Question 1:

Osho,

Rajneeshism is purely a religion of celebration, so why are so many people around the world against it?

 

 

That's why! All the religions of the world have been religions of sado-masochism. They have created a miserable world. Their whole strategy is to make you convinced that this life is a life of sin. You have been made to feel guilty for just being alive.

 

The biblical story will help you to understand. Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise because of a simple enquiry. And the enquiry was also initiated by the so-called God - or Godot. He told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of two trees: one, the tree of knowledge; the other, the tree of eternal life. One can see what kind of God this must have been.

 

To deprive man of wisdom, to prohibit him from tasting the beauties of eternal life, is simply ugly, inhuman - I will not call it even devilish, but it is really the devil that you have been told is God. If He were really a creator of the universe and consciousness, He would have been the first person to tell Adam and Eve to taste wisdom and to taste eternal life. He was not religious at all. You cannot find a more irreligious person than the Christian God.

 

Religion is nothing but a science to attain wisdom, understanding, to know what life is, and to live it in utter celebration.

 

And you can live life in celebration only if you know there is no death. If you know that it is going to be eternal, that there is no beginning and no end, only then can you live without misery. God prohibited man from both. Without wisdom you cannot attain to religious ecstasy, and without the feeling of eternal life you cannot sing and you cannot dance.

 

When death is there every moment, and any moment you can be taken away.... They say, "Never ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." You cannot be certain about the next moment. How can you enjoy, when death is so close and follows you like a shadow?

 

This idiot, God, prohibits man from only two trees. And they lived in the Garden of Eden where millions of trees must have existed. He is not even as intelligent as Sigmund Freud, who is not very intelligent either. Just average intelligence is needed to know that to prohibit anything is dangerous; it gives a challenge to the mind. It is not the serpent who convinced Eve to eat the fruit of knowledge, it is God himself.

 

By pointing out these two trees, God makes it certain that these people sooner or later will be attracted towards them. If He had not mentioned them, I don't think even up to now we would have been able to find those two trees in the immense garden of paradise. And if it was the serpent who convinced Eve, he is the first revolutionary, the first man who feels and who knows what has to be done. He is the most intelligent being in your whole BIBLE - the serpent - because he was showing the way of understanding.

 

Most of your misery is caused by your misunderstanding, your ignorance, your unintelligence. Most of the misery is caused because you are continuously afraid of death - and it is there walking by your side. If these two things can be removed, celebration will come on its own.

 

If you could be aware that there is no death, wouldn't you love to sing like birds in the morning?

 

Wouldn't you love to dance like the peacocks of my garden? If you start understanding human problems, you cannot be miserable. I have not been miserable for so long that I cannot conceive how you go on maintaining misery, you go on nourishing it. You are really strange people. What are the causes of your misery?

 

You look at a beautiful woman. Naturally you are attracted, but your wife is by your side continuously watching you. She is miserable, because how can she enjoy life when she is continuously suspicious of you? You are miserable because this wretched wife is always there. You cannot even have a glimpse of a beautiful woman, you have to avoid seeing her. But a little understanding will dispel the whole thing.

 

It is natural, anything beautiful has to be appreciated. You have to show your wife, "Look! What a beautiful woman." And if there is understanding, the woman will understand it; there will be no jealousy, there will be no quarrel. It is human to taste different joys of life. You cannot eat the same food every day. How can you enjoy the same man or woman every day? It is asking for the impossible. Misery is bound to happen. You will become a hypocrite.

 

It is perfectly human once in a while to have a different dish. And if people are understanding... your wife will understand if once in a while you go with another woman; her love will be great enough to allow you that freedom.

 

Love always allows freedom.

 

Understanding means freedom.

 

And if your wife goes to some man one day, just for the weekend, you will not feel offended. After the weekend you will both be enriched. You will find your wife again, your wife will find you again.

