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 A Great Synthesis 

“I Teach Freedom”

“I Teach One World”

“I Teach Zorba Buddha”

“I Teach Love and Meditation”

“I Teach The Unique Individual”

“I Teach Religiousness not Religion”

“I Teach You Rejocing, not Renunciation”

 I am not a Messiah 

"I am not here to give you a dogma. A dogma makes one certain. I am not here to give you any promise for the future - any promise for the future makes one secure. I am here simply to make you alert and aware. That is to be herenow - with all the insecurity that life is, with all the uncertainty that life is, with all the danger that life is.

I know you come here seeking some certainty, some creed, some 'ism', somewhere to belong to, someone to rely upon. You come here out of your fear. You are searching a sort of beautiful imprisonment - so that you can live without any awareness. I would make you more insecure, more uncertain, because that's how life is, that's how God is. When there is more insecurity and more danger, the only way to respond to it is by awareness."

- Osho, “A Sudden Clash of Thunder, #6”

 A Great Synthesis is Happening Here 

"A great synthesis is happening here – something that has never happened before, of which they are afraid – and which needs to happen. It is a must for humanity’s survival. I am trying to create a great synthesis: the synthesis between Zorba the Greek and Gautama the Buddha, the synthesis between materialism and spiritualism. I am trying to create a spiritual materialism. These two things have always remained separate, antagonistic to each other. And because of their antagonism man has remained schizophrenic because man is both, body and soul. Man is not only soul, man is not only body. To insist that man is only body is materialism; to insist that man is only soul is spiritualism. Both are half, and both are wrong because they are half. And both are unsatisfactory, they have proved unsatisfactory.

Man has to be accepted in his totality. As far as the body is concerned, a man has to be Zorba the Greek, and as far as the soul is concerned, a man has to be Gautama the Buddha. If body and soul can exist together, why cannot Buddha and Zorba exist together in a single man? That will be the highest synthesis.

The West has remained materialistic. It suffers from materialism. It has all the benefits of materialism: great technology, beautiful houses, better medical facilities, longer life, more beautiful bodies, more healthy bodies. It has all the benefits of materialism – it is rich, affluent – but it suffers because it has lost its soul, the inner world is empty, hollow. The West has all that is needed on the outside, but in managing the outside it has leaned too much towards materialism and forgotten its own inner world. The master is lost, the soul is lost; the kingdom is there but the king is dead. Hence the Western anguish, hence the Western search for the king, hence the inquiry into meditation, because meditation is the only way to seek and search for the inner king. Where has he gone? Where is the inner light?

The East has remained spiritual. It has all the beauties of spirituality: calmness, quietness, relaxedness, loving, compassion. It has a certain quality – a flavor of the inner – but the body is sick and there is great poverty and starvation all around, and the outer world is ugly. It has suffered much too. And both are tense, because unless you are whole you will be tense.

Can’t you see that the East is no more interested in meditation? That’s why you don’t see many Indians here. The East is no more interested in meditation, it is no more interested in Buddha; its interest has shifted, and it is natural. It wants to know more about physics, chemistry, engineering, medical science. The Eastern talent goes to the West – to Oxford, to Cambridge, to Harvard, to Princeton – to learn what has happened in the West. The Eastern talent has only one desire: how to go to the West and learn something of modern science. The Eastern talented person cannot believe: Why are you Westerners coming to the East? You have Oxford and you have Harvard, why are you coming here? We are trying to get there and you are coming here. It looks so absurd.

But the West has to come to the East; Harvard and Oxford have proved lacking. They have given much, but they have not given inner richness. The West is affluent, and because the West is affluent, the West has become more aware – in contrast to its affluence – of the inner poverty, the inner black hole. The outside is so full of light that the inner black hole, in contrast, has become very clear. The search has started: the West is moving towards the East, the East is moving towards the West.

The Eastern intellectual becomes a communist, and the Western intellectual becomes a meditator. This can go on, and this can lead again to another kind of shift and to misery. The West can become the East and the East can become the West, and the problem will remain the same.

My effort here is a great experiment in bringing the East and West together."

- Osho, “The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1, #10”

 We are trying to create a synthesis 

Question :

Your work with the people who come here includes both meditation methods and the humanistic psychology methods. Can you explain what you are trying to achieve through this?

We are trying to present a new synthesis between East and West. The eastern methods are more individualistic, more inward-going, and more concerned with solitude, aloneness, and the person.

They are meditative methods, more concerned with the person and his integrity. They are not group methods.

The western methods are all group methods, and are more out-going, more concerned with communication and relationships; with the group, and integrity in relationships, not in aloneness.

So what they can be reduced to is: the western methods are more concerned with love, the eastern methods more with meditation.

These are the two polarities of human consciousness - love and meditation. Meditation means to be alone, as if you alone exist. And love means that you are not, the other is; as if you exist only in relation to the other, and there is no other exiStence. These are the two Polarities. and taken separately they both become extremes, and both are dangerous.

The East has tried the first extreme - of meditation. It became life-negating and escapist - hence the poverty, the ugliness. There has been no scientific progress in the East, because nobody has paid any attention to society. All those who were interested in any search always escaped

In the West, the society has progressed. There is a better standard of living, more affluence and comfort, more convenience, more health, and more life. But they have moved to the other extreme and the individual has by and by disappeared.

These two things taken separately are dangerous, because life exists in polarity. The whole emphasis here is that there are no opposites, there are only complementaries.

So meditation and love are not opposites, they are complementaries. All religion should be life- affirming, and life should be meditative.

So we are trying to create a synthesis, and it is not only an ideology - because that is not difficult.

This synthesis is really in the being of people who come here. A new synthesis is being tried and much depends on it.

A world psychology has to be given birth to. The East has succeeded in certain ways and failed in others, just as the West has failed in certain areas but succeeded in others. Now there should be no more of this bifurcation of East and West. There should be a unitive psychology, global, in which there is no East and no West, but the polarities meet and dissolve.

Our work is on human beings. It is not academic, theoretical, philosophical. It is absolutely personal and existential.

- Osho, "Above All, Don't Wobble, #2"

 The Third Quantum Leap 

- My effort is to leave you alone with meditation -

(Interview BY Aaj Ka Anand)

Osho,

With gautam buddha religion took a quantum leap. god became meaningless and only meditation was important. now, twenty-five centuries after buddha, again religion is taking the quantum leap in your presence and becoming religiousness. please talk about this phenomenon.

The credit of bringing a quantum leap in religion goes back twenty-five centuries before Gautam Buddha to Adinatha, who for the first time preached a religion without God. It was a tremendous revolution because nowhere in the whole world had it ever been conceived that religion could exist without God.

God has been an essential part -- the center -- of all the religions: Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism. But to make God the center of religion makes man just the periphery. To conceive of God as the creator of the world makes man only a puppet.

That's why in Hebrew, which is the language of Judaism, man is called Adam. 'Adam' means mud. In Arabic man is called 'admi'; it is from Adam, again it means mud. In English, which has become the language of Christianity by and large, the word human comes from 'humus' and humus means mud.

Naturally if God is the creator he has to create from something. He has to make man like a statue, so first he makes man with mud and then breathes life into him. But if this is so man loses all dignity, and if God is the creator of man and everything else, the whole idea is whimsical because what has he been doing for eternity before he created man and the universe?

According to Christianity he created man only four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ.

So what was he doing all along through eternity? So it seems whimsical. There cannot be any cause, because to have a cause for which God had to create existence means there are powers higher than God, there are causes which can make him create. Or there is a possibility that suddenly desire arose in him. That too is not very philosophically sound, because for eternity he was desireless. And to be desireless is so blissful that it is impossible to conceive that out of an experience of eternal blissfulness a desire arises in him to create the world. Desire is desire, whether you want to make a house or become the prime minister or create the world. And God cannot be conceived as having desires. So the only thing that remains is that he is whimsical, eccentric. Then there is no need for cause and no need for desire -- just a whim.

But if this whole existence is just out of a whim it loses all meaning, all significance. And tomorrow another whim may arise in him to destroy, to dissolve the whole universe. So we are simply puppets in the hands of a dictatorial god who has all the powers but who has not a sane mind, who is whimsical.

To conceive this five thousand years ago Adinatha must have been a very deep meditator, contemplative, and he must have come to the conclusion that with God there is no meaning in the world. If we want meaning in the world then God has to be disposed of. He must have been a man of tremendous courage. People are still worshipping in the churches, in the synagogues, in the temples; yet that man Adinatha five thousand years before us came to a very clear-cut scientific conclusion that there is nothing higher than man and any evolution that is going to happen is within man and in his consciousness.

This was the first quantum leap -- God was disposed of.

