Question – You say that seriousness is a disease. Whenever i remember myself i feel serious, so what should i do?

Osho – Don’t get serious about it. Let it be so, and laugh. If you can laugh at yourself, everything is okay. People laugh at others, but never laugh at themselves. It has to be learned. If you can laugh at yourself, seriousness is already gone. It cannot make its abode within you if you are capable of laughing at yourself.

In Zen monasteries every monk has to laugh. The first thing in the morning to do is to laugh, the very first thing. The moment the monk becomes aware that he is no longer asleep, he has to jump out of bed, stand in a posture like a buffoon, like a circus joker, and start laughing, laughing at himself. There cannot be any better beginning of the day.

Laughing at oneself kills the ego and you are more transparent, more light, when you move in the world. And if you have laughed at yourself, then others’ laughter toward you won’t disturb you. In fact they are simply cooperating, they are doing the same thing that you were doing. You will feel happy.

To laugh at others is egoistic; to laugh at oneself is very humble. Learn to laugh at yourself — about your seriousness and things like that. You can get serious about seriousness. Then instead of one, you have created two diseases. Then you can get serious about that also, and you can go on and on. There is no end to it; it can go on AD NAUSEAM.

So take hold of it from the very beginning. The moment you feel you are serious, laugh about it and look for where the seriousness is. Laugh, give a good laugh, close the eyes and look for where it is. You will not find it. It exists only in a being who cannot laugh.

A more unfortunate situation cannot be conceived, a poorer being cannot be conceived of, than the man who cannot laugh at himself. So start the morning by laughing at yourself, and whenever you can find a moment in the day when you have nothing to do, have a good laugh. For no particular reason — just because the whole world is so absurd, just because the way you are is so absurd. There is no need to find any particular reason, The whole thing is so absurd that one has to laugh.

Let the laughter be a belly laughter, not a head-thing. One can laugh from the head: then it is dead. From the head everything is dead; the head is absolutely mechanical. You can laugh from the head: then your head will create the laughter, but it will not go deep in the belly to the HARA. It will not go to your toes, it will not go to your whole body. A real laugh is just like a small child laughs. Watch his belly shaking, his whole body throbbing with it — he wants to roll on the floor. It is a question of totality. He laughs so much that he starts crying; he laughs so deeply that the laughter becomes tears, tears come out of him. A laughter should be deep and total. This is the medicine that I prescribe for seriousness.

You would like me to give you some serious medicine. That won’t help. You have to be a little foolish. In fact, the highest pinnacle of wisdom always carries foolishness in it, the greatest wise men of the world were also the greatest fools.

It will be hard to understand. You cannot think that they can be fools because your mind always divides: a wise man can never be a fool, and a fool can never be a wise man. Both attitudes are wrong. There have been great fools who were very wise.

In the old days, in every king’s court, there was a great fool — the court fool. He was a balancing force because too much wisdom can be foolish, too much of anything can be foolish. Somebody was needed who could bring things back to earth. A fool was needed in the kings’ courts who would help them to laugh, otherwise wise people tend to become serious, and seriousness is an illness. Out of seriousness you lose proportion, you lose perspective. So every king’s court had a fool, a great fool, who would say things and do things and bring things back to earth.

I have heard that one emperor had a fool. One day the emperor was looking in the mirror. The fool came, jumped, and hit him with his feet in the back. The emperor fell against the mirror. He was, of course, very angry and he said, “Unless you can give some reason for your foolish act which is more criminal than the act itself, you will be sentenced to death.”

The fool said, “My Lord, I never thought that you were here. I thought the queen was standing here.” He had to be pardoned because he had given a reason that was even more foolish. But to find such a reason, the fool must have been very wise. Every great wise man — Lao Tzu, Jesus — they have a certain quality of sublime foolishness. This has to be so because a wise man otherwise will be a man without salt, he will taste awful. He has to be a little foolish also. Then things are balanced. Look at Jesus — riding on a donkey and saying to people, “I am the Son of God.” Look at it! He must have been both. People must have laughed: “What are you saying? Saying such things, and behaving in such a way….”

But I know that’s how perfect wisdom appears. Lao Tzu says, “Everybody is wise, except me. I seem to be foolish. Everybody’s mind is clear; only my mind seems to be murky and muddled. Everybody knows what to do and what not to do: only I am confused.” What does he mean? He is saying that “In me, wisdom and foolishness meet together.” And when wisdom and foolishness meet together, there is a transcendence.

So don’t be serious about seriousness. Laugh about it, be a little foolish. Don’t condemn foolishness; it has its own beauties. If you can be both, you will have a quality of transcendence within you. The world has become more and more serious. Hence so much cancer, so much heart disease, so much high blood pressure, so much madness. The world has been moved, forced, towards one extreme too much. Be a little foolish also. Laugh a little, be like a child. Enjoy a little, don’t carry a serious face everywhere, and suddenly you will find a deeper health arising in you — deeper sources of your health become available.

Have you ever heard about any fool who went mad? It has never happened. I have always been searching for a report of any foolish man who went mad. I have not come across one. Of course a fool cannot go mad because to be mad you need to be very serious.

I have also been searching to see if fools are in any way prone to be more healthy than the so-called wise. And it is so: fools are more healthy than the so-called wise. They live in the moment and they know that they are fools, so they are not worried about what others think about them. That worry becomes a cancerous phenomenon in the mind and body. They live long, and they have the last laugh.

Remember that life should be a deep balancing, a very deep balancing. Then, just in the middle, you escape. The energy surges high, you start moving upwards. And this should be so about all opposites. Don’t be a man and don’t be a woman: be both, so that you can be neither. Don’t be wise, don’t be a fool: be both, so you go beyond.

Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You, Vol 1″

Question – beloved master, i love to do t’ai chi and it has become my daily meditation, but i have a tendency to become too serious about it. can you drive out the monkey?

Osho – Anand Srajan, it is impossible for anybody to drive the monkey out of your mind, because it does not exist; your seriousness is creating it. And nobody can change your seriousness either. It is your life attitude which is making you serious. What is there to be serious about? Existence is a continuous celebration, a festival that knows no holidays. You are serious because for thousands of years people have been telling you that the serious man is a better man, higher man, more evolved than the nonserious. The nonserious have never been taken into account.

But to me the situation is just the reverse. The nonserious one is the one who will come to know the real life and its experiences. Seriousness is closing you, making you hard, making you sad. Seriousness comes from ambition, from desire which you are not being able to attain.