 

Those first days of love, those days of honeymoon will be back. And when you see that the other gives you so much freedom and so much understanding, you respect them, you feel grateful.

 

But all the religions have been prohibiting you from everything natural; obviously, they have made you miserable.

 

Your whole education system tries to create ambition in you - not understanding. Your education pushes you to become the governor, the premier, the president, whatsoever the cost. The politician cannot be happy - in spite of Jimmy Carter's phony smile. Have you seen him smiling after he was no longer president? When he was president I think he did nothing other than show his teeth to the whole world. I have heard that his wife used to close his mouth every night.

 

All lies - everything phony and American... all plastic. You know the phrase, "the white lie." Perhaps that's why you call your president's house the White House. It is a very suitable name, because only white lies exist there.

 

Man is living unnaturally. If he lives naturally then he feels guilty, because his religion, his education, his culture go on and on conditioning him: "You have to go above nature." Who can go above nature?

 

Nature is all! - there is nothing above it. You have to be natural.

 

That's what my basic teaching is: be natural. Don't try to go beyond nature. That is the beginning of misery, pain. And when you are miserable, when you are in pain, you cannot tolerate anybody who is celebrating. It hurts, it humiliates you.

 

My people are humiliating all the religions of the world. Naturally they are against me and against you. It is your celebration that is creating the trouble. Have long, British faces. Tears are accepted, not smiles.

 

Have you seen Jesus Christ, in any picture, smiling? And Christianity has chosen as its symbol, the cross. Now, the people who are carrying the cross, can they celebrate? A cross is hanging on your neck - it may be a golden cross, but a cross is a cross. All Christians worshipping the cross are managing to remain miserable. They don't love Jesus Christ, they love his being crucified.

 

Remember, Christianity was not born out of Jesus Christ's sayings - there is nothing much in them.

 

You cannot make a religion out of them. The whole of Jesus Christ's doctrine can be condensed on a postcard.

 

Christianity was not born out of Jesus' teachings, it was born out of his crucifixion. Why was the cross accepted so easily? - and Christianity is now the biggest religion in the world. It suited man.

 

It helped man in a very dangerous way. It made you aware that your misery is nothing compared to the misery of Jesus Christ. You are carrying a very small cross around your neck; Jesus had to carry a very heavy cross on his shoulders. Three times he fell on the road because of the weight of the cross. He was whipped and told to take up the cross again.

 

The crucified Jesus is your religion. Compared to your misery, his misery is immense. Naturally, Christianity became the biggest religion in the world, because it is the biggest philosophy of being miserable.

 

Jesus said, "Carry you cross on your shoulders. Everybody has to carry his cross on his shoulders."

 

I don't see any point in it. Why carry a cross on your shoulder? Are you mad? Rather, carry a flute with you, a song, a beautiful flower - a rose I can understand. But then you will be hated by all those who have missed the joys of life. But nobody else is responsible for their missing, they themselves are responsible.

 

Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor." This is sheer nonsense. Wretched are the poor. But it gives solace to the millions of poor people of the world. Jesus says that those who are poor here will be able to inherit the kingdom of God. I do not understand the arithmetic. If they are going to inherit the kingdom of God, why should they be poor here? Why can't they inherit it here, now?

 

I say to you: the kingdom of God is yours herenow, this very moment. Just drop the cross. My religion is very simple: drop the cross. You have carried it long enough, for thousands of lives; it has almost become part of you.

 

So when you see someone dancing and you are crippled - crippled because of your cross, you are dying under its burden, and somebody is playing on his flute - you cannot forgive this man.

 

He makes you aware that you have missed the train, that you are a fool. Nobody wants to accept himself as a fool - except a wise man.

 

The moment you accept that you are behaving foolishly, the change starts beginning. It is your responsibility. I have never seen any miserable man for whom anybody else was responsible. It is your conditioning.

