You ask me:

How may I come to you?

 

 

There is no need. You have to come to YOU, not to me. I am not here to create a new kind of neurosis. There are enough alternatives available! Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism, Buddhism… three hundred religions in the world. You can choose your own kind of neurosis; they come in all shapes, in all sizes. You can easily pick any kind of fanaticism, neurosis, and that will keep you engaged your whole life — but simply engaged. It will not give you time or space to dance, to sing, to celebrate.

 

All kinds of goals basically create deep down in you a split, a hypocrisy. You are that which you are and you start trying to be that which you are not. In the beginning it is only an effort to be that which you are not; slowly slowly you start pretending too that you are becoming that which you are not, because to encounter failure continuously is very humiliating. At least you can pretend to others, you can wear masks, you can create a certain persona, a personality, a garb, a facade, and you can start living behind that facade. And people will look only at your mask and they will believe it, and once they start believing it — you will start believing it — because they are believing that you are holy, that you are saintly, that you are this and you are that.

 

It is a very strange game: you start it, and soon you will be caught in it yourself — in your own lie! And once you are caught in your own lie you will try to hide the truth, to evade the truth, to repress the truth; you will begin investing more and more in your lie. You may be a marigold and you may invest your whole life in being a rose. You may be a rose and you may invest your whole life in being a diamond — which you cannot be. This is the sheer stupidity of the experience humanity has been living with for centuries.

 

Hence what I say hurts. It is not a question of small dimensions, it is a question of immense dimensions. For thousands of years man has lived a hypocritical life, utterly false, pseudo, and now to shatter his whole investment, to shatter his whole mind, certainly hurts. Hence everybody is going to be against me except just a few people who are intelligent enough to wake up.

 

“My so-called liberal mother is really such a prude,” the high-school cheerleader sadly told her locker partner. “She said that I could only pet with my dates if they didn’t touch me below the waist.”

 

“Oh, that’s too bad,” her schoolmate commiserated. “What do you intend to do about it?”

 

“Well,” the cheerleader giggled, “the first thing I’m going to do is learn to stand on my head.”

 

That’s what your religious people have been doing: SIRSHASANA — the art, the yoga of standing on your head. It certainly fulfills something: the ego. Whenever you can do something unnatural or at least pretend that you are doing it, it fulfills the ego. Nature cannot fulfill the ego. If you eat and enjoy eating, what is there to brag about? If you make love and you enjoy it, what is there to brag about? But if you become a celibate then there is something to brag about, if you fast then you have something which nobody else has. Then you can feel superior, higher, greater, bigger, chosen. The unnatural has an attraction, although it destroys your whole life, but the attraction is in the ego. And unless we drop this whole game of the ego, hypocrisy cannot disappear from the world.

 

Rabbi Goldstein had just moved into his apartment and decided he should get acquainted with his across-the-hall neighbor. When the door was opened, he was pleasantly surprised to be confronted by a young damsel considerably more than passing fair and considerably less than fully clad. Though justifiably flustered by this smiling apparition, the rabbi nevertheless managed a remark singularly appropriate to the occasion: “Hi, I’m your new sugar across the hall — can I borrow a cup of neighbor?”

 

You can try to be unnatural, but your nature will assert itself in a thousand and one ways; it will come up again and again. You will have to hush it, you will have to repress it.

 

It was eight a.m. at a Las Vegas gambling palace and two lone bettors were still standing by a dice table awaiting further competition, when a lusciously endowed brunette attired in a suit happened by.

 

“Although it’s quite early in the day,” she announced, “I feel lucky this morning. I’d like to roll the dice once for twenty thousand dollars. Would the two of you care to take me up on the wager?”

 

“Sure, lady,” answered one of the men, “we’ll take your action.”

 

“I hope you gentlemen won’t mind,” she then said, “but the only way I can get lucky is to roll the dice without my panties on.”

 

So saying, the lissome lovely proceeded to remove her slacks and panties. With a shout of “Mamma needs a new pair of pants!” she rolled the dice, gave a squeal of delight and yelled, “I win!” She then picked up her money, her slacks and her underwear and made a hasty exit from the room.

 

The two men exchanged double takes, and one of them blurted out, “Hey, what did she roll anyway?”

 

“How the hell should I know?” snapped the other, “I thought YOU were watching the dice!”