But the religions have paid too much respect to seriousness. I have never come across in any religious scripture of any religion — and there are three hundred religions on the earth — that anybody has paid respect to nonseriousness, to playfulness, to a sense of humor. They all make you dodos.

I have heard… one day as the bishop entered a church in New York, he could not believe his eyes: he saw Jesus Christ standing there. He said, “My god! I thought that prayers are never heard. I never believed that there is any God or any son of God — but what to do with this fellow? Either he is a hippy or he is Jesus Christ. I am in trouble.”
He approached the man and asked, “Can I ask you who you are?”
And the man said, “You have been serving me, spreading my word, and you don’t recognize me!”

The bishop’s heart started sinking: “My god! He is Jesus Christ! And now there is bound to be trouble.”
He phoned the pope in Rome: “What am I supposed to do? In our teaching courses there is not even a single mention that `Jesus will come one day to your church.’ So what has to be done, what is the right course? How should I behave?”

The pope said, “Don’t create trouble for me! It is good that he has come to New York. Do two things: first, the most important, look serious and busy. Who knows, he may be… And second, don’t forget to inform the police.”

Religions have been teaching people to be serious because seriousness creates a certain kind of dullness in your consciousness. Seriousness is not a help. It is poisonous; nobody can take it away, unless you understand… then it will disappear.

A psychiatrist and a friend were walking down the street, and a stranger passing by suddenly kicked the psychiatrist in the shins. The shrink walked on as if nothing had happened. His friend was astounded. “Aren’t you going to do anything about it?” he cried. “Why should I?” asked the psychiatrist. “It’s his problem.”

If the monkey is there inside you, it is his problem! He must be getting tortured with your seriousness and your t’ai chi. Don’t be worried. He himself will be trying to find a way to get out of the mess.

A man who is playful does not bother about things like t’ai chi! There is so much to enjoy around and you, like an idiot, do t’ai chi! Naturally you are becoming serious. A beautiful woman passes by… and you are doing t’ai chi! Can’t you do anything playful, blissful, pleasant? Naturally you are becoming serious because you are losing contact with life.

There are all kinds of idiots in the world. Somebody is doing t’ai chi, somebody is doing aikido, somebody is doing jujitsu, somebody is doing yoga, standing on his head. Now, I don’t think any woman is going to be interested in you: this kind of fellow who is standing on his head is already dead! So then nobody takes interest in you, and you become serious. You are creating it, and you want me to chase it out. I am not responsible for it. Who suggested you do t’ai chi?

I have heard that three missionaries were caught by cannibals in southern Africa. The chief of the cannibals asked the first, “Which do you want — you can choose — do you want `chi-chi’ or do you want death?”
The man thought about it and he said, “Whatever chi-chi is, it cannot be worse than death.” So he said, “I want chi-chi.”

So he was given the treatment they called chi-chi. He was sexually abused, beaten… and as chi-chi started, he started thinking, “It was better to choose death. These people will kill me by chi-chi, and they are unnecessarily humiliating me.”

And the other two missionaries were watching what was going on. Then the turn came to the second: “What do you want?”
Death is such a dangerous thing… he thought, “One can survive chi-chi, but death you cannot survive.” He also said, “Chi-chi.”

So again the whole game began. All the cannibals were beating him and doing all kinds of stupid sexual perversions — and the poor missionary had come to save them…!

Now the turn came of the third, who was the chief missionary. The chief asked, “What do you think — chi-chi or death?”

He said, “It will be a great mercy if you allow me death. Chi-chi I have seen.”
But the chief said, “This is a problem: we don’t kill anybody before chi-chi, and after chichi nobody survives!”

Now what are you interested in t’ai chi for? Naturally it will make you serious. You will forget laughing, you will forget a sense of humor — a man of t’ai chi has to be serious. And you are asking me to take out the seriousness… and the monkey. The monkey comes in the same package! You become serious and the monkey will come in. And as far as the monkey is concerned, it is his problem — you don’t worry. You just get rid of this chi-chi. Just to deceive you they have changed the name to t’ai chi!

Source – Osho Book “The Great Pilgrimage From Here to Here”

Osho – Rumi does not mean anything, it is a name of a place; because he came from Rum he was called Rumi. His message is love, and he belongs to the highest categories of the Buddhas. He was the man who inverted a new method of meditation, whirling.

There have been hundreds of devices; Rumi has also contributed one special device. He became enlightened not by sitting silently like a Buddha, he became enlightened by dancing. And his dance is a special and of dance. You turn round and round, as if you are just a wheel moving faster and faster; you are both the axle and the wheel. Small children enjoy it very much. Almost all over the world parents have to stop their children from doing it because they are afraid they may get dizzy, but they don’t know that the children are enjoying something very special.

When a small child goes on whirling he loses the sense of being a body, he starts hovering above his body, he can see his own body turning — and that is the miracle of the method. But we are stopped by our parents very early.

Jalaluddin introduced that method. He himself became enlightened by thirty-six hours of continuous whirling; day in, day out he went on and on. He was riding on a cloud, he could not stop till he fell down. But when he opened his eyes and got up he was a totally new man, the old was gone. People had gathered to watch him, thousands of people — he was a well-known mystic. What had happened to him? dad he gone crazy or something. And he had told his disciples that he should not be disturbed.

For thirty-six hours he danced and danced. The dancer disappeared in the dance, there was only dance and no dancer — the ego died. And he could see his own body from the higher plane dancing somewhere on the earth. He became a watcher on the hill, the body was in the deep dark valley. And that’s how he introduced the method to his disciples. His message was love and dance. Love the whole existence so you can dance, and dance to abandon so that you can love.

Source – Osho Book “I Am Not As Thunk As You Drink I Am”

Question – What is this urge to Create?

Osho – The urge to create is the first stirring of the divine within you. The urge to create is the presence of God. You have the first message, the first ripple has reached to you. It is the beginning and the birth of prayer. Follow it. To be creative is to be religious. What you create is not the point – you create. In that very creativity something starts happening which is not of the world.

When you create you are lost into your creation. For example, if you are painting or singing or playing on an instrument or dancing, you start disappearing. The dance is really when the dancer is no more. If the dancer is still there then it is not a creative act, then it is at the most a skill. The technician is there but not the dancer – one who knows how to dance is there but not the dancer.

Because the dancer knows nothing; the dancer remains in a state of not knowing. He forgets all his skill, he forgets all the techniques that he has learnt, he forgets himself, he is utterly lost. He is in the hands of God. He cannot even say ’I am dancing’ – he can only say ’God has taken possession of me, I am possessed. God is dancing in me. I am the field where God is dancing, I am the hollow bamboo and Gd is singing. He has made a flute of me.’

