Worship 

 

 

Question 1:

Beloved Osho,

In india there is a proverb, "vasudhaiva kutumbakam: the whole earth is a family". perhaps this proverb is one thousand years old. osho, were there really people once who lived like a family? or was it a vision of some mystic, a vision which you are going to bring to reality?

 

 

There has never been any society who has lived according to the vision of "VASUDHAIVA KUTUMBAKAM: the whole earth is one family."

 

The mystics have been, for thousands of years, talking about it, visualizing it, but unfortunately people worship the mystics but don't allow the mystic to transform them. Worshipping is really a way of escaping from transformation; it is saying, in other words, "You are right, but it is not time for me yet. I respect you, I worship you, and I will remember what you are saying; but I cannot act accordingly right now. I am just an ordinary human being, you are a great realized soul - the distance is vast."

 

Worshipping the mystics is not real respect. It is a strategy of the mind to avoid seeing the finger that is pointing towards the moon.

 

Man is very cunning. He can crucify somebody to get rid of him, he can worship somebody to get rid of him. Crucifixion and worshipping are not different because the basic purpose is the same:

 

"Just leave me alone; your stupid utopia is good, I don't have any argument against it, but you are a special being, and I am just an ordinary creature."

 

To prove this fact, people have called their mystics incarnations of God, messiahs, saviors, messengers. In some way they have made them so far away, they have created such a distance between themselves and the mystics, that the vision of the mystic remained a vision. It is impossible with this approach to make it a reality.

 

The first step to make such a grand vision a reality, is to realize that the mystic is just as ordinary a human being as you are. If he has realized himself, you can also realize yourself. What has become actual in him, is potential in you. What has blossomed in him, is just a seed in you. But between the seed and the flower there is no distance at all. The seed is already on the way, making every effort to become a flower.

 

But there have been two reasons denying this simple fact. One was that the masses wanted the distance; and the other was that it fulfilled the egos of many who were not really mystics, who were simply pretenders.

 

To say, yourself, that you are sent by God, is such a lie - because God is a lie, and now you are making that lie even more destructive by saying that you are a messenger, that you are a prophet.

 

It fulfilled the egos of those who were not really realized people, so they never made any effort to destroy the distance. On the contrary, they emphasized that it was true - what was possible for them was impossible for you.

 

To prove that the distance is immense, either they fabricated miracles or after their death you added miracles in their life - because that makes the distinction very clear. You cannot do miracles, and these people were doing miracles. Certainly, they were coming from a higher order, with some spiritual power that you don't have.

 

They also wanted that miracles should be fabricated around them; it helped their ego. It helped you also to protect yourself; otherwise you would have to transform yourself, bring something which looks impossible into reality - "Vasudhaiva kutumbakam: the whole world is one family." Even one family is not one family. Brothers are fighting with brothers, husbands are fighting with wives, wives are fighting with husbands, children are fighting with children. Even the family is not a family - and the mystics are talking of the whole world being conceived as one family.

 

So it helped their egos to create the distance, it helped you because it seems almost impossible.

 

Even five persons in one home cannot live peacefully; there is constant quarreling and fighting and conflict. Even the people who love each other are a pain in each other's neck. So what possibility is there that the whole world becomes a family, a loving commune?

 

Seeing the impossibility, it is better to accept that it is beyond you, it is only possible for those special beings. But the whole world is not consisting of those special beings, "so all that we can do is worship them." That is a very sophisticated way of crucifying a person.

 

A real mystic will deny it, that there is any difference, because he can see why you want the difference and the distinction.

 

In Gautam Buddha's stories about his past lives there is one story that just before this life, when he became Gautam Buddha, he was an unconscious human being as everybody else is, and he heard about one man that had become awakened, enlightened. Everybody was going to see him. He also went to see him, with flowers to offer. He touched his feet, offered the flowers unto his feet. As he was standing up, he could not believe it; the man who was thought to be enlightened bowed down to this unconscious human being and touched his feet.

 

Buddha said, "What are you doing? I am an unconscious, ordinary human being; you are an enlightened, awakened soul. Why have you touched my feet?"

 

The man laughed, and he said, "Yesterday I was also unconscious, unawakened; today I am awakened. Today you are unconscious, tomorrow you will be awakened. Remember that I touched your feet. Never forget it when you become awakened."

 

This story is so significant. That man is saying, "I am trying to teach you that from now onward...

 

because I can see the possibility, the potential that you will become awakened. It is only a question of time. The time does not matter - tomorrow or one life afterward. But remember that a Buddha touched your feet while you were unawakened."

 

What is the message? The message is, he is trying to create a bridge. He is trying to declare that awakening is not something supernatural, it is something that is intrinsic in your nature; that it is not something to do with God, it has something to do with you. It depends on you. You can go on sleeping as long as you want, and the moment you want to wake up you can wake up.

