False things are always cheap. You can always purchase a mask for your face, a beautiful mask. To transform your face into a beautiful face is an arduous journey. It needs great transformation in your being because your eyes will show that which is within you, your face will radiate your inner reality.

 

Unless your whole being is transformed you cannot have real beauty. Authentic grace is possible only when your innermost core becomes illumined, when it becomes a light unto itself. Then certainly from your eyes, from your face, from your hands, from all your actions and gestures, your inner reality is conveyed. But that needs great work.

 

To purchase a false mask is very simple. You can purchase a mask and look like Buddha or Jesus or Krishna. And you can learn how to act like somebody else. Acting is not a difficult thing. To be a real Christ is one thing, to act as Christ is another. Millions of Christians are doing that act — particularly the pope, the bishops, the priests. In their own way they are just acting.

 

Just a few months ago, the pope enacted the whole scene of Jesus’ crucifixion. He carried a small golden cross on his shoulders — a golden cross! Thousands of people followed him to a small hillock by the side of the Vatican, and there he washed the feet of a poor man who had already been cleaned and bathed and prepared for the whole scene. And the pope kissed his feet. This is all an act. And then he came back — no crucifixion! (laughter) At least they should have crucified him — then the whole act would have been done. The real thing was left out. They should have crucified him and then waited for three days to see whether he resurrected or not.

 

Acting is so cheap, that’s why millions of people have chosen the easier course, the short-cut. But once you choose a lie you will have to choose a thousand other lies to support it, and you will become afraid of truth because a single truth will destroy the whole edifice of your falsity, of your pseudo-ness.

 

It is because of this that the Jews had to crucify Jesus. He was destroying their traditional lies. Socrates was poisoned for the simple reason that he started talking about the truth, he started seducing people into enquiring what the truth is and not being blind followers, not being believers but enquirers. And that was a danger to the whole establishment. The establishment immediately took action. This man had to be stopped. If he did not listen then he would have to be killed.

 

Why have people been so much against truth? Because of their investment in the lies. But the trouble with lies is that although they are cheap, simple, easily available… You can find all kinds of lies in the churches, in the mosques , in the temples, in the gurudwaras, everywhere. You can choose. They come in all shapes and sizes; whatsoever fits you, you can choose that kind of belief. But you will remain miserable.

 

That is the real price you are paying. On the surface they look cheap but ultimately you will come to realise one day that your whole life has been wasted, your whole soul has been destroyed — and you have done it. It is a suicidal act, and your whole life will be nothing but a long tragedy, a sequence of miseries, from one misery to another. Of course one will be always hoping that something good is going to happen but it never happens. Lies can never deliver the goods; only truth can bring bliss to you, only truth can bring celebration to your life, only truth can bring spring.

 

I have chosen for my sannyasins the orange colour. In India it is the colour of spring — when all the trees burst forth in red colours. They dance, they sing, suddenly their whole being is rejoicing. A tree flowers only out of overflowing energy. It is so overflooded with joy it has to share it with the existence. Flowers represent bliss, celebration, spring, youth, resurrection.

 

Remember, to be initiated into sannyas means to be initiated into truth. I don’t ask my sannyasins to renounce the world; I certainly ask you to renounce all lies, falsehoods, hypocrisies — that’s enough. If you renounce all lies your whole past is renounced. You will be reborn; in that renunciation is a rebirth. And when life is fresh and clean of all the junk of the past you can again have the same wondering eyes of a child, the same innocence. And it is innocence that can have a communion with the ultimate — not knowledge but innocence.

 

- Osho, “I Am Not As Thunk As You Drink I Am, #22”