Question – You said, “we are not doing anything here,” But those of us who live and work here in the ashram are continuously occupied with’doing’. In fact the more we do, the more we are praised; and anyone who does not, or does less, is scolded. please explain.

Osho – When I said, “We are not doing anything here,” I meant I am not doing anything here. Because I love you. When you love, the doing is not a doing at all.

If you love me, then you will also not think that you are doing very much. In fact you will not think that you are doing anything. Love is not a duty. In love, work becomes worship. You work in the ashram. The whole quality of the work, and your attitude, will be different if you love me. If you don’t love me, of course it is work. Then your mind will hanker for praise. Then in many ways you will try to avoid the work — as many of you are doing! You go on finding ways and means: how to avoid it, how not to do it.

I never avoid, because I love you. The more I can do. the better I feel. But you avoid — as if work is something that you are dragging: a burden. If work is a burden, only then it looks like work. If work comes out of love, it becomes worship. Then there is no need for any other meditation. It is enough. The work itself becomes the meditation. You are so deeply in it that the mind stops.

Energy needs work otherwise the energy will become restlessness. Energy needs expression, energy needs to be creative. Otherwise the same energy, coiled up within you, will become diseased, an illness. You have energy. The energy has to be creative. There is no happiness except in creativity.

But creativity is work, with love. A painter paints. He is not working; he is loving. He is completely absorbed in it — the doer is not there. A singer sings or a dancer dances. If the dancer is just a professional then it is work. Then he will be tired. But if a dancer really loves dancing, then the more he moves into it, the more energy he gets to move further on.

It is said about Nijinsky — one of the greatest dancers that has ever walked on earth — that even scientists were surprised: they couldn’t believe his jumping. When he would dance he would take jumps that were so big they were against gravitation. They were not possible: one cannot jump that much. And the way he would jump — so gracefully! And when he would be coming down he would come like a dove — so slowly, as if gravitation was not functioning. Many times Nijinsky was asked, “What is the secret?”

He said, “I don’t know. Except that I love dancing.” And once he said, “When you love dancing, then you don’t function under the law of gravitation. You function under the law of grace.”

That is the difference between Moses and Jesus. Moses brings the law of gravitation into the world — all those Ten Commandments are laws, just like gravitation — and Jesus brings the law of grace, which is not a law at all. When you love deeply, you function in a totally different dimension. If you loved me, this question would not have arisen. You would not think of it as work.

Watch a mother — how much she does for the child. But if you ask her, she will say, “I have not been doing anything. In fact many more things were needed to be done and I have not done them. I always feel that my child has not received as much care as was needed.” Then go to the secretary of a club or an institute and ask him. He will give you a long list of everything that he has been doing there. Even things which he has not done will be included in the list! He is a doer; a mother is a lover.

I was reading the biography of a Hindu sannyasin who lived in South Africa. He came to the Himalayas on a pilgrimage. He was going uphill and it was hot. He was perspiring and gasping for breath; the journey was hard. Just in front of him was a girl, not more than ten years of age, carrying a very heavy, fat child on her shoulders. She was perspiring. The sannyasin spoke to the girl and said, “My daughter, the child seems to be very heavy.”

The girl looked at the sannyasin and said, “Swamiji, he is not a burden. He is my brother. He is not a burden at all, he has no weight — he is my brother.” When you love, weight disappears; when you love, you function in a different world.

Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You, Vol 2″

Question – Beloved Osho, When we are scattered throughout the world, most of us far from you and living in small groups. Then what is the meaning of the second gachchhami: sangham sharanam gachchhami?

Osho – Now it has more meaning than it had before. Let me tell you about all the gachchhamis. The first is: Buddham sharanam gachchhami: “I go to the feet of the awakened one.” It is an approach of humbleness, openness, non-resistance. Without such an approach no master can function. The disciple has to give way for the master to enter the innermost core of his being. And that’s what he is saying: Buddham sharanam gachchhami — “I go to the feet of the awakened one.” He is saying, “I am no more.” He is saying, “Now you can do anything you want to do with me. I am absent and I want your presence in me.”