 

Jesus says, "The camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but not a rich man." The animals, the camels, are going to inherit the kingdom of God, remember; they will pass through the needle. But a rich man cannot pass through the gates of God. They have taught you to remain poor, they have given you all incentives to remain poor.

 

My religion is a religion of richness.

 

Why wait for tomorrow? Why wait for a lifetime, in which you cannot be certain of inheriting the kingdom of God after death, and for that, suffer your whole life here? I say to you, forget God and forget the kingdom of God. I give you here and now! Just be ready to drop your conditionings. You are not handicapped, you are not crippled. Every child is born a joy, a celebration, a dance, a song; but somewhere he loses it all. That's why all the poets of all the languages go on remembering how beautiful it was to be a child.

 

What was beautiful in being a child? I cannot say that, because I have been becoming more and more blissful; childhood was just the beginning. If an old man says that his childhood was paradise, that means his whole life has been a hell. He has not been growing up, he is going down. Just to grow old is not growing up.

 

Growing up is a totally different phenomenon. It means the last moment on the earth for you will be the most precious moment. The departure from this life will be the climax of your joy. Childhood is only a beginning.

 

But the religions start distorting the children from the beginning. They create guilt in them, they create unnatural ideals in them. They create their conscience in such a way that they cannot live happily ever. On every point they are at a crossroad, and they will choose the road that suits their conditioning.

 

Christians say you have been punished because Adam and Eve disobeyed God. It is impossible for me to conceive that Adam and Eve's disobedience is still keeping you miserable. And what had they done? It was sheer curiosity. And they did well. Instead of worshipping God and Jesus Christ in your churches, worship the serpent. Adam and Eve, they are the right people; they disobeyed.

 

It was needed; otherwise there would have been no humanity. There would have been no Albert Einstein, no Bertrand Russell, no Gautam Buddha. There was no possibility. You would have been still animals, naked in the Garden of Eden.

 

And God immediately drove them out of the garden. I sometimes wonder what model of car he used to drive them out. It must have been a Ford, because "blessed are the poor." And strange:

 

four-wheelers, Fords, are going in and out of God's garden, his gate, but a rich man cannot enter.

 

Ford himself cannot enter.

 

If you teach people to be poor, and you bribe them to remain poor.... And the bribe is bogus - it is after death that you will have all the pleasure of life.... But if in God's garden all the pleasures of life are available, one thing is certain, that pleasures are not condemned.

 

If you look at the Mohammedan concept of paradise - your word "paradise" comes from a Mohammedan word, firdaus - all kinds of pleasures are available. Beautiful women stuck at the age of sixteen for eternity, they don't grow up; rivers of wine - bottles are not enough.... Drink, swim, have a deep plunge into the wine; enjoy it as much as you can - and all free. This is the arrangement for the religious people.

 

But I cannot see how the contradiction can be resolved. Here wine is a sin. Here, to have many beautiful women is a sin, and there it becomes a virtue. Virtues are rewarded by sins - strange logic! But it was needed to keep the poor, poor.

 

In India I have never seen a single rich man converting to Christianity. I have seen only poor, starving, orphans being converted to Christianity. Christianity thrives on poverty, because only the poor need the consolation. Only the poor need motivation to drag their life up to the grave - beyond the grave everything is just as it should be.

 

When I say celebrate - because this life is a gift of existence to you.... You have not asked for it, you have not paid for it. You, in fact, don't deserve it. Still, existence is overflowing towards you, sharing all its joys. But you turn out to be such an idiot that when the sun is rising and the sky is full of colors - a time to dance, to sing - you are sitting in a dark church, gloomy, before a cross.

 

My people worship, but not in a church.

 

They worship the beauty of existence.

 

A bird flying, a cloud wandering in the sky, the moon, the stars... Outside you can see the whole existence is in celebration, but you have closed your eyes to it. With closed eyes you are saying, "Ave Maria, Ave Maria," and you go on saying it.

 

Yes, all the religions are against me because I teach celebration, because I teach joy, because I teach comfort, I teach luxury, I teach richness.

