Question – What is actually your feeling now towards Sheela and what would you do if she would come back?

Osho : I will take her back. We have a university here, and we have all kinds of therapies here. She needs some psychotherapy, a long treatment.

I have all compassion for her, and the same love and the same trust, because my love is unconditional. What she has done makes no difference to it. In fact, I am worried about her because she must be unnecessarily suffering. There was no need to go anywhere. She could have simply come to me and told to me that these are the things that she has done.

And we would have entered her into the therapies and all her colleagues into the therapies and treated them. This is my attitude about all criminals, not only her. I am against punishment because punishment has not transformed anybody in the whole history. Still we go on doing the same thing all over the world. We are barbarious.

A man kills somebody and you kill the man, give him a death sentence or a lifelong imprisonment, which is even worse. His act was crime and your act is justice. Both the acts are same. Just he is a poor single individual and you have power of the society, of the state, of the military, of the government.

But you are doing the same thing. It is revenge, it is not justice. And if the man committed suicide or murder, he has still a future. His murder was in the past, and murderers have been known to become saints. Now, to kill that man is to deprive him from a future. He may have turned into a saint. And what right you have got? All that you can do is that… that man has something wrong with his psychology, that her hormones are not harmonious. Something chemically wrong.

And that’s what has happened with Sheela. She was raped when she was only sixteen, and raped by a man who was her father’s friend, old. And she had always respected the man as her uncle. He used to stay in their house. The father and the mother had gone out and only the uncle was in the house, and he raped her. She became pregnant. In those days in India abortion was not legal, so she had to go through that indignity of an illegal abortion.

I think that scar is deep in her being. She hates Indians, one thing. And something in her wants to take revenge with the whole society. She is not conscious of all that, but it is there.

So I will not do anything else than be more loving to her than I have ever been to her, because these are the moments when a person needs more love, more respect, more acceptance. And I will give her to the university to treat her, to bring all her unconscious out. It is just a question of vomiting the unconscious out. And once you are clean such a thing cannot happen again.

And this is my general attitude about the whole idea of jurisprudence, criminology. Strange it is: a person tries to commit suicide and fails, and then the court gives him death sentence because he was trying to commit suicide and failed. Now they help him to succeed. Great minds are creating our laws and our courts.

A man steals something very small and he is sent to jail. He is just amateur and perhaps in his situation anybody would have stolen. Perhaps he was hungry, he needed medicine, his mother was dying, he needed medicine. And you imprison him for two years in the jail where he meets great experts, criminals, master thiefs. And in those two years he graduates. He had come as an amateur, now he comes out as a professional thief. Because it is a simple idea amongst all criminals that to commit crime is not crime, but to be caught is crime.

So just you have to be very careful, intelligent, aware, that you are not caught. Then do whatsoever you want to do. Doing is not a problem at all, just don’t get caught.

Punishment helps only to create more criminals. Your imprisoned people, which are in millions around the earth, are just getting training. Your jails are universities for criminology. And your courts serve the crime, not the culture.

So that will be my attitude of all those people. If they come back they will receive not only my love but my whole commune’s love. Whatever they did, perhaps they were unconsciously doing it, not knowing what they are doing. We can clean their unconscious, we can make them more aware, we can clean them, we can give them a new birth.

Source – Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol2″

Question – Beloved Master, What is the role of the commune as it is now, regarding therapy and meditation as offered in the university; and vice versa? And what is your vision of both their growth processes?

Osho – The function of the commune is to create an atmosphere of encouragement — that you are not alone. The path that you have to travel, you have to travel alone; but if you know that so many people are traveling alone on the path, it gives tremendous encouragement. There is no fear: “If these people can manage, I can manage also.”

The commune is not a religion, following collectively on a super-highway. The commune belongs to individuals who have joined hands with each other because they are going on an inner journey where they will be alone. But with so many people going on that inner journey alone the fear of being alone is dropped. You can share your experiences with each other; perhaps sharing your experiences with each other will help immensely. That’s why therapies exist where people can open their heart and share their experiences.

But the commune experience is a therapeutic experience — day in, day out. My vision of a commune is of absolutely individual meditators living together, helping each other: “Don’t be afraid, it is tremendously exciting to go in. Although you are going alone, you are not the only one who is going alone. One million sannyasins are going alone.”

It is a very strange phenomenon: living together, yet exploring the truth in absolute aloneness. And whatever you find, you can share. It will be respected, it will be accepted. And everybody is to have different kinds of experiences on the way, until the person reaches to the ultimate omega point. That omega point is exactly the same for everyone. But on the way there are so many beauties, so much splendor.

You just need a little courage, and the commune provides you the courage. And I am here to encourage you to take the jump. You have nothing to lose, and you have the whole universe to gain.

Source – Osho Book “From Bondage to Freedom”

Question – Beloved Master, What is your Vision for the New Commune?

Osho – Krishna Prem, the new commune is an experiment in spiritual communism. The word ‘communism’ comes from ‘commune’. There is only one possibility of communism in the world and that possibility is through meditation. Communism is not possible through changing the economic structures of societies.

