Uniqueness

 

 

There is not anybody like you anywhere in the world -- there has never been before and there will never be again. You are the only one! But religions have not accepted this simple fact. Existence is not repetitive, and it is good that it is not repetitive.

 

Just thinking of a world where millions of Gautam Buddhas are sitting under the bodhi trees -- it will be so boring! -- or millions of Jesus Christs carrying their crosses and roaming all around the world. They will not even find somebody to crucify them, because others will carry the crosses themselves! Who has time to crucify anybody? It will be ugly; it will be boring.

 

One Jesus has a beauty; many Jesuses will look like produced in a factory on an assembly line, like Ford motor cars: every minute a car comes out, every minute a Jesus comes out, well equipped with the cross, et cetera, with those twelve apostles following him, and they go on coming from the factory, round the clock...! What you are going to do with so many Jesus Christs? What you are going to do with so many Mahaviras, so many Buddhas? No, it is not needed.

 

Each individual is unique; uniqueness is a gift from existence. But why these religions have been teaching: Live in the spirit of Jesus Christ, or in the spirit of Gautam Buddha -- why? Don't you have your own spirit? Then drink alcohol -- get some spirit! Make some spirit of your own! Why Jesus Christ? What wrong this poor fellow has done to you? Can't you stop crucifying him? Will not you ever be able to forgive him?

 

The whole idea is of imitation. Imitate! You have no right to be yourself, you have to imitate. You can be accepted only if you are somebody else -- Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Mahavira, Jesus, Kabir, Nanak, but not yourself. And can't you see a simple fact? -- that Jesus was not Moses. He should have repeated, then he would have saved his life, he would not have been crucified by the Jews if he had lived the spirit of Moses. But he tried to create his own spirit, he tried to be an individual, and that was his crime. If he had simply repeated he would have been respected, glorified as a great rabbi. But he became a rebel.

 

Everybody has to become a rebel, not an imitator!

 

That's why, Premraj, you see people are living there deadly serious; they don't love their work, they don't enjoy their work. How can they enjoy? They are not doing their work. You can never enjoy somebody else's life, howsoever beautiful it is -- it is not your life. You can only enjoy to be yourself. A rose flower can be blissful only as a rose. If you force the rose flower to become a marigold it will be deadly serious; it will lose all joy, all fragrance.

 

That's what is happening. It is not only happening there in the so-called Free University of Amsterdam, it is happening everywhere. Hindus are trying to be like Krishnas or Ramas, Jainas are trying to be like Mahaviras, Mohammedans are trying to be like Mohammeds, Christians are trying to be like Christs... everybody is imitative. The whole world has become full of imitation and whole world is looking sad. It is inevitable, this sadness, and it is not only .sadness. Hidden behind this sadness is a state of schizophrenia, because basically nobody can be anybody else than himself. So deep down he is himself, but on top of it he is pretending to be somebody else, hence everybody is a hypocrite.

 

All the religions have done this to humanity: they have created a hypocrite world, a schizophrenic humanity, a split personality. This is their gift! It is a curse, but this is what they call a gift to humanity. Everybody is living a split life, a double life: from the front door one life, from the back door totally another. And of course, between the two he is caught in a tension, in anxiety; he cannot be totally either this or that. He is torn apart! Hence the misery in people's eyes, the sadness, the deadness.

 

Nobody needs to be anybody else. Just be yourself! Show some respect to your life. Respect yourself, love yourself, because unless you respect yourself you will not respect anybody else in the world. If you cannot even respect your life, how can you respect anybody else? You can pretend, but pretension is not truth and it is pretension creates a bondage around you. It becomes an imprisonment -- and one hates imprisonment.

 

It is not accidental that Friedrich Nietzsche had to declare -- I say had to declare -- that God is dead and man is now free. It is not only his individual opinion, it is really the voice of the millions who have no courage to speak. If God is destroying your freedom then it is better to kill God and save freedom, rather than killing freedom and saving God.

 

Why one should be like Jesus Christ? Why one should live in the spirit of Jesus Christ? There is no need! He never imitated anybody. If you really understand Jesus you should not repeat him.

 

Buddha never repeated anybody. He could have become easily a Krishna -- he had that much intelligence. He could have pretended to be a Krishna, but he never did anything like that. Hindus have not been able to forgive him because he was not following the trodden path, he was not following the crowd, he was not part of the mob psychology. He went on his own; he created his own small footpath towards truth.

 

Everybody has to create his own footpath. There are no superhighways towards truth, only footpaths, and they too are not ready-made, available; you have to walk and create them. You have to search for truth and in your very search you create the path. The path is not already there that you can simply go to the truth. The search for truth is an immense adventure. Each moment one is in for a great surprise.

 

-Osho, "The Wild Geese and the Water, #1, Q2"