Question – What about  Rajiv Gandhi?

Osho – Even Rajiv is a non-politician. And the situation was ripe, because for forty years India has seen what the politicians have done. They have made the country worse and worse. So India is ready to accept the non-political people on their merit.

Now that is the question: those non-political people who want to enter into power should be made fully alert that they should not change; they should remain non-political. Their approach towards problems should remain human, not political. They should promise only that which they can deliver. The politician makes great promises just to gather votes, and once he is in power he forgets all his promises.

The new people have to be made alert: don’t promise anything that you cannot deliver. Always promise something you can deliver — in fact, you can deliver more than you promised.

The signs are good. Rajiv is absolutely non-political. He never wanted to come into politics; it is just circumstances that have brought him into politics. That is a good sign that the inner being is not hankering for power, if the country supports him and helps him, and he has not to depend on politicians, he has a great future.

Rajiv is not the old Indian politician who was brought up under Mahatma Gandhi. That is something very valuable. I wanted India to be completely rid of Gandhism for the simple reason that he was the man who was propagating things which will never allow India to progress. Rajiv is good because he has no impact of Mahatma Gandhi on him.

Secondly, Rajiv is a contemporary man. The people who had come to power before him were really fighters for freedom. They had no idea what they were going to do when they became victorious. The fight for freedom was too much, they were so much involved in it. When suddenly the power came into their hands they were at a loss what to do, so they fell back upon the British system that was already there.

We have changed the high level politicians, but the system of bureaucracy is still British. Just as non-politicians have come to politics, non-bureaucrats have to be brought to bureaucracy. And it is not difficult, it is just a question of decision. And a decision is very important, because if you don’t decide now, every day it will become more difficult because the population goes on growing, problems go on growing. But there is still time.

My suggestion is: change the bureaucracy, make our politicians absolutely non-political. If somebody is an education minister then he should come from the educational world. If somebody is a health minister he should have the best medical expertise. If somebody is the minister for agriculture then he should know the latest technologies which are being used all over the world for agriculture.

What I am saying is that we should try for meritocracy rather than for democracy. Merit should be valued, nothing else. And my feeling is that after forty years’ experience, it is possible; people are ready to do anything if their faith can be restored. This opportunity should not be lost.

So as far as India is concerned, I see some rays of hope, but they have to be made a reality. And the press, the media, can play a significant role in teaching the country, in teaching the politicians, in teaching the bureaucracy. The Indian press and media are not doing that. They have not even considered that they are the greatest educational system today. No university is as great as the media, because it reaches to millions of people who will never go to the university.

The media, in other words, is a university reaching to people’s homes rather than bringing people to the university. And it has a great responsibility in such moments of change.

It should not live on sensationalism. It should not exploit people’s ugly desires. They read about rape, they read about murder, they read about crime, and it is a wellknown psychological fact: while people are reading these things they somehow enjoy it. They also want to murder someone but they cannot. Reading about the murders, they become identified with the murderer.

Source – from Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol 4″

Note – Rajiv Gandhi was son of Indira Gandhi and became prime minister of India in 1984

Osho – J. Krishnamurti, a man who struggled for ninety years – his last words have some great meaning. One of my friends was present there. Krishnamurti lamented, he lamented his whole life. He lamented that ”people have taken me as an entertainment. They come to listen to me….” There are people who have listened to him for fifty years continually, and still they are the same people as had come for the first time to listen to him.

Naturally it is annoying and irritating that the same people… Most of them I know, because J. Krishnamurti used to come only once a year for two or three weeks to Bombay, and slowly, slowly all his followers in Bombay became acquainted with me. They all were sad about this point: What should be done? How can we make Krishnamurti happy?

The reason was that Krishnamurti only talked, but never gave any devices in which whatever he was talking about became an experience. It was totally his fault. Whatever he was saying was absolutely right, but he was not creating the right climate, the right milieu in which it could become a seed. Of course he was very much disappointed with humanity, and that there was not a single person who had become enlightened through his teachings. His teachings have all the seeds, but he never prepared the ground.

Osho – That’s good! I know: things are going well. Things really always go well, nothing ever goes wrong. It is only a question of understanding. If one understands, everything always goes right. Nothing has ever gone wrong and it can never go wrong, so whatsoever happens is how it should happen. To accept this brings great relaxation.

The very idea that something can go wrong and we have to put it right, creates anxiety. It is impossible to change anything in existence. Everything is as perfect as it can be; no change is
needed. To relax in this and to relax utterly into it, is real meditation. Meditation is not something to do, but the attitude that whatsoever is, is good and all is blessed. That attitude is meditation. It is coming slowly slowly. The hankering to change, the hankering to be this and that, is dropping.

That moment when there is no desire to be anything other than what one is, is a moment of great benediction. Then one comes to know that from the very beginning, nothing is missing. We were unnecessarily worried, unnecessarily puzzled, unnecessarily trying to find keys and clues.

And the door has always remained open – it was not closed at all. I am happy with you. Things are going very well.

[Osho then refers to the sannyasin’s colleague, a movie director.]
Just tell one thing to him: that if he has not been courageous enough to keep to the commitment of sannyas, he should be at least courteous enough to return it. And I knew that this was going to happen. I knew, because there were only two alternatives: either his girlfriend was going to become a sannyasin or he was going to become a non-sannyasin… and he was defeated by her. He will repent one day.

He will feel and he will come… but he betrayed. He has broken something very sacred. And one day when he realises the whole phenomenon he will be surprised. It is one of the basic tragedies of all love affairs: a woman becomes interested in any man who has some kind of illusive power; and that power was arising in him. It was not there before, it was arising.

The more meditative he was becoming, the more energy was arising in him. Something beautiful was on the way and I was really working hard on him – more than he ever deserved. Things were coming to a point, it was building up. In fact that energy became the attraction for her.