The change of economic structures of societies will only bring new classes; it cannot bring a classless society. The proletariat may disappear, the bourgeoisie may go, but then the ruler and the ruled…that’s what has happened in Soviet Russia, that’s what has happened in China. New distinctions, new classes have arisen.

Communism is basically a spiritual vision. It is not a question of changing the economic structures of the society, but changing people’s spiritual vision. The new commune is going to be a space where we can create human beings who are not obsessed with comparison, who are not obsessed with the ego, who are not obsessed with the personality.

The new commune is going to be a context in which a new kind of man can become possible. Socrates says that the master is a midwife, and he is right: all masters are midwives. They always bring new humanities into existence. Through them a new man is born.

The old man is finished. The old man is no more valid. And with the old man, all that belonged to the old man has also become invalid, irrelevant. The old man was life-negative. The new commune will create a life-affirmative religiousness. The motto of the new commune is: This very body the Buddha, this very earth the Lotus Paradise.

The new commune is going to hallow the earth, to make everything sacred. We are not going to divide existence into this world and that world: we are going to live existence in its totality. We are going to live as scientists, as poets, as mystics — all together!

The scientist is partial. He believes only in the body, he cannot go beyond it; his vision is very limited, shortsighted. The poet clings to another aspect of humanity, the feeling part. He can see the beauty, but his beauty is very momentary. He has no idea of the eternal. The mystic lives in the being, he lives in the deathless, timeless state. Because he lives in the deathless, timeless state he becomes indifferent to the world of time and space. He becomes indifferent both to science and to poetry. These are all three aspects of reality, three faces of God, the trinity, TRIMURTI.

My effort in the new commune is to create a man who is not partial…who is total, whole, holy. A man should be all three together. He should be as accurate and objective as a scientist; and he should be as sensitive, as full of the heart, as the poet; and he should be as rooted deep down in his being as the mystic. He should not choose. He should allow all these three dimensions to exist together.

The East suffered because we became too much concerned with the being; we lost track of science, we lost track of art. The West has suffered, is suffering, because it has lost track of being. The East became inwardly rich but outwardly poor; the West has become outwardly rich, inwardly poor. The new commune is going to be rich in both ways.

I believe in richness. I am not a worshipper of poverty. That is simply stupid. I would like humanity to be rich in all possible ways: rich in science, rich in technology, rich in poetry, rich in music, rich in meditation, rich in mysticism. Life should be lived in its multidimensionality. God should be approached through all possible ways. Why impoverish your soul?

The new commune is going to create a space, a context, for this multidimensional human being to be born. And the future belongs to this new man. The old man believed in renunciation; the old man believed that if you want to come closer to God you have to be away from the world, as if there is a conflict between God and the world. It is obviously wrong. The world exists through God! The world is God’s body — there can’t be any conflict! If there had been any conflict, then the world would have disappeared long ago.

The world breathes, is alive, and life is God. The tree is divine because it is alive, and the rock is divine because the rock is also alive in its own way, the rock also grows. The whole existence is full of life, overflowing with life. God is not against the world — how can the painter be against his painting? and how can the poet be against his poetry? and how can the musician be against his music? The world is his poetry, his painting, his music — it is his dance.

The old man lived in renunciation, escaped away from the world to the caves, to the monasteries, to the Himalayas. The old man was escapist, the old man was afraid to live, he was more ready to die. The old man was somehow suicidal. My new man is going to be deep in love with life. And my religion is not of renunciation but of rejoicing. The new commune will create every possible opportunity to rejoice, sing, dance.

The new commune is going to be of a totally new kind of religiousness, spirituality. Nobody is going to be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Jaina, but everybody is going to be religious — just religious. To me, religion needs no adjectives. And the moment a religion becomes attached to an adjective, it is no longer religion — it becomes politics.

Bayazid is not Mohammedan. Mohammed himself is not Mohammedan, cannot be. Christ is not Christian and Buddha is not Buddhist. They are simply religious. They have a certain flavor, a certain silence, a certain grace, surrounding them. They are windows to the beyond. Through them you can see the beyond, through them God goes on singing a thousand and one songs.

The new commune is not going to be of any religion. It will be religious. But the religion will not be unearthly, it will be very down to earth; hence it will be creative, it will explore all possibilities of being creative. All kinds of creativity will be supported, nourished.

The real religious man has to contribute to the world. He has to make it a little more beautiful than he found it when he came into the world. He has to make it a little more joyous. He has to make it a little more perfumed. He has to make it a little more harmonious. That is going to be his contribution.

In the past we respected people for wrong reasons. We respected somebody because he was fasting. Now, fasting contributes nothing to the world. And the man who goes on long fasts is simply being violent with himself. To respect him is to respect violence, to respect him is to respect suicidal instincts, to respect him is to respect masochism. He is mentally ill! He is not natural, he is abnormal. He needs psychological treatment, he needs help.

But you respect him, and because of your respect, his ego becomes puffed up; so if he was going to fast for one month, he will fast for three months. And the more he fasts, the more he tortures his body, the more respect you give to him.