The second gachchhami is Sangham sharanam gachchhami — “I go to the feet of the commune of the awakened one.” The question has arisen about the second because now the commune in America is no more — but there are sannyasins all around the world. In a very subtle way, now our commune exists all over the world.

So don’t take it that the Oregon commune’s disappearance is just a disappearance; it has appeared everywhere where a sannyasin is alive and breathing. So the second gachchhami does not lose any meaning, it gains more meaning. It becomes universal.

It is easy to go to a master and to surrender. It is the simplest thing to do because the awakened person functions almost like a magnet. You are not doing anything, you are simply being pulled by the magnet. The second gachchhami is difficult, and hence more important than the first.

Now you are not only magnetically attracted by the charisma of the master…. You have tasted his love, his compassion, his awareness, his being. In his disciples it will not be so strong, it will not be a magnetic force…. But you have tasted the very being of the master in your surrender: you can recognize that anybody who has surrendered to the master has become in a very deep sense your brother or your sister. A love, because of the master, has arisen amongst the disciples. I call it love, I don’t want to call it any kind of organization. And to surrender to these simple people who have not yet arrived will make you more humble, will take your ego completely away from you.

The commune is now all over the world. Wherever a sannyasin exists, the commune exists. And when you are saying, “I go to the feet of the commune,” you are surrendering to millions of people. It is a tremendous experience of being egoless.

With a master there is a difficulty: you may surrender to a master because he is worthy of that — it is almost a demand from his very being. He is not saying anything to you, but his every breath is a demand. And the height of the man and the flight of his consciousness, on the one hand will help you to go to his feet; but on the other hand it may give rise to a subtle ego, that you have found a great master. In finding a great master, unconsciously you think you have become a great disciple.

But when you are doing the second gachchhami that possibility does not exist at all. You are simply being humble, you are simply showing your love — through the disciples — to the master.

The third gachchhami is Dhammam sharanam gachchhami: “I go to the feet of the ultimate realization of the master.” It is possible only after these first two gachchhamis that you can meaningfully say, “I go to the feet of the ultimate experience” — because it is abstract. The master was very tangible. The commune was not so tangible. And now particularly when you say, “I go to the feet of the commune,” you cannot even visualize or imagine it, because there is no commune as such, but individual sannyasins all over the world. But the third is the most difficult in the sense that you are entering abstraction — the religious experience, the experience of truth. You don’t know anything about it.

You have seen the man who has visited the land, you have felt his vibe, you have smelled the fragrance that he has brought, you have seen the light that is still lingering around him. In your deep surrender you have felt that this man is not what he looks; he is much more. He is carrying something invisible within himself.

This has been only a vague feeling, but it gives you an impetus to surrender yourself to the ultimate experience that has created the master, that has created the commune and that has become a star of attraction for you, a deep inspiration for you.

In the beginning the third gachchhami will be vague, abstract, but as you go on deeper in your surrender, with the first two gachchhamis, the third starts taking on more of a reality. It is not a dream, it starts becoming a truth.
All those three gachchhamis are deeply interconnected so none of them can be dropped at any point.

Source – Osho Book “Light on the Path”

Question – One day, as you talked about the new commune, I feel as though someone was hitting me again and again in my stomach until i thought i would vomit. Was that you? It it was, What are you up to?

Osho – HAVE YOU EVER HEARD that St. John of the Cross used to vomit during his ecstasies? Vomit can be of infinite significance. It can be a kind of unburdening. It can be not only indicative that the body wants to unburden – it can be indicative of the deeper psyche too, because the body and the soul are not separate, they are one. Whatsoever happens in the body happens in the soul too; whatsoever happens in the soul happens in the body too – they vibrate together.

It happens many times that when your inner being wants to release some garbage, your body will also release some garbage. And when your body releases some garbage, you will feel as if your mind has also become clean. Have you not felt that kind of cleanliness after a good vomit? Have you not felt a quality of calmness after a good vomit? It not only relieves your stomach, it not only relieves your physical system of some poison – corresponding to it, something in your psyche is also released.