Adinatha is the first master of Jainism. The credit does not go to Buddha because Buddha comes twenty-five centuries later than Adinatha. But another credit goes to Buddha. Adinatha disposed of God but could not manage to put meditation in its place. On the contrary, he created asceticism, austerities, torturing the body, fasting, remaining naked, eating only once a day, not drinking in the night, not eating in the night, eating only certain foods. He had come to a beautiful philosophical conclusion but it seems the conclusion was only philosophical, it was not meditational.

When you depose God you cannot have any ritual, you cannot have worship, you cannot have prayer; something has to be substituted. He substituted austerities, because man became the center of his religion and man has to purify himself. Purity in his conception was that man has to detach himself from the world, has to detach himself from his own body. This distorted the whole thing. He had come to a very significant conclusion, but it remained only a philosophical concept.

Adinatha disposed of God but left a vacuum, and Buddha filled it with meditation. Adinatha made a godless religion, Buddha made a meditative religion.

Meditation is Buddha's contribution. The question is not to torture the body; the question is to become more silent, to become more relaxed, to become more peaceful. It is an inward journey to reach to one's own center of consciousness, and the center of one's own consciousness is the center of the whole existence.

Twenty-five centuries have again passed. Just as Adinatha's revolutionary concept of godless religion got lost in a desert of austerities and self-torture, Buddha's idea of meditation -- something inner, that nobody else can see ; only you know where you are, only you know whether you are progressing or not -- got lost into another desert, and that was organized religion.

Religion says that single individuals cannot be trusted, whether they are meditating or not. They need communities, masters, monasteries where they can live together. Those who are on a higher level of consciousness can watch over others and help them. It became essential that religions should not be left in the hands of individuals, they should be organized and should be in the hands of those who have arrived at a high point of meditation.

In the beginning it was good; while Buddha was alive there were many people who reached self-realization, enlightenment. But as Buddha died and these people died, the very organization that was supposed to help people to meditate fell in the hands of a priesthood, and rather than helping you to meditate they started creating rituals around the image of Buddha. Buddha became another God. Adinatha disposed of God, Buddha never accepted that God exists, but this priesthood cannot exist without a God. So there may not be a God who is a creator, but Buddha has reached godhood.

For others the only thing is to worship Buddha, to have faith in Buddha, to follow the principles of Buddha, to live life according to his doctrine; and Buddha got lost in the organization, the imitation. But they all forgot the basic thing which was meditation. My whole effort is to create a religionless religion. We have seen what happened to religions which have God as the center. We have seen what happened to Adinatha's revolutionary concept, godless religion. We have seen what happened to Buddha -- organized religion without God.

Now my effort is: just as they dissolved God, dissolve religion also. Leave only meditation so it cannot be forgotten in any way. There is nothing else to replace it. There is no God and there is no religion. By religion I mean an organized doctrine, creed, ritual, priesthood. And for the first time I want religion to be absolutely individual, because all organized religions, whether with God or without God, have misled humanity. And the sole cause has been organization, because organization has its own ways which go against meditativeness. Organization is really a political phenomenon, it is not religious. It is another way of power and will to power.

Now every Christian priest hopes some day to become a bishop at least, to become a cardinal, to become a pope. This is a new hierarchy, a new bureaucracy, and because it is spiritual nobody objects. You may be a bishop, you may be a pope, you may be anything. It is not objectionable because you are not going to obstruct anybody's life. It is just an abstract idea.

My effort is to destroy the priesthood completely. It remained with God, it remained with godless religion, now the only way is that we should dispose of God and religion both so that there is no possibility of any priesthood.

Then man is absolutely free, totally responsible for his own growth. My feeling is that the more a man is responsible for his own growth, the more difficult it is for him to postpone it for long. Because it means if you are miserable, you are responsible. If you are tense, you are responsible. If you are not relaxed, you are responsible. If you are in suffering, you are the cause of it. There is no God, there is no priesthood that you can go to and ask for some ritual. You are left alone with your misery, and nobody wants to be miserable.

The priests go on giving you opium, they go on giving you hope, "Don't be worried, it is just a test of your faith, of your trust; and if you can pass through this misery and suffering silently and patiently, in the other world beyond death you will be immensely rewarded." If there is no priesthood you have to understand that whatever you are, you are responsible for it, nobody else.

And the feeling that "I am responsible for my misery," opens the door. Then you start looking for methods and means to get out of this miserable state, and that's what meditation is. It is simply the opposite state of misery, suffering, anguish, anxiety. It is a state of a peaceful, blissful flowering of being, so silent and so timeless that you cannot conceive that anything better is possible. And there is nothing which is better than the state of a meditative mind.

So you can say these are the three quantum leaps: Adinatha drops God because he finds God is becoming too heavy on man; rather than helping him in his growth he has become a burden -- but he forgets to replace him with something. Man will need something in his miserable moments, in his suffering. He used to pray to God. You have taken God away, you have taken his prayer away and now when he will be miserable, what will he do? In Jainism meditation has no place.

It is Buddha's insight to see that God has been dropped; now the gap should be filled, otherwise the gap will destroy man. He puts in meditation -- something really authentic which can change the whole being. But he was not aware -- perhaps he could not be aware because there are things you cannot be aware of unless they happen -- that there should be no organization, that there should be no priesthood, that as God is gone religion should also be gone. But he can be forgiven because he had not thought about it and there was no past to help him to see it, it came after him.

The real problem is the priest, and God is the invention of the priest. Unless you drop the priest, you can drop God, but the priest will always find new rituals, he will create new gods.

My effort is to leave you alone with meditation, with no mediator between you and existence. When you are not in meditation you are separated from existence and that is your suffering. It's the same as when you take a fish out of the ocean and throw it on the bank -- the misery and the suffering and the tortures he goes through, the hankering and the effort to reach back to the ocean because it is where he belongs, he is part of the ocean and he cannot remain apart.

Any suffering is simply indicative that you are not in communion with existence, that the fish is not in the ocean.

Meditation is nothing but withdrawing all the barriers, thoughts, emotions, sentiments, which create a wall between you and existence. The moment they drop you suddenly find yourself in tune with the whole; not only in tune, you really find you are the whole.

When a dewdrop slips from a lotus leaf into the ocean it does not find that it is part of the ocean, it finds it is the ocean. And to find it is the ultimate goal, the ultimate realization, there is nothing beyond it.

So Adinatha dropped God but did not drop organization. And because there was no God, the organization created rituals.

Buddha, seeing what had happened to Jainism, that it had become a ritualism, dropped God. He dropped all rituals and single-pointedly insisted on meditation, but he forgot that the priests who had made rituals in Jainism are going to do the same with meditation. And they did it, they made Buddha himself a God. They talk about meditation but basically Buddhists are worshipers of Buddha -- they go to the temple and instead of Krishna or Christ there is Buddha's statue. There was no statue of Buddha for five hundred years after Buddha. In Buddhist temples they had just the tree under which Buddha became enlightened, engraved on marble, just a symbol. Buddha was not there, only the tree.

You will be surprised that the statue of Buddha that we see today has no resemblance at all to Buddha's personality, it resembles the personality of Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great came to India three hundred years after Buddha. Till then there was no statue of Buddha. The priests were in search because there was no photograph, there was no painting, so how to make a statue of Buddha? And Alexander's face looked really superhuman, he had a beautiful personality, the Greek face and physiology; they picked up the idea of Buddha's face and body from Alexander. So all the statues that are being worshipped in Buddhist temples are statues of Alexander the Great, they have nothing to do with Buddha. But the priests had to create the statue -- God was not there, ritual was difficult, around meditation ritual was difficult. They created a statue and they started saying -- in the same way all religions have been doing -- have faith in Buddha, have trust in Buddha, and you will be saved.

Both the revolutions were lost. I would like that what I am doing is not lost. So I am trying in every possible way to drop all those things which in the past have been barriers for the revolution to continue and grow. I don't want anybody to stand between the individual and existence. No prayer, no priest, you alone are enough to face the sunrise, you don't need somebody to interpret for you what a beautiful sunrise it is.

[....]

And this is my attitude: you are here, every individual is here, the whole existence is available. All that you need is just to be silent and listen to existence. There is no need of any religion, there is no need of any God, there is no need of any priesthood, there is no need of any organization.

I trust in the individual categorically. Nobody up to now has trusted in the individual in such a way.

So all things can be removed. Now all that has been left to you is a state of meditation which simply means a state of utter silence. The word meditation makes it look heavier. It is better to call it just a simple, innocent silence and existence opens all its beauties to you.