The new commune will not respect any masochistic tendencies. It will not respect any asceticism, it will not respect any abnormal, unnatural tendencies — it will respect the natural man. It will respect the child in man, it will respect innocence, and it will respect creativity. It will respect a man who paints a beautiful picture, it will respect the man who plays beautifully on the flute. The flute-player will be religious, and the painter will be religious, and the dancer will be religious; not the man who goes on long fasts, who tortures his body, who lies down on a bed of thorns, who cripples himself.

It is going to be the beginning of a new humanity. It is needed, absolutely needed. If we cannot create the new man in the coming twenty years — by the end of this century — then humanity has no future. The old man has come to the end of his tether. The old man is ready to commit a global suicide. The third world war is going to be global suicide. It can be avoided only if a new kind of man can be created.

This is going to be an experiment, a great experiment on which much is going to depend. It has tremendous implications for the future. Be ready for it. Be prepared for it. This ashram is just a launching pad…. On a small scale I am experimenting. The new commune will be on a big scale: ten thousand sannyasins living together as one body, one being. Nobody will possess anything; everybody will use everything, everybody will enjoy. Everybody is going to live as comfortably, as richly, as we can manage.

But nobody will possess anything. Not only will things not be possessed, but persons also will not be possessed in the new commune. If you love a woman, live with her — out of sheer love, out of sheer joy — but you don’t become her husband, you can’t. You don’t become a wife. To become a “wife” or a “husband” is ugly because it brings ownership; then the other is reduced to property.

The new commune is going to be nonpossessive, full of love — living in love but with no possessiveness at all; sharing all kinds of joys, making a pool of all the joys…. When ten thousand people contribute, it can become explosive. The rejoicing will be great.

Jesus says again and again: Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice! But he has not been heard yet. Christians look so serious, and they have painted Jesus also in such a way that it doesn’t seem that he ever rejoiced himself. Christians say Jesus never laughed! This is ridiculous. The man who was saying “Rejoice!” the man who used to love good food, good wine, the man who used to feast and participate in festivals, the man around whom there was always feasting — he never laughed? Christians have given a false Christ to the world.

In my commune, Buddha is going to laugh and dance, Christ is going to laugh and dance. Poor fellows, nobody has allowed them up to now! Have compassion on them — let them dance and sing and play. My new commune is going to transform work into playfulness, it is going to transform life into love and laughter.

Remember the motto again — to hallow the earth, to make everything sacred, to transform the ordinary, mundane things into extraordinary, spiritual things. The whole of life has to be your temple; work has to be your worship, love has to be your prayer. This very body the Buddha, this very earth the Lotus Paradise.

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol 2″

Question – Beloved Osho, We have experimented with Communes in both the east and the west that did not last. Buddha and other enlightened masters created communes that did last. What is the difference?

Osho – Gautam Buddha and other masters never created communes the way we have created them. Buddha had followers, but not staying in one place… moving continuously. Mahavira had followers, but not staying in one place… moving continuously. So nobody has created the way we created communes. Five thousand people living together is a totally different experience than five thousand Buddhist monks moving from one place to another place, only staying three days at one place. And even in that, man’s cunningness comes in.

Jaina monks have to move continuously, except during the rainy seasons. In India, before atomic experiments started, the seasons used to be very fixed. Even dates and days were fixed — on what day the rains will begin and on what day the rains will stop — and there were three clear-cut seasons, four months each. So for four months in the rainy season they had to stop. But that also does not mean that thousands of sannyasins will be stopping in one place, but wherever they are. But the cunningness of man’s mind is such that I have seen Jaina monks who have lived their whole life in Bombay — somebody is there for fifty years… I enquired, “How is it being managed? — because it is against their basic rule and discipline. After three days they have to move.”

And I was told that in Mahavira’s time there were not such big cities as Bombay. Now the Jaina monk moves from one part of Bombay to another part of Bombay, and in this way he goes on moving around Bombay, inside Bombay, from one place to another place. But he remains in Bombay; he never leaves Bombay. Clever idea! From one suburb he will move to another suburb; that is another place. And in Mahavira’s time there were no such big cities these suburbs would have been different cities, different towns, so…”We are moving!” And they go on circling.

Bombay has a population of the daily population is nearabout ten million people. Forty million people come every day to work, from nearby towns, and they return in the evening. Sixty million people are living in the town. They are logically right, that there was no city in Mahavira’s time of such population. But the whole point is missed. The point was simply that you don’t become attached to a certain place, that you don’t start having friendships, likes, dislikes. In three days you cannot do much. One day you come, just one day you really stay, and the third day you have to move. It is not enough time to get into any politics, or any local problems. To avoid power politics, to avoid local problems, attachments, the device was created that you move after three days.

But after three days they go on moving in the same city — for fifty years, sixty years. They have immense contact with people. They are almost residents of Bombay! The people who like them come to listen to them wherever they are. Nobody had any commune the way we tried, and both the experiments have given great insights into human nature, so nothing has been a failure. We have learned much. So now I am not going to create a commune.