The creator knows God. Only the creator knows God. And all other prayers that you go on doing in the temples and the churches are just impotent, meaningless, unless your life learns how to create. Then no other prayer is needed. Then the very phenomenon of creativity is enough religion for you. More than that is unnecessary – you need not go to any church, any temple, any gurudvara, any mosque. You have to go into creativity.

The question is asked by Gyan Bhakti. She is a creator. Hence the question has arisen in her – ’What is this urge to create?’ She is possessed by that desire. I have seen it in her, aflame. She wants to explode in many many ways, she wants to create. God has knocked at her door. But when the knock comes it is natural not to understand it, because we have never heard it before. It is so new, it cannot be reduced to our old mind. It is coming from the unknown – there is no way to figure it out, what it is. Hence the question.

Go with the unknown, go with the new. Always remember: If there is a choice between the old and the new, choose the new. Howsoever dangerous it is, howsoever insecure it is, choose the new. And you will be always moving closer and closer to God. Choose the old, and you will be moving away from God. Choose the old mind, and you will sooner or later become destructive. And these are the only two ways to live: either be creative or be destructive. There is no other possibility, there is no third possibility. If your energies are not moving into creation they will still be moving, but then they will become destructive. Destruction is creativity standing on its head; something has gone wrong, something has taken a wrong turn.

All destructive people could have been great creators. But if the energy is not allowed, if you become afraid and frightened with the new…. And when the creativity possesses you it is fearful. It looks terrible, it is a kind of tremendum. It takes you so far away from your known and the familiar. It takes you to the uncharted sea, without any maps. It is dangerous. One shrinks back from it.

But once you start shrinking back from it, what will you do with your energy which God goes on pouring into you? Something has to be done. The energy cannot wait, the energy needs expression. So if you avoid creativity you will become destructive. Whenever creativity calls you, go with it. It is God calling you.

Source – Osho Book “This Very Body the Buddha”

Question – Beloved Osho, Why are you not serious? Why are you always joking?

Osho – Gunga Prasad, God is not serious — what can I do? God is always joking. Look at your own life — it is a joke! Look at other people’s lives, and you will find jokes and jokes and jokes. Seriousness is illness; seriousness has nothing spiritual about it. Spirituality is laughter, spirituality is joy, spirituality is fun.

Two hunters were in a forest looking for game, when they came across a huge black bear. The first hunter took aim, but missed. The second hunter took careful aim as the bear drew closer to them, but his gun jammed. The two hunters fled in terror with the bear in hot pursuit. They came to a small cabin at the edge of the forest, ran inside and bolted the door just before the bear reached them.

The enormous bear circled the cabin, found an open window and climbed in after them. Loud crashing and terror-stricken screams ensued, then silence…. Finally, after three days, the door burst open and the first hunter staggered out, walked ten paces then fell face first onto the ground.

Not long after, the second hunter staggered out, walked about twenty paces then fell to the ground. Hours later the bear appeared, staggered up the track about half a mile, then collapsed. Shortly after, a beautiful young lady appeared at the door of the cabin. She walked up to the first hunter and said, “Him, he owes me ten dollars!”

Walking up to the second hunter, she said, “Him, he owes me twenty dollars.” Then she looked up and began scanning the horizon. “Now, I wonder what happened to that big guy in the fur coat? He had another free one comin’!”

Source – Osho Book “Come Come Yet Again Come”

Question – Beloved Osho, Why is it so difficult for me to laugh?

Osho – Sudheer, it must be that you have come here conditioned by wrong people. And the wrong people constitute the majority, almost ninety-nine point nine percent. The religious, the moralists, the puritans — they are all serious people. They destroy the very possibility of laughter in you. They destroy the very sense of humor in you. To them, humor is something earthly, mundane. That’s why Christians say Jesus never laughed. That is absolutely wrong. I know Jesus. It is impossible that Jesus never laughed. It cannot happen. But the Christians go on believing in this — that Jesus never laughed. Two thousand years of seriousness has made it incomprehensible that a man like Jesus can have a sense of humor.

Look at the statues of Jesus that Christians have made. He looks so serious, as if he has been on the cross for thirty-three years. And the cross became very significant to Christianity for the simple reason that the very idea of the cross will destroy all sense of humor in you. The cross has become the symbol of their religion. Krishna is far closer to life. The flute is the symbol of life, not the cross. And have you seen the pictures of Krishna? Dressed beautifully, standing in a dancing posture, the flute in his hands on his lips, it looks like he is going to sing a song at any moment. He looks so alive, and he is wearing a beautiful crown of flowers with peacock feathers. This is far truer to life. That’s how life is. It is tremendous joy.

But Buddhists say that Buddha does not even smile. And Jainas say that Mahavira has no sense of humor, cannot have. All these people are trying to create a certain idea of religiousness which is devoid of laughter. It is as if man’s misery is not enough for them, and they want man to become even more miserable. They tell you, “Carry your cross on your shoulders” — as if your life is not already a cross.

Sudheer, your conditioning of a wrong approach towards life is why you cannot laugh. But you will have to learn laughter here, because to me laughter is one of the most essential qualities of a religious man. If you cannot laugh you can never be a sage. If you cannot laugh totally, then something is missing in you. Then you have not understood
the beauty of existence, you have not understood the mystery of existence.

Bodhidharma laughed for seven days when he became enlightened — nonstop. His friends became very worried; they thought he had gone insane. They asked him, “What is the matter? Why are you laughing?”
He said, “I am laughing because now I see the whole ridiculousness of my search. I have been searching for lives together for the truth, and it has always been within me. What I was searching for was in the seeker himself. I was looking everywhere and it was within me. I was running hither and thither and there was no need to run anywhere. I could have just calmed myself down, and it was mine. It has always been mine. From the very beginning it was within me. It is my innermost being, my very being.

“The seeker is the sought — that’s why I am laughing. I cannot believe how I could remain in such a deception for so long, how I managed to be such a fool. And I am also laughing because I see all around millions of people searching in the same way — searching for bliss, for God, for truth, for nirvana — and all that they are searching and seeking and looking for can be found within themselves. There is no need to go anywhere. There is no need to do anything. Just close your eyes and look within, and the kingdom of God is yours. Hence, I cannot stop laughing.”