 

And man has the intelligence to make the whole world so luxurious that even if there are saints in heaven, they will start praying to go back to the earth. I cannot see that the saints in heaven can enjoy beautiful women, because they missed here, and this is a rehearsal, just a training period of seventy years. If for seventy years you have been repressing yourself, just by entering into heaven, what will you do with your repression? What will you do with your guilt?

 

THE BIBLE was written two thousand years ago; otherwise, marijuana, LSD, hashish - everything would have been made available to the saints in paradise. Of course, here it is a crime and would have remained a crime, but for saints you have to be lenient: they have suffered so much; you have to compensate.

 

I don't tell you about tomorrow, I tell you only of this moment. And if you can enjoy this moment, the next moment you will be more capable of enjoying. If tomorrow ever comes, you will be ready to dance, to love.

 

These religions are bound to be against me, because they are not religions. I want it to be emphasized that this is the only religion. All those religions of the past were sick, pathological.

 

If you start thinking about them, you can easily see that they were pathological. They have made the whole world sick, and they are still going on doing it. They call it "service to humanity."

 

Mother Teresa wrote a letter to me. Because I criticized her a few years ago, she wrote a letter to me: "I cannot understand your criticism. Service to humanity is the true religion. Don't you agree with it?" I wrote to her, "Yes, I agree. Tell all six hundred million Catholics to commit suicide. That will be a service to humanity."

 

The world is suffering from overpopulation - Christians should start committing suicide and serve humanity. But they go on doing just the opposite; they go on opening hospitals, they go on saving orphans. They are against birth control, they are against abortion. This is service to humanity?

 

Nothing can be more poisonous to humanity than what Mother Teresa is doing.

 

In her letter she asked me, "Are you infallible? I believe in the infallible Jesus Christ."

 

I am not such a fool as to be infallible. I am an ordinary man just like you. I am very much fallible.

 

One of my Indian sannyasins is here - his name is Falibhai. Whenever I see him I think to change his name to "Fallible-bhai."

 

Jesus is claiming that he is infallible - and he cannot see that Judas is going to betray him. He cannot see that going to Jerusalem during that religious festival is going to death. Only on the cross does he wake up; and he shouts at God, "Have you forsaken me?" But the skies remain silent.

 

Silence is so beautiful. It is good that the sky does not answer your prayers; otherwise there would be so much noise around the world. And it would be difficult - what answer is given to whom? The sky remained silent.

 

Jesus asks for water because he is thirsty, it is a hot day. And you call this man infallible? He should just have carried a thermos. If he can carry the cross, why can't he carry a small thermos? When you go for a holiday - and he's going forever - a thermos is exactly the right thing to take.

 

Jesus is infallible, and the popes are infallible because they represent Jesus. This is a good arrangement: God is infallible, naturally his son is going to be infallible - and then you can conclude the son's representatives are going to be infallible.

 

One of the last popes before this pope the Polack was homosexual. It was a known fact. In fact, when he became the pope his boyfriend followed him into the Vatican. He became his secretary.

 

Secretaries are very good - girlfriend or boyfriend, it does not matter, but secretaries are very good.

 

Do you think this homosexual is infallible? Do you think this pope the Polack is infallible?

 

Just now he has been trying to convince the Jews that Christians are not anti-semitic. Why? For two thousand years they have been anti-semitic, for two thousand years they have been killing Jews. Has God changed his mind? But infallible people don't change their mind, only fallible people change their mind.

 

Why is he trying now? His effort is to call a conference of Jewish rabbis and Christian bishops, just to meet together and settle the thing: "We are not enemies." He has been telling bishops, "Don't say anything against Judaism." That can mean only one thing: that all the popes that have preceded him were fallible. Or, if they were infallible, then this Polack is fallible.

