptical!You go back a long way, you two. How do we know it’s still not part of the performance?You have to find out. If I say anything, you will be skeptical of it. Yes, I was sitting. Now be skeptical. Now doubt it!Do you plan to see Sheela again?I never plan anything. I never bother about Sheela or anybody. All I am concerned is that she should have courage enough to say the truth rather that creating a smoke of lies and hiding whatever she has been doing for three and a half years. She tried to kill three persons. Eyewitnesses are there who saw the person injecting my physician in a public meeting, in my morning discourse. And my physician immediately pulled his robe and showed to people: blood coming out, and the point of the needle.[Conversation between interviewer and cameraman]Do you think, Osho, that the grand jury process here, given the pressure that has been on your community, do you think that the grand jury process will lay charges against Sheela and the others? Extradite them from southern Germany?They have to, because every fact is against Sheela and her company. There is not a single fact against the commune. The commune has not done anything wrong, just a company of twenty people. And we have provided all the testimonies. When Sheela left, in her room books on poison, books on how to murder people, books on snakes, poisonous spiders.Pretty fantastic stuff, isn’t it?And my physician is not just an ordinary MD. He is one of the most intelligent medical experts, and the youngest Fellow ever who has been accepted as a member of the Royal Society of Physicians in England. Very brilliant, a genius. He was four times poisoned, and all times he said it is a certain poison which is undetectable. He named the poison, but there is no way to detect it. Other doctors said, “What we can do? Because in the blood you cannot find it, there is no sickness that you can find it. There are no symptoms.”When Sheela left, in her room the books on the poison - that very poison is underlined. Only that one poison is underlined with the description that it is undetectable. So you can give it to anybody, there is no problem of being detected. And that poison she had given to the attorney of Jefferson County, to one of the judges of Wasco County, three of my sannyasins.This.In her room, when the new president and my secretary, Hasya, moved, they found a underground room which nobody was aware of, with a tunnel going out. The house is fenced all around, the tunnel goes out of the fence. Even if the police is surrounding the house, it will be inside the wirings, the tunnel goes out of the wirings, reaches exactly to the airport. An airplane can wait there and you can immediately escape.What did she want to escape from? Why do you think she was paranoid?Doing all those things will make anybody paranoid. If you kill people, if you poison people. They were making small lab in which they were culturing virus for AIDS, for other diseases. Sheela has one of the persons with her, a medical expert. The idea was that anybody who is antagonistic, does not want to do anything according to them, can be made sick, can be made an AIDS victim. And what she did: two persons who had disobeyed, their blood was sent for testing and it came with positive AIDS, so they have to be removed into isolation, away from the commune.When she left, their blood was sent again. It was negative! So it seems she has two persons with her which are homosexuals: Dipo, the person who she is married now, and Anubhavo. Both are homosexuals and both may be having AIDS. So the blood was changed. Because these two persons while they were here remained separate, isolated. They never allowed anybody even for cleaning the room. They ate in paper plates. All that shows that something was wrong with them. And their blood was sent. They were saved from AIDS and these two innocent persons were unnecessarily harassed.Perhaps she was thinking to culture more AIDS virus and spread in the whole commune. Her whole desire was, as if without her the commune cannot live. She is absolutely wrong. The commune is far better than when she was here. The commune is far more happier, far more freer, as if a great bondage has disappeared from people’s minds. And nobody is afraid of anybody.Do you have any worries on your mind?No, I don’t have any mind and I don’t have any worries.Have you ever had a vision, then of being led in handcuffs to jail yourself?I.It was not a vision. It was a challenge, challenge to the American government, that “If you have guts, then arrest me with handcuffs, so with my handcuffs I can show to the whole world that America is not a democracy but a hypocrisy.” A man who was in isolation and in silence, who was not coming out of his room, has burnt the Wasco County - two hours journey from here - has killed people, has poisoned people, has done all kinds of crime.It was simply a challenge to the American government. I want them to understand that fight with me is not going to be easy. It is not a small question. I will fight for the Constitution of America, because I respect it more than Holy Bible. Holy Bible is just rotten, but the Constitution of America has some hope for humanity, some values. And I will fight for it against the American politicians.Where will you go? If you are washed up in America, where will you go?I don’t go anywhere. All the Americans are foreigners except red Indians. If I need a green card, they all need green cards from red Indians. They are invaders; I am not a invader. I have to fight in the Supreme Court, and tell to the Supreme Court, that “If you respect your own constitution, then the government should be handed over to the red Indians and all Americans either should go to their own countries or they should apply for green cards.”You were certainly right about one prophecy, that we would be sitting together. You said I’d be back. Will you still be here a year from now?Yes. I will be here, and you will be coming again.See you then.Okay.Thank you.Great.Thank you very much. To be continued. It reminds me of Gurdjieff’s title: Meetings With Remarkable Men. Somewhere down the road I’m sure we’ll meet again.Come on again.Thank you.Ma Yoga PratimaWhat is objective art? Is creativity somehow related with meditation?Art can be divided into two parts. Ninety-nine percent of art is subjective art. Only one percent is objective art. The ninety-nine percent subjective art has no relationship with meditation. Only one percent objective art is based on meditation. The subjective art means you are pouring down your subjectivity on the canvas, your dreams, your imaginations, your fantasies, your dreams. It is a projection of your psychology in the same way it will be in poetry, in music, in all dimensions of creativity. You are not concerned with the person who is going to see your painting. You are not concerned what will happen to him when he sees your painting; that is not your concern at all. Your art is simply a kind of vomiting. It will help you, just the way vomiting helps. It takes the nausea off, it makes you cleaner, makes you feel healthier. But you have not considered what is going to happen to the person who is going to see your vomit. He will become nauseous. He may start feeling sick.Look at the paintings of Picasso. He is a great painter, but just a subjective artist. Looking at his paintings, you will start feeling sick, dizzy, something going berserk in your mind. You cannot go on looking at Picasso’s painting long enough. You would like to get away, because the painting has not come from a silent being. It has come from a chaos. It is a by product of a nightmare. But ninety-nine percent art belongs to that category.Objective art is just the opposite. The man has nothing to throw, he is utterly empty, absolutely clean. Out of this silence, out of this emptiness, arises love, compassion, and out of this silence a possibility for creativity. This silence, this love, this compassion, these are the qualities of meditation.Meditation brings you to your very center, and your center is not only your center, it is the center of the whole existence. Only on the periphery we are different. As we start moving towards the center, we are one. We are part of eternity, a tremendously luminous experience of ecstasy which is beyond words, something that you can be but very difficult to express it. But a great desire arises in you to share it, because all other people around you are groping for exactly such experiences. And you have it. You know the path.And these people are searching everywhere except within themselves - where it is. You would like to shout in their ears. You would like to shake them and tell them, that “Open your eyes! Where are you going? Wherever you go, you go away from yourself. Come home back, and come as deep into yourself as possible.”This desire to share becomes creativity. Somebody can dance. There have been mystics - for example, Jalaluddin Rumi - whose teaching was not in words, whose teaching was in dance. He will dance. His disciples will be sitting by his side, and he will tell them, that “Anybody who feels like joining me can join. It is a question of feeling. If you don’t feel like, it is up to you. You can simply sit and see.” But when you see a man like Jalaluddin Rumi dancing, something dormant in you becomes active. In spite of yourself you find you have joined the dance. You are already dancing before you become aware that you have joined it.Even this experience is of tremendous value, that you have been pulled like a magnetic force. It has not been your mind decision, you have not weighed for pro and for against, to join or not to join, no. Just the beauty of Rumi’s dance, his spreading energy, has taken possession of you. You are being touched. This dance is objective art.And if you can continue - and slowly you will become more and more unembarrassed, more and more capable - soon you will forget the whole world. A moment comes, the dancer disappears and only the dance remains. And then there is a meeting with the master, the synchronicity I have been talking about again and again in different ways from different directions. They are not two. The ice has melted. Slowly, slowly other disciples will be joining.A famous story is about Jalaluddin Rumi. He was living in a forest monastery with five hundred disciples. Few visitors who were passing by the road just out of curiosity, that “What this fellow Jalaluddin Rumi is doing here? We have heard five hundred people are living with him, but what they go on doing inside this monastery?” They went it. They saw. They could not believe. Five hundred people dancing madly. Nobody even took any note of them. They remained there for at time being, and then they thought that these people are mad. “Returning, we will see what happens. Perhaps we can find them sitting and then we can talk about, ‘What you are doing?’ This time they seem to be completely mad.”Next time when they were coming back after few months, they again went into the monastery. The five hundred people were there. Nobody was dancing, all were sitting like statutes, with closed eyes. There was a eternal silence. It was even more frightening to those people. Dancing at least there was some activity. Now what has happened to these people? They have gone, seems to be, completely mad. Dancing in the hot sun in the desert for days - this is the result. But they thought, that “When we are coming again for the next trip, we will see what happens.”Next trip they came, there was only Jalaluddin Rumi. The five hundred has gone. They were very much puzzled: “What has happened? All those people are dead?” That’s what they could logically think. “First they were dancing madly, then they were sitting like statues as if not breathing at all. Perhaps they have all died. This old guy is dangerous! But now at least we can talk something to him.” They reached to him and asked him, “What has happened to five hundred people who used to dance here and then sit?” Jalaluddin said, “The work is over. They have learned what they have come to learn. Now they have gone to teach others. Are you interested?” They said, “No. We are going for a business trip.” Jalaluddin said, “You can go for a business trip later on, but this is far more important.” They said, “Just, please, forgive us. Not this time, because that dance in the hot sun - we cannot manage.” Jalaluddin said, “You need not be worried. It manages itself. You don’t have to manage it.” They said, “Before we leave, we want to ask, they what happens? Why they were sitting like statutes?”Jalaluddin said, “When the dancer has disappeared, who is going to dance? There is a momentum - the dance continues for awhile - then that, too, stops. Then comes a period when one is utterly silent, just sitting, doing nothing. But the bliss of it is incomparable. So whenever you can find time, if I am alive you are always welcome.”There are in India statues which you have just to sit silently and meditate upon. Just look at those statues. They have been made by meditators in such a way, in such a proportion, that just looking at the statue, the figure, the proportion, the beauty.Everything is very calculated to create a similar kind of state within you. And just sitting silently with a statue of Buddha or Mahavira, you will find a strange feeling which you cannot find in sitting by the side of any Western sculpture.All Western sculpture is sexual. You see the Roman sculpture: beautiful, but something in you creates sexuality. It hits your sexual center. It does not give you an uplift.In the East the situation is totally different. Statutes are carved, but before a sculptor starts carving statues he learns meditation. before he starts playing on the flute he learns meditation. Before he starts writing poetry he learns meditation. Meditation is absolute necessity for any art, then the art will be objective.Then just reading few lines of a haiku, a Japanese form of a small poem - only three lines, perhaps three words - if you silently read it, you will be surprised. It is far more explosive that any dynamite. It simply opens up doors in your being.Basho’s small haiku I have on the pond near my house. I love it so much, I wanted it to be there. So every time, coming and going. One of the persons I have loved. Nothing much in it. “An ancient pond.” It is not an ordinary poetry. It is very pictorial. Just visualize: “An ancient pond. A frog jumps in.” You almost see the ancient pond! You almost hear the frog, the sound of its jump: “Plop.”And then everything is silent. The ancient pond is there, the frog has jumped in, the sound of his jumping in has created more silence than before. Just reading it is not like any other poetry that you go on reading - another poetry, another poetry.No, just you read it and sit silently. Visualize it. Close your eyes. See the ancient pond. See the frog. See it jumping in. See the ripples on the water. See the sound, hear the sound. And hear the silence that follows.This is objective art.Basho must have written it in a very meditative mood, sitting by the side of an ancient pond, watching a frog. And the frog jumps in. And suddenly Basho becomes aware of the miracle that sound is deepening the silence. The silence is more than it was before. This is objective art. By ‘objective’ it means the person is not simply trying to get rid of his sickness, garbage, of which he is so full of wants somehow to throw it out.I used to know a principle. I was only a student in his college, but we became very friendly, because so many complaints were coming against me to him, that finally he thought, “This boy seems to be unique. Every day some professor comes with a complaint, and whenever I call the boy, I always find he is right. This is such a strange thing: that all my professors prove wrong and he is always right. I cannot say that you have done anything wrong.”We become friendly, I told him, “Whether they send me or not, I will be coming at least once every day!”He said, “I enjoy your coming, so you can come, whether they send you or not. If they send, good, if they don’t send you, you come on your own. And now we are not going to discuss for what you have done and for what they have sent you. Because I can see, we can discuss far better things. And I love your insight into things.”So I started going to the principle and then I became aware of one thing, that whenever I will go to him, he will take his earplugs off. I said, “What are you doing?”He said, “You know, my whole life I have been tortured by all kinds of complaints, finally I decided not to hear anything. Everything is right! So I just keep earplugs. They go on saying; then I go on nodding. And they feel happy and I feel happy. But with you I really want to talk, so I have to take [them out], but don’t tell it to anybody else.”I said, “This is really a great device. Everybody should use it. It prevents other people pouring their garbage in your mind. And everybody is so interested in pouring his garbage in your mind.”That I have heard - I told the principle the story, that’s why I remember it - that a thief was caught. And the man, in whose house he was stealing, came to the court and asked the judge to forgive the thief. The judge said, “This is strange. He was trying to steal in your house. Why you want him to be released?”He said, “In fact, he would have stolen and he would have left, but I was awake, and you know, I am a poet. So I told him, ‘Sit down and listen to my poetry, otherwise I will give you to the police.’ So out of fear he sat down. He returned everything; he said, ‘You take everything, but please don’t tell me your poetry, I am a poor thief and I don’t understand poetry.’“The poet said, “It does not matter, whether you understand or not. I am enjoying telling it. And if you are going to create trouble, I am going to phone the police. The whole night this poor man has been listening to my poetry; he has suffered enough. And then he was caught by the police. Just release him. And I hope that once in a while he should come and visit me. And no need to catch hold of any thief, because I am capable enough to catch hold of thieves and make them listen to my poetry. I write the poetry with so much effort, and nobody is there to listen to me. So only once in a while I get some audience. And this man was really very attentive. He seems to be a lover of poetry.”People are ready to throw their garbage, their advice, their wisdom, their knowledge, everybody is ready to catch hold of you and put something in your mind. You are already too much burdened. Subjective art burdens you more. Objective art unburdens you. Subjective art should be part of psychiatric hospitals only. People suffering from mental sicknesses should be allowed painting, poetry, sculpture, anything they want. And it is going to help, it is therapeutic. It will make them healthy.Now it is being used by few psychotherapists. Carl Gustav Jung has used painting to heal many patients, but that painting should not be allowed to be sold in the art galleries to reach to people, because if they see it, something sick is bound to radiate from it.Subjective art is good for the artist but not for the one who looks at it, who sees it, who listens it, who reads it. It is harmful to him.And objective art is only one percent, for the simple reason because very few people have been meditating. And out of those very few people, only few expressed their silence into artistic forms.But my idea is that as your commune matures, as you are finished with your necessary things, your houses, your roads - and they too can be very artistic, they can be expression of your meditation - as you are finished with utilitarian things, I have the idea that the university should be teaching you with meditation, painting, dancing, singing, music, sculpture, poetry, every possible thing.This commune should become a commune of creators. Unless you are a creator, you will never find real blissfulness. It is only by creating, that you become part of the great creativity of the universe.But to be a creator, meditation is a basic necessity. Without it you can paint, but that painting has to burnt, it has not to be shown to others. It was good, it helped you unburden, but please, don’t burden anybody else, don’t present it to your friend, they are not your enemies. Objective art is meditative art, subjective art is mind art.Okay, Pratima?