The sense of humor is very significant, particularly for my sannyasins, because I am introducing a new kind of religiousness to the world: a non-escapist religiousness, a religiousness which is not against life. I would like you to be Zorba the Greek and Gautam the Buddha together, simultaneously. Less than that won’t do. Zorba represents the earth with all its flowers and greenery and mountains and rivers and oceans. Buddha represents the sky with all its stars and clouds, and the rainbows.

The sky without the earth will be empty.
The sky cannot laugh without the earth.
The earth without the sky will be dead.

Both together — and a dance comes into existence. The earth and the sky dancing together — and there is laughter, there is joy, there is celebration. Sudheer, look around, watch life. Don’t be too bothered with religious scriptures. Ninetynine percent of those religious scriptures are written by people who know nothing of religion. They are written by scholars, theologians. They are written by ascetics, anti-life people. The person who is anti-life is bound to be anti-laughter, anti-love — he will be anti-everything. His whole life is nothing but a denial, a constant denial. He is suicidal, he goes on cutting himself chunk by chunk. He is destructive, he destroys himself — how can he laugh?

I teach you life, I teach you love, I teach you how to sing, how to dance. I teach you how to transform your life into a festival, into a carnival of delight. Hence, laughter has to be one of the most essential qualities. Even if you cry and weep, your tears should have the quality of laughter in them. They should come dancing and singing; they should not be tears of sadness and misery. They should be tears of overflowing cheerfulness, of bliss. This is possible not through scriptures, but only if you look at life. All that is needed is a clarity.

Sudheer, you are an Indian — that creates difficulty. When you look at life, inside you are reciting the BHAGAVADGITA, RAMAYANA…VEDAS are going on and on. You are chanting VISHNU SAHASTRANAM — the one thousand names of God. How can you see life? Stop all this nonsense. Be silent and look at life, and you will find surprises everywhere — each moment, on
each step.

During the second world war, a house in a London suburb is nearly totally destroyed by a direct hit of a rocket. All the inhabitants survive; only one man is missing. Suddenly, they hear a tremendous laughter coming out of the toilet which stands undestroyed amongst the ruins. The man climbs out of it still laughing loudly, and they ask him, “What the hell are you laughing about?”
“Well,” he says, “isn’t it funny? I pull the chain and the whole house collapses!”

Just look around and you will find a thousand and one ways to laugh….

Source – Osho Book “Come Come Yet Again Come”

Osho – if you have heard of any sad and serious people becoming enlightened, then either they were not sad and serious or you have heard wrong. Serious and sad people become something else, they don’t become enlightened. They become popes, Mother Teresas, Mahatma Gandhis, Morarji Desais, SHANKARACHARYAS, Ayatollah Khomaniacs, IMAMS, priests. The churches, the synagogues, the temples, the mosques, the GURUDWARAS — they are full of these people; they are serious people. They gather around an enlightened person and they start destroying all that he has brought into the springtime. They start creating a dead tradition — and the tradition has to be serious, the tradition cannot be non-serious.

The enlightened person is always joyous, but the tradition, the convention cannot be joyous. The whole structure of a tradition is basically political; it is there to dominate, it is there to oppress, it is there to exploit. And you cannot exploit people playfully, you have to be very serious. You have to make them so sad, so afraid of life itself, you have to create so much trembling in their being, that out of that fear they fall into your hands; they become
objects of your manipulation.

A man like me cannot exploit you, because this whole place is more like a tavern than a temple. It is more playful than serious. We are engaged in a beautiful game! The moment you think of it as a game, all seriousness disappears, things become lighter. You can walk in a dancing way; there is no weight on you.

But the priests cannot do it; their whole prestige depends on their seriousness. The more serious they are, the more somber-looking, the more “holier-than-thou” they can pretend to be… And they will do everything — they will fast… naturally, when a person fasts he becomes serious, he cannot laugh. When you are hungry, starving, you cannot laugh — and you cannot allow anybody else to laugh either. It is not a laughing matter! You are starving, sacrificing, crucifying yourself, and people are laughing! It cannot be pardoned, it cannot be forgiven.

Naturally, when you go to a fasting person you become serious — you have to be serious. That is simple manners. Now, a person who is distorting his body in every possible way, who is torturing his body in every possible way — how can you laugh? The very scene is sad; you feel burdened. It is very difficult to be with these so-called saints. That’s why people just go to pay their respects and escape immediately, because to sit with them means they will make you burdened, they will create guilt in you.

For example, if they are fasting and you are well-fed, guilt is bound to be created. If they are standing on their heads and you are simply standing on your feet, you are doing something wrong. Naturally, you will feel, “I am not yet a perfect man — this man who is standing on his head is perfect.” You see the sheer stupidity of it all? If God wanted you to stand on your head he would have managed it!

If God had wanted homosexuality in the world he would have created Adam and Bruce — it is so simple! Why bring in Eve? Unnecessary trouble! But these stupid people go on doing the unnatural, and their very unnatural approach to life naturally makes them serious. They are going against the current, they are exhausted, tired, bored, but their only joy is that they can also bore you.

Moishe cannot decide about his son’s future. So he goes to the rabbi and asks his advice.
The rabbi says, “That’s very easy. We put the Talmud, the Torah and some money on the table, and let him choose. If he takes the Talmud he will become a rabbi. If he takes the Torah he will become a lawyer. If he takes the money he will become a shopkeeper.”
Moishe agrees and they call his son. The son looks at all the things on the table and then takes them all.
Moishe is perplexed. “What will happen now?” he asks the rabbi.
“He will become a Catholic priest,” replied the rabbi.

These sad people become Catholic priests, Hindu SHANKARACHARYAS, Mohammedan IMAM, and what-not. These serious people lose their humanity; they become parrots. But it pays. You need not have much intelligence to be a parrot, you need not have much courage to be a parrot; if you just have a little bit of memory and you can recite the Vedas, the Gita, the Koran, you will be respected and honored. You are not doing anything creative, you are not adding anything to the beauty of the world, you are not contributing to the earth and its joys, on the contrary, you are destroying. But people have been conditioned for thousands of years, and they go on doing things according to their conditioning. Parrots are worshipped.

A farmer owns a parrot who always screams, “Heil Hitler!”
One day the farmer gets fed up with the parrot and locks it in the hen-house. The cock
walks over to the parrot and asks, “Tell me, why did the farmer lock you in here?” The parrot
remains silent.

“I’ll give you four of my hens if you tell me,” continues the cock, but the parrot remains
silent.
“Listen, if you tell me why he locked you in here, I’ll give you ten of my hens.”
The parrot turns around and screams, “Can’t you leave me alone? I’m a political prisoner!”