 

I am not infallible. In fact, life is a continuous change. And the conscious person goes on moving and changing with life and existence. He is like a river, moving - not like a dirty pond which only goes on becoming more and more muddy; he goes nowhere, he never changes. A river goes on flowing, changing, taking new routes.

 

Consciousness keeps pace with the change of life and existence.

 

There are many questions which remind me, "In 1972 you said this...." Forget all about it! What I am saying now is the truth - only for now, not for tomorrow. I will see tomorrow what is the truth. I am not a blind man. I see, and I see the existence continuously changing. But these bibles don't change, these korans don't change, these gitas don't change - they are dead books, just rubbish.

 

These old religions don't change; they go on clinging to the past which exists no more.

 

Galileo was called by the pope because he wrote that the earth is round, not flat. THE BIBLE says it is flat. Of course, I cannot condemn THE BIBLE; it looks flat to us too. Our vision is not that vast; we cannot see the whole earth, we see only small fragments, which look flat.

 

When Galileo wrote that the earth is round, that it is a globe, he was forced by the pope: "You have to change it, because THE BIBLE cannot be wrong. And we cannot allow one thing to be wrong, because that will create suspicion; then other things maybe are also not right. If one thing can be wrong, then everything can be wrong. THE BIBLE has to be true word for word, as a whole."

 

Galileo must have been a man with a tremendous sense of humor. He said, "I will write whatsoever you say. If you say the world, the earth is flat, I will write it." And he wrote it, "The earth is flat - but forgive me, this is my statement; as far as the earth is concerned it is a globe. I cannot do anything about it. I can change my statement, but what can I do with the earth? How can I make it flat to be consistent with THE BIBLE?"

 

is truth. And if tomorrow I see changes, I am not stubborn and I am not a fanatic, I will change; hence you will find thousands of contradictions in me. Anybody who is aware will have thousands of contradictions in his statements. Only a fanatic is consistent, he never contradicts himself. He keeps his eyes closed, he is afraid to see the truth.

 

Celebration is the very nature of existence.

 

Don't separate yourself from existence; otherwise, you will be miserable. You cannot be nourished, you cannot eat THE BIBLE and the KORAN and the GITA. They will not nourish your body, they will kill you. If they cannot nourish even your body, how can they nourish your consciousness?

 

There is only one nourishment: your roots have to be deep down in existence. There is no other nourishment. And if you are nourished... I say, "Blessed are the nourished. Blessed are those whose roots go deep into existence. They are the richest people." Richness does not mean only money. I am not against money; it is a perfectly good servant for exchanging things. But money alone is not richness.

 

Richness is multidimensional. It happens when you are in tune with nature, in harmony with nature; it starts happening multidimensionally. You may not be aware of what will happen to you if you destroy your conditionings of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and simply rely on and trust in nature. If your consciousness also trusts nature just the way your body remains trusting towards nature....

 

You don't know what treasures you have got. Once there is nourishment you will start blossoming.

 

You may not know that you can become a painter, you may not know you can become a dancer. You may be a Picasso, you may be a Nijinsky, you may be a Van Gogh, you may be a Rutherford. You don't know who you are. You will know only when you blossom; there is no other way to know. And blossoming happens only in harmony with nature. Your roots should go not towards any church, not towards any scripture, not towards any dead prophets, but towards the nature that is available to you.

 

Just be natural. Drop all sense of guilt. The guilt arises only because your conditioning says, "Don't do this" and your nature is hungry to do it. Now you are split. Your religion, your Jesuses, your Mohammeds say, "Don't do this, this is wrong." Those Ten Commandments, three thousand years old - they are still dominating you. Why are you degrading yourself? Those ten Commandments say, "Don't do this, this is sin. You will suffer in hell" - and your whole nature wants to do it.

 

Listen to your nature, not to your conditionings, and celebration will happen on its own accord.

 

Have you seen any tree miserable? Have you seen any bird miserable? They are in harmony.