And as it goes on growing you go on growing, and there comes a moment when you have reached the very peak of your potentiality -- you can call it Buddhahood, enlightenment, bhagwatta, godliness, whatever, it has no name, so any name will do. [....]

- Osho, "The Last Testament, Vol 5, #16"

 I Teach One World. 

- East and West have to disappear -

Question 1:

Can you give me a message to take to the western world so that people there might understand you and your followers?

My message is very simple. That's why it is difficult to understand. I teach the obvious; it is not complex at all. Because it is not complex there is nothing much to understand in it. It has to be lived, experienced. My message is not verbal, logical, rational. It is existential, so those who want to understand it intellectually will only misunderstand it.

Still, there are a few fundamentals I would like to tell you. One: up to now man has lived only half- heartedly. In the East, in the West, man has remained lopsided. Neither has the Eastern man been whole nor has the Western man been whole. The West has chosen the body, is body-oriented; the East has chosen the soul, is soul-oriented; and man is both, a great harmony of both. Man is both and a transcendence. Neither in the East nor in the West has man been accepted totally. We have not yet dared to accept man in his totality.

That is one of the most fundamental things I want everybody to understand about my teaching: I teach the whole man. The very idea of East and West is nonsense; that too is because of the ancient division. All divisions have to be dissolved.

I teach one world. East and West have to disappear; both are schizophrenic. The West is right- handed, the East is left-handed; the West is active, the East is passive; the West is extrovert, the East is introvert - but man is both and beyond both.

To be total, one has to be as capable of being extrovert as of being introvert. To be total, one has to be capable of breathing out and breathing in. Inhalation is as much needed as exhalation. In fact, they are not two; exhalation-inhalation IS ONE process.

The West has chosen the outside world, matter, has become very scientific, has created great technology; but man is crushed underneath that technology because man has not grown simultaneously. Man is lagging far behind. Science has gone far ahead, and the science that man has created is now destroying man himself.

Man's inner world has remained poor in the West, man is spiritually starved in the West. And the same has happened in the East from the other extreme: man has completely denied his body, his world. The East has insisted on denying all that is outside you, renouncing the manifested world and just going in, remaining at your center. The East is spiritually rich but materially very poor and starved. The East has suffered, the West has suffered.

My message is: now it is time that we should drop this division of the outer and the inner, of the lower and the higher, of the left-handed and the right-handed. We should drop this division between man and woman, between East and West. We should create a whole man who is capable of both.

That's why I am going to be misunderstood everywhere. The Eastern religious person is angry with me because he thinks I am teaching materialism, and the Western rational thinker is angry with me because he thinks I am teaching spiritual mumbojumbo. EVERYBODY is angry at me, and that is natural; I can understand it.

I am teaching the whole man - from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest rung, from sex to samadhi, from the body to the soul, from matter to God. My trust is total.

I would like to tell you that up to now man has not trusted. Not even in the East has man trusted.

In the East man has doubted the world; hence in the East the world is called illusory, MAYA. In the West man has doubted God, soul; they are thought to be just hallucinations, pathologies. To the really Western mind Jesus looks like a neurotic, psychologically ill, needs psychiatric treatment. To the East the West looks animalistic. "Eat, drink, and be merry" - that seems to be the understanding of the East about the West, that that is the only Western philosophy: be like animals, gross.

The West has doubted the inner world, the East has doubted the outer world. Both have lived in doubt and their trust has been half-hearted.

My trust is total. I trust the outer, I trust the inner - because outer and inner are both together. They cannot be separated. There is NO God without this world; there is no world without God. God is the innermost core of this world. The juice flowing in the trees is God, the blood circulating in your body is God, the consciousness residing in you is God. God and the world are mixed together just like a dancer and his dance; they cannot be separated, they are inseparable. So I don't say the world is illusion; that is nonsense. The world is as real as consciousness. Neither do I say that the inner world is neurosis, madness, hallucination; it is not. It is the very foundation of reality.

I teach the whole man. I am not a materialist or a spiritualist. My approach is wholistic - and the whole man can only be holy.

Because of this there is going to be great misunderstanding about me, and anybody can pick things, find faults with me, and it is very easy. The spiritualist can call me Epicurean, a follower of Charvaka - and he is not absolutely wrong because half of me is Epicurean. I accept Epicurus and Charvaka because they teach the body and the joys of the body and the exhilaration of the body. And there is exhilaration in the body, and the moment you drop that, you become serious and sad.

That's why the Eastern saint looks so sad, no joy. They talk about bliss but it doesn't show on their faces. They look utterly miserable. They look utterly dead - because they are afraid of the outer, and one who is afraid of the outer will be afraid of love because love is an outgoing process. Love means the other, love means relating, love means communicating with the other. Love means the relationship between I and thou. The East denies the other, hence the East is against love. And if you are against love you will lose dance.

Without love, there is no dance in life and no song. Without love there is no poetry. Life becomes dull, a drag. Without love you can live, but only at the minimum. It will be almost like vegetating.

And that's what is happening to the Eastern spirituality; go into the monasteries, go into the ashrams.

That's why my ashram looks so utterly different - because people are dancing, singing, holding hands, hugging, loving, joyous; this is not the Eastern concept of an ashram. An ashram has to be absolutely joyless; it has to be more like a cemetery than like a garden. But the moment you stop love, all that is flowing in you stops, becomes stagnant.

You cannot celebrate without love. How can you celebrate without love? And what will you celebrate, and with what? [....]

You have not lived if you have not loved.

The East is against love. That's why Eastern spirituality is sad, dull, dead. No juice flows through the Eastern saint. He is afraid of ANY flow, any vibration, any pulsation, any streaming of his energy.

He is constantly controlling himself, repressing himself. He is sitting upon himself, on guard. He is against himself and against the world. He is simply waiting to die, he is committing a slow suicide.

That's why my ashram is going to be misunderstood. This will look like the Ashram of a Charvaka, this will look like the garden of Epicurus.

The Western man has loved - there is laughter and there is dancing and there is song - but the Western man has lost ALL idea of who he is. He has lost track of consciousness, he is not aware.

He has become more and more mechanical because he denies the inner. So laughter is there but laughter cannot go deep, because there is no depth. The depth is not accepted. So the West lives in a shallow laughter and East lives in a deep sadness. This is the misery, the agony that has happened to man.

My message is: it is time now, man is mature enough to come out of these half-hearted, lopsided patterns. These programs have to be dropped and changed. One should accept the outer and the inner both, and totally, and with no conditions at all. Then there will be consciousness and there will be love, and they will not be contradictory to each other but complementary. Love will give you joy, consciousness will give you crystallization. Consciousness will make you aware of who you are, and love will make you aware of what this world is. And between these two banks, the river of life flows.

I teach the whole man. This is one of the most fundamental things to be understood - then all else will become easy, then things will be simple. This is the base. I teach the world and I teach God, and I teach them in the same breath. I want to bring Epicurus and Buddha as close as possible.

Buddha is sitting under his tree; you cannot conceive of Buddha dancing. Epicurus is dancing in his garden; you cannot conceive of Epicurus sitting silently under a tree, meditating.

I would like Epicurus and Buddha to become one. Life should be a rhythm of dance and silence, of music and sound and silence. Life should be a rhythm of going out as far as possible and going in as far as possible, because God is both.

Close your eyes and you see God, open your eyes and you see God, because God is all there is.

Joey, you ask me, "Can you give me a message to take to the Western world so that people there might understand you and your followers?"

The people who are with me are not my followers. They are my lovers, but not my followers. They are my friends, but not my followers. They are my disciples, but not my followers.

And what is the difference between a disciple and a follower? A follower believes; whatsoever is said, he makes a dogma out of it. The disciple learns, experiments, and unless he finds the truth himself he remains open.

I am not giving any dogma to my friends here, to my sannyasins. All that I am doing here is helping them to understand themselves. All I am doing here is helping them to be themselves.

A follower imitates. A Christian has to imitate Christ and a Buddhist has to imitate Buddha - and all imitators are pseudo. I want my friends to be authentic. How can you follow me? I am so different from you and you are so different from me. You are so unique. There has never been a person like you and there will never be again. God only creates one person once. He is very innovative, He does not repeat, He does not make man on an assembly line. It is not like Fiat cars or Ford cars:

you can see thousands and thousands alike, exactly alike. God always creates the unique.

Go into the garden: you will not find two grass leaves the same. Not even identical twins are the same.

So how can you follow anybody? All following is wrong.

So my second message: man has not to follow anybody. Understand certainly, learn certainly, listen certainly, remain open, but follow your own inner spontaneity. Follow your own being. I help people here to be themselves. Just as in my garden I help the roses to be roses and the lotus to be a lotus.