These sad people, they either become priests or politicians or they become great pedagogues, professors, philosophers, theologians. But they never become enlightened; that much is absolutely certain — that cannot happen in the very nature of things. To become enlightened one needs the lightness of a flower, the lightness of a feather, the multi-dimensional colors of a rainbow. One needs the joy of the birds in the morning, one needs the freedom of the clouds. One needs only one thing: a heart full of ecstasy — not the ecstasy of something ultimate, not the ecstasy of something in paradise, but ecstasy here and now, ecstasy this very moment, when your eyes are full of this very moment, when there is nothing else, no past, no future, when this moment pervades you so totally, so intensely, so passionately that nothing is left behind. Only these few people have become enlightened. Hence, I say, if you live in joyous ordinariness you are enlightened. There is no need for any spiritual nonsense, for any esoteric nonsense.

The toilet seat in the Rabinowitz home was chipped. On his day off, Sidney promised to paint it. He had some nice bright green enamel in the garage and applied a fresh shiny coat. Ethel went in with a magazine, sat down to meditate and read. When she tried to get up she found she was stuck! She yelled for Sid. He tugged and tugged but could not pry her loose. Ethel, in desperation, cried, “So what are you standing there for! Call me a doctor! If plaster gets stuck, he at least knows how to remove it without tearing off the skin!”

Sidney dashed to the telephone and pleaded with the doctor to come right over. This was a real emergency! The doctor explained that he had an office full of patients and that he could not possibly get there for at least two hours. Sid had a bright idea. He would unscrew the hinges and she could lie on the bed on her stomach and wait for the doctor. The two hours seemed like four but the doctor finally arrived.

Sidney directed him into the bedroom and pointing to his wife said, “Doc, ain’t that something? What d’ya think of that?”
The doctor looked thoughtfully and declared, “Very nice… but why such a cheap frame?”

Life has to be taken hilariously! Life is so full of laughter, it is so ridiculous, it is so funny that unless your juices have gone completely dry you cannot be serious. I have looked around at life in every possible way and it is always funny, whatever way you look at it! It gets funnier and funnier! It is such a beautiful gift of the beyond.

Prem Jyoti, I am against all seriousness. My whole approach is that of humor, and the greatest religious quality is a sense of humor — not truth, not God, not virtue, but a sense of humor. If we can fill the whole earth with laughter, with dancing and singing — people singing and swinging! — if we can make the earth a carnival of joy, a festival of lights, we will have brought for the first time a true sense of religiousness to the earth.

Source – Osho Book “The Goose is Out”

question: you talked about dancing… could it be anywhere with anyone or by our own self ?

swami rajneesh:
anywhere everywhere !
anything anyhow !
just dance !
just dance with the breeze…with the stars
with the moon…with the sun…with the trees
it is so infectious !
dance with the bamboos
with the trees in the rain

have you seen the mystics when they reach ?
they simply go into a dance
they are not dancing anymore
they have gone into the dance and only the dance remains

you are not dancing with anybody
there is no other
there is no them and you
it is not you who is dancing with the trees and the sun and the moon
when you are dancing the whole existence is dancing
because you have disappeared
and your dance is waving the whole sky

the whole sky is dancing
everything is in the rhythm
it has a particular rhythm
and when you will disappear you will see
this existence is a celebration
that is why in east we call it leela
just a pure celebration !

you need to disappear
and you will see that you are no more
beings of light are moving you
the body has disappeared and is connected to the universe

the greatest state of ecstasy leads you to dance
the dance goes higher and higher and higher
even when everything comes to a stop
even in that ultimate stop there is a subtle dance
very cool…very still…

you know that you have come to the ultimate peak
you stand still…nothing moves
but you will see the dance is happening
you can see the dance of existence
this pulse…this harmony…
that is the ultimate dance

when you disappear into a deep vertical stillness
everything stops
and you see the dance of light
it is the easiest way to move on the inner journey
the most natural way to move in
just dance
move the body until you disappear
dance wherever you can
any place
make everybody dance wherever you go
you can create that waving dance in others too

i am just dancing everywhere i go
i have given up on all other methods
it is too much…a waste of time
but dance…everybody knows what dance is
that is the most universal language
to excite and awaken the kundalini and take it high
feel the peak and the only one secret is the stop
watch the silent pulse

dance is just the outer…the outer tornado
the inner is a pure stillness
you have found the centre of the cyclone
that is why stillness is very important
dance…dance…dance…but stop
find the centre of the cyclone
it is like whirling

when you are whirling…whirling…whirling
your whole body is moving outwards
rushing in all directions creating a centrifugal force
the centrifugal force is going deeper and deeper into the earth
and stretching you higher and higher and higher into the sky
and your dance is taking you outer and outer and outer
and the centre of gravity is taking you inner and inner and inner
that is whirling…

how to find the centre of the cyclone ?
the power of the tornado is not from the outer
if it was it will lose its energy very quickly
the power of the tornado is its vertical centre that is silent
it is going against gravity…it is an antiforce
the antiforce is propelling the outer body
and nothing breaks into it
it can be bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger
to stop the tornado something needs to make a break
and then the tornado loses its intensity

exactly like this is dance
dancing dancing dancing in the state of no mind
do not bring the mind in…it will lose the intensity
do not open the eyes…it will lose intensity
keep the eyes closed and continue…continue…continue
the tornado will become more and more powerful
this is how rumi became enlightened
just whirling…whirling…whirling

he was no more and the tornado within awakened him
because now he has gone into a new dimension
no mind no ego no thought

the only way is to reach the highest possible
reach the door and fall to the earth
this is how he became enlightened

you can dance your way to god
there is no other way but to dance your way to god
god is a dancer
he is silent and cannot speak
his power is his stillness
his power is his silence
dance dance dance dance
just keep dancing

Source – Osho Book “dissOLVE into LOVE”

Question – Osho, You emphasize Playfulness, Leela. But is it possible for a playful mind to be a Plastic surgeon or a Scientist?

Osho – The question is from Prem Leeladhar. He is a plastic surgeon, hence the question.

REMEMBER that all that has ever been invented in the world has been invented out of playfulness. You will be surprised to know that all that you see has been invented by playful people, not by the serious people. The serious people are too much past-oriented — they go on repeating the past, because they know it works. They are never inventive.