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 27 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Guiseppe Josca, Corriere della Sere, Italy.Good evening.Osho,There are many questions that I want to ask you tonight, but first I’d like to clarify one point. You say that you are an ordinary man, but you live, you act, you even dress as an emperor. You have people who worship you, you have money, power. How do you explain this contradiction?I am an extraordinarily ordinary man.A small book was sufficient to spread the teaching of Jesus or of Mohammed, and many people consider them good after hundreds of years. But there are many tapes of your speeches and statements by the thousands. Every single word you say is recorded, including this interview. Wouldn’t you call this a cult of personality?No.I was at the Rajneesh Mandir this morning and I listened to your meditations. I had the impression at a certain point, with all respect, that you were offering easy solutions to impossible problems, like transferring part of the population of India to the Soviet Union, where plenty of land is available. Do you think that such ideas are really practical?Everything that seems impossible is possible. One day flying was impossible to every practical man; now it is no more. Anything that is impossible can become possible, all that it needs is talented people to work it out. And every dream in the beginning is a dream, but it can be transformed into a reality.In your words Jesus was a communist, the first communist. Then what would you say about his representative on earth, Pope John Paul? The communists tried to kill him, apparently.I don’t know what they would do with Jesus. I know about myself, that America would like to kill me, the Soviet Union would like to kill me; every country in the world would like to kill me, for the simple reason that I don’t belong to any tradition, any religion, any ideology. Jesus would not have been crucified by communists. They would have laughed at him, they would have, made a joke out of him. He would have been just a buffoon. They would not have taken the trouble to crucify a simpleton. Jews unnecessarily created the trouble for the whole world.If Jesus had not been crucified there would have been no Christianity. Christianity is because of the crucifixion, not because of Jesus. Alive, he had no impact. Only twelve fools - uneducated, illiterate - were his apostles. Not a single rabbi, not a single scholar, not a single intellectual was impressed by him. But the crucifixion made him special, and that crucifixion became the source of Christianity.I don’t think communists are so foolish. They have learned much in these two thousand years; they would not crucify Jesus. And there was no need! He was just wandering on his donkey, talking nonsense; you could have enjoyed it. If you didn’t like it, didn’t enjoy it, there was no fee to be paid.You were quoted as saying that you consider yourself the guru of the rich. What do you think we should do with the poor?As far as I am concerned, it is not a question of my being the guru of the rich. Religion itself is possible only for those who have known all the luxuries of life and have found them meaningless. Religion is the last luxury. The poor man cannot afford it. He cannot afford even food, he cannot afford even shelter, he cannot afford a little education for his children; how can he understand Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky? It will be beyond his comprehension. And these people are nothing - when it comes to religion, it means the ultimate mysteries of life.The poor neither has the time nor has the appetite nor has the intelligence to take such a flight. So it is not a question of my being the guru of the rich, it is more fundamental. Only the rich can afford religion. The poor can afford communism, but not religion. For the poor, communism is religion and for the rich man even Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism are not satisfying because they are all old rotten. He needs something up to date - and that’s what I am offering.Hence my saying that I am - the guru of the rich. So to those who want to be contemporaries in the search for truth, I am available. But I am not available for those who cannot even understand the ABC of mysticism. They have not even started the journey, and I am talking about the end of the journey. Naturally, very few - those who are surrounded by every luxury and yet find - a deep hollowness in themselves, a great unfulfillment, a tremendous desire to find something that defies death - these are the people for whom I am ready, and I have methods for them. But between me and the Ethiopian, the distance is so big that there is no possibility of communication. The Ethiopian needs bread, he does not need meditation; perhaps he needs medicine. So it is a very simple thing.And the statement is not about me, the statement is about the very nature of religiousness. It blossoms only at the very peak of your growth. For example, if somebody says that sexuality is for those who are young adults, nobody objects; nobody says that this is depriving children of sex. But what can we do? The children are not of age, they are not sexually mature. Let them come of age, and the doors will be open for them too.Religion has a certain delicacy, subtlety. it needs a very refined mind, a very cultured being, to understand it. It is not for the poor. I don’t want the poor in the world, for the simple reason that I want religiousness to be available to all. My concern is less with poverty, my concern is more with religiousness. I don’t want anybody to be poor in the world, but not because poverty is something destructive. I have lived in India and I have seen the poor people living for centuries in poverty with no discontent. They are satisfied with their fate, they have no complaint against anybody. But still I want some discontent to arise in them, some revolt to arise in them, because just being poor they will never have the most beautiful experience of life.To me religiousness is an orgasmic experience with existence. I don’t have any God, I don’t have any belief system: This existence is enough for me. But there are ways in which you can be in tune with existence. When you are absolutely in tune with existence, you have an orgasmic explosion of bliss, ecstasy, joy, eternal life.Religion is not anything to do with churches and temples and mosques; it is something to do with you, with me, with each individual. It is an inner journey. And the poor man cannot go on an inner journey, because on an inner journey he cannot find bread and butter. What can I do? - it does not exist there. And a man who is hungry, starving - to talk to him about the inner journey is simply humiliating him. I would not like even to talk about religion. What he needs is totally different. He does not need religiousness.You proclaim that what some have called Rajneeshism is dead as a religious movement. How can a religion, a spiritual movement, cease to exist only because its leader says so?Because the people who are around me.. It is not an established religion. I had started alone, and then people started coming and became fellow travelers; it became a big caravan. But their love gives me the authority. I don’t have any power over them, but their love gives me the authority.I would not like them to become an organized religion because that is the death of the very search for in which they had come to me. So now it is simply an open movement of religiousness, with no catechism, with no church, with no clergy, with no holy book: an experiment totally new to the whole history of man.And because they love me, they listen to me. It is still up to them: if they want to organize something they can but not around me. I am absolutely free. If they want to organize something they can go to hell and do whatever they want, but I am not going to allow anything to be organized around me.Around me there will be a fluid movement, free and open, for all and sundry, with no conditions, with no qualifications, with no unnatural demands that you have to be celibate, that you have to fast once per week, that you have to do this and you have to do that: no that is only a simple understanding that you have come to me to discover yourself.I can explain how I have discovered myself, and you can find clues from it. You cannot exactly follow my footsteps, you will have to make it on your own path. It is not possible to borrow the truths from anybody, but you can get encouragement.That’s why I don’t say that I am your master, I am just a friend - on the way you met me. I don’t see any superiority in me - just a small difference. But if it has become awake in me, it can become awake in you: we are all equally human beings. I am not a messiah, a savior, a messenger, I don’t proclaim any kind of nonsense. That’s why I said that I am an ordinary human being.But there are people who say that raising the science of religion at this very moment may help with the state/religion controversy and the other problems that you are apparently having at the moment.I am not having any problem. In my whole life I have never had any problem. In fact, every problem becomes such a beautiful challenge that I enjoy it.What is your status with the immigration service?I am fighting. And those fools for four years have not been able to decide, this way or that. And this is the greatest powerful country, the most educated, the best bureaucracy. And for four years the whole department is engaged in deciding. And they cannot decide for the simple reason because they know that it is not going to be a simple matter. If they say ‘yes’, then the political pressure is on them. If they say ‘no’, then I am going to the court.And I have every valid reason to be here. They are all foreigners. It makes no difference whether you have come few years earlier and I have come few years later. And you are invaders. I am just a visitor. On whose permission these Americans have entered this country? What authority they have got? They are talking of democracy, freedom of the individual, and they are repressing the people to whom the land belongs. And all the people who have become the power are foreigners.I am going to fight up to the Supreme Court, and the fight is not going to be easy. I am going to say to the Supreme Court that, “If you have any sense of justice, then the first step should be tell Ronald Reagan to resign. Foreigners should rule this country. The country should go to the Red Indians. And then all foreigners either should move back to their country or they should apply for green card to the Red Indians. You are in the same boat as I am. You cannot decide about me. Who are you? Just because you came a little earlier. I have been four years here. You may have been three hundred years. That simply means if I am committing any crime, I have committed the crime only for four years, and you have committed it for three hundred years. You have toured America enough. Now go home! And I am just a latest comer. At least three hundred years I can be here.”It is going to be a beautiful fight so there is no problem. I am waiting. I am asking them “Decide soon.”Your former secretary, Sheela, has denied all your accusations against her.Her denial is bogus. If she feels that her denial has any validity, she should come back here, and before the court. Because we have given every valid proof to the police, to the Federal Government, so her denial means nothing. Why she should escape from this country? Why she should get married to a Swiss person while she is already married to an American? She is committing bigamy.She also said, and I quote: “I fear for my life. I know too much about him” - that is you.She need not be afraid from me. But she should be afraid about all the crimes she has committed. “Even one thousand years imprisonment will not be enough.” - That is not my statement. That is what experts, when they saw how many houses she has bugged. They said that Nixon is left far behind. For each bugging five years imprisonment, and if this woman has bugged so many houses, even one thousand years imprisonment will not be enough. She need not be afraid from me. I have not killed in my life, even an ant. And she is such a dirty bitch that I will not touch her. Killing is far away.But she should come here. And I guarantee her every protection in the Commune. She should come back and fight in the court. Making allegations there, fictions and lies, does not make sense. We have given facts of everything. One person has been killed by her. Three thousand people have been drugged continuously for twenty-one days, to take over the county. One judge of the county has been poisoned. Another attorney of the other county, Jefferson County, has been poisoned. Three of the sannyasins here have been poisoned. Eye witnesses are there, before whom injections were given to my own personal physician. Every fact has been given to the authorities. Now making allegations and lies won’t help. Just come back and face the facts in the court.According to your statements and what everybody says here in the commune, it seems that Sheela was responsible for all the times, all the mishaps, whatever went wrong in the community was her fault. How can it be that she could do whatever she wanted for years without you or anybody else realizing it, trying to stop it.Because I was in isolation for three years, three and a half years, in silence. And I was not meeting any sannyasin, not coming into the Commune. I did not want anybody to disturb me. I did not read any newspaper, any book, any radio, any television. I did not want to do with any information. I simply wanted to remain with myself. That was my own individual phenomenon. It has nothing to do with the Commune.This gave her an opportunity. She removed all those people who have been close to me from power posts, and placed puppets of her own, made a small group of twenty people, who were doing everything. The Commune was not aware.For example, how the Commune can be aware that the house are bugged. The two persons, who were doing it, were part of the group of twenty people. They were electricians, electronic engineers. And in the name of electricity they were putting one wire more. Now nobody who does not know about electronics can be able to figure out that these people are not putting just electric wires, but they are mixing a wire into it, which is for bugging. Only those two people knew about it. And those two people have escaped.All the twenty people who knew everything, except one who has turned back. Half the way she went with them, and then she felt that this is not right. First she has been part of a criminal group. Second she has deceived the respect and love of the Commune. Thirdly now she is escaping to remain a criminal for her whole life. It is better to go back to the Commune and confess everything. So only one woman is left who had certain spiritual courage. And she has given every detail of all the crimes of all the twenty people. Her testimony has been going on for seven days continuously from morning to evening. Because they committed so many things.But it was impossible to know, because the Commune people who are working making road, make road. People who are making food, make food. People who are doing other jobs, do their jobs.One doctor was part of a group, now she is functioning in creating poisons, what poisons to be used, how they can be injected. And there are poisons which cannot be detected. So you can be injected, but later on there is no way to detect it. So when my own physician was injected he SAID, but everybody laughed at him. Other doctors laughed. They said, “You must be going crazy. This is paranoia. Because there is no indication.” He said, “Indication is not necessary. There is a poison, I am aware, which leaves no indication.”And when Sheela left, we found in her room, books on poison, books on scorpions, books on black spiders, books ‘How to Make Bombs’, ‘How to Murder People’. And the book on the poisons has the same poison, that my personal physician was insisting, underlined. That is the only poison that is underlined in the whole book.No other person was inside the group. And because they all had committed sin - and this is a simple strategy of any criminal group: Let everybody commit something so he cannot get out of it. Because if he gets out of it, then his crime will be exposed. So all twenty criminals are bound to keep secret, and try to defend each other. They all had done something. They burned the Planning Office in the Wasco County. They stole significant papers from government offices. Files disappeared from governor’s offices.These people did everything that you can conceive of. They were taping every phone going out from the Commune. They had all mechanism, which has been handed over to the police. Now what allegations she can make? What all this mechanism was doing in her house? For taping telephones, twenty-six telephones can be taped together. So what purpose this mechanism was serving there?In her house there is discovered an underground air-conditioned room. What they were doing in that room? Because when the dog, which was a very expert dog to detect drugs or gunpowder and things like that, simply got crazy. Nothing was found but it seems the smell was still there. There have been chemicals which have been removed. And that underground room still opens in a secret tunnel that goes to the airport. It goes underneath, because the house is wired from all around, it goes under the wires, so even if the police is around the house, it will be inside the wires. If somebody wants to escape, just a plane has to be ready outside.For what purpose? And they are not in my house. What can be the purpose of all this? She should come here. Just LYING is easy there because the people to whom she is lying know no facts.They were having two labs in which they were keeping black spiders, poisonous spiders, which can kill people. They were keeping snakes which can kill people. And you will not be guilty at all. They were culturing all kinds of viruses, even AIDS virus they were culturing. I don’t think any criminal in the whole world is doing that, culturing AIDS virus. And they did.Two persons who disobeyed them for something they wanted them to do, their blood was sent immediately for testing. It turned out to be positive AIDS and they were isolated from the Commune, put with the AIDS people we are keeping far away. And when Sheela left, because we were looking into everything that she has done, we checked those two people’s blood again. It came negative. They were not AIDS people. So what happened. It seems while sending their blood, AIDS virus was mixed in them. Those two people would have died. Just the idea of having AIDS and only two years, AND then living with other AIDS people, ten other AIDS people, they were bound to become AIDS patients sooner or later.She should come here. She is lying. I have been listening to news. She is lying hundred percent. Not a single fact is in her favor. But the decision can be made only on the spot. She should come and show, why this tunnel. There must be some idea of escape, some possibility. What is the need of culturing AIDS virus? Perhaps the mind, thinking that if I am going to lose power, I may destroy the whole Commune. Mix virus in the food, and the person who was in charge of the food was one of those twenty. That’s why she could manage for those three thousand street people to keep them drugged, through the in-charge of the food.It is inhuman; it is not simply criminal. And it is not one crime. It is crime and crime on every step.She killed her husband. I have never believed it in India because it was just a rumor and a hearsay. I never thought that she could do that. But now I can think that perhaps she did it, if she can do all these things. Retrospectively, I am absolutely certain that she killed him. He was a cancer patient, and she was in love with somebody else, and he was a barrier, a continuous fighting. So finally she decided to finish him. And it was so easy to finish him. He was having an attack and she simply removed the oxygen, in the middle of the night.Well, what was the financial loss that the movement suffered because of Sheela’s mishaps?The Commune.she has not taken anything from here. But she has prevented forty-three million dollars which were coming to Commune, in the middle, in Switzerland, on her own name. So in our books we cannot show that she has taken anything. The money was coming from German communes as a donation. And from there much money has come for the Commune. So slowly, slowly, during these four years she went on gathering money in a bank account in Switzerland.Her secretary, who left two years before because of cancer - for treatment she went to California. She had come to inform that when she left, it was forty-three million. Now in these two years, how much more she may have gathered? It is difficult to imagine, but it is certainly.it must be near about one hundred thousand million. That money she has given the bank number, the bank’s name. But in Switzerland that is not according to bank’s policies. We phoned; they will not accept that Sheela has any account there.Sheela also said, and I quote again, that “If there are any financial problems, you expensive tastes are in part responsible”.There is no financial problems. The Commune is perfectly okay. One hundred million dollars, that she has taken, has not been taken from the Commune. Commune has no financial problem, but if those one hundred million had come to the Commune it would have expanded in many ways, which we were planning: to have bigger lakes, more forests, and make it a beautiful resort place, which will take a little time. We will get one hundred million again. That is not much of a trouble. Two hundred million we have put in this desert already.And as far as the cars are concerned, they are not my property. They belong to the Commune. The Commune can sell them any moment, do whatsoever they want. I have no power on any thing. Nothing to belongs to me. Not a single cent. Everything is loaned by the Commune to me. And even if those cars are counted, they are not more than ninety million.nine million.I don’t know how many Rolls Royces you.Ninety I have got.Ninety. But what I want to ask you is this: when you started collecting them, or somebody suggested the idea.No, nobody.Was that for the sake of publicity, to impress people, to induce the media to talk about you.?I am enough for all publicity, to impress any kind of media. I don’t need any Rolls Royce or anything. Even if I stand naked, that will be worldwide publicity. So there is no problem, I can manage it alone - even without clothes. It was my people.In India I had Rolls Royces - I was the only person given permission by the Indian government, because the Rolls Royce is banned: In India after 1965 Rolls Royce cannot be brought in. If you want to bring it in, the tax is three hundred sixty five percent. That makes it impossible to bring in.Did you pay those taxes?No, because of my back. I tried all cars - even Rolls Royces have models. Only one model, the Silver Spur, was suitable for my back. Any other car.I sit only in this kind of chair, which has been made by my own sannyasin. He has a PhD in engineering, but he works just for my things, small things, anything that is needed for my body. He has worked hard and managed to make many chairs exactly the same, so wherever I go the same chair is available.That car has exactly the same slope, otherwise my back is such a trouble. In any chair it starts hurting. And then it takes weeks for it to settle back. Then no traction, no massage, nothing helps. Then it settles by itself. So it is better.Even the best experts from England came and they said, “You have to live with it, so better just take care. Every care should be taken.”So that car suited me, and my sannyasins are all over the world. I don’t use anything else, so they started presenting those cars to me. I said, “I cannot have them, because I don’t possess anything, so you can give them to the commune.” So the commune has a trust. They possess the cars - they can sell the cars, it has nothing to do with me. And it is an asset to the commune, it is not in any way a loss to the commune. The people who have given those cars were not going to give the money to the commune.These were personal friends around the world who have sent those cars, and they are still sending. It is their love. And the commune is benefited by it, the commune is not a loser. Nine million dollars in cars it has got, and anything else that comes - because only two things are used, either a watch or a car.I don’t want to be irreverent, but don’t you think one Rolls Royce would be enough even for your back?It is enough, but those people don’t listen! I have told; I have told the trustees that ‘either sell those cars or distribute them to the sannyasins’. Neither the trustees are ready to sell those cars because I have used them they said, “They have become sacred for us. We cannot sell them.” And neither the sannyasins are ready to accept them. They say they have enough cars already. Our Commune is a rich commune. We have enough cars, enough buses, enough airplanes, and nowhere to go. So what they are going to do with those cars?Even I just use for coming to the evening interview, morning discourse, and one and a half hour I go for my own drive into the mountains. That is my personal use: one and a half hour. One car can do that. But my people are.Do you have any idea how much is the movement worth at the moment? What is the patrimony* of the movement? How much money do you have - I mean not you, the movement - how much money has it?No, we don’t have any money, because I don’t believe in having money. I believe in spending.How much money.?I always spend before I get. Just the idea that some money is coming, and I tell my people: Spend. Because who knows about tomorrow? Spend today. We don’t have any money, but we are perfectly sufficient. Nothing is missing, everything is perfectly okay. And money goes on coming. I have lived thirty-five years without any money. It has always been coming. Somebody somewhere feels to send, and it comes. And now I have started believing that existence takes care, even of an expensive man like me.You say that love is a liberation. But your enemies and critics maintain that some of the practices that the movement is encouraging seem to be inspired more than - Mr. Hefner of Playboy than by a spiritual leader. What is your reaction to this?I am a spiritual playboy. Is there something wrong? I call myself Zorba the Buddha and that’s my whole life effort: to bring Zorba and Buddha closer. I don’t want the dichotomy of the spiritual and the material. I want the spiritual and the material as one whole - they are. The division creates a schizophrenic state in humanity. And all the religions are criminals in that sense. They have created a split in man: your body is separate, your soul is separate. You have to fight with the body, you have to remain celibate. You have to fast, you have to torture the body. The more you torture it, the more spiritual you are.To me this is simply garbage, just nonsense. There is no need to torture the body, because the body and the soul are not two things. Existence is one. The body is the visible soul, and the soul is the invisible body - it is one mystery. Don’t divide it, and don’t make a conflict between them.So when I say “spiritual playboy,” I am not just joking. That’s my basic standpoint towards life. What is wrong if Buddha is dancing in a disco? It looks so beautiful - a beautiful girl.and why should Buddha be afraid? Is not his meditation strong enough, he will be pulled towards carnal lust? Is he afraid of falling back from his enlightenment? Then he is not enlightened at all, because there is no way to fall back. Once you attain, you cannot fall back. It is your own inner being. Where you are going to fall back to? Once you know it, you know it! Then whatever you do, that knowledge is always there. Whatever you do, that fragrance follows you.And there is no act which is unspiritual; even lovemaking is not unspiritual. In fact, if lovemaking is unspiritual, then every other act will be unspiritual. Lovemaking should be the most spiritual act. It is so delicate, so soft. But the religions have