She is a beautiful woman – perceptive, courageous, adventurous, daring; not an ordinary indian
woman – very modern, in search of some great thrill. She became interested in him not because of him – one day he will understand it – but because he was a sannyasin and something of meditation was arising in him. Even she may not be knowingly aware of it, because people are not knowingly aware of what is happening.

Sannyasins have always been attractive to beautiful women, because a sannyasin becomes a
challenge. He is like an Everest which has to be conquered, has to be defeated, and she is an
adventurous woman. She was not interested in him – she was interested in sannyas; whether
knowingly, unknowingly, that is not the point. She was interested in a very feminine intuitive way in the energy that was arising in Mahesh and which was coming to a build-up and which was going to explode in a great flowering.

And once she became interested, the next step… that is the tragedy of all love. First, a woman is never interested in an ordinary man – no woman worth anything is ever interested in an ordinary man. A woman is always interested in something extraordinary, something majestic, something beyond the grasp. And that was there – something beyond the grasp. But once a woman catches hold of the man she was interested in, she starts destroying that very power, because then she becomes afraid: he will dominate, and nobody wants to be dominated.

Before he starts dominating, she has to destroy that very power. And I call it a tragedy, because once that power is destroyed she will no more be interested in the man. This is the dilemma: she is interested in power, then the power feels frightening. If the man remains so powerful then she will remain dependent; she will never be the whole – and soon she starts playing feminine tricks. And because he loves her, the man goes on yielding.

Once he starts yielding, the lion disappears and the mouse is born, and no woman is interested in a mouse, no woman at all. Once she has reduced the man to a mouse, she is finished, and as I can see, that is what has happened.

I was watching the whole phenomenon and that’s why I was again and again telling him ’Let her
become a sannyasin. If she does not become a sannyasin, then the next challenge is to destroy
your sannyas.’ I had not said so, but it was there. She had to destroy the relationship between me and him. She was jealous of it – there was something more powerful than her love affair.

And no woman wants anything more powerful than her love affair; that should be the suprememost. And soon, in fact already, her interest in him is flopping; she has started looking at other men. And she is not the kind of woman who can stick to one person. She could have remained with him if he had remained unyielding, if he had remained a real man. If he had remained an unconquered peak she would have remained interested, but now she will search for other peaks, somebody else. He is already a spare part, an extra.

So tell him: if he is not courageous enough to keep the commitment, he should be courteous enough to return it. And once his mala is back, I am going to burn it and destroy the whole work on him. Only that will bring him to his senses. So just tell this much to him.

Source: from Osho Book “The 99 Names of Nothingness”

And whatsoever he touched, he brought very novel ideas to that subject. Wherever he moved his eyes, he created new patterns of thought. He was a great man, a great mind, but mind as such, small or great, has nothing to do with religion.

Religion comes out of no-mind. Religion is not a talent, it is your nature. If you want to be a great
painter, you have to be talented; if you want to be a great poet, you have to be talented; if you want to be a scientist, of course, you have to be talented; but if you want to be religious, no special talent is needed. Anybody, small or great, who is willing to drop his mind, enters into the dimension of the divine.

And of course, great talented men find it very difficult to drop their minds; their investment is
bigger. For an ordinary man who has no talent, it is very easy to drop the mind. Even then it seems so difficult. He has nothing to lose; still he goes on clinging. Of course, the difficulty is multiplied when you have a talented mind, when you are a genius. Then your whole ego is invested in your mind. You cannot drop it.

Rudolph Steiner founded a new movement called anthroposophy, against theosophy. He was a
theosophist in the beginning, then his ego started fighting other egos in the movement. He wanted to become the very head, the supreme-most of the theosophical movement in the world, the world head. That was not possible; there were many other egos. And the greatest problem was coming from J. Krishnamurti, who is not an ego at all. And of course, theosophists were thinking more and more towards Krishnamurti. He was becoming, by and by, the messiah. That created trouble in Rudolph Steiner’s mind.

He broke off from the movement. The whole German section of theosophy broke with him. He was really a very, very convincing orator, a convincing writer; he convinced people. He destroyed theosophy very badly, he divided it. And since then theosophy could never become whole and healthy.

Rudolph Steiner has an appeal for the Western mind, and that is the danger – because the Western mind is basically logic-oriented: reason, thinking, logos. He talks about it, and he says, ”This is the way for the Western mind.” No, Eastern or Western, mind is mind; and the way is no-mind. If you are Eastern, you will have to drop the Eastern mind. If you are Western, you will have to drop the Western mind.

To move into meditation, mind, as such, has to be dropped. If you are a Christian you will have to drop a Christian mind. If you are a Hindu, you will have to drop the Hindu mind. Meditation is not concerned with Christian, Hindu, Eastern, Western, Indian or German, no.

Source: from Osho book “Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 10″

Logic takes away all meaning. Logic is destructive, poisonous. It is love that gives meaning to life, it is love that blooms and flowers, it is love that sings and dances, it is love that becomes celebration. A logical mind by and by loses all possibility of loving – because love is so illogical it cannot exist with logic. They prohibit each other, they exclude each other.

If you love, you become illogical; if you are very logical, you become unloving. and without love, what is there to live by, to live with, to live for? What is there? Ayn Rand was a very egoistic, rationalistic, realistic woman. Her philosophy is that of absolute selfishness. If you are absolutely selfish, how can you be loving? It is impossible. Her philosophy is absolutely realistic, materialistic. When there is only matter, what is there to bloom into?

There is no soul. All search disappears. Life is flat and dull. There is no mystery. With the soul enter mystery and life. With mystery there is joy, because there is a possibility to enquire, to explore, to expand. There is a possibility that something may happen, can happen.

Man is more than he knows. You are more than you know. Not only that, you are more than you can ever know, because your intrinsic reality remains mysterious, always remains unknown, unknowable. You can go on knowing more and more and more but that does not reduce your mystery. That’s what we mean by soul – utterly mysterious.