You say, Shaila: AS YOU TALKED ABOUT THE NEW COMMUNE… The day I was talking about the new commune, many of you felt many things…. When I was talking about the new commune, it is natural that you started thinking about yourself – whether you will be acceptable in the new commune? whether you are worthy enough for the new commune? That is natural; for that idea to arise is natural – because the new commune will be the birth of a new man.

We will be creating an alternative world, a small alternative world. We will be moving in different dimensions than the people outside. We will be dropping all taboos, inhibitions, repressions. We will be vomiting all that the society has forced on you, that the society has stuffed you with. That’s why the hammering was felt in the stomach.

All the languages of the world have such expressions: when you cannot accept something you say, ”I cannot stomach it.” When you have to accept something against yourself, you say, ”I had to swallow it somehow.” The stomach is not just physical – it is as much psychological as it is physical; it is psychosomatic. That’s why whenever your emotions are disturbed, your stomach is immediately disturbed.

A man who is constantly angry cannot have a good stomach. A man who is aggressive cannot have a good stomach. A man who is worried will have ulcers, cannot have a good stomach. The stomach is the place where you are joined together: the soma and the psyche, both are joined there in the stomach, in the navel. The navel is the meeting point of matter and soul. That’s why in Japan to commit suicide people hit just under the navel. The navel is called HARA – that’s why in Japanese suicide is called HARAKIRI.

Have you not watched it, observed it, that fear is felt just exactly two inches below the navel? If you are driving and suddenly you see some accident is going to happen and it is beyond control, where are you hit? Where do you feel hit? Deep in the stomach below the navel.

Listening to me, Shaila, on that day, you must have felt this hammering in the stomach, because to become real sannyasins you will have to vomit much. You will have to vomit all your education and all your religion and all your culture and all your civilization. To become a real sannyasin you will have to become primally innocent – you will have to become children again.

And that is going to be the work in the Commune: to efface all that the society has burdened you with, to make you a clean slate; to make you again wild, to make you again as innocent as children are, as innocent as animals; to make you again as innocent as the trees and the rocks. Certainly, much will have to be vomited; your stomach will have to be cleaned physically and spiritually. Yes, it was I who was hitting – excuse me…!

Source – Osho Book “Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind”

[A sannyasin says: I feel very much depressed when I come to the ashram – I don’t know why. But I come because I feel very much love for you and I want to do all the meditations. It seems all the people around here are very jealous. ... There are rules and regulations everywhere.]

Osho – Rules and regulations are imposed by me. Nobody else is imposing them. If you love me, you love my rules and regulations also. You don’t understand. Without rules and regulations, you won’t be able to even see me.

For fifteen years I lived without rules and regulations, and there was always a crowd of thousands of people around me. I saw it was not possible to help anyone this way. I had become a marketplace.

Even one afternoon when I was asleep, I opened my eyes and saw somebody on the roof – he had removed a tile. I said, What are you doing?’ And he said, ’I was curious, and because I couldn’t reach you, I came this way.’

Without rules and regulations it will be just as if there are no rules and regulations for the traffic. You are a driver – you will understand what will happen. There will be no possibility to go anywhere; all the roads will be blocked. This much is possible – that here you can talk with me. You can have your problems solved, I can suggest something to you. It is possible because of rules and regulations, otherwise not.

So don’t take it the wrong way. It is to help you. The day I decide I am not interested in you now, not interested in helping people, I will remove all rules and regulations – and then you will repent. I will be happy with this – because this is a big problem, and then there will be no problem for me – but then I will not be of any help to you. So don’t take it wrongly. This is your misunderstanding.

Source – Osho Book “Nothing to Lose But Your Head”

Question – Beloved Osho, What will be the Legal System used in the new commune until all of its members are totally conscious? Will there need to be a system of punishment and reward?