created the division, and created on the one hand saints which are just dry bones, and the other, sinners. If I have to choose - I don’t want to choose - if I have to choose I would rather be with the sinners than with the saints - they stink. Sinners at least are colorful people. If all sinners go to hell, then hell must be the most beautiful place in the world. And heaven must be the most ugly, because all those dead dry bones, long faces, will be sitting there eternally doing nothing: no entertainment, no dance, no music, not even football match - no Olympics; saints don’t participate in such things. They can’t drink, they can’t smoke. What they can do? Just go on praying and nagging God. They must have killed that poor fellow long before.But in hell I can see all the beautiful people of the world. Lao-Tzu will be there. Chuang-Tzu will be there, Gautam Buddha will be there - because he did not believe in God, he was an atheist. Bertrand Russell will be there, Socrates will be there, Plato and Heraclitus, all great painters - Van Gogh, Picasso - all great thinkers - Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers*. Hell will be a real company, and very colorful. Omar Khayyam will be there, and all kinds of juicy people - the whole of Hollywood. All actors, all actresses, all great showmen, all carnivals, circuses - hell must be from end to end a tremendous rejoicing.But I don’t want to choose, I want them to mix. I want only one place where saints can become again alive, can start breathing, can start dancing, can start loving, can become spiritual playboys. Certainly people must be getting offended, but what can I do? This is how I feel. This is my truth, and I have to say it exactly as it is. I am not at all concerned whether it shocks somebody, makes somebody worried. If it is true, then sooner or later they will have to understand it. And as far as I can see, for thirty years I have tried to look from every angle and I have always found it to be something very fundamental, categorically true, that man has come to the point where all schizophrenia has to be dropped. We are no more going to live like split personalities, fighting with ourselves. I don’t see any problem, why I cannot meditate sitting in my Rolls Royce. Do you think meditation is possible only under a bodhi tree? Has a bodhi tree something spiritual in it? I think a more comfortable place will help you to meditate better. Rather than sitting in the hot sun, an air-conditioned room will be more helpful to meditation. There is no dichotomy between the two. Comfort, luxury, spiritually - all are together. So I teach richness and I teach religiousness. I teach materialism and I teach spiritualism. For the first time somebody is doing it. Naturally, people will be shocked. They are always shocked with anything new and strange.What is more dangerous for humanity: AIDS, nuclear armament, or poverty and hunger in the third world?The most dangerous is AIDS.Why? How can you be so sure, as you say that AIDS will kill two-thirds of humanity?Two-thirds is underestimate. It will kill more.But don’t you think that science, medicine, can find a remedy for it?There seems to be no possibility. All the scientists are agreed on one point. That there seems to be no possibility. Because it is not a possibility; because it is not a disease. If it was a disease, some day some cure would have been possible. It is not disease. It is simply the whole metabolism losing the desire to live. Every cell of the body becomes vulnerable to all kinds of infections. And the metabolism of the body does not create antibodies to fight with them. It simply wants to die.Now if the very will to live has somewhere disappeared in the body, then there is no medicine to create will to live. You can help a patient; he has a sickness but he has also a will to live. You can help him. But if he has lost the will to live, then no cure is possible. And it is not a question of his mind; it is his metabolism, his body itself has lost the desire; every cell of it is simply waiting to die; will not create any resistance; will not fight with any infection.And I call it the most dangerous because as far as nuclear weapons are concerned.ordinarily people will think that should be the most dangerous. I don’t see it that way. The nuclear weapons have come to a point where nobody wants to use them, because that means destruction of all. War has meaning only when somebody becomes victorious and somebody is defeated. With the nuclear weapons the war is finished. The whole meaning of the war is gone. Who starts does not matter, within ten minutes the other party will be ready to fight; and within twenty-four hours the whole earth will be just a funeral pyre. And already Soviet Union and Russia [America?] together have enough nuclear weapons that they can destroy this earth planet seven hundred times. Nobody is going to use it. They will threaten. They will talk about it but they will not use it because it is pointless. So I don’t count it as the most dangerous. It is the least dangerous.Population I don’t count as the most dangerous because nature has its own way to cutting it down. It is cutting it down. Listen to the priests and the pope and Ayatollah Khomeini, and all other idiots. Listen that birth control is against God, and abortion is against God, but look what God is doing in Ethiopia. Abortion would have been better; birth control even more better.So there is no problem about population. Population will die out on its own accord. You cannot help. By the end of this century, the population will be five billion people. And that is the end of population. More than that: millions of people will be dying every day around the earth. So population will be cut to its right size by nature itself. And the right size will be just one billion people, one fourth of what it is today. So I don’t consider that a great problem.The only problem that remains is AIDS, because homosexuality is on the increase. It is created by the religions. Its whole credit goes to the religions. They created celibacy, which is unnatural. They forced monks to be celibate. And the natural perversion was bound to happen. They became homosexuals. Homosexuality is something very spiritual. It is happening in every monastery of the world: Tibetan, Chinese, Indian, Italian. Even the last pope was a homosexual.The Christian Trinity itself is subject to suspicion. Because there is no woman. God the Father, Holy Ghost and the Son. Now how this son comes, from where? Where is the mother? In the Trinity there is no woman. Unless Holy Ghost functions both the ways, is a bisexual. The Trinity is gay.Jesus lived with twelve Apostles. He had few very devoted women but they were not accepted as apostles. When he was crucified, all the Apostles have fled away. Only three women who are not accepted as apostles remained there to the very end. When he was brought down, it was three women who took his body down. But he lived his whole life with those twelve uneducated, illiterate boys. It was a gay company.And to me, celibacy is impossible. It is unnatural.Just two days before, one monk in Vatican itself died, died really a glorious death. He had invented a machine for masturbation. And just to give it a try, he killed himself. Some accident, short circuit, happened. God should not do such things, at least to his own monks. And he was trying, poor man, to find a device, so homosexuality can be avoided. Otherwise all monks will be suffering from AIDS. He was doing a great humanitarian job. But you get rewards for humanitarian job, and the man is dead.AIDS is spreading and its ways of spreading are such that it need not be through sexual intercourse - kissing a person - saliva is carrier of the virus. Even tears are carrier of the virus. Somebody is crying and you just, out of compassion, wipe the tears with your hand, and you get AIDS. There are children born with AIDS now. So even to kiss a child is dangerous. Any liquid coming out of the body, perhaps may be carrying virus. And now there are these religions, Christians on their holy days will share drink from the same cup. It should be banned. It is dangerous. A single person having AIDS will spread it to the whole company.And there are many places where homosexuality is the only way: army, navy, air forces. You don’t allow women there. So in the barracks there are only men. Hostels of many countries don’t allow men and women to live together - in the universities, in the colleges.And one thing which Women’s Liberation is going to discover very soon. Why they have not discovered it yet and are not talking about it is strange. That lesbianism does not create AIDS. That is the safest thing. So the only solution - which you will say is again very impossible, impossible or not but that is the only solution. The only solution is all women turn lesbians! And all men start looking for devices the poor monk died with!And if you want children, go to the hospital, get checked. If you don’t have any virus, then your semen can be collected. There can be banks of male sperms in every hospital. So any woman who wants to be a mother, can go to the hospital, get injected. But man’s function is finished!This is the only way to save. Otherwise, even heterosexual couples will sooner or later get it. If the man has homosexual connections, then the woman can get it. If the woman has with some other man’s connections, then her husband can get it.And it is not necessary that you should have sexual relationships. You can eat in the same plate, which is a very loving way for centuries around the world: to eat in the same plate. Mohammedans do it: eat in the same plate, drink from the same cup. Christians do it. That is dangerous, very dangerous!People are sitting in tubs, hot bath tubs, half a dozen people are sitting, talking, chit-chatting. Their saliva can go into the water. It can reach to all the other people.So many precautions have to be taken that it seems almost impossible task. But in a Commune like this it is possible. We are taking every precaution. Six thousand sannyasins have gone through the test.No city in the world has gone through the test. No city wants to go! Because no city wants to know that it has AIDS people. No city wants to know how many people are homosexual. Because that will disrupt the whole structure of the society.Nobody wants to know whether he has AIDS or not.The government wants to repress the information.The hospitals don’t want any AIDS patients. It is a very strange situation. The hospitals will try that you don’t have it, even if they know that you have it, because it is better to get rid of you. Otherwise you can create trouble to other patients. You can create trouble to doctors, to nurses. It is better to get rid of you: “You don’t have it, you are perfectly okay”. But you are dangerous. You are left in the society as perfectly okay.You also don’t want, if you have it, then you don’t want anybody else to know about it. Because what your wife will do? What your children will say? How your parents will react? How your parents, wife, children, will allow you to live in the same house. How your friends are going to be remaining your friends? You will not be acceptable in any restaurant, in any hotel; in any place where there is possibility of infecting people. You will become a very undignified, inhuman being. And that is awkward, not knowing what to do, except suicide.But only in a Commune like this, it can be managed. Six thousand people went through the test. We have found only two persons. And I have asked my people that: “Don’t condemn them, they are simply victims of religious stupidity. Don’t destroy their dignity as human beings. Be loving towards them more than ever, because they are going to live only two years more.”So we have given them the best scenic place in the whole campus, the most beautiful houses, which we had made for special guests. But we had no idea that these people will be our special guests!Eight other people from outside, sannyasins, who had not come to the Commune when they were known as healthy. Then, they wanted to live in the world. Now that world has rejected them. Now they have come here. We have accepted them. But we have made it clear that: “You have not helped the Commune in its creation. At that time you wanted to live in the world, to earn, to have your own life. And now when the world has rejected you, you have come to the same Commune. But we will not take revenge. We will give you the same respect and love. You can be our guests because you are going only to be two years here. So live here. Listen to the best music, look to the television, look to the movies, read the books, meditate. Do something manual that you can do. Create a garden around yourself. And whatever you feel like doing, which you always wanted to do but had not time to do: paint, compose music, play on the guitar.”They come to the discourses. They are allowed to come to the meetings. They have been told that: “You have to be careful. When the Commune is giving you so much respect, and so much love, and so much health. At least you should be careful on your part not to touch anybody physically.” And they have kept the promise.This is the only way. But I don’t think, in the wide world, cities will be able to do it.So I say this is the most dangerous thing that is facing humanity.Christianity is often the object of your sarcasm and criticism.Um hmm.Why?For the simple reason that in India Hinduism was my object of criticism, Christianity was not. But here it is pointless. So I am going to hit Christianity as much as I can.What do you think of Khomeini?Khomeini is a Khomeiniac.In a few weeks time, Reagan and Gorbachev* will meet in Geneva. What would you suggest to them?I will suggest to them to have a good wrestling match; whoever wins is declared the winner - and there is no need for a third world war! And stop nuclear weapons, decide simply; just a wrestling match, nothing else is needed. Whenever two countries get the urge to fight, then their presidents or prime ministers should have a wrestling match and decide it. That is a more cultured and sophisticated way. And everybody can watch on the television and enjoy what is happening to Reagan - because nothing else is going to come out of it. These kinds of meetings have continued all through history, and they never contribute anything. If they really mean it, then let the UN be the world government, and surrender all your nuclear weapons, all your armies, to the UN.If the politicians cannot preserve the peace and save the world, who could do it?There is no fear, because politicians are not in a state to fight. They are trembling inside; they are sitting on a volcano. There is no fear of a third world war, so I don’t take any note of it. Nuclear weapons have ended wars forever.Do you consider yourself a revolutionary?No, because there have been so many revolutionaries. I am a rebel.You don’t seem to very popular in this area of the country, this part of the county.I never wanted to be popular. I wanted always to be unpopular.Do you fear for your life?No, not at all.I’ve seen many armed people in this commune.Yeah, there are. But they are not to kill anybody, just to keep the idiots away.And if somebody tried to kill you.?I have no objection. I am completely fulfilled, there is nothing for me in tomorrow. And I think your interview is also complete! There is no problem - anybody can assassinate me and that will be a good end! And I had always loved being unpopular and I am unpopular, and there is nobody who can compete with me in unpopularity. I have made my point, whatever I wanted to make; for every unpopular cause I have been fighting. You just show me anything that will make me more unpopular, and I will go do it!How did you first get your inspiration for your philosophy, your approach to religion and life? When was it that you first started thinking about it, and how?Very difficult to answer, because from my very childhood, as long as I remember, I have been arguing, fighting. Of course, a child will fight and argue in a child’s way, but from my very childhood I have never been ready to accept anything without being rationally convinced about it. And I found very soon, very early in life, that all these people with very big heads - professors, heads of the departments, deans, vice-chancellors - are just hollow. You just a scratch a little bit, you find nothing inside. They don’t have any argument for what they have been thinking is their own philosophy. They have borrowed it, they have never discovered it on their own. So I have been continuously fighting, and in this fighting I have been sharpening my own argument. I don’t have a philosophy of my own. my whole function is deprogramming, so whatever you say, I will destroy it. And I never say anything, so I never give any chance to anybody to destroy it. My purpose is to deprogram you, to clean you, to uncondition you and leave you fresh, young, innocent. And from there you can grow into a real, authentic individual - otherwise you are just a personality, not an individuality. A personality is borrowed, it is a mask. And my whole effort is how to help a person to be authentic, to be himself, naked. My sannyasins are neither Hindus nor Mohammedans nor Christians nor communists; they are simply human beings. It really takes guts to drop all the rubbish of the ages. Okay? Good.Thank you very much.Come again.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 28 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Swami Nishkam, Information Daily National, DenmarkOshoCould you say something about the trust between you and your friends in spite of what’s happened recently?Trust is not something like faith. Faith is with motivation. You have faith in Jesus, in Krishna, because they promise if you have faith then paradise is yours. Faith is the price you have to pay. It is simple business, but deep down faith cannot be total. There is bound to be suspicion, doubt, skepticism. You may cover it up by faith because you don’t want to loose paradise, you don’t want to fall into hell. So you cover up all the questions that are natural to arise. So, first thing, trust is not faith. There is no motivation in it. There is no promise in it.I have not promised a paradise and I have not made you afraid of a hell. I am not cheating you because of the natural instinct of fear and greed. That’s what faith does. And all religions are called faith. They all depend on the same strategy.Trust is not belief, either. Faith is simple, emotional, sentimental. Belief is more rational. It has arguments to repress doubt. Faith has no argument, it has only motivation. Belief has arguments. To believe in God, there are arguments provided by the theologians of all the religions. They are more or less childish, but human mind ordinarily never grows beyond the age thirteen. That is the average mental age of humanity. So even those childish arguments appear to be very profound. But belief has arguments. It is a rational thing.A believer can philosophize, rationalize, propound great systems of thought around a certain belief. The whole system may be logical, just the basic belief will be illogical. It is easily deceiving, because the whole edifice is so logical that you never suspect that the foundation itself is nothing but belief.Belief has dominated for thousands of years, so those who were of rational tendencies, for them theologies have been provided. Those who are simple people, closer to their heart, for them faith is provided. But the function of both is to destroy doubt in you. But both fail. They succeed only in repressing doubt, they never succeed in destroying it.Doubt is far more powerful, because it is natural. You are born with it. Everybody is born as a question mark. Nobody gives you the question. Everybody gives you the answers. Those answers are borrowed, but the question comes from your very being. Hence no answer from the outside is going to destroy the question. The question is authentic, and the answers are cheap.So trust is not faith, not belief; then what is trust? These are the two things you will find in the dictionaries: they are all synonymous - trust, belief, faith. They are not. Trust is not something that you can do. Faith you can manage, it is only a cover-up. Belief you can manage. Just a little rationality. Trust is beyond your doing. It happens in a certain state of silence. Let me say, it is the fragrance of silence.With the master, if the disciple feels a silence arising in him, the very presence of the master gives him a tranquillity. Then as a fragrance trust arises. You cannot do it, it is an happening. So you cannot undo it, either. It is not in your hands. It is something beyond you - still, within you. It is very close to qualities like love, respect. But I am saying something similar, not exactly the same.The original meaning of the word respect is beautiful. It means looking back, re-spect, looking once more. It has nothing to do with honor. It has to do something so beautiful that you would like to look at least one time more. And it is non-ending. How many times you look at it, the desire, the longing, the thirst goes on growing rather than diminishing. You want to be more and more closer to the master, more and more filled by his presence, his light, his silence, his love.So something in it is like re-spect. Something in it is like love. You cannot do anything about love. Suddenly it happens. You find one moment in love with someone for no apparent reason. You yourself feel a little embarrassed. You start looking inside you, what may have been the cause. But there is no cause. If somebody asks why you have fallen in love with a certain person, you don’t have any answer. And love comes, and spring comes with it, and suddenly all the flowers blossom, all the birds start singing. You are no more the same person. You cannot believe that this was going to happen to you. You had never dreamed about it. And one moment it is gone, the same way it had come - just like a breeze. It was so cool and so pleasant, but it comes from one side and moves from the other side. It cannot stay, otherwise it won’t be breeze, it will become stale.We would like, so we rush to close the doors so the breeze does not go out. We call it marriage. And marriage is nothing but murder of love. The breeze is no more there. It was in the movement, in the change, the flow, in its coming and its going, in its freedom.So something like love is there in trust. You cannot say why you trust a certain person, you simply feel. Every cell of your being says yes. There is no repression of any doubt, there is no question which you are repressing. It is not somebody else’s answer, it is something that has grown out of your own being and it is so fulfilling. But you cannot say what is the cause, why it has to happen only in this moment, why not before. So about happening it is just like love, but about the other part of love, that it comes and goes, it is different.It comes and never goes, because it is not something coming from outside, a breeze. It is something growing within you, expanding within you, your own spaciousness. There is no way for it to go; where it will go? You are it. The trust is your very being. It does not depend on any conditions. It makes no expectations, hence there is no way to take it away. Even if the master, the friend, deceives you, the trust is not going to change. And sometimes masters have deceived - knowingly, just to see whether there is trust or you are in some misunderstanding.It happened.. It used to happen almost every day in Gurdjieff’s life. One very rich woman - because it was the revolution time in Russia and all the rich people has left the country, and they were making their own small groups in different places. So for Gurdjieff it was very easily to find only the rich people, because he knew only Russian.One woman was very much interested, very cultured and super-rich, was part of the royal family of czar. She wanted to be initiated by Gurdjieff, to be taken as a disciple.Gurdjieff said, “My condition is, first bring all your jewelry.” And it was much, millions of dollars worth. “First your jewelry you surrender to me, then I will think about it.” Then too he will think about it!She went back and asked her friend who had brought her to Gurdjieff that, “What is this nonsense?” The woman laughed. She said, “Don’t be worried about it. The same he did with me. I filled all my jewelry in a suitcase, gave it to him and told him, ‘Now, you can think, I will be waiting. Whenever you will call, I will come. If you decide not to call me, that too is okay. Whatever you decide is okay, because whatever you will decide will be beneficial for me. It is your decision, that is enough. It doesn’t matter whether you initiate me or not. But I will follow your decision. If you say no, I will never come again. And, please, keep the jewelry. Don’t return it, because that is not a condition between us.’“And the woman said, “Next day Gurdjieff called me. He initiated me and gave me the whole box. He said, ‘It was not a condition. Now I give you as a gift from me. All this jewelry, what I am going to do? You take it.’