For Ayn Rand there was no mystery. When there is no mystery, how can there be life? Then what is there to live for? Suicide seems to be the logical conclusion. And if you don’t commit suicide, then madness is the conclusion. Those seem to be the two alternatives. Either go mad – mad means go illogical, drop your rational mind – or commit suicide, drop this useless life. Jean Paul Sartre has said: ’Man is a useless passion.’

Now my feeling is that Sartre is not very, very logical, otherwise he would have committed suicide. If man is a useless passion, if there is no meaning in it, if life is meaninglessness, then why go on living? Why think of tomorrow – that you would like to exist tomorrow? That is very irrational. If nothing is going to happen, if nothing has ever happened, if nothing happens in the very reality, then why go on living? Why go on eating and why go on sleeping and getting up again and again? It is nauseating.

Another book of Sartre’s is NAUSEA. But it seems it is still philosophical, he has not taken it existentially – otherwise suicide would be the logical conclusion to the philosophy. Beware. These possibilities are in you too. If you become too logical, madness or suicide or both will be the conclusion.

That’s why I teach you love not logic, feeling not reasoning, heart not mind. Then life has such beauty, such beatitude, such joy, that one cannot contain it. It is so much, it is so over-flowing, so overwhelming.

You ask me: AYN RAND, THE ORIGINATOR OF OBJECTIVISM PHILOSOPHY, WENT MAD AND COMMITTED SUICIDE. HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO SUCH A RARE LOGICAL MIND? The question is from Sudheer Saraswati. I say ’Precisely.

Osho : In the West there was a philosopher named Descartes – a deep thinker. He decided not to accept anything until he found the truth which cannot be doubted, so he began to reflect. He labored hard and he felt everything was doubtful. One may say ”God is,” but a doubt can be raised about it.

God may or may not be, but a doubt can always be created. ”There is heaven,” ”There is liberation” – it can all be doubted. Descartes said, ”I will believe only in a thing which cannot be doubted, not something that can be proved, or argued in favor of, no.

Something that cannot be doubted, something which is inevitable, indubitable… only then I will accept it.”

He searched and searched. However he too stopped at one point. He denied God, heaven, hell,
and everything else, but he got stuck at one point – ”Am I or not?”

Descartes said, ”This cannot be doubted, because even if I say ’I am not,’ then too I am needed to be able to say this.” It is like a person who is in the house and who answers the caller, ”I have gone out,” or ”Right now I am not in the house. Come back in a little while and then I may meet you because by then I will be back home.”

His very telling this will be the proof of his being at home. So the fact of my being is indubitable. This much is clear, that I am. Though what I am is not so clear. Am I a body, or a mind, or what? – this is not so clear.

He lived in the Himalayas. He was a painter, but not a painter for art galleries and marketplaces. He never sold any of his paintings – not because people were not ready to purchase, but because he was not willing to sell. He said, “It is not a commodity, it is me spread on the canvas. How can I sell it?” He died with all his paintings in his house.

I have been to his house – he was very old at that time – and seeing that he was vegetarian, I asked, “You are a Russian, why should you be vegetarian?”

He said, “Because of my paintings. I cannot even destroy a painting, which is not alive. How can I destroy a living being for my food? And if I can destroy a lion or a tiger, then why not destroy a man?”

Because human meat will be more digestible, more in tune with you, what is wrong with the cannibal? Why is everybody against the cannibals? Just because they are eating human beings? But cannibals say human meat is very delicious. They say there is nothing so delicious on the earth as human meat, particularly the meat of small children.

If deliciousness and taste are decisive…. And perhaps they may be right, because they have eaten other foods also, and if they are saying it – and all cannibals agree…. But you can’t think of eating a man. How can you think of eating a tiger? How can you think of eating a deer? Just if there is no mind given to you by the past, or if you can put it aside and see directly, you will be simply amazed at what people have been doing.

Vegetarianism should not be anything moral or religious. It is a question of aesthetics: one’s sensitivity, one’s respect, one’s reverence for life. To me this is the law of karma. All other interpretations of it are absolutely wrong, just boo boo.

Osho : At the moment the leadership of the Krishna Consciousness Movement in the West has passed into the hands of that irrationalist poet Allen Ginsberg; so far the intelligentsia does not seem to have been impressed by it.

You said that the society in which Krishna was born was prosperous, but the Geeta and the Bhagwad mention Krishna’s friend, Sudama, who was the very picture of poverty. Krishna says in the Geeta that among sacrifices he represents Japa or chanting and that chanting will be the path for the Kali-Yuga, the Dark Age, in which we are living. Please comment.

No, I did not say that no one was poor in Krishna’s time, or that no one is poor in the present-day West. There are poor people in the West, but their society as a whole is affluent. In the same way, although poor men like Sudama existed in Krishna’s time, his society was very prosperous. A poor society is one thing; the existence of a handful of poor people in a rich society is different. The Indian society today is definitely poor, although there are Tatas and Birlas among us. The presence of Tatas and Birlas does not make the society affluent.

Similarly, in spite of the Sudamas, Krishna’s society was prosperous and rich. The question is whether a society on the whole is rich or poor. There are rich people even in an utterly poor society like India’s, and similarly there are poor people in the very affluent society of America. The society of Krishna’s time was rich; good things of life were available to the vast majority of people. The same is true in today’s American society. And only an affluent society can afford celebration; a poor society cannot.

As a society sinks into poverty it ceases to he celebrative, to be joyous. Not that there are no festivals in a poor society, but those festivals are lack-luster, as good as dead. When the Festival of Lights – Diwali – comes here, the poor have to borrow money to celebrate it. They save their worn out clothes for Holi – the Festival of Colors. Is this the way to celebrate a festival like Holi?

In the past, people came out in their best clothes to be smeared with all kinds of colors; now they go through it as if it is a kind of compulsory ritual. The festival of Holi was born when Indian society was at the peak of prosperity; now it is only dragging its feet somehow. In the past people were pleased when someone poured colors on their clothes; now in the same situation they are saddened, because they cannot afford enough clothes.