I don't try so that the lotus be a rose. The world is rich because there is variety. The world would be ugly if only roses grew and no other flower. Thousands of flowers grow, and the world is beautiful.

Each person has to be authentically himself, utterly himself So the sannyasins who are here with me are not my followers. They love me. Through their love they have come close to me. Their love has brought me here, their love has brought them here; because of love we are together. But I am not the leader and they are not the followers. And I am not creating a cult, I am not creating a church. The sannyasins are just a commune of friends, not a church. We don't have any dogma that everybody has to believe in. There is nothing to be believed in, but millions of things to be experimented with. My ashram is a lab; we experiment here.

That too is creating great trouble, because man has forgotten to experiment. We are experimenting in a multi-dimensional way. We are experimenting with Tao, we are experimenting with Sufism, we are experimenting with Jainism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity; we are experimenting with Tantra, Yoga, alchemy. We are experimenting with all the possibilities that can make the human consciousness rich and a human being whole. That is creating trouble, because when the follower of Yoga comes he cannot understand why Tantra should be experimented with; he is against Tantra.

When the follower of Tantra comes he cannot see why Yoga should be experimented with; he is against Yoga.

I am not against anything. I am for all. I am UTTERLY for all. I claim the whole human heritage, and whatsoever is good in any tradition is mine, and whatsoever can make man richer is mine. I don't belong to any tradition, all traditions belong to me.

So this is a new experiment; it has never been done before in such a way. This is the synthesis of all the paths. So I am teaching a synthesis. And my feeling is that the man who has only been experimenting with Yoga will remain partial, will grow only in part - as if a man's hand has become too big and the whole body remains small; he will be a monster... unless he can experiment with Tantra also, because Tantra is complementary to Yoga.

Remember, this is one of my basic insights: that in life there are no contradictions. All contradictions are complementaries. Night is complementary to the day, so is summer to winter, so is death to life. They are not against each other. There is nothing against, because there is only one energy, it is one God. My left hand and my right hand are not against each other, they are complementary.

Opposites are just like wings of a bird, two wings - they look opposite to each other but they support each other. The bird cannot fly with one wing.

Tantra and Tao have to be experimented with together.

Now Yoga has a great insight into discipline, and Tao has a great insight into spontaneity. They are opposite on the surface, but unless your discipline makes you more spontaneous and unless your spontaneity makes you more disciplined, you will not be whole. Yoga is control, Tantra is uncontrol; and both are needed. A man has to be so capable of order that if the need arises he can function in utter order. But order should not become a fixation, otherwise he will become a robot.

He should be able to come out of his system, his discipline, whenever the need arises. And he can be spontaneous, floating, in a let-go. That he can get only through Tantra, from nowhere else.

I am bringing all the opposites into my sannyasins' lives as complementaries. Yogis will be against me because they cannot see how sex and love can be a part of a seeker's life. They are afraid.

They are afraid of sex because sex is the most spontaneous thing in your life. It has to be controlled.

They know that once sex is controlled, everything else is controlled, so their basic attack is on sex.

Tantra says if your sex is not spontaneous your whole life will become robot-like. It has to be in freedom. And both are right, and both are right together! - this is my approach. I will look absurd because my approach is very illogical. Logic will always insist: either be a Yogi or be a Tantrika. I believe in life, I don't believe in logic; and life is both together.

A great discipline is needed in life, because you have to live in a world with so many people. You have to live in discipline; otherwise life would become a chaos. Life would become impossible if you couldn't live in a discipline. But if you only live in discipline and you forget spontaneity and you become the discipline and you are not capable of getting out of it, then again life is lost. You have become a machine. Now, these are the two alternatives that have been available to man up to now:

either become a chaos - which is not good - or become a machine - which is not good either.

I want you to be alert, conscious, aware, disciplined, and yet capable of spontaneity. When you are working, be disciplined. But work is not all. When you are playing, forget all discipline.

I used to stay in a Calcutta house with a High Court judge. His wife told me, "My husband only listens to you. You are the only person who can bring something into his life. Our whole family is tired with his attitude. He remains the magistrate even in the house." She said, "Even in bed he remains the judge of the High Court. He expects me to call him, 'My Lord'. He is never spontaneous, and in everything he makes rules and laws. The children are tired. When he enters into the house the whole house falls silent, all joy disappears. We all wait for him to go to the court."

Now I know that man: he is a good judge, a very conscientious magistrate, very sincere, honest - and these are good qualities - but he has become a machine. If he comes home and remains the magistrate, that is not good. One has to relax too. One has to play with children, but he cannot play with children; that would be coming down too much. Even with his wife he remains on the high pedestal, far away; he still remains the magistrate.

This is what has happened to the followers of Yoga: they cannot be playful, they cannot rejoice in anything, they cannot participate in celebration - because they cannot relax.

And Tantra alone creates chaos. Tantra alone makes you very, very selfish. You don't care about anybody. You forget that you are part of a great whole, that you belong to a society, that you belong to existence and you are committed to this existence; without it you will be nowhere. You have to fulfill some demands from the side of existence, from the side of society. If you become utterly chaotic, then you cannot exist. Then nobody can exist.

So there has to be a great understanding between chaos and mechanicalness. Exactly in the middle there is a point where I would like my sannyasins to be, exactly in the middle; capable of going to both the extremes when needed, and always capable of moving away from there. I teach this fluidity, I teach this liquidity.

I don't teach fixed life patterns, dead gestalts. I teach growing life syntheses, growing patterns, growing gestalts, and always capable of comprehending the other, the opposite. Then life is beautiful.

And one can know truth only when one has been able to transform the opposites into complementaries. Then only is one's life symmetrical. There is balance - positive and negative are both equally balanced. In that balancing is transcendence. In that balancing one knows the beyond, one opens up to the beyond. The Golden Flower blooms.

-Osho, "The Secret of Secrets, Vol 2, #10, Q1"

 Never follow anybody.

- That is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man. -

Question :

Osho,

How can we in the rajneesh times spread your vision if we personally are often so insecure about what your vision actually is?

I can understand the difficulty. It is not only your difficulty, it is the difficulty of every sannyasin everywhere. The moment somebody asks you "What is the vision of your master? What he wants to do? What are the disciplines that he has given to you?" And you are in a difficulty. Because I have not given any disciplines to you. And they are accustomed of the old religions, Christians have their own catechism, just a small booklet in which all that is essential to Christianity is written.

You can just look at within few minutes and you know what Christianity is. Jews have ten commandments, Jainas have their five principles and in the same way all the religions, their belief in a God, their belief in a heaven in a hell, their belief what is good and what is bad, their certainty about what is sin and what is virtue and their clear declaration that those who are virtuous will be rewarded in heaven and those who are sinners will be thrown in the darkness of the hell for eternity to suffer.

Things are simple for these people. And naturally everybody knows about all these religions. They ask you the same question. But they don't know that I am not preaching a religion.

The first thing to be made clear to them is that what I am teaching is a religiousness, a quality. Religion is a dead dogma, fixed principles. Frozen fossils. What I am teaching to you is a living, flowing religiousness -- an experience like love. An experience that is individual, all the religions are collective. They belong to the crowd. And my whole effort is to make you free from the crowd and from the collective so that you can be yourself, so that you can blossom to your own potentiality, to your individuality. I am an individualist.

My vision about man is that he needs no organization. He needs freedom from all organizations. All organizations cripple him, blind him, destroy him. The life of the organization is the death of the individual. Because the organization demands obedience. It is not a question of right and wrong. It is a question that you should obey whatever is written in the scriptures, whatever is ancient, whatever has been always followed. You should not question.

My state is just the opposite. You should question everything. It is your life. And unless you question, you cannot get rid of garbage and crap. All the religions ask you to believe. My vision is that the greatest crime against yourself is believing, because believing means: you don't know yet you start feeling as if you know.

I am all for knowing and I am absolutely against for belief. Because belief prevents people from knowing. When you already believe, your enquiry stops.

There is no need. Gautam Buddha has known, that's enough. What more you can do. Just believe in him, worship him. But remember one thing: when you are thirsty, then you never think that Gautam Buddha has drunk water enough.

There is no need for you to drink.

Even to say that you are thirsty is a sin. When you are hungry, you are hungry and you need food. Gautam Buddha may have eaten -- eighty years he lived -- that does not make any difference to your hunger. If on the physical level it is not possible, how it is possible on the spiritual level? Buddha may have known that can not make you enlightened. You will have to know yourself.

Each individual has to travel the path. Nobody else can travel the path on your behalf. The old religions have made things very simple. But by making them simple, they have destroyed so much that the whole humanity lives in misery because of it. What is good today, may not be good tomorrow. What is good to me, may not be good to you.