“So the other woman said, “If this is the case, then there is no problem. That man is trustworthy. I was unnecessarily suspecting him.” She filled all her jewelry into a suitcase, rushed.Gurdjieff took the case and told her, “Sit down, take your initiation.” She was very much happy, waiting for the suitcase to be returned. It was never returned. This second woman has written in her autobiography that, “His not returning the suitcase make* me aware for the first time that you cannot deceive that man. He knows what is trust, and he knows what is not. I had never trusted him. I had given the jewelry believing that he will return it back.”But this is about an ordinary woman. Even a man like Ouspensky, one of the greatest mathematician of all the ages.. He was already world-famous before he met Gurdjieff. He was teaching in London. And Gurdjieff was in Tiflis* in a faraway land of Caucasus in Russia. And the days were very dangerous. Everywhere there was no government. Nobody’s life was safe. Trains were being burned, looted. There was nobody in control. The czar and his government has fallen, the revolutionaries have come into power. But a vast country like Russia, which spreads from one corner of Europe to the other corner of Asia, covers two continents, it is not easy to manage it. Just in Moscow you can come into power, that does not mean that..All over Russia all kinds of crimes were being committed, and there was no government, no police, no army. Even army and police were looting, cheating, killing. They had weapons and it was very easy, they were raping women, and in such a bloody moment of history, Gurdjieff called Ouspensky from London that, “Sell everything and come immediately.” He resigned from his well-salaried post. He was a professor of mathematics in the University of London. Sold everything, rushed into that dangerous country where there was every chance that he may never reach Gurdjieff with all this money that he was taking with him. But he somehow managed to reach Tiflis*. He entered the room where Gurdjieff was sitting. Gurdjieff looked at him and said, “That’s good. Now you can go back.”This is too much. And even Ouspensky, who has written the best books on Gurdjieff, could not forgive him. He disconnected himself. But this was the moment to know whether it was just intellectual conviction or trust. It was not trust, although he was intellectually convinced that Gurdjieff is one of the most remarkable men who has walked on the earth and there is nobody comparable to him alive. But this experience shut him completely against Gurdjieff. From that moment, Gurdjieff never mentioned Ouspensky’s name. Ouspensky started calling him simply “G”. He dropped his full name in his books, as if Gurdjieff died on that day, the Gurdjieff that he had known, that he had loved, that he had trusted.But in fact Gurdjieff did not die. Ouspensky died on that date. He could not understand the distinction that a intellectual conviction, howsoever great, is not comparable to trust. Trust is a totally different phenomenon. It has nothing to do with intellect or with feeling. It is neither intellectual nor emotional, neither of the heart nor of the mind. It is of the being. And for that the only way is to be available to the master’s presence, to let his aura enter in you, let his fragrance penetrate to the every nook and corner of your being.In the East we call it darshan. Darshan simply means seeing. When somebody goes to a master, what can you expect just sit silently and see, drink, listen to the music of his heart?Bayazid, one of the most significant Sufis, remained with his master for twelve years, coming every day early in the morning, leaving last in the evening, waiting for the master to inquire, “What do you want? What is your question? What is your problem?” After twelve years the master laughed. He said, “You have succeeded. Now there is no need to ask and there is no need to answer. But you are simply unique and rare. Twelve years! What a waiting! What courage! What guts! You have experienced me. You have loved me. And you have come to trust me without asking a single question, without getting a single answer. Now you are free, you can go into the world and help people in the same way.”And Bayazid bowed down, touched the feet of the master for the first time and for the last time, tears in his eyes of gratitude, because what words cannot say tears can say.Trust is something that is a growth in your being, a maturity of your being, indefinable, indescribable - but experienceable. In a single word, trust is the whole experience of mysticism.I’ve heard you said that this is not a religion but a mystery school. Can you say something about how a mystery school should be organized, and what it is?The very word mystery school can give you the feel of the matter. Everything here - it may be trust, it may be love, it may be friendship, it may be silence, meditation - is a mystery, mystery in the sense that there is no way to put it into words just like two plus two is equal to four. Even that is not as simple as people think.Bertrand Russell and Whitehead, two great geniuses of our century, joined hands in writing a book which nobody reads, Principia Mathematica. And you cannot be angry with people if they don’t read it. Just to explain that two plus two are really four, they have spent two hundred fifty pages. Apparently it seems to be a very simple thing, but when you go into details nothing is simple. Even two plus two is not always four for the simple reason because they had to think of all the possibilities. In abstraction two plus two may be four, but in abstraction it means nothing exists.Two chairs and two chairs are four chairs: this is not abstraction, now you have come to realities. But no two chairs are exactly alike. Then problems arise. The first two chairs are not alike, there are differences. The other two chairs are not alike, there are differences. In fact, there are four unique chairs. How can you make two plus two so easily four? In reality it is impossible. Only in abstract concepts it is possible. To go into all its implications, two hundred fifty pages of very complicated argumentation. And I am talking about trust, truth, your being, existence. All these are mysteries.You can be initiated into these mysteries, but you have to travel alone with no guidebooks, because no guidebooks exist. In the very nature of things, guidebooks cannot exist, because reality goes on changing. It is like the continents: move, but very slowly, one feet in a year, so you don’t take much note of it. If somehow they start moving faster, so today where America is tomorrow Africa comes in, where ocean is tomorrow there is land, then there will be no possibility to make geography, maps, because by the time your maps are ready the world has changed.In the inner world, this is the situation. No maps, no guides are possible because everything is in such a tremendous change, speed, and so mysterious, so psychedelic, that to figure it out and bring it back into the world of words, nobody has succeeded yet. People have been into those spaces, but the experience is so different from all the experiences that they had that no translation is possible.So when I say this is a mystery school, I am saying that we will be initiating people into different methods of meditation, helping them not to get discouraged. There are points where one feels great discouragement and wants to return back. Those are the moments encouragement is needed. Somebody is needed that, “Don’t be worried, this will pass on. Just wait a little more. Just a little patience more. It has happened to me, too.”There are places where fear grips, because it is going to be a quantum leap. The jump is so big. Then one naturally feels afraid. One needs somebody whom he can totally trust. That’s why the trust has become so significant. In those moments where fear grips and there is every possibility you may return back, and with the danger that you will never try again because the fear will follow you your whole life, you need somebody you trust so much that even you can risk everything, even your life. If he is saying, “Don’t be worried, take the jump..” Now, except trust nothing can help in those moments.I have one hundred twelve ancient methods of meditation which have never been tried by any school. Different schools have tried one method at a time, but nobody has dared to try all one hundred twelve methods. And I have developed my own dozens of methods, which are basically constructed, structured, for the contemporary man, because those one hundred twelve methods are at least ten thousand year old.In ten thousand years, things have not stayed the same, neither the man has remained the same. Everything has changed - for better or worse, but things have changed. So before trying those methods - and those methods are tremendously powerful - but as the contemporary man is, he cannot start on those methods. There is a gap of ten thousand years. First he has to destroy that gap. So my methods are cathartic, so that he can unload himself, throw out all burden and become as innocent as man may have been ten thousand years before. Just like a child. Then those methods can be tried.And everything has to be done under guidance. That’s the meaning of a school. Otherwise you can do it alone. When you enter in your inner world, you are entering a jungle where there is no superhighway, not even footpaths. You have to walk and create the path simultaneously. Nobody can go with you. So you have to be watched from the outside because there are symbols which indicate what is happening within you.For example, one of the Buddhist monk from Ceylon was sent to me. He has not slept for three years. He has even stopped blinking his eyes. His eyes were just open twenty-four hours. It was really very strange and tortuous: no rest, no relaxation. And his eyes looked as if they are dead, that they are made of stone, because your blinking keeps your eyes continuously wet. It is a strategy of nature to continuously clean your eyes from dust or anything, and keep them fresh and wet. For those three years a man’s eyes, they are bound to become absolutely dry.I asked him, “Have you not been taking medicine?” He said, “I have tried everything. Nothing helps, and no doctor is able to find out what is wrong.” What was wrong was that he was doing an old method of Gautam Buddha, vipassana. It is a method of continuous witnessing. It should be done under a master, not alone, because you can do too much and it can harm you.My own experience has been that one should do it only after sunrise and stop doing it after sunset. If you continue to do it after sunset, then soon you will lose your hours of sleep: from seven to six, from six to five, four, three, two, one. And one day suddenly you will find sleep has disappeared. And when you cannot sleep at all, then blinking disappears, because those mechanism of the eyes is working whole day like a wiper on the car. That too becomes tired. It also needs rest. And if you don’t sleep at all in the night, then there is no rest for the wipers. They will lose their quality of elasticity. They will become dull and slowly they will stop functioning. And then that man will look mad - to others, to himself.Now this has to be done under a guide, and if the guide feels that you need it to do in the night, then he can change. You sleep in the day and do the method in the night. When you have succeeded in doing it in the day, start sleeping in the day and do it in the night, so you have covered the twenty-four hour circle without tiring your mechanism. And it is significant to complete the whole circle. Then there is a possibility that you can fall asleep and still remain alert.You may have observed a common observation. If all the people here are asleep and the house suddenly is on fire, and somebody shouts the name “Hasya!” everybody will listen it, but only Hasya will get up and answer. Strange, because everybody listened but nobody answered it and nobody was disturbed. Something in Hasya even in sleep knows her name is Hasya. Somebody is a slight alert that she has to respond, that somebody is calling her. So a little part is alert in everyone, but it is a very small part. Doing vipassana, that part starts growing, becomes bigger, and a moment comes when you can sleep the whole night, fully rested, and yet deep there is a current of awareness running. You are witnessing yourself sleeping. Then many experiences can happen, on every method, so the guide, the school, is absolutely necessary.For example, in such a state when you are asleep and yet aware, you may come out of the body without your knowing, just simply slip out of the body, you may start floating in the air. And you are watching your body on the bed and you can see a cord - luminous - joining you with your navel. In this state, if somebody wakes you up, he will kill you. If your connection is broken you are finished. Otherwise this is a great experience that you are having. And there is no problem. Just as you have come out, naturally, within few minutes floating in the air you will enter in the body again.Not more than forty-eight minutes you can remain out of the body. That has been thousands of years of experience, that at the most forty-eight minutes a person can remain out of the body and still alive. More than that, then the connection will be cut. So after forty-eight minutes, or before it, you are bound to slip back into the body, and for the first time you will see that it is just like a sleeping bag, your body. You can come out of it, you can go into it. First it happens like a sleeping bag, your body. You can come out of it, you can go into it. First it happens on its own accord, then you start doing it.This is just an example. I told the man that, “For three months you stop vipassana. You be with me. Don’t do vipassana. I will give you another method, just the against.the very contrary of vipassana. Vipassana is witnessing, and I am giving you a method which is getting identified with whatever you are doing. You are digging a hole in the earth, get identified completely, don’t stand and watch. Become the digger. You are dancing, become the dance, don’t watch it. For three months you do just the opposite, so that your whole mechanism comes back to its natural stage. And then I will tell you how you have to proceed on vipassana. You are a Buddhist, you live in a monastery, but your abbot knows nothing of the meditation. He may have read into the books but he has no experience of it.” And there are thousands of people who are suffering in the world because they read in the book something and they start doing it without knowing that the book cannot help you when problems arise. And there are problems.A mystery school simply means that we will be trying all kinds of methods, because I have worked on all the methods and I have created my own methods to help people. First they should go through my methods so their contemporary garbage is flushed out and they become innocent children, then they can use those beautiful methods which have been sharpened through the ages. Everything non-essential has been cut off. But those methods don’t say anything, what will happen on the path, what kind of experiences, what kind of dangers. For that a school is needed where there will be teachers who can help you, where there will be meditators who are ahead of you and can help you that, “Don’t be worried, I have passed through the stage.” And I have all kinds of therapies which are absolutely necessary for modern meditators so first they should have a healthy psychology.Meditation is not for a madman. The madman first have to be brought to the normal state of the mind, and from there meditation can start. The work is tremendous, but if it can help few thousand people to become enlightened, it can save the whole humanity. And it can bring the New Man on the earth.What is happening to the communes in Europe? Will new communes start, get started.centers?Yes.Do we know how many people have left, dropped sannyas, after this?Not many people. A very small group. And many more people will be coming back who had left, who are every day informing that they want to come back, because they have been harassed and somehow forced to leave the communes. They will be coming back. And whatever Sheela and her gang has done in three and a half years, here and in Europe and in other countries, everything has to be undone. Every commune has to become autonomous.Sheela’s desire was to centralize all the communes. So first she dismantled small centers, which was ugly, hurting people. They were running small centers, just a dozen people, but they were happy and they were meditating. Just because they were only one dozen.. Quantity does not matter, because out of that one dozen a miracle is possible. And they were enthusiastic because they had a center of their own, and they were trying to expand it. Rather than helping them, she finished all small centers and forced people to move to the communes.Those who moved were okay, those who did not move were “negative” people. They were condemned. Either their malas were taken back - they were not the right sort, just because they did not want to move from their place. Then she started destroying smaller communes which has eighty people, fifty people, forty people. And she concentrated in six communes finally in Europe. She destroyed England’s all centers, told them that, “You all move to Medina so one commune can happen,” and then finally she destroyed Medina, told Medina sannyasins to move to European communes, and Medina has to be sold.It was good that she left. She has sold Medina, but the money has not been paid, so I have just informed Punem that, “You take charge of Medina and take the money back. It has not yet reached to those people, so you take the money and you purchase a bigger place.” She was so happy, and crying. She sent a message for me that, “Osho, I have never felt in my life so much loved.”All these people were unnecessarily hurt, wounded. And I have told that she should be the head. “Find a better and bigger place, because that place was good but only for four hundred people.” And England had at least two thousand sannyasins. “You can have a very big commune, and rather than sending sannyasins from England and destroying small centers..”They don’t understand a small thing, that those small centers are feeding centers. From those centers people become acquainted with you, they started coming to the commune of that country. From that commune they become acquainted about me, about this place. Sooner or later they will be coming here. If you stop small centers, then you are destroying the feeding grounds. Then you start destroying.. And this was something personal, antagonism.She wanted England to be completely finished with sannyas, and she has managed it. I have told that European sannyasins should go back to England, those who have come from England. And all centers that have been destroyed should be restored. Sannyasins should move back to their small communes. I don’t want any centralized formation. Every commune, every center, is autonomous. Nobody is above it.Does it mean that Danish sannyasins in centers in Holland and Germany will be advised to go back to Denmark to make the centers again in Copenhagen and.?Yes. I have even allowed Veeresh again, because they stopped his commune in Holland, that he can have his commune back. And all centers in Holland will have their own.which have been stopped from functioning, they should start functioning. The commune in Holland should function, but not destroying others but by taking help from others. All those should be your helpers in the whole country. But not that you are authoritative, that you order and command and they have to follow. They have equal rights as you. Every sannyasin is connected to me, not to any organization.All the Danish sannyasins will probably read this interview. Do you have anything to say to them? They don’t have any centers any longer in Denmark.Denmark? They used to have a center.They used to have two centers.Now they don’t have?No.So they should start again. Denmark should not be behind anybody else. In fact, Denmark was the first to have the center in the whole of Europe. They should start and they should expand and slowly make communes. And communes are going to become very attractive, just people have to see how they function, how easily, how more comfortably, how luxuriously, how economically - no unemployment, no population growth, no unnecessary fighting, rape, no prostitution. All these can be avoided. Just people have to see.And more and more people can move. And now that I have allowed you can be a sannyasin without red clothes, you can be a sannyasin even without mala, more and more people.. I have opened the doors, more and more people can come and be part of the commune. And slowly if they feel like having malas and having red clothes, that is up to them. But there is no need to enforce anything.So Denmark should have centers, it should have commune. So tell my people to put their energy back into it. Okay?

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 29 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Carol Olstrom,Seattle Times, Seattle, WAOshoYou are a very funny master. Why do I keep getting the feeling that you are playing a joke on everyone and, if you are, how would I know?Answer:* That is the funniest part of it. A joke can never be explained. Either you get it or you don’t get it.Could you give me some help?That’s the beauty of a joke.Does that mean that it is a joke?Everything is a joke, because to me life is not a serious affair. It is playfulness. It is fun. It is overflowing energy of existence - for no reason, for no purpose. For no goal, for no end. Just for the sheer joy of it. This whole universe is just a big joke. That’s why it cannot be explained.There have been so many philosophers, theologians, trying to explain it. They have all failed for the simple reason because it is not something that can be explained. Either you get it or you don’t get it.Somehow Rajneeshpuram doesn’t feel like a city to me. If you came to visit me in Seattle, I wouldn’t search you or have my dog sniff you. Why do you have your people search me and have the dog sniff me? I don’t understand this.It is a mystery school. It is no ordinary city. It is illegal city. So we have to take care of everything.What do you mean when you say it’s an illegal city?The Oregon attorney general declares it illegal city. And now he wants to prove it, and we have to protect it. And we have to search everybody who comes in because his plan is to plant things inside and to prove that we are doing illegal things. We are not going to be so gullible.And when I said that it is a mystery school.. If you enter in a special kind of university, academy, you have to fulfill few requirements. For example, I don’t allow any drugs inside. In Seattle you must be allowing. The dog is not sniffing you. He is sniffing the drugs, and unless you are carrying drugs you will not feel offended. The dog only sniffs something wrong.It is perfectly right. He protects the commune from drugs, from bombs, from people carrying poisons. And there have been so many threats every day that they would burn the whole city, that they will kill all the sannyasins. So many phones, so many letters.We go on giving all those to the police. It is enough to prove that we need some kind of protection. And the government has not provided any. It seems the government is on the side of those people who are giving threats. Perhaps behind those people are the politicians who are in the government.Then, naturally, everybody has a birthright for self-defense.And we are not harming anybody. We are just searching in case you are going to plant something inside the commune and tomorrow we are responsible for it. So this is a simple method to avoid it.It seems as though most of the bombs and poison came from people who live inside the commune, not people from the outside. Why don’t the dogs sniff sannyasins too?They sniff everybody. But the problem was, I was in isolation for three and a half years. I was not available to the commune. No information was available to me. This became a great opportunity for people who were holding power posts. They made a small clique. It is just human.When you get an opportunity for two hundred million dollars in your hands, five thousand sannyasins to work and to create the commune, absolutely committed and devoted..Because these twenty people were the heads of all the corporations, they could manage to bring things in. It was absolutely natural that the president of the commune would not be suspected of carrying bombs inside or carrying drugs inside. So she managed it.And they had a underground passage just under Sheela’s bedroom, another room, and from that room another facade of a jacuzzi bathroom, and from the bathroom a long tunnel that opens at the airport.So from the airport directly you can carry anything. The poor dog will not be even aware what is happening. He will be waiting on the road.Because the topmost twenty all had committed crimes - and this is a basic principle of all criminal groups, that everybody should commit a crime. That makes the group completely solid. Nobody can expose it, because to expose it means exposing yourself too. You have also committed. So they managed that everybody commits something.And the whole commune was unaware. The things that they did were such that they could manage within those twenty people. One was a medical expert, one was an electronics expert, one was an electrician, one was a finance expert. So they could manage everything within themselves.For example, if sannyasins were told to dig ditches for telephone wires, they had no idea that within the telephone wires there are also wires which are going to bug hundreds of houses.One hundred forty-five rooms of the hotel were bugged. Even my room was bugged. Many other houses, wherever they felt there may be people of independent mind, of free thinking, their houses were bugged.The sannyasins who managed to work had no idea except those two experts, which were within the group. So the whole commune remained completely unaware of what they are doing.They were taping all the telephones. They had a very sophisticated mechanism which could tape all the telephone calls from Rajneeshpuram simultaneously. Even the FBI people were simply surprised. They had never seen such a sophisticated mechanism. And when they found bugging, they said that these people have far exceeded Nixon.For one bugging the punishment is five years of imprisonment. And these people have bugged so many houses that one thousand years of imprisonment will not be enough. This is from FBI experts. I am simply quoting.But these things were such that the sannyasins will not be aware. They saw the wires being stretched but they could not think that they are bugging the houses. They thought it is electricity or telephone.They had no idea that people are being drugged in the food. The chief of the food department was part of the twenty. Only the chief knew what was going on, that three thousand street people that has been brought here were being drugged for twenty-one days continuously. Every food. They became almost zombies. The idea was that now whatsoever you say they will do. They have lost their own thinking. They are not awake at all, they are almost asleep. But nobody in the restaurant had any idea what is happening except one person: the chief.Few of these twenty people tried to kill sannyasins, sannyasins who were in any way dangerous to their clique, particularly sannyasins who were available to me in my isolation and silence.My personal physician used to come for weekly check. Now they were afraid of the man because he may inform me about something that is happening. They tried to poison him four times. And nobody believed the poor doctor, because everybody laughed that, “Why anybody should poison you? There is no reason!”He insisted. So finally they took him to Bend, and there too the doctor said that, “There is no disease and there is no poison. But we suspect that a certain poison is there which is undetectable.”And that was the poison that my doctor was continuously telling that, “That is the poison that has been given to me in the tea, in the coffee.”And when Sheela left, in her room we found literature on poison, on bombs, on snakes, on black spiders. And on the book about poisons, only that poison is underlined. The book describes it, that it is undetectable if given in a certain dose. It does not kill the person immediately. You have to go on giving it at least few times. Within six months the person will go on getting more and more sick, will become more and more available to any infection, and will die almost a natural death. Nobody can suspect that he has been poisoned.But only one person, the medical person in the group, knew about it. The whole medical corporation was unaware.So the problem was that the secret was kept within those twenty people, and because they all were in some way or other involved in arson, in murder - they murdered one man - in attempts to murder, in taping the telephones, in bugging the houses, in drugging the street people..Just yesterday one of the women who belonged to the group of the twenty - she was not here when they left, she was coming from Australia.. If she had come a day earlier they would have taken her with themselves. She was supposed to come a day earlier, but somehow she got late and reached a day after. They had all left.Yesterday she informed me that, “I wanted many times to come to Your house and to inform Your caretaker, Your doctor or somebody who can take the message to You what is going on within this group of twenty people, what they are doing. But I was afraid they will kill me, immediately they will kill me.”All twenty were afraid that they will be killed. Killing had become for them such a simple matter, very casual, of no importance.One woman came back from Seattle from the group. She had gone, but she must have a certain conscience. She felt that to go with these people and to remain her whole life a criminal, guilty, hiding, it is better to go back to the commune and confess everything. And if there is a punishment, then it is better to take the punishment. At least that will be more dignified rather than hiding like a criminal in Black Forest in Germany or in Switzerland, in the mountains.So she came back and she has given the testimony. Her testimony has lasted for seven days continuously, because these people have committed so many crimes that it took seven days for her to describe all these four years, how they did what they did, how they had been stealing files from government offices. She was the woman who drove two of the group to Wasco County office to burn the planning office building. And they burned it. She drove them and she brought them back. She is the only eyewitness.Now, the day they left, immediately many others who had small informations.. For example, in one of my morning discourses where ten thousand sannyasins were present, in the crowd one of the twenty injected the poison into my physician’s body. He looked back, he could see the woman. He took his robe off, he showed to people. They saw the blood , they saw the mark of the needle. And one man said that he has seen the woman push the needle, and that was the woman the doctor himself has seen. But only when these people left, then that man gave his testimony that he was an eyewitness, not before that.They were afraid, because