Osho on Radha Swami and Temple Agre

 

 

The priests have been praying in their hearts that man should never get out of his sickness, unhealthiness, insanity, because these are the people who come to the temple, to the mosque, to the synagogue, to the church. You will rarely find young people in the churches, but you will always find old men, old women, because now death is approaching, and only the priest knows how to help them. And the priests go on pretending that they know.

 

I was visiting a very beautiful place in Agra. Agra is famous all over the world because of the Taj Mahal. But in Agra and the surrounding area there is a small sect of Hindus called radhaswami. For almost one hundred years, their priests had been making something which should be better than the Taj Mahal. It is difficult, but they have made the ground floor; and the ground floor shows that, if they go on exploiting people, perhaps they will defeat the Taj Mahal one day. It is only half-built, but you can see even the half-built has more art, more beauty than the Taj Mahal.

 

They invited me to their temple, which is going to be the samadhi of their guru, who founded the religion, and they showed me, in beautiful marble, a map of stages of spiritual evolution; they said, "There are fifteen stages of evolution." Mohammed and Moses are just in the fourth stage; Jesus, a little better, in the fifth stage. Mahavira, a little better -- sixth stage. Kabir and Nanak, a little better still, were in the seventh stage, and Gautam Buddha is also in the seventh stage. And then there is a gap. In the fifteenth stage -- the last -- is their own guru.

 

They said, "What do you think about it?"

 

I said, "It is absolutely right. Just one thing is missing in it -- but it is bound to be missing."

 

They said, "What is missing in it?"

 

I said, "There are sixteen stages, not fifteen."

 

They said, "Sixteen? But in our scripture there are written only fifteen stages!"

 

I said, "It is written, because your guru has reached only fifteen stages. I am living in the sixteenth! Your guru tries to enter, but I don't allow him -- he goes on trying to climb to the sixteenth and I go on pushing him back to the fifteenth."

 

They were very shocked. And when I went there the next time, they had made sixteen stages, and their guru was in the sixteenth.

 

I said, "It won't work. Your guru could enter in the sixteenth because I have moved to the seventeenth! You cannot keep pace with me; your guru has to be one stage behind."

 

Stupid ideas, just mind games.... I said, "Your scripture has been saying there are only fifteen. From where has this sixteen come? -- because I mentioned it. I am not in any stage, I am not a prisoner. I have wings and I fly in an open sky where you don't leave even footprints -- what to say of stages? Is this some kind of school? Somebody is in the kindergarten, somebody is in the middle school, somebody is in the high school; somebody is in the college, graduating, somebody is studying a postgraduate course in the university; somebody is working on his Ph.D. and somebody has a D.Litt."

 

I said, "Don't be foolish. Remove this stone. Your temple is coming beautifully, but this stone is ugly and shows your intrinsic desire -- why you want to make it better than the Taj Mahal.

 

A spirit of competition is not the way of religion. Religion does not compete, because everyone is coming from the same source and going to the same source. A few people go slowly, a few people run, a few people have speed -- that does not matter! There is no inferiority, no superiority.

 

Religion has nothing to do with your so-called ordinary world; it has something to do with your psyche, with your spirit. You should be one organic unity. Out of that organic unity arises the music which is celestial.

 

-Osho, “The Messiah, Vol 2, #16”

 

 

 

 

You can start calling bullshit "fantastic," but it makes no difference. You can learn religious, spiritual garbage....

 

There are many people here too who are very expert in so-called esoteric jargon. They always talk of so many planes, so many bodies, so many centers...and they talk so seriously that it seems they know what they are talking about. Avoid esoteric garbage! Avoid esoteric knowledge! It is not knowledge, it is just to befool people. If you are interested in such things you should read the great literature that has been created by theosophists.

 

Anything goes, you just have to talk in such a way that it seems otherworldly. It can neither be proved nor disproved. Now how can you prove how many planes there are? Seven or thirteen?

 

One man came to me. His religious sect believes in fourteen planes, and he had a chart, he had brought the chart. Mahavira has attained only to the fifth plane, Buddha to the sixth, Kabir, Nanak, to the ninth -- because he was a Punjabi he had been a little generous with Nanak and Kabir. But his own Radhaswami guru, he has attained to the fourteenth! Even Buddha is just hanging around the sixth! And Mohammed, do you know where Mohammed is? -- just the third! A Hindu and a Punjabi, how can you allow Mohammed to go beyond the third? He keeps him third-rate. Jesus he is a little more generous with -- on the fourth; he places Jesus on the fourth. But his own guru -- nobody knows about his guru -- he has reached the fourteenth! The fourteenth is called satch-khand -- the plane of truth.

 

So I asked him, "What about the other thirteen?"

 

He said, "They are just coming closer and closer to truth, only approximately true."

 

Now, can there be an approximate truth? Either something is true or something is not true. Either I am here in the chair or I am not in the chair -- I cannot be approximately in the chair. So "approximate truth" is a beautiful name for a lie.

 

He had come to ask me what my opinion is about the fourteen planes. I said, "I have reached the fifteenth. And just as you are asking about the planes, your Radhaswami guru asks me again and again how to enter into the fifteenth."

 

He was very angry. He said, "Never heard about the fifteenth plane!"

 

I said, "How can you hear? Your guru has only reached the fourteenth, so you have heard about fourteen. But I have reached the fifteenth!"

 

Just nonsense! But it can be presented in such a way that it looks very spiritual. Avoid!

 

-Osho, "Dhammapada, Vol 1, #3"