Each individual has to be conscious, alert, watchful, an experiment with life. And find out what is good for him. Whatever gives you peace, whatever makes you blissful, whatever gives you serenity, whatever brings you closer to existence and its immense harmony, is good. I cannot point out to you `this is good' and `this is wrong'.

And whatever creates conflict in you, misery in you, pain in you, is wrong.

Nobody else can decide it for you, because every individual has his own world, his own sensitivity. He is unique. So that formulas are not going to work, they have not worked. The whole world is a proof of it.

Never ask anybody what is right and what is wrong. Life is an experiment to find out what is right, what is wrong. Sometimes you may commit what is wrong, but that will give you the experience of it, that will make you aware of it that is has to be avoided. Sometimes you may do something good and immensely you will be benefited. The rewards are not beyond life, in heaven and hell. They are here and now.

Each action brings its result immediately. Just be alert and watch. I call the man mature who has watched and found himself what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad. And by finding it by himself, he has a tremendous authority. He knows it absolutely. The whole world may say something else, it makes no difference to him. The whole world may be against him -- it is not a question of voting. He has his experience and that is decisive. One thing.

Second thing: the man who has found maturity by his own experiments -- and life gives you so many opportunities, every moment they are available. Don't miss any opportunity. Good or bad, don't decide beforehand. Go through the experience and let the decision come afterwards. Let the experience be your conclusion. This will help you to know one thing more that `don't interfere with others'. This will give you the insight that `help others to be themselves'. Tell them to experiment, tell them it is not wrong to commit mistakes. Because every mistake is a part of learning.

But man for thousands years have been fed up- - from his very childhood, what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad. So naturally he ask my sannyasins, too. That "What is the vision of your master?"

Tell them that, "My master is not an imprisonment to me. He is a freedom to me.

He has not given me details of things. He has simply given me methods how to find details myself. He has not shown me the way. He has given me eyes so that I can find my way."

And each individual's way is going to be different. Never follow anybody. That is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man. Once you start following somebody else, you become a carbon copy. You become an imitation. You loose originality. So whoever asks you, "What vision your master has given to you?", tell them that he has given freedom to us. And he has provoked and challenged us to find our original face.

And that is possible only if you do not imitate.

-Osho, “The Last Testament Vol 6, #13”

 Mistakes are immensely necessary. 

My whole vision is of a human being, totally alive, intensely alive, enjoying everything that life makes available, and enjoying it with grace, with gratitude towards existence.

And that's what loving yourself means.

It means that you have thrown all the garbage of religious rejection, repression. You have dropped all the ideals that they have given to you; you are now standing on your own as if you are Adam and Eve. No priest has been there before, no religion has been there before; you are uncorrupted, unspoiled, clean.

Start like Adam and Eve -- just think of the idea!

Why bother about the past? Forget about it. You are the first man.

Start living as if you don't know how to live. Nobody is there to teach you, no guidelines exist. No books exist which say how to do this, how to do that. You are just left alone on an island. Everything is available: Intelligence is within you, instinct is within you, intellect is within you, intuition is within you. Now start moving.

Yes, perhaps you may commit a few mistakes -- there is no wrong in it, that's how one learns. Perhaps a few times you may fall -- nothing to be worried about. You can get up again; and next time you will be walking more carefully, more alert, so you have gained something out of that fall. Out of each mistake, each error, you are constantly gaining something.

Errors are valuable. Mistakes are immensely necessary. If you are somehow protected from committing mistakes and errors, you will never grow, you will never learn a thing, you will never mature.

So behave as if you are the first here. The whole world is available to you to explore. And in exploring it you will be surprised that simultaneously your inner world is being explored too, because as you explore the outer world your insight becomes deeper, your intelligence becomes sharper, your awareness becomes keener. And a perfectly fulfilled man is one who explores both the outer and the inner, and who, at the moment of death, can have a smile on his face: he lived totally, he is happy that he lived totally, he burned his life's candle from both ends together.

When you can burn your candle from both ends together, why be miserly and burn just one end? When you can enjoy double the light and two flames together, enjoy it -- because enjoyment is not simply enjoyment. Every joy is growth and brings you closer to blissfulness, to ecstasy.

And unless you have attained to a state of ecstasy where you can say, "I have arrived, I am fulfilled.... The purpose of existence in me is completed. If now death comes, it is welcome. Now that is the only thing that I don't know." A man who can say, "Death is now the only thing that I don't know -- life I have known," will be enthusiastic about death, will be eager to meet it, would like to have a plunge into it.

And this is the paradox of life:

One who is ready to die, never dies.

One who is himself ready to jump into death, for him death disappears.

Death is only for cowards.

Death is only for those who have not lived, who have really remained dead their whole lives.

Death is not for the living.

The more alive you are, the farther away is death.

If you are totally living, there is no death:

Death exists not.

Then there is only life, life eternal.

- Osho, "From Misery to Enlightenment, #10"

 Relating to each other but not tied in any relationship 

My vision of a real humanity is of pure individuals -- relating to each other but not tied in any relationship; loving to each other but not being possessive of each other; sharing with each other all their joys and all their blessings, but never even in their dreams thinking of dominating, thinking of enslaving the other person... a world consisting not of families, not of nations, not of races, but only of individuals.

Only a world where families have disappeared and nations have died and races are no longer existent can have beauty, and can have immense possibilities for human growth. Otherwise all your relationships are destructive, because they are all possessive -- your love is followed by your jealousy; your love is full of suspicion, mistrust. Everybody is trying to keep the other remaining within his control. It is a very strange situation where everybody is a prisoner and everybody is a jailer too. You are the jailer, you are the jail, you are the jailed, and you are trying to manage all three functions simultaneously. Certainly your life has become a mess!

- Osho, "The Razors Edge, #9"

 Osho on Basic Human Rights  

1) Life.

2) Love.

3) Death.

4) The search for truth.

5) A certain atmosphere for meditation.

6) Freedom in all dimensions.

7) One earth, one humanity.

8) Uniqueness of every individual.

9) A world government.

10) Meritocracy.

Question 1

Beloved Osho,
On December 25th, you spoke to us on the Declaration of Human Rights. You exposed it as a political device to maintain man in his current state of physical and psychological slavery, and to ensure that he remains ignorant of his true potential for godliness. Would you, tonight, make your own declaration of human rights for the new man?

The Declaration of Human Rights basically means that mankind still lives in many kinds of slaveries. Otherwise, there would be no need for the Declaration. The very need indicates that man has been deceived for thousands of years. And he has been deceived in such a cunning way that unless you rise above humanity, you cannot see in what invisible chains humanity is living, in what bondage, in what invisible prisons everybody is confined.

My declaration of human rights consists of ten fundamental things.

The first is life.

Man has a right to dignity, to health; a right to grow, so that he can blossom into his ultimate flowering. This ultimate flowering is his right. He is born with the seeds, but the society does not provide him the soil, the right caring, the loving atmosphere.

On the contrary, society provides a very poisonous atmosphere, full of anger, hatred, destructions, violence, war. The right to life means there should be no wars anymore. It also means that nobody should be forced into armies, forced to go to war; it is everybody's right to refuse. But this is not the case.

Thousands of people are in prisons -- particularly young people, sensitive and intelligent -- because they refused to go to war. Their denial has become a crime -- and they were simply saying that they don't want to kill human beings.

Human beings are not things you can destroy without a second thought.

They are the climax of universal evolution. To destroy them for any cause -- for religion, for politics, for socialism, for fascism...it does not matter what the cause is; man is above all causes, and man cannot be sacrificed on any altar.

It is so strange that the UN declares the fundamental rights of human beings and yet says nothing about those thousands of young people who are wasting their lives in prisons for the simple reason that they refused to destroy life. But it has deep roots which have to be understood.

The right to life is possible only in a certain, different atmosphere which is not present on the earth at the moment. Animals are killed, birds are killed, sea animals are killed, just for game. You don't have any reverence for life. And life is the same whether it is in human beings or in other forms. Unless man becomes aware of his violence towards animals, birds, he cannot be really alert about his own right to life. If you are not caring about others' lives, what right have you got to demand the same right for yourself? People go hunting, killing animals unnecessarily.

I was a guest in Maharaja Jamnagar's palace. He showed me hundreds of lions, deer -- their heads. The whole palace was full, and he was showing them, "These are the animals I have killed myself."

I asked him, "You look a nice a person. What was the reason? What have these animals done against you?"

He said, "It is not a question of reason or a question of them doing anything against me. It is just a game."

I said, "Just look from the other side: If a lion killed you, would that be a game? Your wife, your children, your brothers -- will any one of them have the guts to say that it was a beautiful game? It will be a disaster. If you kill, then it is a game; if they kill, then it is a calamity. These double standards show your dishonesty, insincerity."