When a bullock cart is doing well, why bother? why waste time in inventing a car? And who has ever heard of a car? — you must be mad. The utilitarian cannot be interested in it. He will say ‘For what? The bullock cart is doing perfectly well.’ But there are people who are playful, who cannot be contained by the past, who always go on playing with things. And out of that playing, new combinations arise. Inventiveness is a dimension of playfulness.

And you ask me: IS IT POSSIBLE FOR A PLAYFUL MIND TO BE A PLASTIC SURGEON OR A SCIENTIST?

It is only possible for a playful mind. The non-utilitarians are the discoverers, the explorers. The utilitarian always asks what the profit is in it. For example, people have reached to the moon. The utilitarian, the business mind, asks ‘For what? You cannot find a market there, there is nobody — this is a sheer wastage! Why put in so much energy and so much effort and so much money? And people are starving on the earth.’ The business mind, the economist, will say that this is not right.

But there are people who are more interested in going to the moon — for no reason at all. These are the people who bring the future into the present. Right now you also cannot think of any utility, but who knows? The earth may become very inhospitable to man — it is becoming so. Man has done so much harm that the earth cannot forget and forgive it. Man has been such a disaster, he has destroyed the ecology of the earth. The earth is angry, revengeful.

The earth one day may become absolutely against humanity. It may not provide food. Then the only way to survive will be to move from this planet to some other planet. It may not be the moon — but the moon is not the end of the explorers’ playfulness, that is just a station on the way. It may be some other planet which will be more green,-more alive. The earth is dying; it is a dying planet, it is an old planet.

But only later on will people say ‘Great inventors were these people who landed on the moon.’ Right now, every practical, pragmatic person is against it. That’s how it has always been. Many weapons and tools were to begin as playthings — the bow was a musical instrument before it became a weapon, and the wheel was a plaything before it was used as a tool. In many excavations it has been found that there have been civilizations, prehistoric civilizations, which had no bullock carts but which had toys with wheels.

Ornaments came before clothes, you will be surprised — before clothes, ornaments came into the world. There are still primitives who are naked but they are as much interested in ornaments as you are — even more so. Clothes are a practical necessity, but ornaments just playfulness. Man is not as economical an animal as economists suppose. Man is more an aesthetic animal than economical; he loves beauty more than utility.

The first domesticated animals were pets. And it has been suggested that grain was first cultivated not to raise food but to make beer. Now my Germans will be happy. And I agree with it.

Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of all his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents. Wherever man becomes more of a utilitarian he loses the capacity to explore. Wherever man starts condemning things of luxury he becomes dull, stupid.

You will see it in the East: people have become dull, people have lost all joy of invention — because all luxury has been condemned; it is a sin to seek comfort. But if you are not seeking comfort then there is no point in exploring, if you are not seeking luxury then all search stops. Then all that you need is a shelter, food, clothes — but there you are finished.

And when you don’t explore you don’t become rich, when you don’t explore you stop growing. In the East it has happened, it has happened terribly: because the so-called priests and religious people condemned all luxuries, man became uninventive. The East is poor because of the saints — because people are bound to remain poor if they don’t explore. If people are satisfied with just whatsoever is the case they become more and more poor every day, because every day more and more people are born and the place becomes more and more crowded. And they cannot find any way out of it; they take it for granted as their fate.

Man is a luxury-loving animal. Take away play, fancies and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when the people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.

When I say playfulness is the source of all discoveries, I mean it. The greatest calamity that can happen to a man is that he becomes too serious and too practical. A little bit of craziness, a little bit of eccentricity, is all for the good.

Source – Osho Book “The Revolution”

Question – Beloved Master, Why do I feel sadness about Christmas when the whole message is rejoice and be merry?

Osho – Vachana, Christ’s message IS rejoice and be merry. But that is not the message of Christianity. Christianity’s message is: be sad, long faces, look miserable; the more miserable you look, the more saintly you are. Sometimes I really feel for poor Jesus. He has fallen in such wrong company, and I wonder how he is managing in paradise with all these Christian saints, so sad, so dull.

He was not a dull man, he was not a sad man — he could not be. The word ‘christ’ is exactly synonymous with buddha. He was an enlightened person. He rejoiced in life, in the small things of life. He rejoiced in eating, drinking, friendship. He loved companionship, he loved the whole life.

But Christians down the ages have painted him as very sad. They have painted him always on the cross, as if for thirty-three years he was always on the cross. And my own understanding is that a man like Jesus will not die sad, even on the cross. He must have laughed before he died. That’s what al-Hillaj Mansoor did before he was killed by the fanatic Mohammedans, because he had declared: ANA’L HAQ — I am God. Mohammedans could not tolerate it, just as Jews could not tolerate Jesus. They killed him — but before they killed him, he looked at the sky and laughed loudly.

One hundred thousand people had gathered to see this ugly phenomenon, the murder of one of the greatest human beings who has ever walked on the earth. Somebody asked from the crowd, “al-Hillaj, why are you laughing? You are being killed!” And he was killed in the most cruel way, piece by piece. Jesus’ crucifixion is nothing compared to Mansoor’s: first his legs were cu off, then his hands were cut off, then his eyes were taken out, then his nose was cut off, then his tongue was cut off, then his head was cut off. They tortured him as much as was possible, but he laughed. Somebody asked, “Why are you laughing?”

Mansoor said, “I am laughing because the man you are killing is somebody else, I am not he. I am laughing at God too. What is happening? — have these people gone mad? They are killing somebody else! Me you cannot kill; it is ridiculous, your whole effort is ridiculous. So let it be remembered, let it be on record that I laughed at your foolishness!”

And that’s exactly what Jesus must have done, laughed. But Christians have tried their best to depict Jesus as sad. They have made a saint out of a real authentic human being; they have cut everything. The gospels are not true stories; much has been changed, much has been reduced, much has been added. They have become mere fictions.

Down the ages, Christians have been trying to paint Christ as more and more sad. Why? — because all over the world religion has been dominated by a neurotic kind of people. It has been dominated by the people who are masochists, sadists. In the East too, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism — they have all been dominated by the masochistic people, the people who enjoy torturing themselves, the people who are incapable of living life in its totality.

The people who are too cowardly to live, escapists, have dominated religion up to now. These escapists have depicted Buddha as not laughing, Mahavira as not laughing. And Christians actually say that Jesus never laughed in his life.