 

And Buddha remembered it. His last words when he was dying were, "Please don't start worshipping me. I was not here to create worshippers - there are millions of worshippers already. Don't make statues of me; otherwise you will forget my teaching, a deviation, and you become satisfied with worshipping - which makes no difference to you. You remain the same."

 

And that's exactly what people did. He died, and they started making statues and worshipping him in spite of his last words. In fact, there are more statues of Gautam Buddha in the world than of anybody else.

 

The Middle Eastern languages like Arabic and Persian don't have another word for statue. Their word for statue is budt, and 'budt' has come from 'buddha'. The statues of Buddha were so many that his name became synonymous with statue. And for twenty-five centuries people have been worshipping him. There are thousands of temples in the East. Nobody seems to be interested in the transformation he was teaching, and everybody is very enthusiastic about worshipping him.

 

Worship seems to be a very subtle strategy to avoid the man.

 

Jews also avoided Jesus, but they used a very primitive method. Hindus have also avoided Gautam Buddha but they have used a very sophisticated method. And you can see by the results - because Jesus was crucified, and crucifixion became the source of Christianity. It is out of murder, out of violence and blood, that a religion arises. You cannot expect from Christianity anything else. In two thousand years it has killed millions of people. Its very origin was in murder, in crucifixion.

 

They have not bothered about Jesus' teachings. He was saying, "Love your enemy like yourself."

 

Then I cannot understand who these people were killing. If you are going to love your enemy, are you going to kill your lovers? Enemies have to be loved, so who is to be killed - friends? No, the teaching has not been followed; only sermons were given in the churches. But enemies - and innocent enemies, who have done no harm to the Christians.... Their only crime was that they were not Christians, and they were not willing to be Christians; and that was too much, too big a crime.

 

Hindus used a more sophisticated method, perhaps because it was an older civilization, more cultured. They could have crucified Gautam Buddha, but they did not do that. On the contrary, they accepted Gautam Buddha as one of the incarnations of the Hindu God.

 

You will be surprised that Hindus have twenty-four incarnations of God. This number twenty-four got fixed in the mind of India. Just as there are twenty-four hours in the day - one circle is complete - one creation is one circle of millions and millions of years. In one circle of existence there are twenty-four tirthankaras; that was the Jaina concept.

 

Things arise out of strange things. Every language and its arithmetic is based on ten digits, and those ten digits have come from the ten fingers - because uneducated people count on their fingers.

 

So the first counting was done on fingers, and there are ten of them; this is just a coincidence. That's why from one to ten the whole mathematics is complete, then it is repetition. Eleven, twelve, thirteen - that is repetition. Then you can go to millions of numbers, but they are all repetitions. The basic numbers are ten, but there is no necessity that there should be ten basic numbers.

 

There have been mathematicians like Leibnitz who worked only with three numbers - one, two, three - and managed to do every calculation. After three, four does not come because four does not exist in Leibnitz' mathematics. After three comes ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, twenty. There is no problem - you can count that way. In the ordinary mathematics there will be four chairs in the room; Leibnitz will count ten, and it makes no difficulties, the calculations will be perfectly right.

 

Albert Einstein even tried to work with two. Just reading Leibnitz he said, "Why three?"

 

That too was another coincidence; it was because Leibnitz was a very Christian-minded person, and the trinity would be disturbed. If you bring down the numbers to less, if you make the numbers two, what will happen to the trinity? If there are only two digits, then one, two, ten, eleven. Ten will be the number, not three. To save the trinity and not to get into trouble with the pope, he kept the number three. Albert Einstein tried with number two. Two is certainly absolutely essential - you cannot work with just one - and he succeeded; with two it is possible.

 

The same kind of coincidence happened in India. Jainism, being the oldest religion, had the idea that just as a day and night make the whole circle, and then begins another day and night, another circle, it is the same with creation... one creation, then everything goes into dark night, disappears, then another creation starts.... Each creation has twenty-four teachers; those are called tirthankaras, the path-makers. That is the literal meaning of tirthankara.

 

Before Jainism's twenty-four tirthankaras became famous, Hindus had only ten incarnations of God; but then they started feeling a little poor. "Jainas have twenty-four and you have only ten?"

 

In every sphere, people are so competitive and behave so stupidly, that unless you look you will never find out how suddenly after Mahavira, because he was the most prominent Jaina tirthankara....

 

Although he was the last, he was the most important person in the whole range of twenty-four. Up to Mahavira, all Hindu scriptures have ten incarnations. Perhaps the fact there were ten incarnations is nothing but the result of tenfinger counting. Perhaps the reason is the same as in mathematics; and you will not be surprised that the number ten is also a Hindu concept. It was the Hindus who first brought the digit ten.

 

So it is not impossible that ten is the complete number; naturally ten incarnations are complete. You can look into your languages and you will find it. For example, all languages which are originated from Sanskrit - particularly all the languages of the developed countries of the West.... The Sanskrit for two is 'dwa', which becomes in some languages 'twa' and finally culminates in 'two'.