He said, "I have never thought about it."

But the whole of humanity is non-vegetarian; they are all eating other life forms. There is no reverence for life as such.

Unless we create an atmosphere of reverence for life, man cannot realize the goal of getting his fundamental right of life.

Secondly, because the UN also declares life to be a fundamental right for man, it is being misused. The Pope, Mother Teresa, and their tribe are using it for teaching people against birth control, against abortion, against the pill. Man's mind is so cunning. It was a question of human rights -- they are taking advantage of it. They are saying you cannot use birth control methods because they go against life; the unborn child also has the same right as you have. So some line has to be drawn, because at what point...?

To me, the pill does not destroy human rights; in fact it prepares the ground for it.

If the earth is too overcrowded, millions of people will die of starvation; there will be wars. And the way the crowd is exploding it can lead humanity into a very inhuman situation.

In Bengal, there was a great famine in which mothers ate their own children. People sold their own children just for one rupee, two rupees. And do you think the persons who were purchasing them were purchasing human beings? No, they were purchasing food.

The pope and Mother Teresa will be responsible for all this.

The pill simply does not allow the child to be formed in the mother's womb, so the question of human rights does not arise. And now, recently, science has found a pill for men too. It is not necessary that the woman should take the pill, the man can take it. The child is not formed in any way; hence, this fundamental right is inapplicable in that case. But these religious people -- the shankaracharyas in India, Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran...and all over the world, all religions are against birth control methods. And they are the only methods which can prevent man from falling into a barbarous state.

I am absolutely in favor of birth control methods. A child should be recognized as a human being when he is born -- and then too, I have some reservations....

If a child is born blind, if a child is born crippled, if a child is born deaf, dumb, and we cannot do anything.... Just because life should not be destroyed, this child will have to suffer -- because of your stupid idea -- for seventy years, eighty years. Why create unnecessary suffering? If the parents are willing, the child should be put to eternal sleep. And there is no problem in it. Only the body goes back into its basic elements; the soul will fly into another womb. Nothing is destroyed.

If you really love the child, you will not want him to live a seventy-year-long life in misery, suffering, sickness, old age. So even if a child is born, if he is not medically capable of enjoying life fully with all the senses, healthy, then it is better that he goes to eternal sleep and is born somewhere else with a better body.

The right to life is a complex thing. Nobody is entitled to kill anyone, either, in the name of religion. Millions of people have been killed in the name of religions, in the service of God.

No one should be killed in the name of politics.

Again, the same has happened. Joseph Stalin alone killed one million people, his own people, while he was in power. Adolf Hitler killed six million people. And thousands of wars have happened.

It seems that on this earth we are doing only one thing: reproducing children because soldiers are needed, reproducing children because wars are needed. Even to increase the population, Mohammed said that every Mohammedan can marry four women or even more. He himself married nine women. And the reason is war, destruction of life. It is not out of love for nine women that he has married them, it is simple arithmetic. If a man marries nine women, he can produce nine children in one year. If nine women marry one man, this is okay but vice-versa, nine men marrying one woman may not be able even to produce one child. They will mess up the whole thing. Most probably they will kill the woman!

It seems man is nothing but a necessary instrument for more destruction, more wars.

The population has to be reduced if man wants to be, to have his dignity, honor, his right to live -- not just to drag, but to dance. When I say life is a fundamental right, I mean a life of songs and dances, a life of joy and blessings.

My second consideration is for love.

Love should be accepted as one of the most fundamental human rights, and all societies have destroyed it. They have destroyed it by creating marriage. Marriage is a false substitute for love.

In the past, small children were married. They had no idea what love is, what marriage is. And why were small children married? For a simple reason: before they become young adults, before love arises in their hearts, the doors have to be closed. Because once love takes possession of their hearts then it will become very difficult....

No child marriage is human. A man or a woman should be allowed to choose their partners and to change their partners whenever they feel. The government has no business in it, the society has nothing to do with it. It is two individuals' personal affair. The privacy of it is sacred.

If two people want to live together, they don't need any permission from any priest or any government. They need the permission of their hearts. And the day they feel that the time has come to part, again they don't need anybody's permission. They can part as friends, with beautiful memories of their loving days.

Love should be the only way for men and women to live together. No other ritual is needed.

The only problem in the past was what would happen to the children; that was the argument for marriage. There are other alternatives, far better. Children should be accepted not as their parents' property -- they belong to the whole humanity. From the very beginning it should be made clear to them, "The whole humanity is going to protect you, is your shelter. We may be together -- we will look after you. We may not be together; still we look after you. You are our blood, our bones, our souls."

In fact, this possession by the parents of the children is one of the most dangerous things that humanity goes on carrying. This is the root of the idea of possessiveness. You should not possess your children. You can love them, you can bless them, but you cannot possess. They belong to the whole humanity. They come from beyond; you have been just a passage. Don't think more than that about yourself. Whatever you can do, do.

Every commune, every village should take care of the children. Once the commune starts taking care of the children, marriage becomes absolutely obsolete. And marriage is destroying your basic right to love.

If man's love is free, there will not be blacks and whites, and there will not be these ugly discriminations, because love knows no boundaries.

You can fall in love with a black man, you can fall in love with a white man. Love knows no religious scriptures. It knows only the heartbeat, and it knows it with absolute certainty. Once love is free, it will prepare the ground for other fundamental rights.

In fact, if you ask the scientists, people falling in love should be as different as possible. Then they will give birth to better children, more intelligent, stronger. We know it now; we are trying it all over the world as far as animals are concerned. Crossbreeding has given us better cows, better horses, better dogs. But man is strange. You know the secret, but you are not bettering yourself.

All the royal families are suffering. They create the greatest number of idiots, because they go on marrying amongst themselves. Royal blood cannot mix with a commoner's blood -- even in the twentieth century we think in terms of royal blood. Blood is simply blood. But if just a dozen families go on marrying amongst themselves continually, they create many kinds of diseases.

Retardedness is one. Just have a look again at the picture of the Prince of Wales and you will see what I mean by a retarded person. They are fed up, but they cannot go out of their small circle. I have never come across any person belonging to a royal family who has intelligence, and in India I have been acquainted with almost all the royal families. It is not only that their minds remain retarded, their bodies lose many things.

You must have heard the name of Rasputin.

Before the Russian revolution he had become the most important man in Russia, for the simple reason that the child of the Czar had a disease -- if he wounded himself accidentally then the bleeding could not be prevented. No medicine could prevent it, there was no way; the blood would go on flowing out. And that is one of the symptoms of marrying close relatives.

Rasputin was a great hypnotist. He was not a saint and he was not a sinner, he was simply a great hypnotist. He managed with hypnosis to prevent the blood from flowing out of the child. What no physician was able to do...and the child was going to be the successor to the greatest empire of those days. Rasputin certainly became very important. Without him the child's life was in danger.

But still those royal families, although they have lost their kingdoms, their empires, continue to marry amongst themselves. It creates a very weak personality.

Have you ever seen somebody from these royal families being declared as the beauty queen of the world? Do you think Queen Elizabeth of England can even be declared a beauty? All over England there is a rumor. I don't know whether it is true or not; hence I don't take any responsibility for it. The rumor is that Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth, is a homosexual. I feel sorry for poor Philip. In fact anybody marrying Elizabeth would have been homosexual, so he should not feel worried about it. It is just natural.

And just two weeks or three weeks ago, one of the bodyguards of Prince Charles died of the disease AIDS. Now you cannot get AIDS from the sky. One does not know who the holy ghost is, but he must be in the royal family. And soon many more will die, because it is a chain disease.

There should be no boundaries -- that a Hindu should marry only a Hindu, or a Brahmin should only marry a Brahmin. In fact, the rule should be that the Indian should never marry an Indian. The whole world is there; find your spouse far away, beyond the seven seas, and then you will have children who are more beautiful, more healthy, long living, far more intelligent, geniuses. Man has to learn crossbreeding, but that is possible only if marriage disappears and love is given absolute respect. Right now it is condemned.

The third most fundamental right...because these are the three most important things in life: life, love, and death.

Everybody should be given the fundamental right that after a certain age, when he has lived enough and does not want to go on dragging unnecessarily.... Because tomorrow will be again just a repetition; he has lost all curiosity about tomorrow. He has every right to leave the body. It is his fundamental right.

It is his life. If he does not want to continue, nobody should prevent him. In fact, every hospital should have a special ward where people who want to die can enter one month before, can relax, enjoy all the things that they have been thinking about their whole life but could not manage -- the music, the literature...if they wanted to paint or sculpt....