Can you believe that? Jesus never laughed in life? — and he enjoyed drinking and eating, he enjoyed gamblers and prostitutes, and he enjoyed all kinds of people, and he never laughed? Can you imagine that a man like Jesus, who was always feasting for hours with his friends, never laughed? It is inconceivable! How can you go on wining and dining without laughing? He must have joked, he must have told funny stories. They have been edited out. He was a very true man, and very courageous. He accepted Mary Magdalene, the famous prostitute of those days as his disciple. It needs courage, it needs guts. I cannot believe that he never laughed.

I can rather believe a very fictitious story about Zarathustra — that the first thing he did when he was born was to laugh loudly. That I can believe, but I can’t believe this story about Jesus, that he never laughed. It looks impossible. A child… just the first thing he did was a belly laughter. But I can believe it. It has a certain beauty about it, a certain significance. It simply says that Zarathustra was born wise, he was born enlightened, that’s all. Whether he laughed or not, that is not the question.

And it doesn’t seem too difficult: if children can cry, why can’t they laugh? Doctors say that children cry just to clear their throat, so that they can breathe easily. But that can be done in a far better way by a belly laughter. And now there are doctors who say that if we take enough care children don’t cry; on the contrary, they smile. That’s a good beginning. Soon Zarathustras will be coming.

But up to now doctors have been very Christian. The first thing they do is they hang the child upside down and hit him on the buttocks. Do you expect a child to laugh? This is a great welcome to the world, putting the child upside down, giving him a hit — a good beginning, because his whole life he is going to get hit in the pants, again and again. And hanging upside down, how can he laugh? No wonder he cries!

Now there are a few doctors working in a different direction. They bring the child in a more natural way out of the mother’s womb; they don’t cut the umbilical cord immediately because that creates crying, that is violence. They leave the child on the mother’s belly with the umbilical cord intact. They give a good bath to the child, a hot bath, they put the child into a hot tub of exactly the same temperature as it was in the mother’s womb.

In the mother’s womb the child is floating in water. The water has the same contents as sea water, salty. In the same salty chemical solution, of the same temperature, the child is put in the tub. He starts smiling. It is a real beautiful reception. And not with glaring tube lights… that hurts the eyes of the child. In fact, so many people are wearing glasses only because of the foolishness of the doctors. The child has lived for nine months in the mother’s womb in darkness, utter darkness. Then suddenly so much light… it hurts his delicate eyes. You have destroyed something delicate in his eyes. The child should be received in a very dim light, and the light should be increased slowly slowly, so his eyes become accustomed to the light. Naturally the child smiles at the beautiful welcome.

I can believe Zarathustra loudly laughing, but I can’t believe Jesus not laughing at all. He lived thirty-three years and did not laugh? — that can only be possible if he was absolutely perverted, absolutely pathological, ill. Something must have been wrong if he didn’t laugh. But nothing is wrong with him; something is wrong with the followers. They depict their saints, their messiahs, their prophets, as very serious, somber, sad, just to show that they are above the world, that they are beyond, that they are not worldly people. Laughter seems shallow, seems unspiritual.

That’s why, Vachana — because you have been brought up as a Christian. Although the message of Christmas is rejoice and be merry, still there is a sadness, because the whole of Christianity teaches you to be sad. It is not a life-affirming religion, it is life-negative. It is much more life-negative than Hinduism, much more life-negative than Judaism. It has no sense of humor at all. And a religion without a sense of humor is ill, pathological. It needs psychological treatment.

Peter, standing in the crowd, looked up at Jesus on the cross. As he watched, he distinctly saw Jesus motioning him forward.
“Pssst, hey Peter, come here,” said the Lord.
As Peter moved forward, two Roman guards blocked his way and beat him till he fell to the ground.
A few moments later, Peter, bruised and bleeding, looked up and saw Jesus again motioning him forward.
“Pssst, hey Peter, come here!”
Looking around, Peter noticed that the crowd was gone and so were the Roman soldiers. He moved closer to Jesus, “Yes, Lord, what is it? What is it you want?”
“Hey Peter,” said Jesus. “Guess what? I can see your house from here!”

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol8″

Question – Beloved Osho, I have heard that your Sannyasins Celebrate Death.

Osho – Paul, you have heard rightly! My sannyasins celebrate everything. Celebration is the foundation of my sannyas — not renunciation but rejoicing; rejoicing in all the beauties, all the joys, all that life offers, because this whole life is a gift of God.

The old religions have taught you to renounce life. They are all life negative; their whole approach is pessimistic. They are all against life and its joys. To me, life and God are synonymous. In fact, life is a far better word than God itself, because God is only a philosophical term, while life is real, existential. The word “God” exists only in scriptures; it is a word, a mere word. Life is within you and without you — in the trees, in the clouds, in the stars. This whole existence is a dance of life.

I teach love for life. I teach the art of living your life totally, of being drunk with the divine THROUGH life. I am not an escapist. All your old religions have been teaching you escapism — they were all in a certain sense hip. The word “hippie” has to be understood. It simply means one who escapes from the battle of life, who shows his hips…! All your old religions are hippie! They have shown their hips. They could not accept the challenge of life, they could not confront and encounter life. They were cowards; they escaped to the mountains, to the monasteries.

But even if you escape to the mountains and to the monasteries, how can you leave yourself behind? You are part of life. Life pulsates in your blood, life breathes in you, life is your very being! Where can you escape? And all those efforts to escape, considered correctly, are suicidal. Your monks, your nuns, your mahatmas, your so-called saints, were all suicidal people; they were trying gradual suicide. Not only were they suicidal, they were cowards too — cowards because they could not even commit suicide in a single blow. They were committing suicide gradually, in installments; by and by, slowly they were dying. And we have respected these unhealthy people, these unwholesome people, these insane people. They were against God because they were against life.

I am in tremendous love with life, hence I teach celebration. Everything has to be celebrated, everything has to be lived, loved. To me nothing is mundane and nothing is sacred. To me all is sacred, from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest rung. It is the same ladder: from the body to the soul, from the physical to the spiritual, from sex to SAMADHI — everything is divine!

An old neo-sannyasin told an actor playing Hamlet that he himself had once played the part.
“What was your interpretation of the role?” asked the actor. “Did Hamlet really make love to Ophelia?”
“I don’t know if Hamlet did,” replied the sannyasin, “but I certainly did!”

Celebration has to be total, only then can you be multidimensionally rich. And to be multidimensionally rich is the only thing we can offer to God. If there is a God, and someday you have to face him, he will ask you only one question: “Have you lived your life totally or not?” — because this opportunity is given to you to live, not to renounce.