The West now can well afford a festival like Holi. They have already adopted Krishna’s dance; sooner or later they are going to adopt Holi as well. It does not need an astrologer to predict it. They have everything – money, clothes, colors and leisure – which is necessary to celebrate such a festival as Holi. And unlike us they will celebrate with enthusiasm and joy. They will really rejoice.

When a society on the whole is affluent, even its poor are not that poor; they are better off than the rich people of a poor society. Today even the poorest of America does not cling to money in the way the richest of India does. Living in a sea of poverty, even the rich people of this country share the psychology of the poor. Their clinging to money is pathetic.

I have heard that on a fine morning a beggar appeared at the doors of a house. He was young and healthy and his body was robust and beautiful. The housewife was pleasantly surprised to see such a beggar, he was rare, and she gave him food and clothes with an open heart. Then she said to the beggar, “How is it that you are a beggar? You don’t seem to be born poor.”

The beggar said, “It seems you are also going the same way. I gave away my wealth in the same way you gave me food and clothes a little while ago. You will not take long to join me in the street.”

Clinging to money is characteristic of a poor society; even its rich people suffer from this malady. And clinging disappears in a rich society; even its poor can afford to spend and enjoy what little they have. They are not afraid, they know they can make money when they need it.
It is in this sense that I said Krishna consciousness happens in an affluent society, and the West is really an affluent society.

The questioner also wants to know why the revolt, the breakthrough in the West is being led by people like Ginsberg, who are irrationalists. It is true that all the young rebels the West, whether they are existentialists, the Beatles, the beatniks, or the hippies or the yippies, are irrationalists who represent a revolt against the excessive rationalism of their older generations.

It is also true that the intellectuals of the West are yet uninfluenced by these offbeat movements. In fact, irrationalists appear only in a society that goes to the extreme of rationalism. The West has really reached the zenith of rationalism. Hence the reaction; it was inevitable.

When a society feels stifled and strangled by too much logic and rationalism, it inevitably turns to mysticism. When materialism begins to crush a people’s sensitivity they turn to God and religion. And don’t think that Ginsberg, Sartre, Camus, and others who speak about the absurd, the illogical are like illiterate and ignorant villagers. They are great intellectuals of irrationalism.

Their irrationalism, their turning to the unthinkable is not comparable to the ways of the believers, the faithful. It is a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, like Chaitanya who after stretching thinking to its extremity, found that it was unthinkable.

So if Ginsberg’s statements and his poetry are illogical and irrational, it has nonetheless a system of its own. Nietzsche has said somewhere, “I am mad, but my madness has its own logic. I am not an ordinary madman; my madness has a method.” This irrationalism is deliberate. It stands on its own ground, which cannot be the ground of logic. It is a candid, ingenuous refutation of rationalism. Certainly it will not base its assault upon logic; if it does, it will only support rationalism. No, it opposes rationalism through an irrational lifestyle.

Somewhere Ginsberg is reading his poetry to a small gathering of poets. His poetry is meaningless; there is no consistency between one concept and another. All its similies and metaphors are just inane. Its symbolism is utterly unconventional; it has nothing to do with poetic tradition. It is really a great adventure; there is no greater adventure than to be inconsistent and unconventional.

He alone can have the courage to be inconsistent who is aware of his innate consistency, his inner integrity, whose innermost being is consistent and clear. He knows that however inconsistent his statements may be, they are not going to affect the integrity and consistency of his being.

People lacking in spiritual consistency and innate harmony weigh every word before they make a statemen
t, because they are afraid that if two of their statements contradict each other their inner contradictions will be exposed. One can afford to be inconsistent only when one is consistent in his being.

This Ginsberg is reading a poem which is full of inconsistencies and contradictions. It is an act of rare courage. Someone from among his listeners rises up in his seat and says, “You seem to be an audacious person, but to be audacious in poetry is nothing. Do you have the courage to act with audacity?”

And Ginsberg looks up at the questioner, takes off his clothes and stands naked before his listeners saying, “This is the last part of my poetry.” Then he says to the man who has interrupted him, “Now please take off your clothes and bare yourself.”
The man says, “How can I? I cannot be naked.”

The whole audience is in a state of shock. No one had thought that poetry reading would end like this, that its last part would come in the form of the nude poet. When they asked him why he did this he said, “It just happened; there was nothing deliberate about it. The man provoked me to act audaciously, and I couldn’t think of anything else. So I just concluded my poetry reading this way.”

This is a spontaneous act; it is not at all deliberate. And it is wholly illogical; it has nothing to do with Ginsberg’s poetry. No Kalidas, no Keats, no Rabindranath could do it; they are poets tied to tradition. We cannot think of Kalidas, or Keats, or Tagore baring himself the way Ginsberg does. Ginsberg could do it because he rejects logic, he refuses to confine life into the prison of syllogisms. He does not want to reduce life to petty mathematical calculations. He wants to live and live in freedom, and with abandon.

A man like Ginsberg cannot be compared with a gullible villager. He represents the climactic point of a profound rationalist tradition. When a rationalist tradition reaches its climax and begins to die, people like Ginsberg come to the fore to repudiate the rational. I think Krishna too, represents the peak point of India’s great rationalist tradition.

This country had once scaled the highest peaks of rationalist intelligence and thinking. We had indulged in hair-splitting analysis and interpretation of words and concepts. We have with us books that cannot be translated into any other languages of the world, because no other language possesses such refined and subtle words as we have. We have such words that only one of them can cover a whole page of a book, because we use so many adjectives, prefixes and suffixes to qualify and refine them.

Krishna comes at the pinnacle of a rationalist, intellectual culture that had left no stones unturned. We had thought everything that could be thought. From the VEDAS and Upanishads we had traveled to vedant where knowledge ends. VEDAS itself means the end of knowledge. Giants like Patanjali, Kapil, Kanad, Brihaspati and Vyas had thought so much that a time came when we felt tired of thinking. Then comes Krishna as the culmination, and he says, “Let us now live, we have done enough of thinking.”