I am going to create a totally different thing: a mystery school… forty, fifty people will be there to take care of the school, and two hundred, three hundred, five hundred people can come for a one month course, or a two month course, or a three month course, and move on. And slowly, slowly we can train people so that they can open mystery schools around the world. A school is a different thing. You come for three months to learn something, to go through some experiences, and then you are back in the world, to your work, to your job.

The commune experiment has made it clear that if five thousand people are living in a commune, they will have to do many things — make roads, make houses, make other facilities for five thousand people, and for the guests who will be coming for festivals. These people will not have any time left for the real search they had come for in the first place. They will not have time for meditation. They will not have time to go within themselves, to find techniques and work upon them, because the work is such that you cannot just work five hours a day, five days a week; it will never be completed. You have to work ten, twelve hours a day seven days a week. You are tired — and moreover, what you are doing is only the necessary facilities for yourself. Soon you will have to start production; otherwise from where are you going to get your food, your clothes? So this is a vicious circle.

And when five thousand people are there, then there is bound to be power politics. Then you have to find group leaders, coordinators. It is not possible to give freedom to five thousand people: “Do whatsoever you like” — because they will all go swimming and trekking and playing their guitars, but then who will make the roads and the houses and do the farming? And how are your food and your clothes to be arranged? How long can we depend on donations? Sooner or later you will have to make factories and you will have to create something. Then this commune becomes just an ordinary world — so why make so much unnecessary trouble? Our basic reason was to give you an insight into yourself. That is completely forgotten in unnecessary trivia.

So my new phase of work is a mystery school. You work in the world, where roads are already there, houses are already there, you need not make them. Factories are already there… in thousands of years the world has created all that. So you can manage — five hours work five days a week is enough. On the weekend you can meditate, you can go into silence or you can go to some isolated spot and just relax. And in a year you will be able to earn so much money, save so much money, that you can come here for one month, two months, three months… as much as you can manage.

Then being with me has no connotations of work. Then being with me is simply joy, celebration, meditation, singing, dancing. Those three months are simply holiday. You forget the world for those three months. They are pure search for the truth. And after three months, whatever you have learned, continue it at home; there you have time. Five hours you work — you have enough time; you can get at least two hours for yourself.

Not only this… when you start living with me there is a possibility that you may start taking me for granted, that I am always here. Nine months being away will bring you closer to me, because distance creates longing, creates love, creates understanding. So each year you will be coming, then going. Whatever you can manage… you can come twice. You will not be a burden on anybody, and there is no need for anybody to dominate you; there is no need for any strict discipline — work needs that. There is no need for coordinators, so we can avoid the power trip.

But both our communes have helped to bring us to this point where we can start a mystery school. Without those two communes it would have been impossible. This is my way of looking at things. Even failures bring you closer to success, because each failure gives you insight into what went wrong, how it went wrong. So both the experiments have been immensely significant.

Now we are in a position to create a totally different kind of place, which is simply a festival all the year round. People will be coming and going. They will take whatever they learn and they will practice it in the world, and they will come again to renew, to refresh, to go further, deeper. Only a skeleton crew will be here to take care of you.

Source – Osho Book “Beyond Psychology”

Question : You have spoken of the need for Courage. Where does Courage come from? Is there any way to stimulate people’s Courage?

Osho – Everything that is valuable comes from your own innermost being. It may be love, it may be intelligence, it may be creativity, it may be courage, it does not matter what. Anything of value comes from your own innermost being. Many dimensions open up with your experience of yourself.

Yes, courage is needed, and for that you will have to go to the same source. It is in a way a very simple phenomenon. There is nothing complex in it because there is only one source for every great value. So by achieving one thing, you achieve all great values simultaneously.

You ask me, “Is there some way to stimulate courage?” That’s what the commune is for. Everything in human life is contagious, because no man is an island. We are all part of one infinite continent. So anything that is happening in me, if you are available it immediately starts happening in you. Something is triggered. Carl Gustav Jung has coined a new word for it: synchronicity. It is a beautiful word. And everybody experiences it. For example, here… silence is your synchronicity. Everybody is so silent that you are surrounded from everywhere by a pool of silence.

The same is true about love, about sadness, about blissfulness. Just sit with a few people who are sad, miserable, and soon you will find that something in you is becoming sad, something in you is becoming miserable. And when you leave this company of miserables, you will feel sucked, tired, as Lf your energy has been exploited.

Everybody in the world once in a while has experienced the other polarity, too. You may be sad, but you meet a few friends who are laughing, joking, enjoying, dancing, and you forget all about your sadness, all about your worries. Something overpowers you. Their energy is much bigger than your misery.

Your misery simply slips out of you. You start dancing, singing, your face changes, and afterwards you will feel so much nourished, so much stronger that even though those people have left, the misery cannot enter you again. Now you are far stronger and far more nourished. Misery needs a certain weakness, certain loopholes, a certain readiness on your part to be miserable.

