THE BUDDHA is the greatest anarchist in human history. He does not believe in any rule from the outside. To help you become free from the outside, he teaches you an inner rule, an inner discipline. Once you have learned the ways of the inner discipline, he's there, ready to destroy that too - because either you are ruled from the outside or from the inside. You are a slave; freedom is only when there is no rule.

 

So the inner discipline is just a step to get out from the outer domination of the society, of the state, of the masses, civilization, culture, etcetera. Once you are free of the outer domination, then Buddha starts destroying your inner discipline too. That's why I call him the greatest anarchist ever. There have been people who have taught that no outside rule should exist, but Buddha is alone in teaching that even the inside rule is a form of slavery, a subtle slavery. No- discipline is his discipline. And when a person is absolutely without any discipline, then there is beauty - because then there is freedom. Then one acts spontaneously; not according to any rule imposed by others or imposed by oneself. Then one simply acts out of nothingness. Then the response is total; nothing is being held back, and there is no enforcement of any sort, there is no violence. There is tremendous grace, there is benediction - because now the actor has completely disappeared, the doer is no more there. If you are trying to discipline yourself, the doer remains, in a subtle way. If you are trying to discipline yourself, you remain schizophrenic, you remain divided. A part of you disciplines you, another part is being disciplined by you. So one part becomes the master and another part becomes the slave. Again there is division, again there is duality, again you are not one.

 

And there is bound to be conflict in this duality, because in reality you are one, and this is a fiction. Who is trying to rule whom? Who is there to be dominated by whom? There is only one existence inside, one being. To bring any sort of discipline means to divide that unity, and that division is misery, that division is hell.

 

So first Buddha says: There is no God - because if there is a God and any belief in God, then man can never be free; because then there is a dominator, a dictator.

 

With a God in the world, there can be no democracy - impossible. If God has created man, then of course He is the ultimate power. If He's omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, then how can freedom exist? You are never left alone, He's everywhere: that's what the so-called religious people teach. They say, "He's looking at you wherever you are. In the most private situation also, He's there, watching you constantly. His eyes follow you."

 

This seems to be a very dangerous teaching: it means you don't have any freedom, it means you don't have any privacy. And God is like a universal peeping-tom; He's always there at the keyhole, you cannot escape from Him. His very presence is destructive; His presence means that man has no freedom.

 

Neitzsche's declaration that God is dead and now man is free, has a Buddhist tone to it. That's what Buddha has said: God is not and there is freedom.

 

Freedom means: you are not created by anybody and you are not dominated by anybody and you are not manipulated by anybody. To Buddha, freedom is God.

 

Try to understand it. It is difficult, because Buddha uses such terminology that it becomes very difficult for childish minds to understand. The childish mind can always understand that there is a God dominating you, looking after you:

 

compassionate, kind, great - the Father, the Mother. These are childish ways to understand the truth.

 

Buddha says: There is no God, and freedom is absolute. That absolute freedom is Buddha's God. Freedom is God. Freedom is divine. So first he takes away all outer beliefs. There is no need to believe in a God. The belief itself will become the barrier.

 

Just the other night a sannyasin came from England, and she was very nervous, trembling, shaking. And she said, "I am very much afraid, because I cannot yet believe in you." I said, "Who expects you to believe in me?" She was afraid because she thought that she doubts. The ordinary religions have taught people that you become religious only when you believe. If you don't believe, you are irreligious. The west is completely unaware of a great religion that has existed in the east which does not require any belief. In fact it says belief is a barrier. A religion without belief is very difficult for a Christian or a Mohammedan and a Jew to conceive. It was even difficult for Hindus and Jains to conceive.

 

Buddha is a great revolution, a very radical outlook. He says: All beliefs are dangerous. You should not believe, you should see.

 

I told the sannyasin, "Don't be worried; doubt is perfectly okay. Doubt is better than belief. Doubt can never hinder you; doubt remains open. Belief is a closing of the mind - then the aperture is closed, then you don't look." In fact, a man who believes becomes afraid to look. Maybe the truth is against his belief. Then what to do? - he closes his eyes. It is easier to protect one's belief with closed eyes than with open eyes. Who knows? - the truth may not coincide with your belief, the truth may shatter your belief, the truth may be against your belief. It may not be Christian, it may not be Hindu, it may not be Mohammedan. Then what will you do? So it is better to remain with closed eyes.

 

A man with belief becomes afraid: he does not seek and he does not enquire and he does not search. He never explores. He remains stuck with his belief. He holds his belief to his heart; this is out of fear.

 

Religion is not out of fear - at least REAL religion is not out of fear. At least, it should not be out of fear. Real religion is fearlessness. Buddha says: With a God, how can you be fearless?

 

The Jewish God says: I'm very jealous. Don't worship any God other than me; I'm very jealous. And if you worship any other God, I will destroy you.

