Question 2
Osho,
What is hell? Is there really such a place?
RELIGION HAS SURVIVED UP TO NOW because of your fear and greed -- the false religion I mean, of course. The true religion has nothing to do with fear and greed. In fact, the true religion means transcending fear and greed. Fear and greed are not two things, they are one. Fear standing on its head becomes greed; it is one energy, two poles of the same energy.
The priests must have discovered it very early, that man can be dominated easily if he is made afraid. They created hell. It is imaginary, it is pure imagination -- there is no place like hell. Of course, there is a SPACE like hell, but no place.
Hell is not geographical, it is psychological. It is not somewhere down underneath the earth. If you dig a hole from here and you go on digging and digging, you will reach America, and the American will come to India. And the American believes somewhere down in the earth there is hell and the Indian believes somewhere down in the earth... and the earth is round!
And there is no heaven either -- that is to satisfy your greed. Hell is to create fear and heaven is to create greed. And these are the two strategies of the priests to dominate you, to oppress you, to exploit you.
One day a great Sufi mystic Rabiya was seen running in the marketplace, with a burning torch in one hand and a pot full of water in the other hand. People stopped her and they said, "What are you doing? Where are you going? We have heard stories about you, that you are a little crazy, but this is going too far!"
She said, "Don't stop me! I am going to burn your heaven -- this torch is for that -- and I am going to drown your hell -- this water is for that. And unless your hell and heaven are taken away from you you will not find God, because God cannot be found by those who live in fear or those who live in greed."
So the first thing, Krishna Deva: there is no hell, no heaven, as places somewhere. But still they exist -- in a totally different way: they exist within you: Whenever you are in anger you are in hell, but that is psychology not geography. And whenever you are in love you are in heaven; that too is again psychology not geography.
The Western religions know only two words: heaven and hell. The East has a third word also: MOKSHA. That means absolute freedom from both heaven and hell. That means transcending psychology. No fear, no greed, no mind... and suddenly you enter into the world of eternity, immortality, into the world of God.
You carry your hell within you and you carry your heaven within you, and each moment it is up to you to be in hell or in heaven.
I have heard about a great saint who was never known to be sad. He was nearing ninety years of age but he was always happy, always cheerful, always bubbling with joy, like a small child overflowing with joy. People gathered; they were celebrating his ninetieth birthday, and maybe this was going to be the last so all the disciples had come from faraway places. They asked him, "We have only one question -- and soon you may leave us, your body is getting older and older. Before you leave, please satisfy our inquiry: What is the secret of your joy? Nobody has ever seen you sad."
The old man laughed. He said, "There is not much of a secret in it. Early in my life I discovered that it is up to me to be in hell or to be in heaven, so every morning when I wake up, the first thing I ask myself is: 'What do you want today? -- heaven or hell?' And I always decide for heaven! That is my simple secret."
A whole bus-load of women from the Hadassah and the United Jewish Appeal overturned on a Miami freeway and everybody was killed. In Heaven, Saint Peter, without thinking, assigned them to Hell They had hardly been there a week, however, when Satan phoned Peter and demanded that he remove the women to Heaven. They were a disrupting influence.
"Why, what have they done?" asked Peter.
"They have banded together, collected money, and employed engineers to install air-conditioning."
If you have intelligence, awareness, even in hell you can manage to air-condition it.
That's what I am doing. Can't you see the hell all around? But somehow I have got a few people banded together and we are trying to create a small heaven of our own. What to do? People have decided to live in hell, they are not ready to listen, then the only wise choice is: we can create our own heaven. And if we can create our own heaven, that will become an example, a model, that this way also one can live.
When people come for the first time to our commune they are surprised. Just the other day a young priest wrote a letter to me, a Catholic priest, who now has become interested in me, and wants to get married, and wants to get rid of the Catholic church. He has written a letter to me saying, "I have heard that you have got the most beautiful people in the whole of the world around you. Can you find a wife for me?"
I have told Laxmi to write to him, "Why one? Just come here. And I need not find any wife for you -- the women will chase you, they will find you!"
We have got the most alive lot of women in the whole of the world here.
Heaven and hell are not realities but ways of living. You can live in jealousy -- that's how people live. You can live in competition, you can live in conflict, you can live in ambition. That's how you have been brought up to live. This is the way to hell!
A Zen Master was asked by the Emperor of Japan.... The Emperor had come and asked the same question, Krishna Deva. Maybe you are the reincarnation of the same Emperor! Because the Japanese tend to be reborn in India -- this is the land of their Master, Buddha. Every Japanese keeps the desire to come to India some day. If they die without coming in this life, they are reborn here. They die with the desire.
The Emperor reached the Zen Master and asked him, "What is hell and what is heaven?"
The Zen Master looked at the Emperor and said "You son-of-a-bitch! Have you looked at your face in the mirror lately? I have never seen such a dirty-looking fellow before!"
The Emperor was enraged! He had not expected such a thing from such a great saint. You don't know great saints! You know only small, puny saints. A real saint is not a cat, he is a tiger!
The Emperor was so enraged that he pulled his sword out of its sheath. He was going to cut the head of the Master. Just as the sword was coming closer, the Master said, "Wait! You are entering hell. This is the gate to hell."
The way the Master said "Wait!" was so powerful that the Emperor's hand was stopped in the middle, and he understood -- "True!" He threw the sword away, fell at the feet of the Master, and the Master laughed and said, "This is the way to heaven! You have already experienced both within a single moment. The distance is not far."
Whenever you are surrendered to existence, whenever you live in trust, love, prayer, joy, celebration, you are in heaven.
But what I am doing here is to help you to go beyond both -- because the person who lives in heaven can fall into hell any moment. They are not far away, they are very close by...just a small fence and that too is tattered because it is very old. And for centuries there has been an argument as to who should repair it. The Devil is not ready. Why should he be worried about it? Nobody wants to enter hell! If it is God' worry that hell people may enter into heaven, then he should repair it. But God is a miser, and they go on quarreling.
One day it happened: God said, "If you don't repair the fence -- which has really been destroyed by your people and your nuisance on the other side, our people have not done anything -- I am going to court!"
The Devil said, "You can go, but where are you going to find an advocate? They are all here on my side! Go to court!"
Hell is a state of mind when you live in plenty and yet you live in poverty, when life is such a blessing and yet you live in sadness. When the flowers bloom you don't bloom. When the stars shine you don't shine. When the clouds are in the sky floating in freedom don't enjoy the freedom. When the cuckoo calls from a distant wood and you remain deaf. When the peacock dances you don't dance. This is hell! And you are the creator of it.
Mahatma Gandhi died and went to heaven. He was royally welcomed by St. Peter as a great saint and told that any request of his would be granted. Gandhi said, "All my life I have been non-violent. Now I would like to live a life like Adolph Hitler."
That seems to be absolutely psychological, right. If you live a repressed life this is going to happen. Adolph Hitler would like to live like Mahatma Gandhi, and Mahatma Gandhi would like to live like Adolph Hitler; the rejected, the denied part will take revenge. So I see a point in this fictitious story.
St. Peter replied, "This is too horrible a wish to be granted -- but we will let you see Hitler in hell. That will give you an idea and you may drop your desire."
Gandhi was taken to hell where he saw Hitler surrounded by beautiful naked dancing girls and many bottles of wine. "How can this be hell?" cried Gandhi "This is heaven!"
"Of course it is hell," said St. Peter. "The bottles all have holes and the women don't!“
- Osho, "Be Still and Know, #8"