And the doctors should take care to teach them how to relax. Up to now, death has been almost ugly. Man has been a victim, but it is our fault. Death can be made a celebration; you just have to learn how to welcome it, relaxed, peaceful. And in one month's time, people, friends, can come to see them and meet together. Every hospital should have special facilities -- more facilities for those who are going to die than for those who are going to live. Let them live for one month at least like emperors, so they can leave life with no grudge, with no complaint but only with deep gratitude, thankfulness.

Between these three comes the fourth: the search for truth.

Nobody should be conditioned from childhood about any religion, any philosophy, any theology, because you are destroying his freedom of search. Help him to be strong enough. Help him to be strong enough to doubt, to be skeptical about all that is believed all around him. Help him never to believe, but to insist on knowing. And whatever it takes, however long it takes, to go for the pilgrimage alone, on his own, because there is no other way to find the truth.

All others -- who think they are Christians, or they are Jews, or they are Hindus, or they are Mohammedans -- these are all believers. They don't know.

Belief is pure poison.

Knowing is coming to a flowering.

The search for truth...you should not teach anybody what truth is because it cannot be taught. You should help the person to inquire. Inquiry is difficult; belief is cheap. But truth is not cheap; truth is the most valuable thing in the world. You cannot get it from others, you will have to find it yourself.

And the miracle is, the moment you decide that, "I will not fall victim to any belief," you have already traveled half the way towards truth. If your determination is total, you need not go to truth, truth will come to you. You just have to be silent enough to receive it. You have to become a host so that truth can become a guest in your heart.

Right now the whole world is living in beliefs. That's why there is no shine in the eyes, no grace in people's gestures, no strength, no authority in their words. Belief is bogus; it is making castles of sand. A little breeze and your great castle will be destroyed.

Truth is eternal, and to find it means you also become part of eternity.

Fifth: to find the truth, all education systems from the kindergarten to the universities will create a certain atmosphere for meditation.

Meditation does not belong to any religion, and meditation is not a belief. It is a pure science of the inner.

Learning to be silent, learning to be watchful, learning to be a witness; learning that you are not the mind, but something beyond -- the consciousness -- will prepare you to receive truth.

And it is truth that has been called by many people "God", by others, "nirvana." By others, other names have been given to it, but it is a nameless silence, serenity, peace. The peace is so deep that you disappear; and the moment you disappear you have entered the temple of God.

But strange it is, that people are wasting almost one-third of their lives in schools, colleges, and universities, not knowing anything about silence, not knowing anything about relaxation, not knowing anything about themselves. They know about the whole world -- it is very weird that they have forgotten only themselves. But it seems there is some reason....

In India there is an ancient story.

Ten blind men pass through a stream. The current is very forceful, so they hold hands. Reaching the other side, somebody suggests, "We should count ourselves. The current was so forceful and we cannot see -- somebody may have gone with the wind, gone with the river."

So they count. Strangely enough the counting always stops at nine. Everybody tries, but it is always nine. One man sitting on the bank of the river starts laughing -- it is hilarious! And those ten blind people are sitting there crying, tears in their eyes because they have lost one of their friends.

The man comes to them and he says, "What is the matter?"

They explain the situation. He says, "You all stand up in a line. I will hit the first person -- he has to say 'one.' I will hit the second person -- he has to say 'two,' because I will hit twice. I will hit the third person three times; he has to say 'three.'"

Strangely enough, he finds the tenth man who was lost. They all thank him, they touch his feet; they say, "You are a god to us. We were thinking we had lost one of our friends. But please, can you tell us...we were also counting; all of us tried, and the tenth was not there. How has he appeared suddenly?"

The man says, "That is an ancient mystery which you will not understand. You just go on your way."

What is the ancient mystery in it? One tends to forget oneself. In fact, one lives his whole life without remembering himself. He sees everybody, he knows everybody; he just forgets himself.

Meditation is the only method in which you will start counting from yourself, "one."

And because it is not part of any religion, there is no problem -- it should be all over the world, in every school, in every college, in every university. Anybody who comes home from the university should come with a deep, meditative being, with an aura of meditation around him. Otherwise, what he is bringing is all rubbish, crap. Geography he knows: he knows where Timbuktu is, he knows where Constantinople is, and he does not know where he is himself.

The first thing in life is to know who you are, where you are. Then everything in your life starts settling, moving in the right direction.

The sixth: Freedom in all dimensions.

We are not even as free as birds and animals. No bird goes to the passport office. Any moment he can fly into Pakistan; no entry visa. Strange, that only man remains confined in nations, in boundaries. Because the nation is big, you tend to forget that you are imprisoned. You cannot get out of it, you cannot get into it. It is a big prison, and the whole earth is full of big prisons.

Freedom in all dimensions means that man, wherever he is born, is part of one humanity.

Nations should dissolve, religions should dissolve, because they are all creating bondages -- and sometimes very hilarious bondages.

I was in a city, Devas. For twenty years the Jaina temple there has not opened. There are three locks on the temple: one lock from the digambaras, one of the sects of Jainism, one from another sect, svetambaras, and the third from the police. For twenty years poor Mahavira has been inside -- no food, no bath, no light. One wonders whether he is really alive or dead, because he does not make any noise...at least he could knock and shout, "Open the doors and let me out!"

When I saw it, I asked, "What is the matter?" I was just passing by and I saw three locks -- big locks, bigger than you may have ever seen -- and I came to know the story.

In Devas, there is only one Jaina temple, and this was the temple. Jainas are few; they don't have enough money to make two temples, so they have made one temple and divided the time. Up to twelve o'clock in the morning, Digambaras will worship, and after twelve, Svetambaras will worship...but there was a fight every day.

The differences between Svetambaras and Digambaras are not very big -- so childish and so stupid. Digambaras worship Mahavira with closed eyes and Svetambaras worship Mahavira with open eyes. This is the only basic difference.

Now a marble statue...either you can make the eyes closed or you can make the eyes open, unless you fix some mechanism, to switch on so he opens his eyes, and switch off.... But that much technology does not exist in India; otherwise it would not be difficult. You can find it in toys -- a beautiful girl, you lie her down and she closes her eyes. You put her back and she opens her eyes. Something could have been arranged.

And they had something arranged -- primitive, but they had arranged it. And it is being following all over India: When Svetambaras worship a statue which has closed eyes, they put false eyes on top; they just glue them on. That is simple, non-technical; not much technology is needed.

But every day the problem was there: at the time of twelve, exactly twelve, Svetambaras would be waiting. One minute more...and the Digambaras are worshipping -- and they are worshipping knowingly a little longer -- and the Svetambaras will come and start putting their eyes on the statue and the fight will start.

It happened so many times that finally the police locked the temple and said to them, "Go to the court and get a decision." The case goes on -- how can the court decide whether Mahavira used to meditate with closed eyes or with open eyes? The reality is, he used to meditate with half open eyes.

No child should be given any idea by the parents what life is all about -- no theology, no philosophy, no politics.

He should be made as intelligent and sharp as possible, so when he comes of age he can go in search. And it is a lifelong search. People today get their religion when they are born. In fact, if you can get your religion when you die, you have found it early. It is such a precious treasure, but it is possible only out of freedom -- and freedom in all dimensions, not only in religion.

There should be no nations, no national boundaries. There should be no religions. Man should be taken as man. Why confine him with so many adjectives? Right now he is not free in any way.

I was arrested in America.

In one jail in Oklahoma, the U.S. Marshal told me that I had to write my name as David Washington. I said, "This is the first time that somebody has told me my name. Do you read thoughts?"

He became a little puzzled. He said, "Is it really your name?"

I said, "Of course."

He said, "Then change it. Some other name will do."

But I said, "You know my name. David Washington is not my name. And why should I write David Washington? And you call this country a democracy! And not even the freedom to write one's own name. What other freedoms do you have? And on your coat there is written in big letters 'Department of Justice, U.S. Marshal.'" I said, "At least take this coat off. David Washington is not my name and I am not going to write it." I said, "This is for the first time in my life that I am seeing how democracy works, how freedom works. I am not even free to write my name. What is the purpose?"

He said, "That, I don't know. From high above I have been ordered: 'David Washington should be his name and he should be called David Washington in jail.'"

I said, "Then you fill out the form" -- and it was in the middle of the night, twelve o'clock. I said, "You fill out the form -- I will not fill it out, I refuse -- and then I will sign it."

He was in a hurry to go home, so he filled out the form. I signed my name. He looked at it and he said, "But it doesn't look like David Washington."

I said, "How can it? I don't look like David Washington."

He said, "You are a strange man. You deceived me."