 

We have created such a strange humanity, and the whole rationale of this whole mad earth, this mad humanity, is religious, spiritual. Search for the truth, search for God, search for the peaks, and you have lost yourself in the search. There is only one search — to find yourself — and for that you need not go anywhere else. For that you have to withdraw from all your desires, ambitions, goals. You have to come back home.

 

Rahaman, you are not to become me. I am not your enemy — I cannot tell you to become me. If you try to become me you will only be a carbon copy, a hypocrite, you will only be an imitation. Those who have gathered around me are not my followers, not my imitators — just fellow companions, fellow celebrants, dance partners! Existence to me is a carnival, it is just a festival. It is for those who know how to dance. And the dance need not wait for tomorrow — tomorrow never comes — the dance has to be now, here, this very moment. This very silence has to become the dance!

 

So don’t hanker for any peaks, just be where you are totally, utterly, and the goose is out! Hanker for the peaks, and the goose is in the bottle. Those peaks are the bottle, those goals are the bottle. They keep you encapsulated, they keep you imprisoned. The future is your bondage and the present is your freedom.

 

Here I differ totally from Jesus, from Buddha, from Krishna, from Mahavira, from everybody else. Knowingly, unknowingly, they have created a pattern of imitation for humanity. I want to destroy this whole pattern, this whole status quo. I want you to be just yourself. Whatsoever you are, you are beautiful as you are; you need not be somebody else to be beautiful.

 

That’s the only way to enjoy, but it is up to you. If you want to suffer… and there are people who love suffering, they cannot live without suffering; their only joy is in suffering and more suffering. The more they suffer the more they feel that they are doing something great. Then it is up to you; then don’t make any fuss about it, then go to the peaks. But the peaks won’t satisfy you because from those peaks you will again be looking far ahead for further peaks.

 

The headmistress of a girls’ boarding school was abruptly awakened one night by one of her students, a rather mature-looking sixteen-year-old. “Miss Forbes,” she cried, “I’ve just been raped!”

 

“Now, be calm, Melissa,” the headmistress told her firmly. “The first thing you must do is to go to the refrigerator and eat half a lemon.”

 

“Half a lemon?” asked the surprised student. “Will that keep me from getting pregnant?”

 

“No,” admitted the headmistress, “but it WILL get rid of that silly grin.”

 

That’s what religious people have been doing: removing all your smiles, making you look as sad as possible, as long-faced as possible. Christians say Jesus never laughed. If it is true, then whatsoever he has said is wrong. If what he has said is right then this cannot be true, because the man continuously says, “Rejoice! I say to you again and again rejoice!” And Christians say he never laughed! Laughter seems to be mundane for them, laughter seems to be worldly; it is not good for holy people. Holy people have to be continuously sad, hence they have created a long tradition of sad, ill, sick, pathological people whom they worship.

 

The more pathological you look the more you will be worshipped. The more you are a sadist and a masochist the more you will be worshipped. Torture yourself and teach others to torture themselves — they call it asceticism — become a monk, renounce the world… The word “monk” means one who lives alone, escapes from people. And in fact it is relationship that is the opportunity to grow, it is love that is a challenge to growth, it is friendship that brings you to your real flavor. It is life in all its adventures, challenges, that helps you to become mature, integrated.

 

Monks remain retarded, they remain stupid. They are bound to remain stupid — they have been taken out of the soil of life. At the most they are greenhouse plants: bring them into the world and they will immediately shrink and die. They are very afraid people, continuously trembling, afraid of hell, which does not exist, greedy for heaven, which does not exist — and between hell and heaven missing everything that does exist.

 

The inexperienced young man had heard that a good way to arouse sexual desire in a girl who proved impervious to the more usual forms of wooing was to forthrightly place her hand on his organ. Having parked with a date for more than an hour in the local lovers’ lane with nothing to show for it but some sisterly kisses, he decided to try this new technique. The response was instantaneous: the girl berated him with the longest stream of invectives he had ever heard. Stunned, he tried to reply, but she refused to listen, insisting instead that he take her home at once.

 

As he pulled up in front of her house, she again started shouting imprecations. Finally out of breath, she demanded, “Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

 

“Yes, I have,” was his pained reply. “Please let go.”

 

– Osho, “The Goose is Out, #3”