if they can kill my personal physician they can kill any sannyasin. They created a very great fear. They drove away, harassed, people who were more intelligent than themselves, more educated. The chancellor of the university, the vice-chancellor of the university, many professors of the university, who had been with me for many more longer years than Sheela and her group, they harassed them, they tried in every way to insult them. Finally they had to leave. So they managed to drive people out, whoever was suspected can create a trouble for them.Now we are receiving every day letters and telephones from all over the world. All those people want to come because they have never left me, they have never left the commune. They have left because of this fascist group.And I was in isolation and in silence. I was not reading any book, any newspaper, television or radio. My only information was through Sheela, and my only message to the commune was through her. So she managed.Whatsoever she wanted to say to the commune, she said it in my name. Now I am discovering that this was never my message. And whatever she wanted to tell me she told me. Whether it was true or untrue did not matter because I was not going out. So it was really great opportunity for her to betray the commune, to betray a great trust, to betray love.And what she has gained? What those twenty people’s gang has gained? They have become criminals for their whole life.We have not lost anything. They have stolen money, but money does not matter much. I have millions of friends around the earth who can again give the money, that is not a problem.Forty-three million dollars she has put in her own name in Switzerland, in some bank account. But it will not be easy to take it out, because how she is going to show that money anywhere in any way? She does not come from a rich family. She was just a hotel waitress. And she will end into being a hotel waitress again.I had made her almost a queen of a vast empire around the world. But she misused, took advantage. And not only that she misused the trust that I had given to her, she has insulted whole womanhood.I had so much respect for women, and I had given all power to women in the commune for the simple reason because man has been running the society for thousands of years and has not succeeded to make it yet civilized, yet cultured, yet human. But Sheela and her gang has proved beyond doubt - because all those women who are with her - that it does not make any difference whether man rules the society or women rule the society. Power corrupts in the same way. That power makes no distinction between men and women.So she has not only lost her own dignity, she has lost a friend of womankind. I have fought my whole life for women’s liberation. I have fought for my all the years that the woman should be given more power than man because she is more motherly, more loving. Perhaps she will not be so easily corrupted as man is corrupted, because man has not that love, that heart.Man is hard, functions more from the head. I used to think that if women had been in power we would not have produced people like Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah*, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong. But now I cannot say it with the same certainty. I think we would have created all these people. They would have been women, but there would have been no difference at all.So Sheela and her group has been tremendously important to me, to my people. It has given a great insight and understanding. Now I am no more interested that women should have power. It is better wherever they are, because she proved far more cruel. Perhaps I can see it now, why..Because I had seen only the woman’s love. I forgot her jealousy. I had only seen her compassion, kindness, but I had forgotten that she has in the same quantity hatred, anger, violence. And perhaps she has more than man, because man has been using it, is almost spent, and she has been accumulating it for thousands of years. She is full of it. Just a small opportunity and there will be an Adolf Hitler, a Josef Stalin, without delay.These women in Sheela’s group were just ordinary human beings with no indication that they will prove murderous. Very loving, very nice, very polite, but behind that facade of lovingness there must have been something boiling for centuries that exploded.In every way the experiment has been rich, and we are far more healthier.They had to go. They knew it, because she was asking me again and again, “Will You ever start speaking?”I said, “Are you worried? I can start any day. I am just waiting for the right time.”She was very insistent that it will be bad for my health, and “Everything is going perfectly well. Why You should unnecessarily trouble Your body? You rest.”But when I saw my own physician being given poison, my own caretaker being given poison, then I said, “It is time that I should come out of my isolation.”And the moment I started speaking the whole commune was joyous, dancing in the streets, except those twenty people. They were really very sad and shocked, because once I started speaking Sheela had no power.All her power was because she was representing me. Now there was no need for any mediator. No representative was needed. I was in direct communion with the sannyasins.Since I started speaking she started finding any excuse to go away, to Europe, to Australia, to India, to Singapore, to Japan - any excuse, that, “Their commune needs me very much.” And I could see the reason is not..The reason is she cannot come down from the ego that she has gathered in these three and a half years. Now, with me, she is just an ordinary sannyasin again. She has become the high priestess.I have been in my whole life teaching that organized religion is an enemy of man. And in three and a half years she managed to create an organized religion out of sannyasins.She wrote a book collecting my sayings, mixing it with her own interpretations, and managing it like a Christian catechism, calling it Rajneeshism.I have been always against all isms because they all become prisons sooner or later. I wanted my people to be free from any ism, individuals not cogs in a wheel, not part of any organization but just lovingly living together not because they are ideologically believe in the same God, in the same philosophy, no, but simply because they are all seekers of truth. And everybody is searching his own truth in his own way.So I had called this a school of seekers, searchers. But I never wanted it to be an organized religion.She managed to make it an organized religion. She became the high priestess. She even made a dress like a high priestess should have, like the pope. She was going even to the assembly of Oregon when it starts its session and all religions can pray. She was going to pray there. She was praying there.I don’t have any prayer because I don’t have any God. Whom you can pray? And we are not a religion.So she did everything that was against me and now she was afraid to face me. So for the last three, four months she has not faced me. She used to come for one or two day and she will send the message that, “I cannot come because I have cold.” And because I am allergic to many things - cold, perfume, dust, smoke - so that is a good excuse.For four months whenever she came back she has cold. Even the last time she left here she has informed me that, “I have cold so I will stay three, four more days. When the cold is over, then I will come to You and explain my situation, how my mind is going.” But that was simply a lie. She did not want me to know when she is leaving, because if I had known that she is going to leave tomorrow, then I would have informed people that all their luggage should be searched.They are no more president, secretaries. All of them have resigned. But they did not tell to the commune. They simply informed me just the night before that they have resigned. Then they don’t have any right to use the airplanes of the commune or the vehicles of the commune. And their luggage should be searched, because they must be carrying bombs, they must be carrying weapons, they must be carrying that particular poison that they were giving to so many people.So she wanted to avoid me to know when she is leaving. And she had chosen the right time. I go for a ride in the mountains between two and four. Exact at four she left. And because the commune was unaware, they thought just the way they always come and go she is going. So their luggage was not searched, their persons were not searched, the airplane was not searched. How much money they have carried with them was not searched. They certainly must have carried a lot of money. Just for twenty persons traveling to Europe, living in Switzerland, they will need money.When I came back from the mountains I saw the airplane leaving. Then I inquired that, “This is not for the plane to leave.” And I was told that Sheela and twenty other peoples have gone for a trip to Europe. And I was told that Sheela and twenty other peoples have gone for a trip to Europe.She has taken with herself all the tapes of telephones, all the bugging tapes. And she must have carried money. She must have carried everything that could have proved dangerous. And if they were caught right now, here, things would have been far simpler.Now the trouble is the attorney general of Oregon is really a creep. We have given every testimony, witnesses, evidences of all the crimes, but he is not taking any action. They should be immediately caught while they are in Switzerland or in Germany, which are in treaty with America that their criminals should be exchanged if any case arises. But there are countries America has no treaty. They are all just living near East Berlin. They can enter East Berlin and they are beyond America’s reach.And I have been telling to these people that, “When you have got every evidence..” Their police, FBI experts, state police officers, county police officers, all topmost officers have been here for three weeks working. They have collected every material. But no step is being taken.From the very government sources I have been informed that attorney general is not interested in catching the criminals. They have already left. His interest is to give one of the criminals immunity and dump all the crimes on innocent sannyasins. And his idea is that at least one thousand sannyasins should be imprisoned so that the commune can be destroyed.The idea is great, but it is not going to be so easy. We are going to fight up to the Supreme Court, and if soon steps are not taken against the criminals, then we are going to take steps against attorney general. Then he seems to be the real criminal. Perhaps he was behind all those criminals. Otherwise why he is protecting them?So either he catches the criminals or he has to face us in the Supreme Court and prove why the criminals are not being caught. And what more evidence do you want? Machines you have got which were used for taping. You have found hundreds of houses bugged. Your police has taken photographs, taken all the wires, all the bugging mechanisms. Your police has found all the books on poison, bombs, how bombs are to be made, how people should be murdered. Your police has entered into the underground tunnel and seen the whole strategy of it. What more evidence these people want?They had not only poisoned sannyasins, they poisoned the attorney of Jefferson County one year before. The same doctors in Bend treated him. They said, “This is a very similar case, exactly the same. We could not find any poison, any disease, but the symptoms were the same as are the symptoms now.”One of the judges of Wasco County who had come here to visit, and one of the persons of the twenty - the medical one, which is very rare, because it is not her work to offer him a glass of water.. That is not a work of a medical person. That can be done by restaurant people, hotel people. But why she should do it? And immediately after drinking it he started feeling strange. And by the time he reached home he was sick, badly sick - and the same symptoms: no sickness, no poison in the blood, but his whole mind was as if splitting. And this splitting of the mind has been in all the cases the same.All these proofs are there.And now there are people who are ready, who have testified that they know that these people have been given poison, and who had given them they are ready to identify, because it was decided between the twenty people’s inner group who will do it, how it will be done.They went on denying that, “We are not bringing the three thousand street people for election. We are bringing them here because we have surplus money, three million dollars, and we want to do some humanitarian work.” That’s what she told me.I asked her that, “I don’t understand why you are bringing these street people here. I myself am not interested in mixing my people with that kind of people, who have been brought up in crime, in rape, in murder, in theft, addicted to all kinds of drugs. I don’t want them for three months to be here amongst my people. If you want them to help, you can help them anywhere else. You can give them money if you have surplus money. But don’t bring them to this place. All of my sannyasins are of a different class. Most of them are graduates, have masters’ degrees, have PhD degrees. There are DLitts.“Now these people you are mixing with street people. It will not do any good to them, but it may do certain harm to these people. These people not accustomed to rape. In four years time no rape has happened. Anybody can move at any time in the night, there is no problem.“Nobody has been murdered, nobody has committed suicide. These people should not be exposed to a criminal class.”But she said, “Now they are already here, and it will be dad, it will look bad, to send them back.”Only when I came out of my silence I became aware that that was a lie. These people were brought to overtake the Wasco County just the way they had overtaken Antelope. They wanted to take the whole county.Lust for power knows no limits.Now I have to do everything to destroy whatever they have done. I have advised my people in Antelope that, “Bring the name back.” They have changed the name of Antelope to City of Rajneesh. “Put it back. It is Antelope and it belongs to the people who live there.” And I have offered that people of Antelope should purchase their properties as they have sold to us, and we will vacate the town and they can have their government back.But her desire was to take over the whole Wasco County. And she was ready to do anything to take Wasco County. For that purpose the planning office was burned so that all the papers concerning it, all the comprehensive plans, should be burned, so when she takes over the county everything can be started afresh according to her idea.The one judge who has been poisoned was very much against us, so she wanted another judge who was favorable to us to be chosen. Two other judges were just sitting on the fence. It depends on the third judge. If he was in favor of us, those two were in favor of us. If he was against of us, those two were against of us. They were just on the fence. So that one person was most significant.She asked one of our pilots that, “Put bombs in a big airplane and other explosives and crash the plane against the Wasco County office. And before crashing it, you jump in a parachute so you can save yourself.”He said, “But so many bombs and so much explosives, they will not only destroy the Wasco County office, they will destroy half the town. The fire will be almost uncontrollable. I am not going to do such a thing.”He was immediately sent away to Germany, that, “You are needed there very urgently.” Because they were afraid that.. He was not within the twenty-one.Those twenty, they did not have a pilot amongst them. That was the trouble. So they had to ask a pilot who was outside the gang. He refused. He said, “Osho cannot say anything like that. He will not think even of killing an ant. And to destroy the office, kill all the people and kill many innocent people by the side of the office.. I cannot believe that Osho has said it.”And she told him that, “It is from Osho.”But he said, “Whatever you say, I know Him longer than you have known Him.”He was immediately sent. He was not allowed even few minutes to stay here, so that he cannot convey the message to anybody that it reaches to me. And where he was sent to Germany there was no airport in the commune, no airplane in the commune. And he wondered what urgent purpose is there for him.It was simply punishment.For six months he was there. He asked many times to come back. He was refused.The day she left he immediately phoned. And I called him and asked, “What is the matter? Why you were sent?” And he said, “This is the story.”Now he is testifying. He has testified before the FBI. Now he will be testifying before the court.What proofs these people want? They should say. If there is any possibility, we will provide. But they should act, and act as quickly as possible. If they don’t act, that simply means their intentions are not gentlemanly.You say, “Don’t trust authority” and your sannyasins continue to believe everything you say and put your picture everywhere. Doesn’t this frighten you somehow, that even though you tell them not to make you a pope that somehow they will?This is one of the dilemmas of human psychology. Nothing can be done about it. I can say only two things. I can say, “Don’t believe in me, believe in yourself.” But the more I insist on it the more they feel love towards me.And this is natural and understandable. I am not imposing myself on them. I am saying them not to put me on any high pedestal. “At the most I am your friend, just like you, amongst you.” But this creates more trust.The problem is, I can say to them, “Believe in me. Whatever I say is the word of God.” That will do the same.And there is no third way.So at least to my own contentment I will continue to say the first and leave them whatever they want to do. Because in fact I am saying them that, “You are absolutely free.”But in that freedom, naturally, trusting in me is included.So when I say, “Don’t believe in me, don’t believe my words, trust in yourself,” it creates a deep love and trust towards me. But this is their freedom. I am not asking it. And I cannot prevent. I am doing everything on my part that I do not create it, but if it is the nature of things, then one is helpless. There are many mysteries like that.Perhaps you could make some mistakes. Or do enlightened people make mistakes?I make as many as possible. But that makes me more human. And it is easier to love a human being than to love the only begotten son of God.Your sannyasins work very hard to build the commune and to give you things and the privacy and the place you live in. What do you give them?Nothing. I don’t have anything to give. I have given myself to them.What does that mean?That means I am here for them. My presence is for them. And that can mean everything to one who has eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to feel.I don’t have anything except myself, and I have given myself totally to them. I am available in every possible way.I don’t have any secret. My hands are not closed but completely open, and my people understand it.In fact, they don’t feel that they are giving anything to me in comparison to what they have received. What they can give? They can bring all the material things of the world, which are only toys to me, nothing more. And even then when they give them to me I simply give them back to the commune.I don’t possess anything. Everything that comes to me as a gift from all over the world becomes part of the assets of the commune.So I have given myself to them, and whatsoever comes to me also comes to them.It is a very deep love affair.Why don’t the sannyasins drive the Rolls Royces then? I don’t understand that.There are sannyasins who drive.The Rolls Royces that they bought.Yes. The Rolls Royces that I drive, no sannyasin is ready to drive it. It has become sacred to them. I had told the Trust that maintains those ninety Rolls Royces that they are unnecessarily standing there. I have never gone even for once in the garage, and the garage is just in front of my house, within the compound of my house. I have never gone in to even see. So what is the point? I just drive one.And I don’t like any other car. Because of my back, only that particular model, Silver Spur, suits me and my back. So all those ninety cars are just one model. One or ninety makes no difference, it is the same model. And when I am inside I can’t even see the color. So what is the use?I told him that, “You give to all the corporations - we have nine corporations - give ten cars to each corporation. Make a pool so every sannyasin who wants can take the car.But there are so many problems.First, no corporation is ready to take because they already have too many cars. I don’t believe in poverty, I believe in abundance - of everything. So my sannyasins have enough cars. They have one hundred buses. They have five airplanes. So no corporation is willing to have ten white elephants on their heads. That will be simply a financial burden to the corporation.And secondly no sannyasin is ready to drive it.Thirdly, the trustees are not willing to distribute the cars. They want the cars to remain as a memorial. I have used them.Whatever I have used they have been collecting. All my dresses they have collected, all my shoes, all my hats that I have used they have collected. Anything that I have used they have collected. They don’t want to give those Rolls Royces. They are going to make a beautiful memorial.So I cannot do, because I am not the owner of anything. It is up to them. Whenever they decide they can sell them, they can keep them.Four cars have been sold because those were not of the same model. They were Rolls Royce; they were better model than the one that I use. They were Carmargue: two-door Rolls Royces. They were far more costlier.First I was using Corniche, which is the costliest Rolls Royce: one hundred sixty thousand dollars. But the seat did not suit me. My back is really a trouble. I liked the Cornice* but my back was not willing.Then the second best was Carmargue, so I was using Carmargue. It was better than Corniche. It is one hundred fifty thousand dollars. But then I thought that if this seat is better than the other, I should try their third model also, the Silver Spur. And when I tried it I was simply amazed - as if it was just made for me!In ‘89 they are going to change the model, and because I am their greatest customer in the whole world I have told the president of Rolls Royce that, “Do everything but don’t change the seat. Otherwise you lose your best customer.”I just need one car, nothing much. But my sannyasins around the world are intending to make it a memorial with three hundred sixty-five Rolls cars. And they will make it!You’ve discouraged people from having children. Why is that?There are many reasons. First, the world is already overpopulated. No intelligent person would like to increase the population more. It is already four billion. By the end of the century it will be five billion, and when it becomes five billion, fifty percent of the population will be dying of starvation.If you love your child whom you want to bring in the world, this is not the world. To leave him in this world, where two and half billion people will be dying out of starvation, what will be the shape? It will be just death all around.Secondly, the nuclear weapons are going bigger and bigger. Already Soviet Union and America together have enough nuclear weapons to destroy this earth seven hundred times.Now, we must be living in a mad world. Now, what is the point of creating more nuclear weapons? But nobody can stop it because the other party is doing it. And the same is the question from the other party. They cannot stop it. And nobody has the guts to take the initiative.Any day this world can be in flames of nuclear explosions. Would you like your child to be in those flames? My people don’t like.Thirdly there is AIDS, which is as dangerous as nuclear weapons, perhaps more dangerous, because nuclear weapons may not be used. Politicians may chicken out, seeing the situation that it will destroy everybody. There will be no victorious, nobody will be defeated.The whole point of war is lost when all are going to be dead. There is not going to be somebody left even to write the history of it. It has lost its very value. War has value only when there is a possibility of your being victorious.But AIDS is a totally different matter. It is not within anybody’s hands. And it is spreading fast. And it is invisible.Just in Texas few days before, they have made a law against homosexuality. Now homosexuality in Texas is a crime. One million homosexuals protested against it. Nobody would have ever imagined that Texas has one million homosexuals. Now what about California?And making a law against homosexuality has simply driven it underground. Now nobody will say, “I am a homosexual.”But your law has never changed anybody. No criminal has been changed by your law, by your courts, by your jails. And you are just being stupid rather than asking the whole population to go through tests to find out how many people have AIDS so they can be isolated.Every state should make a special city to isolate AIDS people so it does not spread any more. But no state, no nation, is taking any steps. In fact, nobody wants even to accept the fact that AIDS is spreading like wildfire.In LA every day one person is dying of AIDS. One does not know how many people are dying of AIDS every day all over the world. And if one person is dying of AIDS every day, how many people in LA are suffering from AIDS? The number must be very high.And AIDS spreads not only by sexual contact. Even by kissing. Saliva is a carrier of virus. Unknowingly you may get it or you may give it to somebody. Kissing should be prohibited, not homosexuality.Even through tears its virus is transferable. And now there are children born with AIDS already, so even if a child is crying and weeping and you just out of compassion try to wipe the tears, you may get AIDS as a reward.Any liquid coming out of the body can carry the virus, and there seems to be no cure. And all the scientists are absolutely in agreement that there is no hope in the future either, because the very nature of AIDS is totally different from other diseases. The cure is not possible.It is not a disease but a slow kind of death. Just as there is no cure for disease called death, there is no cure for disease called AIDS. It is slow death.I don’t want my people to bring children into this ugly, insane.on the very verge of a global suicide. This world is not right to bring children.So in four years not a single baby has been born in the commune. And I would like that the whole humanity follows the pattern.If for thirty years no children are born anywhere, if the birth control is total for thirty years, then we can reduce the population to one-fourth of what it is now.One billion people can live on this earth really comfortably, richly. And there is no need for communism, there is no need for any revolution, there is no need for any classless society. People will be having so much that there is no need to hoard.Rather than making life just hell, a small effort for thirty years and we can make it a paradise. And then it will be worth bringing children in a fresh world.But right now is not the time.Harley Soltiss*, our photographer, would like to know what time we could come to your house tomorrow to take a picture of you swimming.Unfortunately, I am not swimming right now. I had some trouble with my ear and my doctors have stopped my swimming. So my swimming pool is empty, there is no water. If you want, I can swim, but the water is not there.I am reminded of a story.One rich man has made a very beautiful house, and he has made three swimming pools. And he used to take every visitor to show. And every visitor was surprised.He said, “I can understand. One is for hot water, one is for cold water. But what is the third swimming pool?”He said, “It is for those who cannot swim. There is no water in it*. But I have made arrangement for every guest who comes here.”So the third type of swimming pool is there right now. But next time when you come. Okay?Thank you, Osho.