Osho – Maneesha, all legal systems are nothing but the revenge of society — revenge against those who don’t fit in with the system. According to me, law is not for protection of the just, it is for protection of the crowd mind; whether it is just or unjust does not matter. Law is against the individual and for the crowd. It is an effort to reduce the individual and his freedom, and his possibility of being himself.

The latest scientific researches are very revealing. The people who are termed criminals are not responsible for their crimes; their crimes are genetic, they inherit them. Just as a blind man is not responsible for his blindness, a murderer is not responsible for his murderousness. Both inherit the tendency — one of blindness, another of committing murder. Now it is almost an established scientific fact that punishing anybody for any crime is simply idiotic. It is almost like punishing somebody because he has tuberculosis — sending him to jail because he is suffering from cancer. All criminals are sick, psychologically and spiritually both.

In my vision of a commune, the courts will not consist of law experts, they will consist of people who understand genetics and how crimes are inherited from generation to generation. They have to decide not for any punishment, because every punishment is wrong — not only wrong, every punishment is criminal. The man who has committed anything wrong has to be sent to the right institution; maybe a hospital, to be operated on, or a psychiatric institution, or a psychoanalytic school. He needs our sympathy, our love, our help. Instead of giving him our sympathy and love, for centuries we have been giving him punishment. Man has committed so much cruelty behind such beautiful names as order, law, justice.

The new man will not have any jails and will not have any judges and will not have any legal experts. These are absolutely unnecessary, cancerous growths on the body of society. There will certainly have to be sympathetic scientists; meditative, compassionate beings, to work out why it happened that a certain man committed rape: is he really responsible? According to me, on no account is he responsible. Either he has committed rape because of the priests and the religions teaching celibacy, repression for thousands of years — this is the outcome of a repressive morality — or biologically he has hormones which compel him to commit rape.

Although you are living in a modern society, most of you are not contemporaries because you are not aware of the reality that science goes on discovering. Your educational system prevents you from knowing it, your religions prevent you from knowing it, your governments prevent you from knowing it.

A man is attracted to a woman and thinks that he is in love. The woman also thinks she is in love. But the scientific truth is that they both have certain biological factors, certain hormones that attract each other. That’s why it is possible to change the sex of one person from man to woman or from woman to man just by changing the hormonal system. A good injection of hormones and you are full of love.
The man who is committing rape perhaps has more hormones than those moral people who manage to live with one woman for their whole life, thinking that they are moral. The real fact is that their hormones are very weak; it is enough for their hormones to be satisfied with one woman. A man with more hormones will need more women; so will be the case with a woman. It is not a question of morality, it is a question of biology. A man who commits rape needs all our sympathy, needs a certain operation in which his extra hormones are removed, and he will cool down, calm down — he will become a Gautam Buddha.

To punish him is simply an exercise in stupidity. By punishing, you cannot change his hormones. Throwing him in jail, you will create a homosexual, some kind of pervert. In American jails they have done a survey: thirty percent of the inmates are homosexuals. That is according to their confession; we don’t know how many have not confessed. Thirty percent is not a small number. In monasteries the number is bigger — fifty percent, sixty percent. But the responsibility lies with our idiotic clinging to religions which are out of date, which are not supported and nourished by scientific research.

The new commune of man will be based on science, not on superstition. If somebody does something which is harmful to the commune as such, then his body has to be looked into; he needs some physiological change or biological change. His mind has to be looked into — perhaps he needs some psychoanalysis. The deepest possibility is that neither the body nor the mind are of much help; that means he needs a deep spiritual regeneration, a deep meditative cleansing.

Instead of courts, we should have meditative centers of different kinds, so every unique individual can find his own way. And we will have — instead of law experts, who are simply irrelevant: they are parasites sucking our blood.We need scientific people of different persuasions in the courts, because somebody may have a chemical defect, somebody may have a biological defect, somebody may have a physiological defect. We need all these kinds of experts, of all persuasions and schools of psychology, all types of meditators, and we can transform the poor people who have been victims of unknown forces… and have been punished by us. They have suffered in a double sense.