 

Fortunately they don't have priests, popes, shankaracharyas, imams. If the trees had popes and

 

imams and shankaracharyas, then all the trees would stop flowering, would not come to fruition.

 

They would somehow survive - only survive. Survival is not life! Survival is the minimum. You have to be overflowing, you have to be so full that you can share, and still your fullness remains full. That's what the meaning of celebration is.

 

But the religions are bound to be against me, because if I am heard, then there is no need for any other religion in the world. They are trying to stop my words from reaching you; otherwise, there is no hope for themselves. And they have a great investment.

 

In Russia I have my sannyasins - of course, underground. But I am not a serious man; only fanatics are serious. When Russian sannyasins asked me what to do about the red clothes, the mala, I said, "Forget all about them - they don't matter. They are just to provoke people." But there sannyasins will be killed, so they have to meet in basements. Still the Russian government has started torturing them. They have taken their books, they have taken their tapes that they had smuggled from the outside. And they are torturing them to make them give the names of other sannyasins.

 

Why does communism fear us? - because communism is also a religion. It has its own trinity: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, V.I. Lenin - the trinity. They also have their bible: DAS KAPITAL. Neither Christians read THE BIBLE nor do communists read DAS KAPITAL. I am the only unfortunate one who has been reading all this rubbish. Communism is an atheist religion.

 

All these people are going to stop my words from reaching people. That's what is happening here.

 

I was tremendously disappointed when I came to America. I had thought that it was a democratic country. It is not, absolutely not, because what they have been doing to my people, to me, is fascist.

 

Democracy is just a mask; behind the democracy everything is fascist.

 

You will be surprised to know that one of my sannyasins, one of my oldest sannyasins, Ma Yoga Laxmi, who was the president of the Indian section of my sannyasins for almost ten years, and has been with me almost for twenty years.... She is frail, small-bodied... she has cancer. She has been operated on, much of her stomach has been removed. Still, in America - remember I am saying in America, not in the Soviet Union - she has been beaten by your naturalization services. She was not allowed to have her legal expert, she was not allowed to phone anybody. She was not allowed - because other sannyasins were waiting outside.

 

The officials took her first into the front part of the building. They were very sweet - just the way communists are in Russia. They tried to bribe her. They said to her, "We will give you a green card without any difficulty, we will help you in every way. And if you help us and whatsoever we say you support, we will replace Bhagwan's secretary and put you in power."

 

When she refused, when she said, "Whatsoever you are saying is absolute lies, and I am not power- hungry," when they found that she could not be seduced in a friendly way, they forced her - four strong people for a tiny person, fragile, the body is dying - and they took her to the back. She told them, "Please, let me have my advocate with me." They did not allow it. And at the back of the building they started beating her - of course in such a way that no medical evidence can be found.

 

And she is so weak....

 

You call this democracy?

 

My sannyasins - the president of the international sannyas movement, the president of this commune, the head of another corporation - all these three women, and I don't know about others, whenever they come into the country or go out of the country officials take them into a dirty room, force them to be naked, and force their fingers into their vaginas under the pretext that they are searching for drugs. This you call democracy?

 

And doing it to three women.... Perhaps they have done it to many. Those poor women cannot say anything, just out of shame: what to say to anybody? And there is no witness; those officials will deny it flatly. These women are tortured in an ugly, inhuman way - and this is a democratic country.

 

Sometimes I think the attorney general of Oregon must be the reincarnation of Pontius Pilate.

 

This is also humiliation of womankind. Not only should sannyasins fight it, all the women of America should fight it. This is simply against every woman; it is not a question only of my sannyasins. But other women will remain silent because they are Christians, they are Protestants, they are Catholics, they are Jews. People cannot see because they have so many curtains before their eyes.

 

Yes, religions are against me - it is natural. I am also against all of them. And remember, if Jesus could work with only twelve disciples and managed to have the biggest religion in the world, what about me?

 

-Osho, "From the False to the Truth, #4, Q1"