But we are living in a kind of human ocean which we cannot see — just like the air which we cannot see, but which surrounds us all. What is my breath this moment may become your breath in the next moment. It is changing its place every moment. You are inhaling, exhaling; everybody is inhaling, exhaling. Everybody is inhaling from somebody else; everybody is exhaling into somebody else. In the same way, you are continuously inhaling and exhaling all other inner values, which are even more subtle than the air. There is a constant exchange, uninterrupted even in your sleep.

I have made thousands of experiments about everything before I have said anything about it For example, I have tried to make a sleeping man miserable or happy in his sleep. He does not know what is happening, he is fast asleep. But in the darkness, twelve meditators are sitting, projecting sadness, misery. Soon the person starts moaning, may have nightmares that somebody is killing him, that something really terrible is happening to him. He starts grinding his teeth. He really wants to get out of it. We have observed his hands, holding his blanket as a last resort. Perhaps he is drowning, or who knows what.

And we have changed the same person by changing our projection. We have projected love, joy, rejoicing, dancing, laughter. Just a thought being projected towards the man by twelve people who have a certain capacity of meditation, and the moaning stops. His hands get relaxed on the blanket. His face is no more distorted. Soon he starts giggling. You cannot believe it when you see a sleeping person behaving in this way. He is smiling. You have never seen his face so beautiful as he is looking at this moment.

This is the function of the commune, where so many people are just happy for no reason at all, where life is just fun, every moment of it. We can radiate from this commune for miles around.

New people coming from some other country outside America have reported to me that the moment they enter Rancho Rajneesh something in the air changes. Suddenly they feel as if they have come home, and they have never been here before. Perhaps never in their millions of lives — I don’t think they have been born in the Big Muddy Ranch, but suddenly they feel at home, as they have never felt even in their own home. And as they come closer to the commune, a great joy starts arising in them for no visible reason.

We have not only created an oasis in the desert, we have created an oasis of consciousness, too, which is far deeper, far more powerful, far more significant. And soon, as our other communes in the world will be becoming more mature….
My idea is to make a belt of energy around the world, so in fact we become one commune as far as the energy belt is concerned.

So all the communes may be far away from each other in space, but in the inner world they are all together. You don’t have only five thousand people’s strength, you have the strength of one million sannyasins, wherever they may be. And each commune has one million sannyasins’ support. So if we have two hundred communes, the inner logic and arithmetic is that we have already 200,000,000 sannyasins — that much energy, the quality, the quantity. And that is going to transform the world.

Never before has any experiment of this kind been made, so ordinarily nothing is known about it. But I have been experimenting on small scales until I have become absolutely certain of something. I have not tried to make any effort for expansion. We are in perfectly good shape — it could not be better — to do the job that we have chosen.

We can be so full of bliss that we can fill the whole universe with our bliss, our rejoicing our dance, our laughter. And to me, this is revolution, an absolute psychological change in the atmosphere of the world.

Source – Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol 2″

Question – I asked about the energy field here; and I was wondering if it ever happened, particularly when you were not feeling well, that a melancholy caught on? or, Is the energy here always positive?

Osho – It is always positive. My sickness is a physical thing; the energy has nothing to do with my body. The energy is never sick. It is never negative.

I mean the energy of an enlightened person is never negative. the energy of an unenlightened person is always negative. The unenlightened knows nothing of positive energy. He only reads books on positive thinking and this and that. Idiots like Norman Vincent Peale go on writing books on positive thinking, and millions of people read those books thinking that perhaps by positive thinking they can become millionaires, by positive thinking they can produce palaces. And they don’t bother about how many palaces Norman Vincent Peale has created.

They don’t bother at all that Rockefeller has never read Peale, that Henry Ford has no idea of Peale. It is not a question of positive thinking. Positive thinking is appealing only to negative people, because they know their negativity continuously. But without enlightenment, you cannot have positive energy. So I saw throw away all those books on positive thinking. They are deluding you. They are giving you a sense as if without being enlightened you can be positive. That is impossible.

Positivity is beyond the door of enlightenment. Negativity is on this side. The night is on this side — the black hole — and the day is on the other side where the sun never sets. So as far as I am concerned, I am always overflowing with energy. My body can be sick — but that makes no difference to my innermost being; it remains exactly the same. and whether I am speaking or silent, my field is vibrating, is ready to welcome anybody who comes with an open heart, is ready to receive into the innermost center of the energy field one who is not resistant, not reluctant, but is ready, vulnerable, open, is willing to risk.

There is a field already existing. And the moment you enter Rajneeshpuram, you will feel a different air, a different milieu, a different silence, a different loving energy all over the place. But those who come with closed eyes and closed heart, those who come with prejudices already determined with their conclusions — naturally, they come, they go, and they remain untouched by the immense energy that was available, free.

I have been known around the world as the free sex guru. Now they should change it because things have gone far beyond sex. Sex is energy, the energy of the sleepy man. The moment a man becomes enlightened, the same energy turns into a positive field. Now they should start calling me the free energy guru, because I have traveled miles, and the go on calling me something which I have left far behind.

Even if I die and my people can remain rejoicing, loving, the energy field will remain. I cannot take it away with me. But if they start being ordinary again, jealous, full of hate, hostility, violence, then they will destroy the energy field. I have created the energy field; now it is existing almost independent of me. And my whole effort is that while I am alive I should detach myself completely from the energy field and see whether my people can manage it.