 

Now, these words look very political, and very stupid. And to put these words into the mouth of God Himself is sheer nonsense. God saying"I am very jealous"?

 

- then God seems very human, even below human - because there have existed human beings who are not jealous. A Buddha has existed who is not jealous.

 

Buddha seems to be in a better state of consciousness than the Jewish God!

 

Jealous? Prohibiting his followers not to worship anybody else? - "Because I am jealous, and I will destroy you"? What the Jewish God says is simply unbelievable. He says. "If you commit something against me, for ten generations I will torture you. Not only you: ten generations of your children will be tortured. And if you worship me, for a hundred generations the rewards will be coming to you."

 

Now, what type of God is this? And your child has not done anything. You commit some crime, you disobey God, and for generations your children will suffer, and for a hundred generations your children will get the reward if you have done something good. And 'something good' means, in Jewish terms: if you have obeyed the omnipotent God. If you disobey it is sin; if you obey it is virtue.

 

There seems to be no real value. God may be saying something absurd, but if you obey it is virtue, if you disobey it is sin. And this threat, that "For ten generations I will take revenge", and this bribery, that "For one hundred generations I will reward" - look at what type of mind has worked out this concept of God. It cannot be very divine. It is not divine at all. It is, in fact, sub-human.

 

Buddha says: There is no God. Don't be afraid. To make man fearless, Buddha says there is no God. And to make man an explorer of truth, he says there is no need for any belief. Belief is not a requirement: it is an obstacle. Be open. Explore.

 

Doubt, think, meditate, experiment; and when a mind comes to experience truth without any belief, the mind itself becomes true - because then there is a communion between truth and the mind.

 

Be fearless. There is no need for anybody to dominate you; freedom is the very substratum.

 

First he drops outer beliefs: in God, in hell, in heaven - because your hell and heaven are just your projections. If you knew about different hells and heavens you would understand. The Tibetan's hell does not have fire in it, because the Tibetan's hell has to have more cold, more ice. They know - they suffer from cold, so hell has no fire at all. Of course, the Hindu's hell has fire; they suffer from heat. The Hindu's concept of heaven is almost of an air-conditioned heaven.

 

The sun is never hot, and cool breezes are always blowing, and shady trees, and the flowers are like diamonds... and everything is cool. Of course, a hot country - - suffering for centuries from heat - dreams.

 

But things continue - they are your projections. There are as many hells in the world - and as many heavens - as there are climates, because it will depend on the experience of your own climate. For a Tibetan, fire in hell will look almost like a heavenly gift. No, fire has no existence in hell, it is absolutely cold; you will be frozen to death by coldness. Fire exists in heaven. There, everything is warm.

 

Now, what do these concepts show? They show your mind, they don't show anything about heaven or hell. Man continues in his dreams, in his projections.

 

If you die, you may be dying as far as your body is concerned, but your mind continues. In fact, the Buddhist approach is that the idea of heaven and hell has arisen because during his whole life a man projects, thinks, about the after-life.

 

And if he has been committing many crimes and sins, he becomes guilty; he feels that he is going to hell. He becomes very afraid. By the time he's dying the fear arises: "Now there is no time left to put things right." Now he is going into hell, and he has an idea of hell, of what hell is. So when a person dies, when he is free from the body, the projections become very real. He starts dreaming. So when a Hindu dies, certainly he dreams after death. Immediately he dreams either of heaven or hell; it depends. If he was a good man, virtuous, a worshipper, then of course he is very self-confident: when he dies, he knows that he is going to heaven. Immediately after death, the mind starts dreaming. The time between one death and another birth is used in dreaming.

 

You live in a dreamworld - exactly as you live in the night. What happens when your body relaxes and you go to sleep? - you start dreaming. You forget your body in your sleep. Sleep is a tiny death, a very mini-death. You forget your body, you don't remember your body at all, you become just your mind; as if the mind is no more burdened by the body and the reality of the body. The mind is freed. There is no pressure on the mind of bodily reality, of objective reality.

 

Mind is freed. Suddenly, you start dreaming. Of course, your dream is YOUR dream; it has nothing to do with any reality whatsoever.

 

When you die this is exactly what happens, and it happens in a bigger proportion. Once you die all the pressure of bodily reality and objective reality disappears. The mind is free to dream. Even in sleep there is a burden, even in sleep you are connected with the body, but in death you are disconnected completely. Now the mind is completely free. Like a balloon, it starts rising into its projections. So if you have lived a bad life.... When I say 'if you have lived a bad life', I mean: if you THINK your life has been bad, if you have been taught that this life is bad.

 

For example, if a Jain has been eating meat, he will suffer hell after his death - but not a Mohammedan, not a Christian, not a non-vegetarian who has never thought about it. He will not suffer hell. But a Jain is bound to suffer hell. If he has eaten meat, his idea will make him guilty; the guilt will be there, the guilt will project. And he knows what hell is; the hell will be projected.