Osho : The East has created great geniuses, but we are still living in the bullock cart age because our geniuses simply meditated. Their meditation never came into action. If they had meditated for a few hours and used their silence and peace and meditativeness for scientific research, this country would have been the richest in the world – outer and inner, both.
The same is true about the West: they created great geniuses, but they were all involved with things, objects. They forgot themselves completely. Once in a while a genius remembered, but it was too late.

Albert Einstein, at the time of death, said his last words – and remember, the last words are the most important a person has ever spoken in his life, because they are a conclusion, the essential experience. His last words were, “If there is another life, I would like to be a plumber. I don’t want to be a physicist. I want to be something very simple – a plumber.”

A tired brain, a burned brain… and what was his achievement? – Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This man was capable of becoming a Gautam Buddha. If he had looked inwards, he had such an insight that perhaps he would have gone deeper than any Gautam Buddha, because he looked towards the stars and went further than any astronomer has ever done. It is the same power; it is only a question of direction.

Osho : Hundreds of times we had discussed Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy, and I was always against. People were a little bit puzzled why I was so insistent against a man I had only seen twice, when I was just a child. I will tell you the story of that second meeting….

I can see the train. Gandhi was traveling, and of course he traveled third class. But his “third class” was far better than any first class possible. In a sixty-man compartment there was just him and his secretary and his wife; I think these three were the only people. The whole compartment was reserved.

And it was not even an ordinary first-class compartment, because I have never seen such a compartment again. It must have been a first-class compartment, and not only first class, but a special first class. Just the name plate had been changed and it became “third class” so Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy was saved.

I was just ten. My mother–again I mean my grandmother–had given me three rupees. She said, “The station is too far and you may not be back in time for lunch, and one never knows with these trains: it may come ten hours, twelve hours late, so please keep these three rupees.” In India in those days, three rupees was almost a treasure. One could live comfortably for three months on them.

She had made a really beautiful robe for me. She knew I did not like long pants; at the most I wore pajama pants and a kurta. A kurta is a long robe which I have always loved, and slowly slowly the pajama has disappeared, only the robe remains. Otherwise one has not only divided the upper body and the lower body, but even made different clothes for each. Of course the higher body should have something better, and the lower body is just to be covered, that’s all.

She had made a beautiful kurta for me. It was summer and in those parts of central India summer is really difficult because the hot air going into the nostrils feels as if it’s on fire. In fact, only in the middle of the night can people find a little rest. It is so hot in central India that you are continuously asking for some cold water, and if some ice is available then it is just paradise. Ice is the costliest thing in those parts, naturally, because by the time it comes from the factory, a hundred miles away, it is almost gone. It has to be rushed as quickly as possible.

My Nani said I should go to see Mahatma Gandhi if I wanted to and she prepared a very thin muslin robe. Muslin is the most artistic and the most ancient fabric too, as far as clothes are concerned. She found the best muslin. It was so thin that it was almost transparent. At that time gold rupees had disappeared and silver rupees had taken their place. Those silver rupees were too heavy for the poor muslin pocket. Why am I saying it?–because something I’m going to say would not be possible to understand without it.

The train came as usual, thirteen hours late. Almost everybody was gone except me. You know me, I’m stubborn. Even the stationmaster said, “Boy, you are something. Everybody has gone but you seem ready to stay the whole night. There is no sign of the train and you have been waiting since early this morning.”

To come to the station at four o’clock that morning I had to leave my house in the middle of the night. But I had not yet used those three rupees because everybody had brought so many things with them, and they were all so generous to a little boy who had come so far. They were offering me fruits, sweets, cakes and everything, so there was no question of feeling hungry. When the train finally arrived, I was the only person there–and what a person! Just a ten-year-old boy, standing by the side of the stationmaster.

He introduced me to Mahatma Gandhi and said, “Don’t think of him as just a boy. The whole day I have watched him, and I have discussed many things with him, because there was no other work. And he is the only one who has remained. Many had come but they left long ago. I respect him because I know he would have stayed here till the last day of existence; he would not leave until the train arrived. And if the train had not arrived, I don’t think he would ever have left. He would have lived here.”

Mahatma Gandhi was an old man; he called me close and looked at me. But rather than looking at me, he looked at my pocket–and that put me off him forever. And he said, “What is that?”

I said, “Three rupees.”

He said, “Donate them.” He used to have a box with a hole in it by his side. When you donated, you put the rupees in the hole and they disappeared. Of course he had the key, so they would appear again, but for you they had disappeared.

I said, “If you have the courage you can take them. The pocket is there, the rupees are there, but may I ask you for what purpose you are collecting these rupees?”

He said, “For poor people.”

I said, “Then it is perfectly okay.” And I myself dropped those three rupees into his box. But he was the one to be surprised, for when I started leaving I took the whole box with me.

He said, “For God’s sake, what are you doing? That is for the poor!”

I said, “I have heard you already, you need not bother repeating it again. I am taking this box for the poor. There are many in my village. Please give me the key; otherwise I will have to find a thief so that he can open the lock. He is the only expert in that art.”

He said, “This is strange….” He looked at his secretary. The secretary was dumb, as secretaries always are; otherwise why should they be secretaries? He looked at Kasturba, his wife, who said, “You have met your equal. You cheat everybody, now he is taking your whole box. Good! It is good, because I am tired of seeing that box always there, just like a wife!”

I felt sorry for that man and left the box, saying, “No, you are the poorest man, it seems. Your secretary does not have any i
ntelligence, nor does your wife seem to have any love for you. I cannot take this box away–you keep it. But remember, I had come to see a mahatma, but I saw only a businessman.”

That was his caste. In India, baniya, businessman, is exactly what you mean by a Jew. India has its own Jews; they are not Jews, they are baniyas. To me, at that age, Mahatma Gandhi appeared to be only a businessman. I have spoken against him thousands of times because I don’t agree with anything in his philosophy of life.