And that’s what I am doing every day. I am giving more and more responsibility to my people. I am sending people from one commune to another. If twenty people are ready here, I send them to Germany. If in Japan they need, I send people there. So twenty people go to Germany and from that commune twenty people come here.

So in both ways it is a great exchange program. My twenty people there will try to create the energy field, and those twenty people here will learn how energy fields are created and how one should preserve them. Soon I want a belt of energy around the earth. And as far as I am concerned that energy belt is the only hope for life to exist beyond this century. Otherwise the politicians have already arranged for global death.

Source – Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol 1″

Question – It seems the Whole Commune is run by Women. Is there a particular purpose or strategy to that?

Osho – Certainly there is a particular strategy. Man has dominated women for centuries and forced the idea on them that they are the weaker sex, that they cannot do anything that man can do. They can do small homely things — that is their world. I want to destroy that idea completely. And you can see I have destroyed it.

My communes are run by women, and they have proved far superior to men in every possible way. My sannyasins are doing better business than any man can do, finding better bargains than any man can find. I wanted it to be a solid argument before the whole of humanity that women are not inferior, that if you give them a chance, they can even prove superior in many matters. At least they are going to prove equal.

And this is a strange way: to keep half of humanity in a downtrodden state. How much is the loss? — half of humanity means that women, if they were accepted equally, would have produced a Dostoevsky, a Turgenev, a Chekhov, a Gorky, a van Gogh, a Picasso, a Nijinsky. They may have proved a Buddha, a Jesus…. Half of humanity! — it is a vast ocean to whom you have denied all possibilities of creation, expression. And you have behaved with women as if they are cattle, not human beings.

It is not going to be so in my commune. But I do not agree with the liberation movement of women, because that is going in a reactionary way, creating hate for men — so much so that their basic approach is now that no woman should love any man, that they should all be lesbians.

Here, women are running the whole commune, everything, but no man who is here has ever felt that he is inferior. In fact, for the first time he feels a respect for women. He can see the dignity of women. Every day I receive letters from my male sannyasins asking, “What is happening? The commune sannyasins, the women, are becoming juicier and juicier, more and more graceful, more and more beautiful. And they are working so hard!”

For the first time, they have been given the chance to show their mettle. It is not a loss to men: they have found a companion, equal to themselves, side by side with them. You were missing half of humanity…. And remember, because you have repressed that half, that half was trying to take revenge in every possible way. Of course, the woman has her own ways of taking revenge, and every man knows how the woman can take revenge. Every woman has been taking it for centuries. She will be nagging the husband, she will be spying on the husband. She will make the husband just a henpecked person.

All husbands are henpecked! I have never come across another category. Outside they may roar like lions, but that is not to be believed. Just look through the keyhole in their houses — the woman is roaring and the husband is hiding like a rat behind this chair, behind that table. It is natural, because if you repress their energy, somehow they are going to revolt against it. Here, men also are feeling tremendously relieved because no woman is nagging them.

Women’s liberation is automatically men’s liberation. Women’s slavery is automatically men’s slavery. They go together. But this is only a transitory period…. Once I have proved my point, all around the world in different countries and different communes — even where I am not present — women will be on the top, once the point is proved and people can see.

Just four years ago, when we came here, we did not have a single dollar. My women sannyasins managed to purchase 126 square miles, an area three times bigger than New York. In four years we have poured almost two hundred million dollars into creating this oasis, and all has been managed by women. They have proved their mettle — and without insulting men, without putting them down, without in any way taking revenge. And they are not lesbians.

So it is, in fact, a tremendous revolution which is needed, which has been needed for centuries. And the sooner the whole world goes the way my communes function, the better, because I don’t think women will be ready to use nuclear weapons in the third world war. Women won’t want to kill; that is not part of their feminine psychology. They would like people to come closer, to be more loving.

If the world is run by women — and man can take his place more significantly in scientific research, in the service of life and creativity — and the governments and all other functional things are run by women, we will have a tremendous balance.

It will take a little time for women to produce Einstein and Picasso and Michelangelo. It will take a little time to bring a Mozart, a Leonardo da Vinci, because for thousands of years — in fact, for the whole history — they have been repressed, so it will need a little time. And once the repression changes into expression, it will be just like land which has been lying fallow for thousands of years gathering all kinds of fertilizers, rain water, and nobody cultivating it. When you cultivate it, it is going to give you a bumper crop. All other fields will look poor because they have been exploited every year; they have lost their energy to produce more.

The same is the situation of the human mind. The feminine mind has not been used, has not been allowed to function. If it is allowed, it may take a quantum leap. And it will be a blessing for all.

An intelligent woman, respected as equal to men in the society, will not become a lesbian because it is unnatural, absolutely unnatural. She will be heterosexual. And if all women turn to heterosexuality, we will be declaring war on homosexuality, too, because from where are they going to find men? They will chase the homosexuals to their deaths. They are chasing them here.