First, they are suffering from an unknown biological force. Secondly, they are suffering at the hands of your judges, who are nothing but butchers, henchmen; your advocates, all kinds of your law experts, your jailers — it is simply so insane that future human beings will not be able to believe it. It is almost the same with the past.

Just the other day there was a report from South India that a woman was thought to be having intercourse with the devil. Now the devil has been almost dead for many centuries; suddenly he became alive in that small village. And the villagers took the woman to the priest who declared that she should be hung upside down from a tree and beaten: the devil is still inside her. Somebody informed the police of the nearby town. The police arrived, but the villagers were reluctant…. Two hundred villagers were standing, stopping the police, saying, “You cannot interfere with our religious conceptions.” And they were beating the woman — they killed her! Until she was dead, they were not satisfied. They could not find the devil, but they killed the woman.

This used to be the common practice all over the world. Mad people were beaten to cure their madness; people who were schizophrenic, who were thought to be possessed by ghosts, were beaten almost to death — this was thought to be the treatment. Millions of people have died because of your great treatments.

Now we can simply say that those people were barbarous, ignorant, primitive. The same will be said about us. I am already saying it: that your courts are barbarous, your laws are barbarous. The very idea of punishment is unscientific. There is nobody in the world who is a criminal; everybody is sick, and needs sympathy and a scientific cure, and half of your crimes will disappear. First, with the disappearance of private property…. Private property creates thieves, dacoits, pickpockets, politicians, priests.

You will be surprised to know that just a few days ago a cartoonist was put into jail in the contemporary, educated city of Madras, because he has printed a cartoon in a magazine with the caption that the man who looks like a pickpocket is a cabinet minister; and the man who looks like a dacoit, is the prime minister. There were two men in the cartoon. Immediately, he was caught by the police — and this is called democracy! One cannot even joke, one cannot even laugh. He has not named anybody — but all your politicians are pickpockets, are dacoits. They also need psychiatric treatment, they also need sympathetic psychiatric nursing homes. They have to be cured of their politics. Politics is a disease.

Man has suffered from many diseases and he has not even been aware that they are diseases. He has been punishing small criminals and he has been worshiping great criminals. Who is Alexander the Great? — a great criminal; he murdered people on a mass scale. Adolf Hitler alone killed millions of people, but he will be remembered in history as a great leader of man.

I received a letter from the president of the Neo-Nazi party saying that I should stop speaking against Adolf Hitler because, “It hurts our religious feeling.” I said, “My God!” I had been receiving letters from Hindus, from Mohammedans, from Christians, from Buddhists, from Jainas. I have been facing hundreds of cases in courts on the same grounds, that I have hurt somebody’s religious feeling — but I had never even dreamt that to speak against Adolf Hitler was going to hurt someone’s religious feelings.

And the president of Neo-Nazi party had said, “Adolf Hitler, to us, is not just a great political leader, he is also the reincarnation of the ancient, Old Testament prophet Elijah. Now he will be remembered in history as the great incarnation of the prophet Elijah who killed forty-five million people. Certainly it must have been done according to the will of God. Who are the people you read about in history?
Napoleon Bonaparte, Ivan the Terrible, Nadir Shah, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane are all mass scale criminals. But their crimes are so big, perhaps, that you cannot conceive…. They have killed millions of people, burned millions of people alive, but they are not thought of as criminals.

And a small pickpocket, who takes away a two rupee note from your pocket will be punished by the court. And perhaps the two rupee note that you were carrying was not authentic at all. But his mother is dying, and he has no money for medicine, and I cannot say that he is a criminal; he is simply a kind-hearted man who loves his mother.

Once private property disappears…. And in a commune there is going to be no private property, everything belongs to all; naturally, stealing will disappear. You don’t steal water and accumulate it, you don’t steal air. A commune has to create everything in such abundance that even the retarded person cannot think of accumulating it. What is the point? It is always available, fresh. Money has to disappear from society. A commune does not need money. Your needs should be fulfilled by the commune. All have to produce, and all have to make the commune richer, affluent, accepting the fact that a few people will be lazy. But there is no harm in it.