Osho on Mother Teresa

Osho : The politicians and the priests have always been in deep conspiracy, they have divided man. The politician rules the outside and the priest rules the inside: the politician the exterior and the priest the interior. They are joined in a deep conspiracy against humanity–they may not even be aware of what they are doing. I don’t suspect their intentions; they may be absolutely unconscious.

Just the other day I received a letter from Mother Teresa. I have no intention of saying anything against her sincerity; whatsoever she wrote in the letter is sincere, but it is unconscious. She is not aware of what she is writing; it is mechanical, it is robot-like. She says, ‘I have just received a cutting of your speech. I feel very sorry for you that you could speak as you did. Reference: the Nobel Prize. For the adjectives you add to my name I forgive you with great love.’

She is feeling very sorry for me…I enjoyed the letter! She has not even understood the adjectives that I have used about her. But she is not aware, otherwise she would have felt sorry for herself.

The adjectives that I have used–she has sent the cutting also with the letter–the first is ‘deceiver’, then ‘charlatan’ and ‘hypocrite’….

Now I have criticized her and said that the Nobel Prize should not have been given to her, and she feels offended by it. She says in her letter, ‘Reference: the Nobel Prize.’

This man Nobel was one of the greatest criminals possible in the world. the First World War was fought with his weapons; he was the greatest manufacturer of weapons….

Mother Teresa could not refuse the Nobel Prize. The same desire to be admired, the same desire to be respectable in the world–and the Nobel Prize brings you the greatest respect. She accepted the prize….

That’s why I have called the people like Mother Teresa ‘deceivers’. They are not deceivers knowingly, certainly, not intentionally, but that does not matter; the outcome, the end result is very clear. Their purpose is to function in this society like a lubricant so that the wheels of the society, the wheels of exploitation, oppression can go on moving smoothly. These people are lubricants! They are deceiving others and they are deceiving themselves.

And I call them ‘charlatans’ because a really religious person, a man like Jesus…Can you conceive of Jesus getting the Nobel Prize? Impossible! Can you conceive of Socrates getting the Nobel Prize or Al-Hillaj Mansoor getting the Nobel Prize? If Jesus cannot get the Nobel Prize and Socrates cannot get the Nobel Prize–and these are the true religious people, the awakened ones–then who is Mother Teresa?…

The really religious person is rebellious; the society condemns him. Jesus is condemned as a criminal and Mother Teresa is respected as a saint. There is something to be pondered over: if Mother Teresa is right then Jesus is a criminal, and if Jesus is right then Mother Teresa is just a charlatan and nothing else. Charlatans are always praised by the society because they are helpful–helpful to this society, to this status quo.

Whatsoever adjectives I have used I have used very knowingly. I never use a single word without consideration. And I have used the word ‘hypocrites’. These people are hypocrites because their basic life style is split: on the surface one thing, inside something else.

She writes: ‘The Protestant family was refused the child not because they are Protestant but because at that time we did not have a child that we could give them.’

Now, the Nobel Prize is given to her for helping thousands of orphans and there are thousands of orphans in the homes she runs. Suddenly she ran out of orphans? And in India can you ever run out of orphans? Indians go on creating as many orphans as you want, in fact more than you want!

And the Protestant family which has been refused was not refused immediately. If there was no orphan available, if all the orphans had been disposed of, then what is Mother Teresa doing with seven hundred nuns? What is their work? Seven hundred nuns…then whom are they mothering? Not a single orphan–strange!–and that too in Calcutta! You can find orphans anywhere on the road–you find children in the dustbins. They could have just looked outside the place and they would have found many children. You can just go outside the ashram and you can get orphans. They will come themselves, you need not find them!

Suddenly they ran out of orphans…And if the family had been refused immediately it would have been a totally different matter. But the family was not refused immediately; they were told, ‘Yes, you can get an orphan. Fill in the form.’ So the form was filled in. Till they came to the point where they had to state their religion, up to that moment, there were orphans, but when they filled in the form and wrote ‘We belong to the Protestant Church,’ immediately they ran out of orphans!

And this reason was not given to the Protestant family itself. Now, this is hypocrisy! This is deception! This is ugly! The reason given to the family itself was that because these children…because the children were there, so how could she say, ‘We don’t have any orphans’? They are always on exhibition!

She has invited me also: ‘You can come any time and you are welcome to visit our place and see our orphans and our work.’ They are constantly on exhibition!

In fact, those Protestants had already chosen the orphan, the child that they wanted to adopt, so she could not say to those people, ‘It is because there are no more orphans. We are sorry.’

She said to them, “These orphans are being raised according to the Roman Catholic Church and it will be bad for their psychological growth because it will be such a disruption. Now, giving them to you will make them a little disturbed and it will not be good for them. That’s why we cannot give the child to you, because you are Protestant.”

Exactly that was the reason given to them. And they are not stupid people. The husband is a professor in a European university–he was shocked, the wife was shocked. They had come from so far away just to adopt a child, and they were refused because they are Protestants. Had they written ‘Catholic’ they would have been given the child immediately.<
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And one thing to be understood: these children are basically Hindu. If Mother Teresa is so concerned about their psychological welfare then they should be brought up according to the Hindu religion, but they are brought up according to the Catholic Church. And then to give them to Protestants, who are not different at all from Catholics…What is the difference between a Catholic and a Protestant? Just a few stupid things!…

Just a few days ago there was a bill in the Indian Parliament Freedom of Religion. The purpose of the bill was that nobody should be allowed to convert anybody to another religion: unless somebody chooses it out of his own free will no conversion should be allowed. And Mother Teresa was the first one to oppose it. In her whole life she has never opposed anything; this was the first time, and maybe the last.

She opposed it. She wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, and there was a heated controversy between her and the Prime Minister: ‘The bill should not be passed because it goes against our whole work. We are determined to save people, and people can be saved only if they become Roman Catholics.’ They created so much uproar all over the country–and the politicians are always concerned about votes, they cannot lose the Christian votes–so the bill was dropped, simply dropped….

If Mother Teresa is really honest and believes that converting a person disturbs his psychic structure, then she should be against conversion unless a person chooses it by himself.