We have got a few homosexuals, and they go on writing letters of complaint to me: “We are homosexuals and women are chasing us. We are not interested, but we do not want even to declare that we are homosexual.”
I say, “What can I do? Drop your homosexuality.”

We can make a better world together. Men and women should be really half-and-half of a whole. There are qualities which men have and women do not have; there are qualities which women have and men do not have. Both together, the human being will be richer in every possible way.

Just think of a woman pilot dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I cannot conceive of it. If there had been a woman pilot, she would have refused to follow the order. She would have preferred to be shot dead, but she would not go to kill innocent people who have nothing to do with war.

And anyway, the war was ending. Germany was already on its knees, it was only a question of a week or two until Japan would surrender. There was no need of an atom bomb to create a hell for two beautiful cities.

I don’t think a woman could have done that. A woman would rather have said, “You can court-martial me. You can shoot me. That seems to be easier than killing 100,000 people in one city, and 120,000 people in another city.”

But what did the man pilot do? He dropped atom bombs on both the cities, came back to his base, had a good dinner, smoked the best cigar, joked with his friends, and went to sleep with a woman. In the morning when the journalists reached him, they asked the man if it had been very difficult for him to sleep having caused 220,000 people’s deaths.

He said, “No, I slept beautifully. I did my duty, and once the duty was fulfilled — and it was a great duty to be fulfilled — I was feeling so happy that I managed to do it that I went to sleep with a woman and had a beautiful sleep.”

Because it had been his orders, President Truman was asked early in the morning the next day, “How was your night?” He said, “I felt immensely relieved. Now there is no question of the war being prolonged any more. Not only that, we have made a point to the whole world: Don’t come in conflict with America, otherwise the result will be more Hiroshimas, more Nagasakis” — not a single word of sympathy for those innocent people. They were civilians, they were not in military camps.

I have seen a picture that I cannot forget. One friend from Japan sent me a photograph of a small child, maybe eight or nine years old. His bag hanging on his shoulder, his books in the bag, he was going upstairs into the attic which was allotted to him as his place to study and sleep. And just when he was on the middle of the staircase, the atom bomb fell on Hiroshima.

The boy simply got burned and got stuck into the wall — just a burned body with a burned bag, burned books. When I saw that picture, I could not believe that man can do this to man. If a woman was president of America, I don’t think this could have happened. Man has been given enough chance; now let the woman come up, and man can pour his energies more into scientific fields. Meanwhile, women will pick things up.

Yes, there is a certain basic strategy why my communes are run by women. But you can meet my male sannyasins. They are not in any way thought to be inferior. No woman is treating them as inferior in the way they have always treated women as inferior.

Perhaps it is that the male ego functions in that way: unless it makes somebody feel inferior, it is not satisfied. The woman functions in a different way: unless she feels somebody needing her, desiring her, she feels frustrated. A man’s need seems to be to dominate, and the woman’s need seems to be to be needed. That is a far better need — to be needed.

And I am doing an experiment, I am not a philosopher. I hate philosophy because it is simply a wastage of time. My commune is my experiment, and everything that I have envisioned has come true in it. The same can happen all over the world. This is a prototype.

Source – Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol 1″

Question – But you don’t think that you are responsible for all the Sannyasins living here, for the life and the future of the children I have seen in this city?

Osho : I am not responsible for anybody. I am not even a member of this commune. I live outside the City of Rajneeshpuram. And I am not a sannyasin, as you can see. It is the commune’s responsibility. I am very irresponsible.

When I was leaving the university, one girl used to love me. But just the way girls are — and particularly in India — she was shy, and I am not the one to chase anybody. I do chasing sitting in my chair… I am just a lazy man. She loved me; and continuously she was sending messages to me. She wanted to get married to me. Then the day of departure came and we were leaving. We had passed our final examinations and then she could not contain it any more.

She pulled me aside and told me, “I have loved you for two years, but I had not the courage to say it. And you are a strange man… I made so many efforts and so many messages, and you just remained as if I am not here.”

I said, “You do not know. It is just out of compassion that I have remained that way, because I am a very irresponsible man. I may marry you, and tomorrow morning I may forget all about you. I may give birth to children and then I will not bother at all what happens to you and your children.” Just out of compassion, I kept out of it. It is enough that I am carrying my own responsibility towards myself That’s why I have never accepted any responsibility for anything.

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, wanted me to join politics. I was introduced to him by India’s very old seniormost parliamentarian, who had been a member of parliament from 1916 up to 1976. He was known as the father of the Indian parliament. Jawaharlal used to stay at his palace — his father was given the title of rajah, king, so his house had become the palace, and it was palatial.

And Jawaharlal was a man of tremendous intelligence. He talked just for five to ten minutes with me and he said, “You’d better join politics. You don’t waste your time here and there, you have a great future and I am with you and I will support you.”
I said, “Thank you for your generosity, but I am not going to be in any position where I am responsible for anybody.”

Politics means responsibility, and if you are not responsible you have to become a hypocrite. That’s what all the politicians have become. They talk about being responsible and nobody is responsible.