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The Last Testament Vol 3 01-30Category: INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD PRESS

The Last Testament Vol 3 30 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/the-last-testament-vol-3-30/

Ben Bochner, Cable TV Access Center, Eugene, OregonMa Yoga PratimaI dreamed I was here at the ranch a week ago, and I slept out on the desert that night, and I looked at the stars and they looked to me like the tips ends of roots, and the space was black soil. I knew that it was a story I had told myself. Do stories like these help us to understand ourselves, or are they a fiction that we have to see past?The ways of the mind are very subtle. Its dreams, its fantasies, its fictions, they all indicate to something which is real; and because they indicate towards the real, they themselves attain a certain reality of their own.That’s why dreams became so important for psychoanalysis. The whole movement of psychoanalysis is based on the interpretation of dreams. If rightly interpreted, a dream is no more a dream, it is a way of the unconscious to say something to your conscious. But the unconscious knows no language, it speaks in pictures. It is just like small children; they can understand pictures, hence their books are full of pictures - colored pictures, big pictures. As they become older, the pictures become smaller; as they become scholars in the universities, the pictures disappear, only words remain.The same is true about the unconscious. The unconscious is still a child. The conscious is trained, has started speaking the language, has become able to rationalize, to follow logic. But the unconscious has no language, no logic; it has only pictures, dreams, visions. They are more significant than what you think, because your thinking is superficial, it does not go very deep. Most of it is borrowed from the books, from other people, from the world around. Your thinking, in fact, is not yours.But your dreams are certainly yours, they are not borrowed. They indicate more authentically your being, your longing. But you have forgotten the language as far as the conscious mind is concerned, you have forgotten the language, the symbology, so you simply drop them out of your mind as nothing but a dream. But that is not being intelligent.The dream should be taken more seriously than you take your thoughts. It should be looked from all angles, dimensions. If you dream yourself that you have a house in this commune, perhaps deep down within you there is something which is searching the same truth these people are searching here. Perhaps you also want to know your self, you don’t want to remain ignorant about your own being, you would like to enter a mystery school where you can learn ways and methods, techniques, how to explore inwards.I feel that I’m in a mystery school now.You are. And your dream is significant. It may turn out to be your future, it may become your very search. Because ordinarily people are living but their life is not deep enough, it has no roots, it is very superficial. They are doing things as if they are taking part in a drama. They are repeating words which they are supposed to repeat which are not coming from their own sources.The whole society tries every child to become a hypocrite. Not that they want the child to become a hypocrite - their intentions are very good, but this is the result of their good intentions. They want to make you something, without inquiring whether that is your potential or not. You may have the potential of being a musician, and they may force you to become a mathematician because that is more paying, more respectable; but you will remain your whole life shallow. You will never feel your being in what you are doing. You will do it but not with your totality, intensity, with a love that transforms the very quality of the work. If you had been a musician, perhaps you would not be so respected, perhaps you may not have so much comfortable life; perhaps you may be just a hobo on the street, but just playing on your guitar.[inaudible]You could have felt your deepest part dancing, your very being in a dance. And to me, to find the way where your potential becomes actual, when you for the first time feel that you’re doing what you are meant to do by existence itself..I’ve already felt that.You have not.That’s why I’m here.That’s right. Here is every possibility to inquire into your self. It is not an ideology that I preach, it is not a religion that I impose. On the contrary, my whole effort is to deprogram you. So that you become again an innocent child the way you had come into the world, without any prejudice, without any idea, just innocent. And once that innocence is there, existence opens all its mysteries to you.So be here for few days, or whenever you can come, come here and remain here for a few days. Mix with my people, who are all seekers, who are all meditators, who are doing things that they wanted to do, and who are rejoicing life in its totality. Just being with them, the very aroma, the milieu, the atmosphere, something may catch fire in you. It always happens.You have read my words, but words are dead. You have to read me, and to read me there is only one way: to be here for some time, and to sit silently and just let your presence and my presence melt and merge. They have their own way, their own language, which is beyond mind; but once you understand that in silence, in somebody’s presence, something blossoms in you, starts growing in you, then you have found a friend on the path.I’m not a savior, I’m not a prophet. I’m just a friend. And anybody who wants to walk few steps with me on the path is welcome, and whenever he wants to depart he’s absolutely free. There is no bondage, no condition. It is an unconditional togetherness.My whole commune is not any organization. It is just pure togetherness without any conditions from any side. Anybody can join it, anybody can move out of it. Everybody is totally free to have his own way.But being with five thousand seekers immensely helps. Alone the path is really very lonely, alone it is very dark, alone there are many moments when one is discouraged. With other seekers ahead of you, behind of you, by the side of you, you know there is no fear. People have passed this stage. There come nights - dark nights of the soul, but you know that others have passed through these dark nights, they have reached; and seeing the sunrise, there is no reason it cannot happen to you. It has to happen to you because you have as much right, just by being alive and being part of existence, as anybody else. Nobody is special in existence, everybody is just with the same right.The differences are created because few people use their right and few people don’t use their right.I see my whole life as a process of learning. I’ve taken my teachings from many different places; your books and tapes have been a large source of that. And that’s what I want my work to be.I understand, but I would like to say to you that whatever you have learned from the books is just the beginning, just the tip of the iceberg. Don’t be contented with it. If it creates more discontent, more thirst, then you are on the right path.The more you learn, the more you want to learn, because the more you learn the more you see how much is there to learn. The more you learn, the more you see how much you are ignorant. The thirst disappears only when you have arrived to the ultimate end beyond which there is nothing. And that is the point I call enlightenment.It sounds boring.It sounds; it is not.What’s interesting about it?You think that excitement is interesting. You think that learning new things every day is interesting. It is really your boredom. You get bored with one thing so you want to move to another thing. For a time being the other thing is new and you feel excited.Every day a new sun rises.You will get bored. What I am saying is that what you call learning and excitement is nothing but postponing boredom. You learn something; while you are learning, you are excited, it is opening new ways, new feelings, new spaces, but soon they are all old, you want more, you want to learn more. You are fed up with this, you are bored. That’s why you think that if there comes a point where there is no more left to learn you will be bored. But you don’t know that when there is no more anything left to be learned, there is no more anybody left to learn either. The learning and the learner are not two things; they disappear together. Who is going to be bored? You have to be there to be bored. You are not there. Just a pure silence with no feeling of I, with no sense of ego, with nobody present, but just a pure presence. There is nothing to learn, there is nothing to be bored, and there is nothing to be excited.This state is the ultimate state of peace, bliss.Once you’re enlightened, couldn’t you learn something new like riding a bicycle or driving a helicopter. Isn’t there something left to be learned?What I am talking about has nothing to do with bicycles and helicopters. And what I am talking about, if you experience it, then neither helicopters have any excitement nor rockets have any excitement - they are all toys for idiots to play with.And you cannot be an idiot any more. You are no more, and you cannot go back either. There is no way ahead, there is no way back. Listening about this state, one may feel - it sounds that one may feel utterly stuck, because one goes on thinking that one is because you have not known a moment when existence is and you are not. But before that, you can go on learning.And it is not easy to reach to that ultimate point, so don’t be worried.I’m not. I don’t think I’m very close [inaudible].We just go on learning bicycles, helicopters..[inaudible]There is no harm. And that point is not so easy to reach, but some day one has to take that challenge too. That is the greatest challenge, as if a dew drop slipping from a lotus leaf into the ocean. In one sense the dew drop disappears; in another sense it becomes the very ocean, it becomes oceanic. When the dew drop is slipping from the lotus leaf, there is a natural hesitation, that “I am going to disappear into this vast ocean. There is still time, if I can hold.” But once the dew drop has melted into the ocean, merged, there is tremendous joy because now the other side of the story opens up: now the dew drop is no more there, but an infinite ocean.Man disappears at one point. His separation from existence melts away at one point, but that is not a death, that is really the greatest orgasmic experience possible - because one becomes one with the whole. And when one is one with the whole, where you can grow? What can you learn? Where can you go?It seems like new things are always happening.New things are always happening, but not to me. To me the last thing has happened. On the outside new things are always happening. You have come to see me for the first time, this is a new thing. But as far as I’m concerned, the greatest and the last thing has happened thirty years before; since then nothing has happened. Millions of new things have been happening all around, but at the very center of the cyclone nothing has happened. And I’m talking about the center of the cyclone. It is absolutely silent, absolutely still, no movement, no sound; but a tremendous ecstasy and a tremendous benediction.But there is no point in being worried about it. You just go on searching and learning. When some day it happens, please remember me.You’ve heard of the gaia hypothesis, how the earth is one whole system, one self-regulating system. And there’s a man named Peter Russell who wrote a book called The Global Brain. And he says that what’s being created in humanity is a planetary brain for earth. Could you comment on this terms of Gurdjieff’s concept of organic life on the earth being food for the moon.I agree with Gurdjieff on many points, but I absolutely disagree on that point - that the earth and the human beings are food for the moon. That is sheer nonsense.But Gurdjieff was putting many nonsensical ideas in his books for a certain purpose. He will put what is true mixed with many things which are untrue, and that was a device that unless you go through Gurdjieff’s methods of crystallization you will never be able to know what is right in his books and what is wrong in his books. Those books are not ordinary books. Those books are devices.This theory is simply nonsense. But if you have never gone through his methods of crystallizing yourself - which is one of the arduous methods ever evolved, and very few people have been able even to come close to it, you are going to be confused reading his books. They were written specifically for disciples, written in such a way that nobody who has attained to a certain state can make any sense out of them.That theory of man being food for the moon is just one of those nonsensical things that he was putting knowingly into the system.The idea of the thin layer of organic life on the earth, receiving and transmitting energy, was that something else that..That is something different, because moon has no life - not even a thin layer of any energy. Moon is simply dead.This planet has a biosphere, and that biosphere is certainly getting energies from other biospheres. In the whole universe there are at least 50,000 planets who have life on them, and they are continuously connected with life rays, supporting each other.The idea of eight centers are available and the nineteenth is missing has some significance. The nineteenth is missing because of man. Man has not been able to evolve superconsciousness which can become the receptor. Those rays are coming from other planets, but we don’t have a receiving station here. The nineteenth system can be created, but it can be created only by people who reach to the superconsciousness.Just as Sigmund Freud discovered that below the conscious mind there is subconscious mind, below the subconscious mind there is unconscious mind, and then Carl Gustav Jung discovered that below the conscious - the unconscious mind there is collective unconscious mind..I am not interested in that kind of work. Otherwise, anybody who is interested I can suggest there is one thing more below collective conscious - unconscious mind, and that is cosmic unconscious mind.These are under-steps. Exactly same steps are above the conscious mind. In the same way as there is subconscious mind below the conscious mind, there is superconscious mind above the conscious mind. Then there are higher stages, equal in number as they are under the conscious mind, until the cosmic conscious mind - of which I was talking to you.. When you reach to the cosmic conscious mind, then there is nothing to learn, nowhere to go, nothing grows. Then everything is just still and utterly peaceful.But if we can create just one layer above the conscious mind, that nineteenth system will not be missing. Those scientists cannot do anything about it.That superconscious mind can be created by meditation very easily. And if at least 200 people - just 200 people around the earth have created the superconscious mind, the nineteenth missing system will be available. Only that much quantity of superconscious mind will be enough to receive from 50,000 planets energies - which are still coming, but we don’t have a receiving center for them.Is there any necessity for masses of people to develop this superconsciousness?It will transform the whole life on the earth. It will change the whole ugliness that exists, the violence that exists. With the superconscious mind, you cannot manage to have a third world war. With the superconscious mind, so many crimes that man is committing will simply stop. Just that energy has to be available here, just the presence of that energy. It will be something like reign of a new kind of energy because the receivers are available, and that will change not only those 200 people - they will be changed absolutely, but it will change the whole humanity, it’s outlook, it’s ways, it’s insight into things. Right now it is so retarded. The average mental age of human beings are only thirteen years. This is so insulting - that a man of ninety years has only a mental age of thirteen-year-old boy; the body goes on growing old, the mind remains stuck.With the superconscious energy reigning on the earth the mind will start growing, just as with the rain everything becomes green and starts growing. The mind needs a certain kind of nourishment which is not available to it.So those people are right. Our biosphere has eighteen systems. Those systems are also not functioning well because man has disturbed he whole ecology. If the nineteenth system starts working, the man will stop disturbing ecology; it will put it back into harmony. It will be conscious enough what he is doing, and what has to be done and what has not to be done.But it has nothing to do with Gurdjieff’s idea of moon and.. That is simply.. Gurdjieff was a strange type of master, really a great master, but his ways were his ways, inimitable. He will write books sitting in small restaurants in Paris where customers are going and coming, and people are talking and gossiping, and everything kind of thing is going on, and he will be writing his great treatises: All and Everything, Meetings with Remarkable Men. His disciples used to ask, “Why you choose such a place? People go to a silent place if they want to write something significant. You go to a restaurant.” And then every night, whatever he has written, one disciple will read it, and Gurdjieff will sit silently and ask the other disciples, “Have you understood?” If they said yes then he has to write it again. Unless they said no, he will have to write that chapter again and again. One book took twenty years to write. First the place he will choose to write was crazy; second, his disciples have to be in a state that they cannot understand it - because if they can understand it then it is not worth, then it is not going to help anybody. It needs to be changed. And he will go on changing. Finally, when the book was published, one-hundred pages were opened - that was the preface, and nine-hundred pages were not opened, with a note that, “Read the preface, the pages are open. If you still want to read on, you will have to open the pages. If you don’t want to read on, you can return the book and your money you can get back. But don’t cut the pages beyond the preface.”But even to read one-hundred pages is something of an impossibility. He will write sentences which will run half page, one page, sometimes two pages, and he will create his own words. He never believed in any grammar. He never knew any contemporary language. Sometimes his one word will be so big that it will fill the whole line. Even to read it is difficult. Hundred pages, just ten pages were enough and people returned the book.The disciples were asking him that, “You worked twenty years on this book, and what is the gain out of it? So much labor. And we read every night for twenty years.” Gurdjieff said, “There will come some time, some people, who will understand, but they will be the people who have superconsciousness. This book is written for them. Just consciousness will not help. Howsoever cultured, educated, sophisticated, it is not going to help.”Can mass mediums like television help to spread the superconscious?It can help in a way. It can teach meditation methods. It can give instructions, for the audience to follow the instructions and do it before the television. If people follow and do it, it is exactly the same, as here a professor in the university of meditation will instruct.Simple methods can be given, simple instructions how you have to do it, step by step, mass media can be used. It depends whether people want to attain to superconsciousness, or they want to listen to advertisements or they want to see some silly fiction, drama; it depends on them. But effort can be made. I can give you the teachers. If you want, they can instruct the whole thing. And there is no need for the teacher every day; just once you have taped it, you can play the tape every morning or every night - those who are interested can do it. Few people certainly will get interested.But superconsciousness is something which is absolutely needed; otherwise this earth is going to die. Eighteen systems alone are not enough; that nineteenth system is absolutely necessary. These eighteen systems were enough till the arrival of man. With the arrival of man, evolution of the man, now there is danger. Man has capacities which can destroy the whole ecology, he has destroyed it. He can make nuclear weapons, he has made them; he’s ready to destroy the whole earth. Unless something within him changes so diametrically, so radically, that his whole value system goes through an evolution, there is no future for this earth.My work here is exactly that: to create the nineteenth center system. But every hindrance will be created by the people of lower consciousness for the simple reason that whatever they have created - the world, the society, the nations, the races, the religion - all will disappear. Once superconsciousness descends, the whole super-structure of our society will go into a total change. So all the vested interests are bound to prevent any revolution of that kind.Is there a way that mass medium, like television, can be used to decondition people - aside from just showing the methods, can the medium itself be used to allow people to become open enough to drop the old ways?That is very difficult. That is very difficult, because I have been doing it for thirty years. That means you will have to tell them the truth about everything, which they believe.For example, you will have to tell them that your holy Bible is a pornographic book. I don’t think your owners will be able to tell it or allow it to do it, or your listeners will not burn your station. It is not possible.You will have to say exactly what it is. All holy books are pornographic. The Bible is the worst.Nobody reads; that’s the - problem. Who reads Bible? At least Christians don’t read; just mad people like me. Otherwise nobody reads. Every house has the Bible; it simply gathers dust. And even if they read, they read with a conditioned mind; they will not be able to figure it out.So I have told my sannyasins to find out all the passages which are pornographic, and then we will publish a glossy pictorial Bible.. With quotations of Bible, but showing it in real pictures what the Bible says. Then perhaps people will read it the way they read Playboy.You may have to buy your own station to put that out.That, too, is there; the idea is there.I have an idea for a tv station. I would like to have one of the cameras that’s in outer space - one of the satellites in outer space, I’d like to have a live video camera so that you could just tune to that channel and see the earth floating in space any time you felt like it.Mm mmm. That’s good.You can show your movie on my station.Okay. Good.We have been thinking of having a satellite of our own so that whatever I want to say can be immediately brought [inaudible] all over the world.It’s possible now for every single person to hear that.Yes, it is possible. So we are thinking. And I’m all for everything, latest technology, latest media. I’m not old-fashioned. So it will be possible soon. But only that can be done from here; you will not be able to do if your station is owned by somebody else, they will not allow you to tell the truth.Can the truth be presented in a fashion like a Trojan horse?You can present it, but nobody will understand it. The question is to present it so naked that nobody can miss; one has to understand it. It has to come so clear and loud that you cannot avoid it, rationalize it, explain it away. It has to be just like a hammer hit on your head; then only people can be deprogrammed.The attention span of people now is so short you have to be able to do in thirty seconds or so.Yes, I can. Okay?Ma Yoga PratimaWhy have all the religions failed in changing the world?The first thing, they failed in changing the world because they never wanted to change it. They wanted it to remain as it is. It was their need. They could exist only in this world - with poverty, with sickness, with exploitation, with misery, with crime; all these are basically necessities for all those religions to exist. They may have talked about changing the world, but they never meant it.On the contrary, they gave all kinds of rationalizations for the world as it is.Christianity, for example, says to people that, “You are born in sin, and suffering is your fate; misery is just the outcome of your sin.” And they really convinced millions of people for something very illogical. Adam and Eve disobeyed God, according to Christianity six-thousand years before, and you are suffering in misery because they disobeyed. There seems to be no logic in it. If they disobeyed - they had suffered; why their children, generation after generation, should go on suffering?You are born of sin because you are born of sex. To avoid this, they had to invent the story that Jesus is born of a virgin mother so that he is not born in sin. Just one lie leads to another lie. They don’t want your suffering, your poverty, your misery, your anguish, to disappear, because these are the things which bring you to the church, to the priest. People who are without any anguish, without any fear, any greed, who don’t care about hell and heaven, don’t go to the churches.My people don’t care about going to the churches, going to a priest to confess. They are not committing any sin, why they should confess? If they are making love to a woman or a man, it is not sin; it is the most beautiful thing on the earth.Hinduism says - Jainism, Buddhism, all religions born in India tell to the poor, who are starving, dying, and live their whole life in utter misery, but without revolting against the socialist structure, because the religions - the three religions which are predominant on the continent are agreed on one point only, and that is the law of karma. About everything else they differ, they contradict each other, they write against each other, they are enemies; but on one point they are not. This is something strange. They all say that you are suffering in this life because in the past life you committed some grave sins, some evil acts. That, too, is as illogical as Christianity.If I put my hand into the fire, it will be burned right now; it won’t wait for my next life. That somebody will have to explain me in the next life when suddenly my hand burns, and I don’t see any fire any where, then some great theologian is to explain that, “You had put your hand in the fire in the past life; now, reap the consequences.” But why so much delay? It seems, in these religions, the divine bureaucracy is even far bigger than any bureaucracy any where, it takes so long.And for thousands of years, people have believed in them. Their minds are conditioned from the very childhood. Naturally these religions will not like things to change. Things are perfectly good. Religions are getting good number of customers. The whole humanity is divided. Somebody is Christian, somebody is Jew, somebody is Hindu, somebody is Mohammedan, somebody is Buddhist.Those who are not, they have created their own religion, communism. It differs not in any way. It has its own mecca, Kremlin; it has its own trinity, Marx, Angels, Lenin; it has its only holy book, Das Kapital. It has every ingredient of a religion. You cannot change anything. Now, everything that Marx and Angels wrote are out of date, most of them history has proved wrong. Still, the communist goes on believing in them. The strangest thing is that Marx never had thought that Russia or China will become Communist, he was thinking America will be the first to become communist. According to his logic it seems perfectly right. A capitalist country can become communist. Russia was not capitalist yet; it was a feudalist country, still far backward than capitalism; and according to Marx, communism can be born only after capitalism reaches to its peak. And in Russia there was no capitalism at all, and Russia became communist. Still, Das Kapital is continued and worshipped.I have been talking to the president of Indian Communist Party, that, “You should at least change those sentences which say that in Russia, China - countries like these - communism is impossible, because they are not even capitalist yet. Communism will come into developed capitalist countries like America.” He said to me, “Nothing can be changed in Das Kapital ; to us it is as holy as to Christians the holy Bible is holy. Science may have proved that the earth is round, it is a globe; but Bible still goes on saying it is flat. It cannot be changed.”So, every religion - communism included - are in favor of a particular society. For example, communism went through a revolution, but the revolution has not changed anything. It simply changed labels. There used to be feudals, czars and royal family, and the ordinary common masses; now there are communist leaders and the common masses. The same group of people has been ruling for sixty years continuously. And worse are the ways of the communists than czars would ever have implied. And the poor are poor, nothing has changed for them. Revolution has happened, and nothing has changed.All the promises that were given by and by have been withdrawn. First promise was that within ten years time there will be no dictatorial government, because once the riches are being distributed the function of dictatorship is finished. They have been distributed long time before, sixty years before; but the dictatorship does not move. Dictatorship has become permanent.Before the revolution they were saying after revolution, marriage should be dissolved because marriage, according to Marx, came with private property. Before private property there were no marriages. There were tribes; people lived together in a tribe, they all shared everything; they shared women also. The children had no idea who is their father. So remember, uncle is the older word than father. All people who could be suspected the father were called uncle ; there was no way to decide who was the father. But then private property came in. The powerful people, stronger people - bullies - started having things in their possession. Soon they became concerned when they die what will happen to their property. They needed inheritors. Marriage came into existence for an economic reason, for no religious reason, so that you have your own children they can inherit the property and you can die in peace that your own son is going to have all that you have gathered in your life.Naturally, Marx said after communism comes in and property is no more private, marriage has to disappear, its function is finished. And before revolution they were saying it, that marriage will be finished after revolution. And for three years they tried, for three years after, 1917 to 1920, they tried to destroy marriage, but they found that if they destroy marriage the family will be destroyed, and if the family is gone the nation will be in danger - because family is the unit of the nation. And they went back, they dropped the idea of dissolving marriage, seeing the implications immediately marriage was restored.Now, Soviet Russia is the most orthodox about marriage. About divorce it is very difficult; it takes almost three years to get a divorce. Marriage you can get immediately, right now enter the registrar’s office and get married. But for divorce, three years - and that is in a communist country, who have been talking and their scriptures saying that there will be no marriage.Soon they found that the society is needed in a certain way; otherwise, their own existence is in difficulty.But this has been the experience of all the religions. Communists found that after revolution other religions were more perceptive; they understood it and never went into any revolution.So all religions are against change, because their vested interests are with the status quo. I am all for change, and I would like my sannyasins to be always for change. The new has also the right to be experimented with, and the old has been used and found useless. Give chance to the new; At the most it can fail. The old has already failed. We will find something else. How long we can fail, if we go on changing and don’t get stuck with a system that is continuously failing, if we are ready to change, sooner or later we are going to find a system that works.That’s the simple way of science, of finding any truth - go on experimenting. One experiment fails, another experiment fails, but sooner or later you stumble upon something and you have found the right key.So always choose the new. It will keep you fresh, young, it will keep you alive, it will keep you flowing. Otherwise the old becomes heavy, a burden, a corpse, and then it stinks. All the societies are stinking with corpses of all kinds.It is a simple thing. Just the individual has to understand that all that is old is not gold. In fact, all that is old is never gold. If you are in search of gold, try the new, the fresh, the young. Move always into the unknown and the unknowable.And what is there to lose? The very adventure into the unknown is so nourishing, so rejuvenating, that whether you find something at the end or not does not matter. Every moment of the adventure is of tremendous beauty and benediction.Okay, Pratima.