Paul, my sannyasins celebrate death too, because to me death is not the end of life but the very crescendo of life, the very climax. It is the ultimate of life. If you have lived rightly, if you have lived moment to moment totally, if you have squeezed out the whole juice of life, your death will be the ultimate orgasm. The sexual orgasm is nothing compared to the orgasm that death brings, but it brings it only to the person who knows the art of being total. The sexual orgasm is a very faint thing compared to the orgasm that death brings. What happens in sexual orgasm? For a moment you forget that you are a body, for a moment two lovers become merged into one unity, into one organic union. For a moment they are not separate entities; they have melted into each other like two clouds which have become one.

But it is only for a single moment, then they are again separate. Hence all sexual orgasms bring in their wake a kind of depression, because you fall from the height. You reached a crescendo, and for only a fragment of a moment you remained on the peak and then the peak disappeared. And when you fall from that height, you fall into the depth of depression. This is one of the contradictions of sex: it gives you the greatest pleasure and also the greatest agony. It gives you ecstasy and agony — both. And each time you reach an orgasmic state, you know that soon it will disappear. Then there is disillusionment, disappointment.

Death gives you the ultimate in orgasmic joy: the body is left behind forever and your being becomes one with the whole. It is immeasurable. If to become one with a single person gives you so much joy, just think how much joy will happen in becoming one with the infinite! But it does not happen to everybody who dies, because the people who have not lived rightly cannot die rightly either. The people who have lived in deep unconsciousness will die in deep unconsciousness. Death will give you only that which you have lived all your life; it is the essence of your whole life.

If your life was of meditativeness, awareness, witnessing, then you will be able to witness death too. If your whole life you remained cool, centered in different situations, death will give you the ultimate challenge, the ultimate test. And if you can remain centered, calm and cool and watching, then you will not die an unconscious death, your death will bring you to the ultimate peak of consciousness. And then, certainly, it HAS to be celebrated. So whenever one of my sannyasins dies, we celebrate, we dance, we sing. We give him a good farewell.

A midget had died and left a widow. Friends came to pay their condolences and look at the body lying in an upstairs room of the house. After one friend came down he was asked by the widow whether he had shut the door of the room where the body lay.

“No,” said the visitor, “I didn’t think it was necessary.”
“Then I’d better go upstairs and shut it,” replied the widow. “The cat has had him downstairs twice already. You know, my cat is a neo-sannyasin and he wants to celebrate the occasion!”

Little Pierino goes camping with his parents. A little while after, at the end of a day doing many things, they bed down for the evening. Pierino cries, “Mummy, I can’t sleep. There is a dead ant on my belly!”
“Shhh, Pierino,” says his mother, “be a good boy, just go to sleep — it is nothing to worry about.”
After a few minutes Pierino’s voice is heard again, “Mummy, Mummy, I can’t go to sleep — I’ve got a dead ant on my belly!”
“Pierino,” scolds his mother, “come on now, don’t tell me that a small dead ant stops you from sleeping!”
“Well,” replies Pierino, “it is not the dead ant really, it is all his orange sannyasin friends that have come to celebrate his death!”

Yes, Paul, my sannyasins celebrate death because they celebrate life. And death is not against life; it does not end life, it only brings life to a beautiful peak. Life continues even after death. It was there before birth, it is going to continue after death. Life is not confined to the small space that exists between birth and death; on the contrary, births and deaths are small episodes in the eternity of life.

We celebrate everything. Celebration is our way to receive all the gifts from God. Life is his gift, death is his gift; the body is his gift, the soul is his gift. We celebrate everything. We love the body, we love the soul. We are materialist spiritualists. Nothing like this has ever happened in the world. This is a new experiment, a new beginning, and it has a great future.

In the past there have been materialists who denied the soul, and there have been spiritualists who denied the body. Both were agreed on one point: that only one can be accepted, either the body or the soul. They were either/or people. They were not ready to accept the whole as it is; they were choosers.

My sannyasins live in choiceless awareness. We are not choosers; we simply accept whatsoever is the case. The materialists — the Charvakas in India and the Epicureans in Greece — denied the soul. They said, “There is no soul. The soul is just imagination. The soul is illusion.” And the spiritualists — Shankaracharya in India and Berkeley in Europe — these people said that matter is illusory, maya. The body does not exist really, it is only your imagination. It is a dream, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of; you are a soul. But both are agreeing on one point: that they cannot accept reality as it is, they have to choose.

It is as if one electrician chooses the positive pole and another electrician chooses the negative pole, and each denies the other pole. There will be no electricity, no light in the world. That’s what has happened: the spiritualist has not been able to transform the world, the materialist has failed also — because the world exists with polar opposites. Without polarity there is no world at all. The day is needed as much as the night; the body is needed as much as the soul; the world is needed as much as God. There can be no circumference without a center and there can be no center without a circumference. This is a simple fact.

My sannyas is the acceptance of that which is. We are not choosers. Who are we to choose? And what difference is our choice going to make? You can choose whatsoever you like, but whatsoever you don’t like is going to remain there. Just by not choosing it, it is not going to disappear. And because you have not chosen it, you will remain half, lopsided. The East has remained lopsided because of so-called spirituality. It has remained poor, unscientific — without any technology, without industry. It has become lousy, lazy, lethargic; it has lost all joy in existence because “this is all a dream, why bother about it?”

It is hungry, ill, poor, but “this is all illusion. You are simply dreaming that you are poor, you are not really poor. You are simply dreaming that you are starving, you are not starving.”
And the West has chosen materialism, so there is great technology, beautiful houses, better roads, better cars, better airplanes, but man is very empty and meaningless. Without spirituality there is no center; man falls apart. The Western man is half; the Eastern man is half. My effort here is to create the whole man. To me the whole man is the only holy man. The East and the West have to meet; they have to become complementaries, not antagonists.

But this is possible only if we change the whole philosophical background. Hence I teach a very contradictory philosophy. Spiritual materialism is the name that I give to my philosophy. I want you to be materialists and spiritualists simultaneously, in a balanced way. I would love society to have all the facilities, all the comforts and conveniences that science and technology can provide, and I would also love people to have a great awareness inside them so that they can enjoy whatsoever science provides. I would like everybody to be a buddha, but at the same time I would also like the world to become more and more comfortable, more and more loving, more and more beautiful.

We can transform this world into a paradise, but then we have to stop choosing. We have simply to accept the whole as it is, with all its contradictions. Those contradictions are contradictions only because of our logical obsession; otherwise they are complementaries. Life and death — both are beautiful.

Source – Osho Book “Come, Come, Yet Again Come”