Question: Who are you?
Osho: I am just myself. No prophet, no messiah, no Christ. Just an ordinary human being... just like you.
Question: Well, not quite!
Osho: That's true... not quite! You are still asleep -- but that is not much of a difference. One day I was also asleep; one day you will be able to awaken. You can wake up this moment, nobody is preventing it. So the difference is just meaningless. A person who is capable of being asleep is capable of being awake.
Question: Is there such a thing as god?
Osho: No.
Question: What is within us? you talk about turning inward. what does that really mean?
Osho: First, let us finish God; otherwise, he will interfere again and again. God is just a projection of the ego. As ego is false and a substitute for a true self, God is the ego of the whole world -- a substitute self, because our egos cannot exist without support. They need universal support, and God gives immense support.
When I say go inwards... you are not going to find God at all. You are going to find a pure, silent consciousness, and you are going to realize immediately that the same consciousness pervades all. I call it godliness, not God, because this is a quality. Don't give it a personality, don't confine it into a person. Let it remain free, flowing. It is more like a fragrance than like a flower. A flower can be painted, a flower can be photographed; a fragrance can only be experienced, you cannot photograph it, you cannot paint it. It is a quality far superior to the personal God. It is an impersonal consciousness, universal consciousness.
Question: Doesn't that seem sort of boring?
Osho: Boring?
Question: Yeah, because it's all the same.
Osho: Yes. To an asleep person, it is boring. The person who is asleep needs colorful dreams, changes -- every night, marriage, divorce, job change. The asleep person becomes bored very easily for the simple reason that his joy is derived from something, it is not coming from his own inner source.
I have never been bored since I came to know myself. I have been trying in every possible way. Eating the same food for years, I don't get bored. Sleeping at the same time, waking at the same time, doing the same thing round the clock for years, I don't get bored because there is no comparison with the past, there is no comparison with the future.
Boredom needs comparison. You have to remember that this rose is nothing new: you have seen it yesterday, you have seen it the day before yesterday. You are bored. And slowly your boredom creates a barrier between you and the rose. You cannot smell it any more, you cannot see it any more. Although you see it, you cannot see its newness, its freshness. The rose that you had seen yesterday is not the same rose. It has the same quality, the same fragrance, but it has its own individuality.
When you feel a cosmic consciousness, you are not lost like a dewdrop in the ocean. For the first time your individuality is revealed to you. For the first time you know the luminous being that you always have been; that you will always be immortal, that now there is no death. There is a tremendous insight into the beauty and the grace of things, and it goes on becoming bigger and bigger, fresher and fresher. It is not that it remains the same -- the universal energy is a constant growth.
That's why I wanted to finish with God in the first place, because God cannot grow. Where will he grow? He is perfect. Now perfection cannot grow. He knows all; what more is there for him to know? He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent... and don't you get bored with God?
My godliness is imperfect; it is an opening, always bigger and bigger. It is expanding, and there are no limits to its expansion. And each moment is a discovery for the awakened man. In small things -- sipping the tea in the morning,the smell of the tea.... The taste of the tea is so new, it is as new as the sun rising outside the window.
It depends on how conscious you are to make the world new every moment. It is already new every moment; nothing is static, everything is changing, in a flux. The tree that you had left at home, by the time you go back a few leaves may have died, the wind may have taken them. A few new leaves may have come up, a few flowers may have fallen to the ground, a few new buds may have opened. It is only to a sleeping man that the tree is the same. To the awakened man, it is new every moment.
Heraclitus said, "You cannot step in the same river twice." And I say to you that you cannot step even once in the same river, because while your feet touch the surface of the river, it is flowing. Your feet go into the river, and it is flowing. By the time your feet have touched the bottom, it is not the same river you touched on the surface.
Heraclitus is wrong. Many people have said Heraclitus is wrong, that the world is permanent. I say it from a totally different direction -- and I know Heraclitus will have to agree with me, because I am not contradicting his basic standpoint, I am refining
When he says you cannot step twice, he is trying to say that everything is changing, the wife is not the same, the husband is not the same. If people are awake, I don't think there will be so much despair, gloom, grumpiness, so many complaints about everything. The husband is bored because it is the same wife, the same geography he has to explore every day. The wife is also bored; the moment the husband starts making an approach, immediately she has a heart attack, a headache, anything will do, but somehow..."at least one holiday. Just go to sleep silently. Don't disturb me." And this is the same woman who had been dreaming about this man one day, writing beautiful poems and letters to him -- and this is the same man.
What has happened? What went wrong? Why are they thinking to divorce each other? They have become bored, and they think that the other is responsible for the boredom. My point is that your sleep is responsible for all boredom. No divorce is going to help. The other person will bore you just the same.
Question: What does it take to wake someone up?
Osho: It needs people who can shock you. Your sleep is deep; it is no ordinary sleep, it is spiritual sleep. You need people who can shock you and break all your shock absorbers. Every person has grown buffers around his sleep. Even if a shock is given, the buffers absorb it. It never reaches to the person.
The real function of a religious man is to teach how to break the buffers, how to come out of the shell of darkness in which you have been living for many lives. No prayer is going to help. Only a Master can help you -- and by a Master I mean a craftsman who has broken his own buffers, who has somehow sneaked out of the shell of sleep. That is the function of a Master. But all the so-called religious leaders go on putting more buffers on you.
-Osho, "The Last Testament, Vol 1, #14",
From an interview with Roberta Green, 'Santa Ana Register' Orange County, California