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My Way The Way of White Clouds 01-15Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

My Way The Way of White Clouds 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Why is your way called The Way of the White Clouds?Just before Buddha died somebody asked him: “When a buddha dies where does he go? Does he survive or simply disappear into nothingness?” This is not a new question, it is one of the oldest, many times repeated and asked. Buddha is reported to have said: “Just like a white cloud disappearing….”Just this very morning there were white clouds in the sky. Now they are there no longer there. Where have they gone? From where do they come? How do they evolve, and how do they dissolve again? A white cloud is a mystery, the coming, the going, the very being of it. That’s the first reason why I call my way The Way of the White Clouds.But there are many reasons, and it is good to ponder, to meditate upon them. A white cloud exists without any roots. It is an unrooted phenomenon, grounded nowhere or grounded in the “now-here”. But still it exists. The whole of existence is like a white cloud; it exists without any roots, without any causality, without any ultimate cause. It exists as a mystery.A white cloud really has no way of its own. It drifts. It has nowhere to reach, no destination, no destiny to be fulfilled, no end. You cannot frustrate a white cloud because wherever it reaches is the goal. If you have a goal you are bound to get frustrated. The more goal-oriented a mind is, the more anguish, anxiety and frustration there will be, because once you have a goal you are moving with a fixed destination. And the whole exists without any destiny. The whole is not moving anywhere; there is no goal to it, no purpose.Once you have a purpose you are against the whole – remember this – then you will get frustrated. You cannot win against the whole. Your existence is so tiny – you cannot fight, you cannot conquer. It is impossible to conceive how an individual unit can conquer the whole. And if the whole is purposeless and you are with purpose, you are going to be defeated.A white cloud drifts wherever the wind leads – it doesn’t resist, it doesn’t fight. A white cloud is not a conqueror, and still it hovers over everything. You cannot conquer it, you cannot defeat it. It has no mind to conquer – that’s why you cannot defeat it. Once you are fixed on a goal, purpose, destiny, meaning, once you have got that madness of reaching somewhere, then problems will arise. And you will be defeated, that is certain. Your defeat is in the very nature of existence itself.A white cloud has nowhere to go. It moves, it moves everywhere. All dimensions belong to it, all directions belong to it. Nothing is rejected. Everything is, exists, in a total acceptance. Hence I call my way The Way of the White Clouds.The white clouds have no way of their own – they drift. A way means reaching somewhere. The white clouds’ way means a pathless path, a wayless way – moving, but not with a fixed mind, moving without a mind. This has to be understood, because purpose is synonymous with mind. That’s why you cannot conceive how to live without purpose, because the mind cannot exist without purpose.People are so absurd; they even come to me and ask: “What is the purpose of meditation?” Meditation cannot have any purpose because meditation basically means a state of no-mind. It is where you are, not going anywhere; where just being, just to be, is the goal.The goal is here and now. Once the goal is somewhere else, mind starts its journey. Then the mind starts thinking, then the mind starts a process. If future is there then mind can flow, then mind can have its course, then mind has space to move. With purpose comes future, with future comes time.A white cloud hovers in the sky, timeless – because there is no future and no mind to it. It is here and now. Each moment is total eternity. But the mind cannot exist without purpose, so mind goes on creating purposes. If the so-called worldly purposes are lost then the mind creates religious purposes, otherworldly purposes. If money has become useless, then meditation becomes useful. If the so-called world of competition, politics, has become useless, then another world of new competition, of religion, achievement, becomes meaningful. But mind always hankers for some meaning, some purpose. And to me only that mind which is purposeless is religious. But that means that mind is no longer a mind at all. Think of yourself just like a white cloud, with no mind.In Tibet they have a meditation: monks sitting on the hills, lonely, absolutely in aloneness, just meditating on white clouds drifting in the sky, continuously contemplating, and by and by being merged. Then they become white clouds – just perching on a hill like a white cloud. No mind, just being there. No resistance, no fight, nothing to be achieved, nothing to be lost – just enjoying the very existence, celebrating the moment, the joy, the ecstasy of it.Hence I call my way The Way of the White Clouds. And I would like you also to become white clouds, drifting in the sky. I say drifting, not moving, not moving to a point – just drifting wheresoever the winds lead you. Wheresoever you happen to be, that is the goal. So the goal is not something ending somewhere, the end of the line. The goal is every moment.Here you are siddhas to me. Here you have achieved. Here you are as perfect as you can be, just like a Buddha, a Mahavira, or a Krishna. There is nothing else to be achieved. Right this very moment everything is there, only you are not alert. And you are not alert because your mind is in the future. You are not here. You are not aware of what is happening to you this very moment. And this has been happening always and always. For many, many millions of lives this has been happening. Every moment you have been a buddha. Not for a single moment has it been missed. It cannot be missed, that is how nature itself is, how things are. You cannot miss it.But you are not alert and you cannot be alert because of a goal somewhere, something has to be achieved. Because of that a barrier is created and that which you are already is missed. Once this is realized, once you become aware of this, the greatest mystery of being is revealed – that everyone is perfect. That’s what we mean when we say everyone is brahman – everyone is the soul, the ultimate soul, the divine. That’s what we mean when we say tattwamasi – you are that. Not that you have to become that, because if you have to become that, then you are not that. And if you are not that already, how can you become? The seed becomes the tree because the seed is already that. A stone cannot become a tree. The seed becomes the tree because the seed is already that!The question is not of becoming, the question is only of revelation. The seed is revealed this moment as a seed, next moment as a tree. So this is only a question of revelation. And if you can penetrate deeply, the seed is the tree this very moment.Tibetan mystics or Zen masters or Sufi dervishes, they have all talked about the white clouds. The white clouds have been catching many people’s inner being. A rapport is achieved, it seems, with the white clouds. Make it a meditation and then many things will come to you.Life should not be taken as a problem. Once you start that way you are lost. Once you think life is a problem it can never be solved. That’s how philosophy moves – and that’s how philosophy always moves wrongly. There are no right philosophies, there cannot be. All philosophies are wrong. Philosophizing is wrong, because philosophy takes the wrong basic step of thinking of life as a problem. Once life is a problem there is no solution to it. Life is not a problem but a mystery, which is how religion takes it.A white cloud is the most mysterious thing, suddenly appearing, suddenly disappearing. Have you ever thought that clouds have no nam-roop – no name, no form? Even for a single moment the form is not the same. It is changing, it is becoming, it is a river-like flow. You can give a form to the cloud, but that is your projection. A cloud has no form; it is formless, or continuously being formed, it is a flux. And that’s how life is. All forms are projected.This life you call yourself a man and just one life before you could have been a woman. This life you are white and the next life you may be black. This moment you are intelligent and the next moment you behave in a stupid way. This moment you are silent and the next moment you become mad, fiery, aggressive. Have you got a form? Or are you continuously changing? You are a flux, a cloud. Have you got a name, any identity? Can you call yourself this or that? The moment you say you are this, in that very moment you will become aware that you are the contrary also.You say to someone: “I love you” – and in that very moment hate is there. In the same way you are a friend to someone and in that very moment the enemy is laughing inside you, waiting for its moment. Some moment you say you are happy and that very moment happiness is lost and you have become unhappy. You have no identity. If you realize this you become a cloud with no form, with no name. And then drifting starts.To me, the life of a white cloud is the life of a sannyasin, of a man who has renounced. The life of a householder is a fixed routine. It is a dead thing, it is a pattern. It has a name, it has a form. It moves on a particular track, like railway lines. On the track trains are moving; they have a goal, they have to reach somewhere. But a sannyasin is like a cloud drifting in the sky – no iron tracks for him, no routes, no identities. He is no one and lives the life of a non-being, lives as if he is not.If you can live a life as if you are not, you are on my way. And the more you are, the more disease will be there; the less you are, the more healthy. The less you are, the more weightless you are. The less you are, the more you will be divine and blissful.When I say life is not a problem but a mystery, I mean you cannot solve it, but you can become it. A problem is something to be solved intellectually; even if you solve it nothing is achieved. You have gathered a little more knowledge, but no ecstasy out of it. A mystery is something you can become. You can be one with it, merged. Then ecstasy arises, then bliss – then the ultimate that can happen to a being, the ultimate joy.Religion takes life as a mystery. What can you do about a mystery? You cannot do anything about the mystery but you can do something about you. You can become more mysterious. And then the similar can meet with the similar, the same can meet with the same.Look for the mysterious in life. Wherever you look – in the white clouds, in the stars in the night, in the flowers, in the flowing river – wherever you look, look for the mystery. And whenever you find that a mystery is there, meditate on it.Meditation means: dissolve yourself before that mystery, annihilate yourself before that mystery, disperse yourself before that mystery. You be no more, and let the mystery be so total that you are absorbed in it. And suddenly a new door opens, a new perception is achieved. Suddenly the mundane world of division, of separation has disappeared, and a different, totally different world of oneness comes before you. Everything loses its boundary; everything, with another, with others, is not divided, but one.But this can be done only if you do something with you. If you have to solve a problem, you have to do something with the problem. You have to find a key, a clue. You have to work on the problem; you have to move as if in a laboratory – you have to do something. If you have to encounter a mystery, you have to do something with you; with the mystery nothing can be done.We are impotent before a mystery. That’s why we go on changing mysteries into problems, because with problems we are potent, with problems we feel we are in control. With mysteries we are impotent, we cannot do anything. With mysteries we face death and we cannot manipulate.That’s why the more human intellect grows mathematical, logical, less and less open is the possibility of ecstasy before the human mind; less and less poetry is possible. Romance is lost; life becomes factual, not symbolic.When I say my way is The Way of the White Clouds, it is just a symbol. The white cloud is not being used as a fact, it is used as a symbol, as a poetic symbol – as an indication of a deep merger into the mysterious and the miraculous.The second question:Osho,Would you tell us what your relationship is to the white clouds?I am a white cloud. There is no relationship and there cannot be. Relationship exists when you are two, divided. So relationship is really not a relationship. Wherever relationship exists there is separation. I am a white cloud. You cannot be related to a white cloud. You can become one with it and allow the white cloud to become one with you, but relationship is not possible. In relationship you remain separate, and in relationship you go on manipulating.This is one of the miseries of human life, that even in love we create relationship. Then the love is missed. Love should not be a relationship. You should become the lover or the beloved. You should become the other and let the other become you. There should be a merger, only then conflict ceases; otherwise love becomes a conflict, a struggle. If you are, then you will try to manipulate, then you would like to possess, then you would like to be the master, then exploitation comes in. Then the other will be used as a means, not as an end.With white clouds you cannot do that, you cannot make them wives and husbands. You cannot chain them, persuade them into a relationship. They won’t allow it, they won’t listen to you. They have had enough of it – that’s why now they have become white clouds. You can be one with them, and then their hearts are open.But the human mind cannot think beyond relationship, because we cannot think of ourselves as if we are not. We are. Howsoever we hide it, we are there. Deep down the ego is there and deep down the ego goes on manipulating.With a white cloud this is not possible. With your ego you can look at the white cloud, think about it, but the mysteries will not be opened. The doors will remain closed. You will remain in a dark night. If your ego disappears you have become the white cloud.In Zen they have one of the oldest traditions of painting…. One Zen master had a disciple who was learning to paint, and through painting, of course, meditation. He was obsessed with bamboos; he was continuously drawing and painting bamboos. The master is reported to have said to his disciple: “Unless you become a bamboo nothing is going to happen.”For ten years the disciple had been drawing bamboos. He had become so efficient that even with closed eyes on a dark night without light he could draw; and his bamboos were so perfect and so alive.But the master would not approve. He would say: “No, unless you become a bamboo, how can you draw one? You remain separate, you remain an onlooker, you remain a spectator. So you may have known the bamboo from without, but that is the periphery, not the soul of the bamboo. Unless you become one, unless you become a bamboo, how can you know it from within?Ten years the disciple struggled but the master would not approve. So the disciple disappeared into the forest, into a bamboo forest. For three years nothing was heard of him. Then news started coming that he had become a bamboo. Now he doesn’t draw. He lives with bamboos, he stands with bamboos. Winds blow, bamboos dance, he also dances.Then the master went to find out. And really, the disciple had become a bamboo. The master said: “Now forget all about you and bamboo.”The disciple said: “But you told me to become the bamboo and I have become it.”The master said: “Now forget this also, because now this is the only barrier. Deep down somewhere you are still separate and remembering that you have become the bamboo. So you are not yet a perfect bamboo, because a bamboo would not remember this. So forget it.”For ten years the bamboos were not discussed. Then one day the master called the disciple and said: “Now you can draw. First become the bamboos, then forget the bamboos, so you become so perfect a bamboo that the drawing is not a drawing but a growth.”I am not related to white clouds at all. I am a white cloud, and I would like you also to be white clouds, not related. Enough of relationship – you have suffered enough. Many, many lives you have been related with this or that, and you have suffered enough, more than enough. You have suffered more than you deserve. And the suffering has been centered on the wrong concept of relationship. The wrong concept is: you have to be yourself and then related. Then there is tension, conflict, violence, aggression, and the whole hell follows.Sartre says somewhere: “The other is hell.” But really, the other is not hell – the other is the other because you are the ego. If you are no more the other has disappeared. Whenever this happens – between a man and a tree, between a man and a cloud, between a man and a woman, or between a man and a rock – whenever it happens that you are not, hell disappears. Suddenly you are transfigured, you have entered paradise.The old biblical story is beautiful, that Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden because they had eaten a forbidden fruit, the fruit of the tree of knowledge. This is one of the most wonderful parables ever devised. Why was the fruit of the tree of knowledge forbidden? Because the moment knowledge enters, the ego is there. The moment you know you are, you have fallen. This is the original sin.Nobody has thrown Adam and Eve out of heaven. The moment they became aware that they are, the Garden of Eden disappeared. For such eyes, which are filled with ego, the garden cannot exist. Not that they have been thrown out of the garden – the garden is here and now, it is just by your side. It has always been following you wherever you go but you cannot see it. If the ego is not there you enter again, the garden is revealed. You have never been out of it.Try this: sitting under a tree, forget yourself. Let only the tree be there. This happened to Buddha under the bodhi tree. He was not, and in that moment everything happened. Only the bodhi tree was there.You may not be aware that for five hundred years after Buddha his statue was not created, his picture was not painted. For five hundred years continuously, whenever a Buddha temple was created only the picture of the bodhi tree was there. That was beautiful – because in that moment when Gautam Siddhartha became Buddha he was not there, only the tree was there. He had disappeared for a moment – only the tree was there.Find moments when you are not, and those will be the moments when you will for the first time really be.I am the white cloud, and the whole effort is to make you also white clouds drifting in the sky. Nowhere to go, coming from nowhere, just being there this very moment – perfect. I don’t teach you any ideals, I don’t teach you any oughts. I don’t say to you: be this, become that. My whole teaching is simply this: Whatsoever you are, accept it so totally that nothing is left to be achieved, and you will become a white cloud.The third question:Osho,Is it true that to really break through, to become totally present, to become a white cloud, we have to live through all our dreams, all our fantasies? And how can that reality be as real in response to “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama” in Pune as it would be in the Garden of Eden in the heart of nature?The question is not whether one has to live through all the dreams and fantasies or not. You are living in them. You are already in them. And it is not a question of choice – you cannot choose. Can you choose? Can you drop your dreams? Can you drop your fantasies? If you try to drop your dreams you will have to substitute them with other dreams. If you try to change your fantasies they will change into another type of fantasy – but they will remain dreams and fantasies.So what is to be done? Accept them. Why be against them? This tree has red flowers, that tree has yellow flowers. So it’s okay. You have certain dreams – yellow dreams. Somebody else has certain other dreams – blue dreams, red dreams. So it’s okay. Why fight with dreams, why try to change them? When you try to change them, you are believing in them too. You don’t think they are dreams, you think they are real and that changing them will be significant. If dreams are dreams, why not accept them?The moment you accept them they disappear, and this is the secret. The moment you accept them they disappear – because the dreaming mind exists through rejection. The very phenomenon of a dreaming mind is rejection.You have been rejecting many things, that’s why they pop up in your dreams. You are moving along a street; you look at a beautiful woman or man. Desire arises. And suddenly you drop it: “This is wrong!” You reject it. Tradition, culture, society, morality say: “This is not good!”You can look at a beautiful flower, nothing is bad in it. But when you look at a beautiful face something immediately goes wrong – you reject it. Now this face will become a dream. The rejected becomes the dream. Now this face will haunt you. Now in the night this face will come around you. Now this body will be hovering. The desire that you have rejected will become a dream. Desires that you have repressed will become dreams and fantasies.So how to create a dream? The secret is: reject. The more you reject, the more dreams will be there. Those who go to the hills, those who reject life, they are filled with too many dreams. Their dreams become so real, hallucinatory, that they cannot make any distinction, whether this is a dream or a reality.Don’t reject, otherwise you will create more dreams. Accept. Whatsoever happens to you, accept it as part of your being. Don’t condemn it. The moment you become more accepting dreams will dissolve. A person who accepts his life totally becomes dreamless, because the very base has been cut. That’s one thing….And secondly, the whole is nature – the whole I say. Not only the trees, not only the clouds – the whole. Whatsoever has happened has happened because of nature. There is nothing unnatural – cannot be; otherwise how could it have happened? Everything is natural. So don’t create a division, that this is natural and this is unnatural. Whatsoever is, is natural. But the mind lives on distinctions, divisions. Don’t allow divisions; accept whatsoever is, and accept without any analysis.Whether you are in the market or in the hills you are in the same nature. Somewhere nature has become hills and trees, and somewhere it has become shops in the market. Once you know the secret of accepting, even the market becomes beautiful. The market has its own beauty – the life there, the activity, the beautiful madness that goes on around. It has its own beauty. And hills would not be so beautiful if there were no markets, remember. The hills are so beautiful and so silent because the market exists. The market gives silence to the hills.So everywhere – whether you are in the market, or doing Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, or sitting under a tree silently – take it as one expanse, don’t divide it. And when you are dancing, doing Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, enjoy it. It is the way you are flowering, the way your tree is being this very moment. Hare Krishna, Hare Rama can become a flowering in you; it has become a flowering for many. When Mahaprabhu Chaitanya was dancing in the villages of Bengal and doing his kirtan, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, it was a flowering. It was one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened. Not only is Buddha sitting under a bodhi tree beautiful, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu dancing in the streets with Hare Krishna, Hare Rama is also beautiful – the same, just the other extreme.You can sit under a tree and can forget yourself so completely that you have disappeared. You can dance in a street and be so absorbed in your kirtan, in your singing, in your dancing, that you have disappeared. The secret is total absorption wherever it happens.It happens to different people in different ways. We cannot conceive of Buddha dancing; he was not that type, not a dancing type. You may be a dancing type, so don’t force yourself, otherwise sitting under a bodhi tree you will be in trouble. Just forcing yourself, stilling yourself, will be violent. Then your face will not become like a Buddha; it will be tortured, it will be a self-torture. You may be like Chaitanya, you may be like Meera….Find out the way your cloud moves, where it drifts, and allow it full freedom to move and drift. Wherever it goes it will reach to the divine. Only just don’t fight, flow. Don’t push the river, flow with it. A dance is beautiful, but you must be totally in it – that’s the point. Don’t reject anything, rejection is irreligious. Accept totally, acceptance is prayer.