For example, you have come to me, I have not gone to you. I don’t even go outside the door….

I have not gone to anybody, you have come to me. And I am not converting you to any religion either. I am not creating any ideology here, I am not giving you any catechism, any doctrine. I am simply helping you to be silent. Now, silence is neither Christian or Hindu nor Mohammedan; silence is silence. I am teaching you loving. Now, love is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan. I am teaching you to be aware. Now, awareness is simply awareness; it belongs to nobody. And I call this true religiousness.

To me Mother Teresa and people like her are hypocrites: saying one thing but doing something else behind a beautiful facade. It is the whole game of politics–the politics of numbers.

And she says, ‘For the adjectives you add to my name I forgive you with great love.’ First of all, love need not forgive because in the first place it is not angered. To forgive somebody first you have to be angry; that is a prerequisite.

I don’t forgive Mother Teresa at all, because I am not angry at all. Why should I forgive her? She must have been angry. This is why I want you to start meditating on these things. It is said that Buddha never forgave anybody for the simple reason that he was never angry. How can you forgive without anger? It is impossible. She must have been angry. This is what I call unconsciousness: she is not aware of what she is writing,…she is not aware of what I am going to do with her letter!

She says, ‘I forgive you with great love’–as if there is small love and great love, and things like that. Love is simply love; It cannot be great, it cannot be small. Do you think love is a quantitative thing?–one kilo of love, two kilos of love. How many kilos of love makes it great? Or are tons needed?

Love is not a quantity at all, it is a quality. And quality is immeasurable: it is neither small nor great. Whenever somebody says to you, ‘I love you very greatly,’ beware! Love is just love; it cannot be less than that, it cannot be more than that. There is no question of less and more.

And what crime have I committed that she is forgiving me for? Just old Catholic stupidity–they go on forgiving! I have not confessed any sin, so why should she forgive me?

I stick to all the adjectives, and I will add a few more: that she is stupid, mediocre, idiotic! And if anybody needs to be forgiven it is she, not I, because she is committing a great sin. She is saying in this letter, ‘I am fighting through adoption the sin of abortion.’ Abortion is not a sin; in this overpopulated world abortion is a virtue. And if abortion is a sin then the Polack Pope and Mother Teresa and company are responsible for it because they are against contraceptives, they are against birth control methods, they are against the pill. These are the people who are the cause of all the abortions; they are responsible. To me they are great criminals!

In this overpopulated world where people are hungry and starving to be against the pill is just unforgivable! The pill is one of the most significant contributions of modern science to humanity–it can make the earth a paradise….

I would like to destroy poverty, I don’t want to serve poor people. Enough is enough! For ten thousand years fools have been serving poor people; it has not changed anything. But now we have enough technology to destroy poverty completely.

So if anybody has to be forgiven it is these people. It is the Pope, Mother Teresa, etcetera, who have to be forgiven. They are criminals, but their crime is such that you will need great intelligence to understand it.

And see the egoistic ‘holier than thou’ attitude. ‘I forgive you,’ she says. ‘I feel sorry for you,’ she says. And she asks, ‘May God’s blessings be with you and fill your heart with his love.’ Just bullshit!

I don’t believe in any God as a person, so there is no God as a person who can bless me or anybody else. God is only a realization, God is not somebody to be encountered. It is your own purified consciousness. And why should God bless me? I can bless all your gods! Why should I ask for anybody’s blessing? I am blissful–there is no need! And I don’t believe that there is any God. I have looked in every nook and corner and he does not exist! It is only in ignorant people’s minds that God has existence. I am not an atheist, remember, but I am not a theist either.

God is not a person to me but a presence, and the presence is felt when you reach to the climax of your meditativeness. You suddenly feel a godliness overflowing the whole existence. There is no God, but there is godliness.

I love the statement of H. G. Wells about Gautam the Buddha. He has said that Gautam the Buddha is the most godless person yet the most godly too. You can say the same thing about me: I am the most godless person you can find, but I know godliness.

Godliness is like a fragrance, an experience of immense joy, of utter freedom. You cannot pray to godliness, you cannot make an image of godliness, you cannot say, ‘May God’s blessings be with you’–and that too with a condition: ‘May God’s blessings be with you during 1981.’ Such misers! And what about 1982? Great courage! Great sharing! Such generosity!

‘…and fill your heart with his love.’ My heart is full with love! There is no space for anybody else’s love in it. And why should my heart be filled with anybody else’s love? A borrowed love is not love at all. The heart has its own fragrance.

But this type of nonsense is thought to be very religious. She is writing with this desire that I will see how religious she is, and all that I can see is simply that she is an ordinary, foolish person, just the same as you can find anywhere among the mediocre people.

I have been calling her Mother Teresa, but I think I should stop calling her Mother Teresa because I am not very gentlemanly but I have to respond adequately.  She calls me Dear Mr Rajneesh, so from now onwards I will call her Dear Miss Teresa–just to be gentlemanly, mannerly!

The ego can come in from the back door. Don’t try to throw it out.

Osho : Kabir’s religion is very aesthetic, artistic. He’s a great poet – uneducated though. But what does poetry have to do with education? A great poet, one of the greatest; his poetry is simply sublime, not of this world. He says: One has to look for beauty. It is all over; the whole of nature is full of beauty.

And beauty is nothing but God hidden. All beauty is His. When you see a beautiful human face – a man’s, a woman’s – it is God’s face. When you look into two beautiful eyes, you are entering into the temple of God. When you see a flower opening, it is an invitation from God.

I have heard….
Thirty-eight years ago, philosopher George Santayana came into a sizeable legacy and was able
to relinquish his post on the Harvard faculty. The classroom was packed for his final appearance, and Santayana did himself proud. He was about to conclude his remarks when he caught sight of a forsythia uncurling in a patch of muddy snow outside the window.