Now, millions of tons of food in Europe have been thrown in the ocean, but they will not send it to Ethiopia. One hundred thousand dollars were needed to take it to the ocean, and they dumped it there — fresh fruit, fresh food. But its presence was going to bring the prices down, and that they would not like. And who cares about Ethiopia? And why should anybody care?

In speeches, everybody will talk about Ethiopia and responsibility, but the real face is totally different. The prime minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, is one of my friends. He is Jawaharlal’s grandson. If I had accepted Jawaharlal’s offer, perhaps I would have been in his place. He is selling wheat to other countries while half of India is starving and dying.

And they go on talking about sympathy and compassion for the poor… but he needs nuclear weapons. For that he needs money, and India has only raw materials to sell. It has no technology, no high technology. The poor man works his whole life producing wheat and dies starving while the wheat will be sold to purchase uranium to make nuclear weapons.

I don’t take anybody’s responsibility. In this way I help whoever comes close to me to be responsible for himself. People who take others’ responsibility are responsible for creating retarded, dependent slaves all around the world. If nobody had taken their responsibility, they would have taken the challenge of life and struggled for themselves.

I have heard about a very super-rich woman. She had come to a holiday resort, to the best hotel. Her boy, who looked perfectly young and healthy, was carried from the car on a stretcher. Even the hotel manager and others thought that there must be something wrong. The young man looked perfectly healthy, in the best of health. They said, “What is wrong with this young man? What has happened?” She said, “Nothing has happened, but he can afford to be carried on a stretcher. Why should he walk?”

Now, this woman thinks she is making the life of the boy luxurious, but she is crippling him. He may become crippled, he may not ever be able to walk. Somebody took the whole responsibility.

It is a known fact that in the whole history of humanity, not a single genius has come from superrich families. And the reason is simple. All that he wanted was available, there was no challenge. When there is no challenge intelligence goes out of function, it is not needed.

It is strange. It should have been otherwise. The richer people should have given birth to better geniuses, better Einsteins, better painters, musicians, poets, but they have just given birth to buffalos.

I don’t take anybody’s responsibility, because I love people and I have compassion enough not to take their responsibility on my shoulders. They have to take their own responsibility.

Source – Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol 1″

Question – Do you have any kind of personal strategy for the future, any message to leave? Do you have any idea of Rajneeshism and Rajneeshpuram after you? Do you have any successor?

Osho – No, because all the religions who have followed those lines have turned poisonous, have turned into curses on humanity. I don’t want to be a curse to humanity. I am a blessing and I want to remain a blessing.
So nobody is going to succeed me.

And my message for my people is that the moment I am gone, your religion is gone. Then whatever remains is just a corpse. Don’t start worshipping the corpse. I am a free man and I want every sannyasin to be a free man. My love is the only binding force between them; otherwise, there is no theology, no belief system, no agreement on anything.

Only one thing is keeping them together around the world, and that is their love for me. When I am not there, nothing can keep them together. There is no bridge. Each sannyasin is individually connected to me. You don’t ask the sun, “If one day you stop rising, what is going to happen to the rays?” You know that the rays will not be there the moment I am dead and gone.

They have lived with me, they have danced with me, they have enjoyed with me — now they know the secret of how to enjoy life, how to live life. And there is no need to go on making a church, popes, successors… because they have done so much harm. I will not allow my people to do that.

When I am gone, then you disperse. What is the point? my love was keeping you together, and I am no more there. It is good that I am no more, because now your last attachment is also dropped. I was the last attachment to be broken, now you are totally free. You were free from your family, from your nation, from your religion, but a small thin thread of love was binding you with me. Now I am no more there; I give you the last, the final taste of freedom.

And then whatever happens, happens. I am not responsible for it. The people who will be coming after me will have the responsibility. And I never think about the future. I am so totally involved with the present… I am talking to you, and at this moment only you exist for me. The whole space has disappeared and the whole time has stopped. Just you and me… only then can there be some communication.

And I don’t think about what is going to happen tomorrow. I am not thinking what you are going to write about me, and I am not going to read it, whatever you write! It doesn’t matter at all. What matters is that we enjoyed this moment together, loved this moment, laughed together, felt each other’s humanity.

I cannot see anybody as a journalist, as a doctor, as an engineer. Those are not your realities, they are just your jobs. When I look at you, I put aside your journalist, I am talking directly to you. Journalism is just your way of earning bread and butter. What importance does it have? I cannot love bread and butter, but I love you as a person, as an individual, and whatsoever I am saying is totally different from what you would have found in the past with the many other people you have interviewed. Even in the future you may not come across a man like me.

My whole interest in this moment is how to help you enjoy the time you have been with me. Your magazine, your writing, does not come between me and you, so when you started introducing the magazine, I was going to stop you, but just out of politeness I listened. What concern do I have with magazines, newspapers?

My concern is purely with the individual, and then it is up to him. Whatsoever he wants to make out of it, he will make out of it. I trust in my love, and I trust in the dignity of the individual that is sitting before me, and the trust will take care of everything. I never think of tomorrow.

Source – Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol 1″