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My Way The Way of White Clouds 01-15Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

My Way The Way of White Clouds 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Beautiful white cloud, why are we so fortunate to have you with us – and why are we with you?Why’s are always unanswerable. To the mind it seems that whenever you can ask a why it can be answered. But that is one of the fallacious assumptions. No why has ever been answered or can be answered. Existence is – no why about it. If you ask, if you persist, you may create an answer – but that answer will be a created one; it will not really be an answer. Questioning itself is foundationally absurd.The trees are – you cannot ask why.The sky is – you cannot ask why.Existence exists, rivers flow, clouds float – you cannot ask why.The mind asks why, I know it. Mind is curious; it wants to know the why of everything. But this is a disease in the mind, and this is something which cannot be satisfied because if you answer one why, then another arises immediately. Every answer only creates more questions. And the mind will not be satisfied unless the ultimate answer has been given to you – and there can be no ultimate answer. By ultimate answer I mean that you cannot ask any why any more. But there is no possibility of such a state. Whatsoever is said, why again becomes relevant.This has been the whole absurd effort of philosophies: Why this world? So they thought and they created a theory about it: God created it. But why did God create it? Then again more theories and then finally: Why is God?So the first thing to know is this quality of the mind which goes on asking whys. Just as leaves grow out of trees, why’s grow out of the mind – you cut one, many more grow. And you may collect many answers but the answer will not be there. And unless the answer is there the mind goes on restlessly in its search. So this is the first thing I would like to say to you: Don’t insist much on whys.Why do we insist? Why do we want to know the cause? Why do we want to go deep into a thing and come to the very base of it? Why? Because if you know every why, if you know every answer about a thing, you have become the master of it. Then the thing can be manipulated. Then the thing is not a mystery; there is no awe, no wonder about it. You have known it, you have killed the mystery.The mind is a killer, a murderer – the murderer of all mysteries. And mind is always at ease with anything dead. With anything alive mind feels uneasy, because you cannot be the total master. The living is always there – unpredictable. With a living thing the future cannot be fixed, and you don’t know where it will go, where it will lead. With a dead thing everything is certain and fixed. You are at ease. You are not worried about it, you are certain.To make everything certain is a deep urge in the mind because mind is afraid of life. Mind creates science just to kill every possibility of life. Mind tries to find explanations. Once an explanation is found the mystery is dissolved. You ask a why and it is answered, then the mind is at ease. What have you achieved through it? You have not achieved anything, you have lost something – a mystery has been lost.Mystery makes you uneasy because it is something greater than you, something which you cannot manipulate, something which you cannot use as a thing; something which overwhelms, something which overpowers, something before which you are naked and impotent – something before which you simply dissolve. Mystery gives you a feeling of death; hence so much inquiry about whys – why this, why that? This is the first thing to be remembered.But don’t think that I am avoiding your question. I am not avoiding it, I am telling you something about the mind – why it asks. And if you can retain the feeling of mystery, I am going to answer. If the feeling of mystery is retained then answering is not dangerous, it can be useful. Then every answer leads you into a deeper mystery. Then the whole thing becomes qualitatively different. Then you don’t ask to get an explanation, you ask to get deeper into the mystery. Then the curiosity is not mental, then it becomes an inquiry – a deep inquiry of being.See the difference? You are hankering after an explanation; then it is bad, and I will be the last one to fulfill it because then I become an enemy to you, then I make things dead around you. Theologians have made even God a dead thing – they have explained it so much, they have answered so many things about God, that’s why God is dead. Humanity has not killed him – the priests, they have killed him. They explained him so much that no mystery has remained. And what is God if there is no mystery in it? If it is just a theory you can discuss it, a doctrine you can analyze, a belief you can accept or deny; then you are greater and this God is just part of the furniture of your mind – it is a dead thing.Whenever I am talking to you remember this always: whatsoever I say is not to kill your inquiry, is not to give you explanations. I am not interested in giving you answers. Rather, on the contrary, it is to make you more inquiring, penetrating deeply into the mysteries. My answers will give you deeper questions, and a moment will come when all questioning will drop – not that you have received all the answers, but because every answer is futile. And then the mystery is total, then it is all around, without and within. Then you have become part of it, then you float in it, then you have also become a mysterious being, and only then do the doors open.Now I can answer why I am with you, and why you are with me here.The first thing: it is not only that here this moment you are with me – you have been before. Life is so interrelated, it is a riverlike flow. We divide it into past, present and future, but the division is just utilitarian. Life is not divided. The flow of life is contemporaneous.The river Ganges at the very source, the river Ganges passing through the hills, the Himalayas, the river Ganges on the plains, the river Ganges falling into the ocean – this is one. It is contemporaneous. The origin and the end, the beginning and the end, are not two separate things – it is one flow. It is not past and future, it is eternal present. This has to be understood very deeply.You have been with me. You are with me. It is not a question of past. If you can be silent, if you can put your mind aside a little, if you can become a white cloud perched on a hill, not thinking, just being, you will feel it. You have been with me, you are with me, you will be with me. This being with me is not a question of time.Somebody asked Jesus: “You talk about Abraham – how do you know?” – Because there is a long gap between the days of Abraham and Jesus, thousands of years. And Jesus said a very mysterious sentence, the most mysterious that Jesus ever asserted. He said: “Before Abraham was, I am. Before Abraham was, I am.” Time dissolved.Life is eternal present. We have been here and now always – forever, forever. Different shapes, different forms, of course, different situations – but we have been always and always.Individuals are fictions. Life is not divided. We are not like islands, we are one. This oneness has to be felt, and once you feel this oneness time disappears, space becomes meaningless. Suddenly you are transported from both time and space. Then you are – you simply are.Somebody asked Buddha: “Who are you?” And Buddha said: “I belong to no rank. I just am. I am, but I don’t belong to any rank.”Right now you can have the glimpse. If you are not thinking, then who are you? Where is time? Is there any past? Is there any future then? Then this moment becomes the eternity. The whole time process is just a long extended now. The whole of space is just expanded here.So when you ask why I am here, or why you are here, it is because this is the only way of being. I cannot be anywhere else, you cannot be anywhere else. This is how we have become joined together. You may not be able to see it right now. The links are not so clear for you because your own unconscious is not clear for you, because you don’t know yourself in your totality. One-tenth of your being is known to you, nine-tenths is just in darkness.You are like a forest with a little clearing. Trees have been cut, and a small place has been created in which to live. But just beyond that small clearing the dark forest exists. You don’t know the boundaries of it, and you are so afraid of darkness and the wild animals that you never leave your clearing. But your clearing is just part of this dark forest. You know only a part of your being.I see you as your total darkness, the whole forest of you. And once I see a single individual in his totality, all individuals are involved because that forest is not separate. In that darkness boundaries meet, mingle and become one.You are here. If I become too attentive toward one individual, then I am focusing myself. But still, even focusing, I continuously feel your boundaries are mingling with the other. So for certain purposes I may take you as an individual, but in reality it is not so. Once I am not focused I simply look at you without seeing you – just a look, then you are no longer there. Your boundaries are meeting with everyone else’s and not only with man and human beings – with trees, with rocks, with sky – everything. Boundaries are fictions, hence individuals are fictitious.I am here because I cannot be anywhere else. This is how life has happened. You are here because you cannot be anywhere else. This is how life has happened to you. But it is difficult to accept it. Why is it difficult to accept? – Because then you cannot manipulate it, then life becomes greater than you.If I say you are here because you are a great seeker of truth, then you are at ease. If you are here because you are a great seeker then the ego is fulfilled. Then if you choose, you can go. Then you are the chooser. Then you are controlling life, not controlled by life. But I don’t say that, I say you are here because life has happened this way. You could not have chosen, it is not your choice. Even if you leave that will not be your choice. Again, that will be how life happens to you. If you choose to remain, that too is not a choice. Choice is not possible. Choice is possible only with the ego.So whenever ego is not fed, uneasiness, discomfort, is felt. There are two ways to be at ease: one is to go on feeding the ego, another is simply to drop it. And remember, the first way is temporary. The more you feed it the more it demands, and there is no end to it.So I tell you: life has happened in such a way that I am here and you are here. And it has been happening many times before, and it will continue happening the same way. If you can realize this, much more will immediately become possible. If you realize this you will be more open, less closed, more vulnerable, more receptive. Then you are not afraid. Then life can pass through you. Then life becomes just a breeze, and you become an empty room, and life comes and goes – and you allow it. Allowing is the secret – the secret of all secrets.Hence I emphasize, insist, that you are not here because of any choice on your part. I am not here because of any choice on my part. As far as I am concerned there cannot be any choice, because I am not. As far as you are concerned, you may be under the delusion that you are here because of your choice, but that is not a fact.I am not going to feed your egos because they have to be destroyed. That’s what the whole effort is: how to destroy you – because once your boundaries are destroyed you are infinite. Right this moment this can happen. There is no barrier to it – there is only your clinging.Many people come to me and they ask: “Have we been with you before?” If I say yes, they feel very good. If I say no, they feel dejected, depressed. Why? We live in fictions. You are here with me – that is not so significant. You were with me in the past – that seems to be more significant. And you are missing this moment when you can really be with me – because to be with me is not a physical phenomenon. You can sit by my side and you may not be with me. You can cling to me for years and you may not be with me for a single moment – because to be with me only means that you are not.I am not, and if even for a single moment you are also not there, there will be a meeting – then two emptinesses meet. Remember, only two emptinesses can meet, there is no other meeting possible. Whenever you have a meeting, it means two emptinesses merging.The ego is very solid, too substantial to merge. So you can struggle, clash, but you cannot meet. You may think that this clash of two egos is a meeting; it is a sort of meeting. You come together, but you are never together. You meet and still you don’t meet. You touch each other and still you remain untouched. Your inner emptiness remains a virgin land, it has not been penetrated.But when the ego is not there, when you are not feeling much I, when you are not thinking about yourself at all, when there is no self, that’s what Buddha calls anatta – no-selfness. He was very much misunderstood, because In India people were talking of atman – the self, the supreme self. Everybody was searching for the supreme self – how to become the ultimate self. And then Buddha comes and he says: “There is no self to be attained; rather, please be a no-self.” His teaching could not be accepted. Buddha was thrown out of this country. He was not accepted anywhere. A buddha is always thrown out. Wherever he goes he will be thrown out, because he hits on you so deeply you cannot tolerate it. He says you are not.When you are empty, when just a vacuum exists, meeting happens. Anybody who is capable of being empty will merge. And this is the only way to become one with existence. You may call it love, you may call it prayer, you may call it meditation, or whatsoever you like.You are here because life has happened that way.I am here because this is how life has happened to me.And this possibility of your being near me can be used, or can be misused, can be missed altogether. It would not be for the first time that you are missing. Many times you have been with me. It may not have been with me exactly; many times you were with a Buddha and that was to be with me. Many times you were with a Jina, with a Mahavira, and that was to be with me. Many times you were around Jesus or Moses or Lao Tzu – that was being with me. Because A Lao Tzu or a Buddha cannot be defined in any way; they are two emptinesses, and two emptinesses have no qualities to differ. You may have been with a Lao Tzu and I say you were with me, because there is nothing to make any distinction. A Lao Tzu is an emptiness. Two emptinesses are just the same, you cannot make any distinction. But you missed. You have been missing many times. You can miss again.And remember, you are wise, clever, calculating. Even if you miss you will miss very wisely. You will rationalize it. You will say there was nothing to be dropped. Or you will find arguments how to miss or how to hide the fact. If you become alert to this possibility of missing, then meeting is immediately possible. And I say immediately – there is no need to postpone it.And this is significant, that life has happened in such a way that you are here. Millions are there and life has not happened in such a way. You are fortunate, but don’t make that point an ego food – because if your ego takes anything out of it and becomes stronger, you have missed that fortune. You are fortunate, but it remains an open possibility. You can grow into it, you can drop out of it. And this is rare – rare for many reasons.First, it is very difficult to be attracted to a person who is empty – very difficult, because emptiness is not such a magnetic force. You are attracted to something, to a man who has got something. Why are we attracted to a man who has got something? – Because we have desires. We also want to get something. You are attracted to a politician who has power because you are power-oriented, you want power. So whosoever has it becomes the idol, the hero. You are attracted to a person who has fabulous riches. Because you are poor, deep down you hanker after riches. So whosoever has them becomes the ideal. But why should one be attracted to a person who has nothing?This is fortunate, a rare possibility. Sometimes life happens in such a way that you become attracted to a person who has got nothing, who is empty. You are not going to gain anything out of him; rather, everything has to be lost with him. It is a gamble. So you are gamblers – that’s why you are here. And unless you gamble totally you will miss, because this gambling cannot be partial – parts cannot be accepted. That is not a rule of this game.So don’t hold back, put in everything you have. It is dangerous and risky. That’s why I say it is rare to be attracted to a Buddha or to a Jesus. Very few are attracted. You know about Jesus – very few, only twelve disciples, and very ordinary men: some fisherman, some woodcutter, some farmer – not significant in any way, just common people. Why are such common people attracted to Buddha or Jesus? To be common is a very uncommon quality, because those who are not common, they are after some ego-trip – riches, power, status. A farmer, a fisherman, a woodcutter – insignificant, absolutely ordinary, not looking for any achievement – they become attracted to Jesus.To be common is rare; to be absolutely ordinary is really extraordinary. Zen masters are reported to have said continuously: “Become ordinary and then you become extraordinary.” Every ordinary being is trying to be extraordinary – that is very ordinary.Just remain ordinary. That means not searching for anything, not seeking any achievement really, not in any way goal-oriented, just living moment-to-moment, drifting. That’s what I was saying to you – drifting like a white cloud.This is rare for other reasons also – because human mind is always afraid of death. It clings to life, a lust for life is there. Even in misery it clings to life – a deep fear of death. And when a person comes to me he is coming, really, to die, he is coming to dissolve. I will be an abyss to him, a bottomless abyss in which he will fall and fall and fall and reach nowhere. If you look into me you will feel dizzy. If you stare into my eyes you will see the abyss, and then the fear will grip you – and the falling and falling…. Just think of a leaf falling into an abyss – and the abyss is infinite and there is no bottom to it so it cannot reach anywhere, it can only disappear; falling, falling, falling, it will disappear.The religious journey begins but never ends. You come to me, you fall into me, you disappear, you never reach anywhere. But that disappearance is the delight. No other delight has ever been known, no other delight is there. The delight of total disappearance! Just as a dewdrop disappears in the morning when the sun rises, or just as in the night an earthen lamp burns, the wind comes and the flame goes out and darkness…. The flame has disappeared and you cannot find it anywhere – in the same way you disappear.It is rare to seek suicide: this is suicide, the real suicide! You can kill the body anywhere, but you cannot kill the self anywhere. Here you are ready for the final suicide – to kill the self.But don’t make all these things explanations, they are not. I am always anti-explanation. If all this makes you more mysterious, if all this makes you more vague, so far, so good. If your mind goes up in smoke and you don’t know what is what, that’s the best condition.The second question:Osho,As with all clouds, white clouds are directed by the wind. What is the present direction of the wind? Are there special potentialities in this age?White clouds are not directed by the wind. The phenomenon of direction exists only when there is resistance. If the white cloud wants to go east and the wind blows to the west, then there is direction – because resistance is there. But the cloud is not going anywhere, east and west mean the same, there is no resistance. If there is no will on the part of the cloud, then the wind cannot direct it.You can direct only when somebody is not ready to float, to relax, to let go. But the phenomenon of the cloud means it is the very let-go. If the wind says east the cloud is ready; it is already on the move toward the east. There has not been a single thought of no; there has not been a single denial. If the cloud was moving to the west and the wind starts blowing east, the cloud moves to the east. The wind is not directing, direction is needed only when someone is against.People come to me and they say: “Direct us” – and I know what they are saying; “Guide us” – and I know what they are saying. They are not ready; otherwise, what is the need of being directed and guided? It is enough that you are here with me, and everything will happen. The wind blows to the east and you start floating toward the east. But you say: “Guide;” you say: “Direct.” You are saying that you are against. You have denial, you have rejection; you will fight – one thing. And if there is no will on the part of the cloud, how can you make a distinction – which is the cloud and which is the wind? The boundary exists with the will.Remember this; this must become your foundational insight: the boundary between you and me exists because of your will. You are there, surrounded by a will. Then I come and then there is conflict. A cloud has no will, so where is the boundary? Where does the cloud end and the wind begin? The wind and the cloud are one. The cloud is part of the wind; the wind is part of the cloud. The phenomenon is one, undivided.And the wind goes on blowing in all directions. So the problem is not to choose the direction; the problem is how to become the cloud. The wind goes on blowing in all directions, it moves, it changes. It is always running from this corner to the other. Really, there is no direction. There is no map; the whole thing is uncharted. There is no one guiding it and saying: “Now go to the east, now go to the west.” The whole of existence waves it. It is a waving existence – all directions belong to it. And when I say all directions, I mean both the good and the bad, I mean both the moral and the immoral. When I say all directions, I mean all. The wind is blowing in all directions. This has always been so.So remember: there has not been a specifically religious age nor an anti-religious age, there cannot be. People think so because that too gives them ego-trips. In India, people think that in the old days, in ancient days, there was a religious age on the earth and now everything has gone rotten – this is the darkest age. This is all nonsense. No age is religious, no age is anti-religious. Religiousness is not concerned with the time, it is concerned with the quality of the mind.So it is not a question of whether the cloud is going to the east, then it will be religious, or going to the west and it will be anti-religious. No. If the cloud has no will, the cloud is religious wherever it goes. And if the cloud has will, then wherever it goes it is irreligious. And there are both types of clouds: very few who are will-less, millions who have their wills and projections and desires and ideas. They fight with the wind. The more they fight, the more anguish is created. And fighting leads nowhere, because nothing can be done. Whether you fight or not the wind will go to the east and you will have to go to the east. You can only carry a notion that you have been fighting and you are a great warrior, that’s all.One who understands stops fighting. He is not even trying to swim, he simply goes with the flood. He uses the very current as a vehicle; he becomes one with it and moves with it. This is what I call surrender, and this is what old scriptures called the attitude of the devotee. When surrendered, you are not. Now wherever the wind leads you, you will go. You don’t have any will of your own. And this has always been so.In the past there were buddhas, floating white clouds; in the present there are buddhas, floating white clouds. In the past there were mad black clouds filled with will, desire, future; they are there today also. With will and desire you are a black cloud – heavy. With no will, no desire, you are a white cloud – weightless. And the possibility for both these is always open. It is up to you whether to allow the let-go or not.Don’t think of time and age. Time and age are indifferent. They don’t force anyone to become a buddha; they don’t prevent anyone from becoming a buddha. Time and age are just indifferent. Allow yourself to be empty and this is the golden age. Allow yourself to be too much filled with desire and this is the darkest age possible, the Kali Yuga. You create your time and age around you. You live in your own age and time.Remember, we are not contemporaries in that way. A person like Jesus is ancient; he may be just here, but he is ancient. He lives so eternally, you cannot call him modern. He lives so totally that you cannot say that he belongs to a fragment of time. He is not part of the world of fashions which come and go. Living with the absolute, you become absolute. Living with the eternal, you become eternal. Living with the timeless, you become timeless.But the question is still pertinent in another sense also. All over the world people have the feeling that a certain age, a certain time, a certain climax, a crescendo, is nearing – something is going to explode, as if we are reaching a particular point in human evolution. But I would like to say to you: this is again the ego-trip for the age. Every age thinks that way: something is reaching a climax with us; we are here, something special is going to happen on the earth. This has always been so.It is reported that when Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, just as they passed through the door Adam said to Eve: “We are passing through the greatest transformation ever known in history.” The very first man saying and thinking: “The greatest transformation….”Every age thinks that things are reaching to a crescendo, to an ultimate point, to an omega point, where everything will explode and a new being will be born. But these are hopes, ego-trips, not very meaningful. You will be here for a few years; then others will be here and they will be thinking the same. The crescendo is reached, not with the age but with the individual being. The climax is reached but it is always reached with a consciousness, not with a collective unconscious.You can become a religious person. And the time is good, the time is always good. And don’t think of others too much because this may be just an escape from yourself. Don’t think of the age and don’t think of humanity – because mind is so cunning, human mind is so cunning, you don’t know.I have been reading a letter from a friend, and he says that he became so frustrated with all his love affairs, whenever he was in love it was such misery that he stopped loving any individual and started to love the whole of humanity. Now, the whole of humanity is easy to love; and those who cannot love will always love the whole of humanity, there is no problem. To love an individual is very, very difficult; it can be hell itself. It can be hell itself because it can become heaven.We go on avoiding. People start thinking about others just to avoid thinking about themselves. They start thinking about the age, the time, the planets, and what is going to happen to human consciousness, just to avoid encountering the basic problem: What is going to happen to my consciousness?Your consciousness should be the target.And every time is good, all times are good for it.