 

The English 'three' comes from Sanskrit 'tri'. The difference is so small - because in English there is no 'dthra' sound. The alphabet in Sanskrit is double that of English, so in English you cannot write 'dthri'; if you write 'dthri' it will become 'three'. You have to make 'dthra' by making 't-h', joining two letters.

 

The Sanskrit for six is 'sasth', and you can see it is connected. For nine it is 'nov'; and you can see it is connected. Ten was the complete number; after ten it is a repetition.

 

But once Mahavira emphasized twenty-four tirthankaras, Hindu scholars started feeling that they were a little behind. People started saying, "You have only ten tirthankaras, while Jainas have twenty-four." So after Mahavira, Hindu scriptures started talking about twenty-four reincarnations - suddenly, with no reasoning, with no cause. Just as Mahavira died, immediately Hindu scriptures started talking about twenty-four reincarnations, just to compete with Jainism.

 

It gave them an opportunity also, and this was the opportunity - perhaps for this opportunity they made it twenty-four, or vice versa. They accepted Gautam Buddha, who was the most influential person outside the Hindu fold. They could not really crucify him - they were much more sophisticated people - but they could still crucify him in a very logical way.

 

They started a story about Buddha in their famous scriptures, the shivapuram. The story is that God made the world. He made hell and heaven; he made hell to be guarded by the devil. The devil was the king of hell, just as God was the king of heaven; the devil was his shadow, his opponent.

 

But millions of years passed and nobody came to hell - everybody died and reached to heaven, because people were not doing anything wrong. They were not being criminals, sinners.

 

The devil was very angry, and he reached heaven and he asked God, "This is absolutely stupid!

 

Why have you made hell? If nobody has to come there, then it is mere wastage. And my life is wasted - I am simply sitting there! You have made me the king of hell, and there is nobody in my kingdom. It is just empty space. Millions of years I have waited, and it is enough. You finish that kingdom, or start sending people. I want real people to dominate, I don't want to sit there alone."

 

And God said, "Don't be angry, you go back. I will be born as Gautam Buddha soon, and will convince people to do wrong things. And soon hell will be overcrowded." That's why God took an incarnation as Gautam Buddha.

 

You see the strategy: they are accepting Gautam Buddha as a Hindu incarnation of God, but the purpose is to send people to hell. So whoever follows Buddha is going to hell. And since then hell has been overcrowded. And they go on making extensions, but people are always coming in more and more. The situation has completely reversed: now very rarely does someone go to heaven.

 

Most of the trains are going to hell.

 

In the shivapuram it is said that the crowd is so much that sometimes a few people are kept alive on the earth because they are on the waiting list. You cannot take them to heaven, and in hell there is no room; they are making room as fast as they can. So many people on the earth are on the waiting list, living just until some place is ready for them; then they will be taken there.

 

This way they have condemned Gautam Buddha's whole teaching - that it is just to destroy people's spirituality. And you see the effect in India: Buddhism disappeared. It was born in India, and India was immensely impressed with Gautam Buddha. There are thousands of temples and statues that show that the whole country was under his impact.

 

But Buddhism disappeared so totally that even in the most holy Buddhist place, Bodhgaya, where Gautam Buddha became enlightened - the bodhi tree is there and a temple stands as a memorial - they could not find a Buddhist priest for the temple, so a Hindu brahmin has been performing the worshipping rituals for hundreds of years. It has become a family tradition.

 

I asked the man who is the priest, "How long have you been here?"

 

He said, "We have been here since this temple has been here." Hindus created such an atmosphere that those who had started following Gautam Buddha moved back - who wants to go to hell, and hellfire - to the Hindu fold.

 

I am trying to say to you that Jesus' crucifixion made a fanatic religion of Christianity, which has been killing millions of Jews down the centuries, and their vengeance is not fulfilled.

 

Hindus did far better. They did not disrespect Gautam Buddha, they respected him as an incarnation of God, but managed to convince people that whoever followed him would go to hell, so not to follow him. The whole of India became completely clean of Buddhism. Buddhism spread all over Asia except in India. I used to go to their world conferences in Bodhgaya. Every nation of Asia was represented except India, because in India, Buddhism does not exist.

 

You can use crucifixion, you can use worship, and manage the same result; and sometimes worship may be a worse crucifixion than any crucifixion can be.

 

The mystics - the authentic mystics - have always tried to convince man: "There is no difference between us and you. The only difference is that you are sleeping and we have opened our eyes and we are awake - and it is not much of a difference."

 

Vasudhaiva kutumbakam - 'vasudhaiv' means the whole earth, 'kutumbakam' means the family - has never been realized. One hopes that some day it will be realized.

 

It is my vision too.

 

-Osho, “The Transmission of the Lamp, #35, Q1“