 

Between death and birth there is a great dreaming time, and you can live long in that dream time - because the dream time is absolutely different from your waking time. Have you sometimes observed that you are just sitting in your chair and for a minute you fall asleep and you dream? And the dream is so long that it takes years - in dream time. Then suddenly you are awake and you look at the clock and only one minute has passed. Now you are puzzled. How, in one minute's dream, could you see a projection of many years? You were a child, then you become young, and then you went to the college and the university, and you fell in love and were married, and you were just coming out of the church - and the dream is broken. And there is such an expanse of many years.

 

How has it happened in a single minute?

 

Dream time is different from actual time: it can happen in a single minute. So maybe between death and birth there are only a few minutes, or a few days at the most, or a few hours. But they will look very long; you can dream infinite dreams - you can dream of hell, you can dream of heaven - but you continue.

 

[....]

 

Your hell is your hell; your heaven is your heaven. It is your projection, it is your personality projected in dreams. These are not realities.

 

Buddha is tremendously existential. He's the first religious man who has said that there is no heaven and no hell; it is just in the dreams of humanity that heaven and hell exist. If you have stopped dreaming while alive, then there is no heaven and no hell. In fact, there is no sin and no virtue. He's the greatest iconoclast, the idol-breaker. He takes everything away from you - because he knows that unless everything is taken away, the mind continues. Mind needs props. If all the props are taken away, the mind collapses. And in that collapse, reality arises in its true color, in its true tone.

 

The reality is only when the mind is not. Mind is a distorting faculty.

 

Now these are the last sutras; of tremendous import. Each sentence is like a sword, and it cuts the roots of the mind. And when it comes to cutting the roots of the mind, Buddha excludes nobody, not even himself. That's his authenticity.

 

It is not that he is against other philosophies, he's against philosophy as such - against his own philosophy too. That's the authenticity of the Master. It is very easy to be against others' philosophies, but to be against one's own philosophy means the man has no philosophy of his own. He's simply asserting a truth: that philosophy is not the door to reality. He's against all methods, including his own.

 

You will be surprised: "Then why does he use methods?" The methods are to be used only because of you: because you are not ready to take the jump. The jump is too big, and you take it in small doses. Hence, he has to invent methods. The same is true about me: I would like you to take the quantum jump without any methods, but you cannot take it. Then the abyss is too big and fear possesses you.

 

So I have to make small steps for you. Slowly, slowly, I persuade you. The more you become ready, the more I push you into no-method, into no-mind, into no- religion.

 

The essential religion is no-religion, and the greatest method is no-method. And to come to a state of no-mind is to come to awareness. Buddha has to talk to many categories of people, but these sutras are for those disciples who have come of age, who have become mature.

 

It happened once:

 

I was chatting with Mulla Nasrudin, who was a rabid fisherman. I told him, "I notice, Nasrudin, that when you tell about the fish you caught, you vary the size of it for different listeners."

 

"Yes," he said, "I never tell a man more than I think he will believe."

 

And that's what Buddha is doing too. If you have come to him with a childish mind, he will give you some toys to play with. If you have come with a little better, a little more grown-up mind, a little more mature, he will not give you those toys. And if you are really mature enough to listen to truth, unafraid, then... then these sutras.

 

Today's sutras are the last. They are meant only for very grown-up people, so listen to them very attentively.

 

It is said: Once Jesus' disciples asked him, "Have you brought a message of peace to the world?" He said, "No. I don't bring peace, I bring a sword." A sword? And Christians have puzzled over it down through the centuries, because it doesn't look right. Jesus is the messenger of peace and he says, "No, I have not brought peace to you, but a sword." And he says, "I will teach you how to hate your mother and how to hate your father and how to hate your wife and how to hate your husband and how to hate your children. And unless you are ready to hate your father and your mother, you cannot follow me."

 

Now, these words coming from Jesus, who says, "God is love," look very contradictory, very inconsistent. It is difficult to sort out what he means. And it has been difficult for Christians; they avoid these sentences. But if you understand this sutra of Buddha, you will be able to understand Jesus too. By 'sword' he means: each Master brings a sword into the world to cut the roots of the mind. And when he says, "Unless you hate your father and your mother and your family, you cannot follow me," what is he saying? He's saying: Unless you drop that mind that has been given to you by your mother, by your father, by your family; unless you drop your past; unless you forget completely what the society has given to you - the idea of good and the idea of evil; unless you drop the whole conditioning that society has given to you, you cannot follow me.

 

These sutras are like swords: they cut, and they cut totally. Buddha is very hard because he has great compassion. He will not allow any loophole from where you can find your slavery again. So first, drop all outer discipline; and then, drop the inner discipline too. In that undisciplined state is freedom, is NIRVANA, is MOKSHA. And out of that freedom, whatsoever happens is virtue. Out of slavery, whatsoever happens is sin.

 

-Osho, “The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 4, #11“