First I taught you about trust, the heart, feeling, love; and now I am teaching you about doubt, skepticism, reason, intellect, because I would like you to be a whole man. You can be completely satisfied with trusting, with the heart, but you will not be a whole man.
I would not call Mira a whole person, I would not call Ramakrishna a whole person. They are beautiful, but the intellect is missing; it is all heart. It is too much sugar, it creates diabetes. I am diabetic. Too much of the heart, too much sweetness, and you suffer from diabetes -- and I don't want any of you to suffer from diabetes. Yes, just living by the heart you will have spiritual diabetes. Intellect is salty, spicy; it is not all sugar.
I would like you to enjoy the wholeness of your being, when your body, your heart, your intellect all fall in tune. I have called that the new man -- Zorba the Buddha.
-Osho, "From Personality to Individuality, #13, Q1"
Nikos Kazantzakis has made a tremendous contribution by revealing himself in many novels. From ZORBA THE BUDDHA... now I cannot even ask your forgiveness! So please, be kind... from ZORBA THE GREEK to CHRIST RECRUCIFIED -- between these two novels there are other novels -- but these two are the polarities. He was continuously obsessed with Jesus, Christianity, God -- and simultaneously afraid of death. The man never lived.
He was here -- and what a man, of tremendous potential. All that he needed was a meditative consciousness -- that could make the split disappear. Yes, there would have been a loss; he would not have written ZORBA THE GREEK, he would not have written CHRIST RECRUCIFIED. But I think it is worth risking -- he would have lived!
All these novels are from a person who has not lived. Perhaps if he had lived he would have created something... what I call Zorba the Buddha.
That's what I am writing! -- in your hearts, because I don't believe in writing in books. That's what each of my sannyasins will be carrying in his heart. That is the right soil for Zorba the Buddha to grow; hence my insistence that you should not renounce Zorba.
If you renounce Zorba you can never become the Buddha.
It is your Zorba, accepted with respect, love, dignity, that is going to grow slowly slowly into the Buddha.
The Buddha is the peak.
The Zorba is the foundation.
They cannot exist separately; both are incomplete.
Gautam the Buddha is incomplete. He has the whole upper structure without foundations. So it is not a coincidence that his religion died with him and everything disappeared within a few centuries.
Just three hundred years after Buddha's death Alexander reached India, but he could not find a man who could even come close to the idea of Buddha that he had heard resounding all over the world. Alexander also was Greek, by chance. He was seeking a Buddha, but he could not find one. There were statues -- thousands in number -- but not a single man. What happened?
Gautam Buddha is perhaps the most religious man in the whole history of man. But what happened?
Why did everything fall apart the moment he was not there? The reason is, there was no foundation. The structure was without foundation, it was going to fall apart any moment.
Buddha is incomplete. It hurts me to say that, but now I have decided to say everything, whether it hurts me, or hurts you, or hurts anybody -- I don't care. The truth has to be stated, naked.
Zorba -- you can find many around the world, but they are incomplete. They are just eating, drinking, merrying; but life is much more. The Zorba is like the foundation, but the palace has never been raised upon those foundations.
I mentioned Shahjehan, who made the Taj Mahal in memory of one of his wives. He was also making another memorial for himself. On one side of the river Yamuna -- a beautiful place -- he had raised the Taj Mahal. But it took twenty years. Exactly on the other side -- you can see from Taj Mahal to the other side -- he was making another memorial, so that when he died the memorial would be ready. He knew that his sons would not be so interested in making the memorial, which was to be better than the Taj Mahal.
The Taj Mahal had taken so much energy, so much money, that his successor was not going to bother about another memorial. So he was making it himself.
The Taj Mahal is made of white marble; he was making his memorial with black marble. But he died; only the foundations are there. And he was right, his sons did not bother to make a memorial for their father. They buried him just within the foundations.
Every Zorba is only the foundations. But foundations cannot have any meaning; their whole meaning is in the palace that is going to be raised upon them.
Both types have existed in the world, but separately -- that is the misery of the whole humanity.
My effort is to make Zorba and Buddha meet together, be one. That is my vision of the new man -- psychologically healthy with no split personality, with no garbage about guilt, sin, God.
Zorba the Buddha will not go to any temple, to any mosque, to any gurudwara to worship, to pray.
His whole life will be a worship. All his acts will be his prayer.
Whatever he does will be his art, will be his painting, his poetry, will be his sculpture.
Each movement of an integrated human being is going to have tremendous beauty and fragrance.
Nikos Kazantzakis could have become Zorba the Buddha. I feel sorry for the man; he had the potential, but Christianity destroyed him.
Christianity has destroyed thousands of people.
Other religions are also doing the same on a smaller scale, but Christianity is committing crimes on a mass scale.
-Osho, "From Death to Deathlessness, #25, Q1"