In every family, you will find somebody lazy. Somebody is a poet, somebody is a painter, somebody simply goes on playing on his flute — but you love the person. A certain percentage of lazy people will be respectfully allowed. In fact a commune that does not have lazy people will be a little less rich than other communes which have a few lazy people who do nothing but meditate, who do nothing but go on playing on their guitar while others are toiling in the fields. A little more human outlook is needed; these people are not useless. They may not seem to be productive of commodities, but they are producing a certain joyful, cheerful atmosphere. Their contribution is meaningful and significant.

With the disappearance of money as a means of exchange, many crimes will disappear. As religions disappear, with their repressive superstitions and moralities, crimes like rape, perversions like homosexuality, diseases like AIDS will become unheard of. And when from the very beginning every child is brought up with a reverence for life — reverence for the trees because they are alive, reverence for animals, reverence for birds — do you think such a child one day can be a murderer? It will be almost inconceivable.

And if life is joyous, full of songs and dances, do you think somebody will desire to commit suicide? Ninety percent of crimes will disappear automatically; only ten percent of crimes may remain, which are genetic, which need hospitalization — but not jails, prisons, not people to be sentenced to death. This is all so ugly, so inhuman, so insane. The new commune, the new man, can live without any law, without any order. Love will be his law, understanding will be his order. Science will be, in every difficult situation, his last resort.

Osho - Buddha called his community SANGHA. Buddha says to his disciples to seek three refuges. When anybody comes to surrender he has to surrender to three things. He says: “I surrender to Buddha, I surrender to sangha, I surrender to DHAMMA.” Buddha is the alive, the presence herenow. But he will not be there always. Sooner or later he will disappear, just as a lamp disappears and then you cannot find where the flame has gone. Buddha will disappear — this body cannot contain him for long, because the body is mortal and he is immortal. The vehicle is weak, the vehicle cannot persist for long. Sooner or later the body will fall and the flame will disappear. Then to whom will you surrender? So Buddha says, “I am creating a community: the sangha.”

Sangha is a community of those who live with the same attitude, who live a life in common, who commune with each other. It is a community, a community of seekers on the same path, a community of those who have been in love with the same Buddha, whose love joins them together.

The community is a group. When the buddha is there you can look at him — he can be helpful, he can guide you, he can take you out of your misery and darkness — but when he is gone, then there is only one possibility: you should join together to help each other. A few will be a little ahead, a few will not be so. A few may be lagging behind, a few may be marching forcibly, a few may just be fast asleep; but if there is a community, then those who are lagging behind can also be helped. The community can take care of them: the community can think about them, can love them, can help them, can guide them. When a Buddha is alive there is no need, but when the Buddha is gone a community is the only refuge.

Jesus was creating a community. This community is not the church, remember; this community is not a sect, remember. This community is a family of fellow seekers, not of fellow believers. When you believe, the community becomes a sect. When you seek, then it is a community. A community is an alive phenomenon of those who are all seeking together and helping each other.

There is a parable in India that once it happened that a great fire broke out in a forest. Two men were helpless there in the forest, they couldn’t get out of it, because one was blind and another was crippled in the legs. The crippled one could not run: he could see, but he could not run. The blind one could run fast, but he couldn’t see. So they formed a community. They talked to each other and they said, “We can help each other.” So the blind man took the crippled man on his shoulders. They became one man. The blind could walk, the crippled could see. They helped each other. They came out of the fire; they were saved. Separate they would have died; together they found the way out.

A community is a community of blind people and crippled people. When a Buddha is there, there is no need. But when Buddha is gone, the master is gone, then the source of life disappears. The whole forest is on fire and everywhere there is darkness. Somebody is crippled and somebody is blind — everybody lacks something. But everybody also has something. Then the community can arise.

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″