He stopped abruptly, picked up his hat, gloves, and walking stick, and made for the door. There he turned. ‘Gentleman,’ he said softly. ‘I shall not be able to finish that sentence. I have just discovered that I have an appointment with April.’

Each flower is an invitation, an appointment with God. Each song of the bird, and each cloud floating in the sky, is something like a message, a coded message. You have to decode it, you have to look deep into it, you have to be silent and listen to the message.

Osho : When one of the great Greek philosophers, Pythagoras, reached Egypt to enter a school – a secret esoteric school of mysticism – he was refused. And Pythagoras was one of the best minds ever produced. He could not understand it. He applied again and again, but he was told that unless he goes through a particular training of fasting and breathing he cannot be allowed to enter the school.

Pythagoras is reported to have said, ”I have come for knowledge, not for any sort of discipline.” But the school authorities said, ”We cannot give you knowledge unless you are different. And really, we are not interested in knowledge at all, we are interested in actual experience.

No knowledge is knowledge unless it is lived and experienced. So you will have to go on a forty-day fast, continuously breathing in a certain manner, with a certain awareness on certain points.”

There was no other way, so Pythagoras had to pass through this training. After forty days of fasting and breathing, aware, attentive, he was allowed to enter the school.

It is said that Pythagoras said, ”You are not allowing Pythagoras in. I am a different man, I am reborn. You were right and I was wrong, because then my whole standpoint was intellectual. Through this purification, my center of being has changed. From the intellect it has come down to the heart. Now I can feel things.

Before this training I could only understand through the intellect, through the head. Now I can feel. Now truth is not a concept to me, but a life. It is not going to be a philosophy, but rather, an experience – existential.”

Osho : Adolf Hitler killed millions of people, and those who have looked deeply into his mind are all convinced of one fact: that he was very much afraid of death. He was afraid of death, so much so that he never allowed anybody to be in his room in the night, not even the woman that he had fallen in love with once. Nobody was ever allowed to stay in the same room.

He would lock the room, check everything, because while he was asleep somebody could kill him. Who knows? – the woman he had fallen in love with may be just a spy. He never allowed anybody to come close to him, too close, he was so much afraid.

He got married only three hours before he was going to commit suicide; there was not even a chance for the honeymoon. In fact that was his honeymoon – suicide. In the middle of the night the priest was called to marry him to the woman he had been in a kind of relationship with – it could not have been of love, because a man like Hitler cannot love.

They were married, and the next thing they did after marriage was that they killed themselves. Now there was no fear, he could allow the woman to come close – he was going to commit suicide anyway. All was lost, the game was lost, the enemy had entered into the capital. He could hear the bombs exploding just close by; now there was no hope, he had failed. Now he could get married.

For what? For twenty years he had been waiting, for twenty years the woman had been waiting, but he was so afraid of bringing anybody too close. This man killed millions of people for stupid reasons. He killed Jews, MILLIONS of Jews, with this stupid idea: that it was because of the Jews that Germany – the race, the country, the nation – had fallen low; because of Jews the First World War had been lost.

Now these are all stupid reasons, with no logic, no relevance. Jews had nothing to do with the First World War, they had nothing to do with the fall of the German race. Really, they had given the greatest geniuses that Germany has ever known: Karl Marx was a Jew, Sigmund Freud was a Jew, Albert Einstein was a Jew. In fact it was the Jews who were the cream, but he killed millions of Jews.

Deep down, it seems he was suffering from an inferiority complex. And deep down he was suffering from so much fear of death that he wanted to kill to convince himself that ”If I kill so many people, if I can kill millions of people, then I am beyond death. I am so powerful.”
A man who is afraid of death is dangerous, dangerous to himself and to others. And the fear arises out of a very fallacious beginning; the fallacy is that we think we are separate.

But consciousness has that possibility. Man has been given such a potential power of being conscious that he has to be very careful how he uses it. Remember, if you move on plain ground there is no danger of falling; if you move in the mountains, if you go towards the peaks, there is great danger of falling.

The higher you move, the danger becomes more and more acute. Man is the only animal who is moving higher, at the peaks, towards the peaks. Consciousness is the mountain and we have to be very alert. And that is the whole teaching of all the Buddhas and all the Krishnas and all the Christs, and that is the teaching of Kabir: be conscious, be so conscious that you don’t create the self, be so alert that the self is not created at all.

Self-consciousness is a dis-ease. Just consciousness is great freedom, liberation. By being just conscious, sooner or later you will become God-conscious. By becoming self-conscious, sooner or later you will lose even that small consciousness that lingers behind the self like a small tail; that consciousness will also disappear

More Osho Discourses

1. Osho on Lord Krishna
2. Osho on Mystic Kabir
3. Osho discourse on Truth
4. Osho darshan Diary discourse
5. Osho discourse on Selfish Pride
6. Osho on Greed, Desire and Needs
7. Osho on Lao Tzu and Yoga Sutras
8. Osho Sufi Story on Fakir and a Pandit
9. Osho on Living in this moment and time
10. Osho discourse on Patanjali Yoga Sutras
11. Osho discourse on Life. Life has no security
12. Osho discourse on heat yoga and Bhrama Yogi
13. Osho discourse on Loving Oneself and Growth
14. Osho on kabir Initation, Kabir and Ramananda
15. Osho Sannyas, Osho discourse on Neo Sannyas
16. Osho discourse on real knowledge and knowing
17. Osho on Adolf Hitler and Self-consciousness
18. Osho Story on Hassid Master Sosya – Be yourself
19. Osho on Conscious action and Conscious Loving
20. Osho on inferiority complex, superiority complex.
21. Osho discourse on Meditating and watching – Meditate
22. Osho on Memorizing the Scriptures and Real Knowledge
23. Osho : God is overflowing energy God is Sat Chit Ananda

24. Osho on Yoga Sutra, Alonesness and Universal Oneness
25. Osho on Tirthankara, Jiddu Krishnamurti becoming Tirthankara
26. Osho on various Samadhi’s, Atma, Bhrama and Nirvana Samadhi’s