I said, "You are deceiving yourself. You know perfectly well what my name is. And tomorrow the whole world will know that the so-called democracies -- free countries, talking too much of freedom -- are not even able to allow people to write their own names." And I said, "You don't know the reason why your higher authorities have asked this?"

He said, "I don't know."

I said, "This is strange, because I know. It is a simple, logical inference that even if you kill me in the jail nobody will be able to find out where I disappeared. Because in your forms, on your register, I never entered your jail, so the question of my being killed in your jail does not arise."

He was shocked. I said, "This is a simple thing. Otherwise, there is no need to change my name; you don't have any authority."

But in this world there is no freedom in any dimension.

I was going to college. My parents wanted me to go to science college or to medical college. I said, "Am I going or are you going?"

They said, "Of course you are going; why should we be going?"

"Then," I said, "leave it to me."

They said, "We can leave it to you, but then remember: we will not support you financially."

I said, "That's understood." I left my home without a single rupee. I traveled in the train to the university without a ticket. I had to go to the ticket checker and tell him, "This is the situation. Can you allow me to travel without a ticket?"

He said, "This is the first time in my life that somebody has come to ask me! People escape, people deceive me, cheat me. Certainly I will take you, and at the university station I will be at the gate so nobody bothers you."

I went directly to the vice-chancellor and told him the whole story. And I told him, "I want to study philosophy, but it seems there is no freedom even to choose what I want to study. So you have to give me all the scholarships possible, because I will not be getting any financial help. Otherwise I will study philosophy, fasting...even if I die."

He said, "No! Don't do that, because then the blame will be on me. I will give you all the scholarships."

From the very childhood we go on crippling, cutting freedoms; we try to make a child according to our desires.

I was talking to a Christian missionary and he said, "God made man in his own image."

I said, "That is the foundation of all slavery. Why should God make man in his own image? Who is he? And to give his own image to man means he has destroyed man from the very beginning." And that is what every father is doing.

Man's basic right is to be himself.

And in an authentic human society, everybody should be allowed to be himself -- even if he chooses just to be a flute player, and he will not become the richest man in the world but will be a beggar on the streets.

Still I say freedom is so valuable.... You may not be the president of the country, you may be just a beggar playing the flute in the streets. But you are yourself, and there is such deep contentment, fulfillment, that unless you know it you have missed the train.

Seventh: one earth, one humanity.

I don't see any reason at all why there should be so many nations. Why should there be so many lines on the map? And they are only on the map, remember. They are not on the earth; neither are they in the sky. And the map is man-made.

Existence has not created this earth in fragments.

I am reminded of one of my teachers. He was a very loving human being, and he had his own methods of teaching. He was a kind of rebel.

One day he came with a few pieces of cardboard, placed them on the table, and said to us all, "Look, this is the map of the world, but I have cut it into pieces and I have mixed them. Now anybody who is confident that he can put them in their right places and make the world map should come up."

One tried, failed; another tried, failed. I went on watching him and watching the people who were failing and why they were failing.

Watching five persons fail, I was the sixth. I went and I turned over all his cardboard pieces. He said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "You wait, I am working it out. Five people have failed but I have found the secret."

On the other side of the map was a picture of a man. I arranged the man, which was easier. On one side the man was arranged and on the other side the whole map of the world was arranged. That was the key that I had been looking for, waiting to see if I could get some clue. And when the others were arranging the pieces, I saw that there was something on the other side.

The teacher said, "You are a rascal! I was hoping you would come first, but when you didn't come I understood that you were waiting to find out the key. And you have found the right key."

The world is divided because man is divided; man is divided because the world is divided.

Start from anywhere; just let the whole of humanity be one, and the nations will disappear, the lines will disappear. It is our world -- one humanity, one earth, and we can make it a paradise. Right now there is no need to describe hell. You can just look all around; it is here.

I have heard a story.... A man died. He was a thief, a murderer, a rapist -- you name it and he had done it. And when the angels started taking him away, he said, "Certainly you will be taking me to hell."

They said, "No."

He said, "What?"

They said, "Hell you have been in; now we are taking you to heaven. The old hell is empty because you have created a better hell, so all the sinners are sent here." And the story seems to be significant. Looking around the earth, man is in such misery and suffering that there seems to be no need for another hell.

But we can change the whole situation. This earth can become a paradise. And then there will be no need for any paradise; paradise will be empty.

Eighth: uniqueness of every individual.

A very beautiful word has been misused so utterly that it is difficult to imagine, and that word is equality.

A few thinkers say human beings are equal. To counter them, the UN declares that equality is man's birthright. But nobody bothers to see that man is not equal and has never been equal. It is absolutely un-psychological.

Every man is unique. The moment you are all equal you are a crowd, your individuality has been taken away. You are no longer yourself but just a cog in the wheel.

I teach not equality, not inequality -- I teach uniqueness. Every individual is unique and needs to be respected in his uniqueness. Because every individual is unique, the birthright should be: equal opportunity for their growth of uniqueness.

It is such a simple and obvious fact. Two thousand years have passed and you have not been able to produce another Jesus. Twenty-five centuries have passed and you have not been able to produce another Gautam Buddha. And still you go on saying man is equal?

Man is unique, and everybody should be respected as a world in himself. He is neither inferior to anybody nor is he superior to anybody; he is alone.

In this aloneness there is beauty. You are no longer a mob, a crowd; you are yourself.

Ninth: a world government.

I am absolutely against governments. I am for one government for the whole world. That means no war will be possible; that means there will be no need to keep millions of people in armies unnecessarily. They can be productive, they can be helpful, and if they are merged into humanity, all poverty will disappear.

Right now seventy percent of the national income of every country goes to the army and the rest of the country lives on thirty percent. If armies disappear, seventy percent of the income of every country will be available. There is no need to be poor, there is no need to have any beggars.

These beggars, these Ethiopias -- they are our creations.

On the one hand, we are creating great armies and on the other hand, we are killing human beings through starvation. And these armies are doing nothing. They are simply professional killers, professional criminals, trained criminals. We are giving them training in how to kill.

And we talk about humanity, we talk about civilization, and still seventy percent of our income goes into killing.

One world government means a tremendous change, a revolution. The whole earth will be benefited by it.

Secondly, if there is one world government it becomes only functional. Right now government is not functional, it has real power. The president of a country or the prime minister of a country...in a functional government things will be different. Now you have the postmaster general; he is a functional person, he has no power. He has work, he has no function, but he has no power. There is no need. The man who heads your railways, what power does he have? The man who is the president of your airlines, what power does he have? It is functional.

If there is only one government, it will automatically become functional. Right now it cannot be, because the fear of other governments keeps you afraid, "Make your leaders strong, give all support to the leaders." But if there is no war there is no need of anybody having power -- war is the cause of power. And unless war disappears from the world, power cannot disappear; they are together.

A functional world government -- like the post office, the railways, the airlines -- will be efficient but without power. It will be a beautiful world where you don't know who the president is, who the prime minister is -- they are your servants. Right now they have become your masters, and to keep their power they have to keep you always completely afraid. Pakistan is getting ready to fight with India, so you have to give all power to the Indian leaders. China is going to attack....

Adolf Hitler has written in his autobiography that if you want to remain in power, keep people always afraid. And he is absolutely right. Sometimes mad people are also right.

And tenth: meritocracy.

Democracy has failed.

We have lived under many kinds of governments -- aristocracy, monarchy, city democracies -- and now we have seen the whole world getting addicted to the idea of democracy. But democracy has not solved any problems; it has increased the problems.

It was because of these problems that a man like Karl Marx supported a dictatorship of the proletariat. I am not a supporter of a dictatorship of the proletariat, but I have another idea that goes far ahead of democracy.

Democracy means government by the people, of the people, for the people -- but it is only in words. In India right now there are nine hundred million people. How can nine hundred million people have power? They have to delegate the power to somebody.

So it is not the people who rule, but the people who are chosen by them. What are your grounds for choosing? How do you manage to choose? And are you capable of choosing the right people? Have you been trained, educated for a democratic life? No, nothing has been done.

The ignorant masses can be exploited very easily by very insignificant things.

For example, Nixon lost his election against Kennedy and the only reason was that Kennedy looked better on television than Nixon; this is the analysis of the psychoanalysts.

Nixon improved. When he discovered this, before the next election, he improved; he learned how to stand, how to walk, how to talk, how to dress. Even the color of your dress will make a difference on television. If you go there in white clothes you will look like a ghost.

Arbitrary reasons...somebody speaks well, is a good orator. But that does not mean that he will make a good president. Somebody makes good shoes -- do you think that will make him a good president?

It happened when Abraham Lincoln was chosen president. On the day of his inaugural address to the Senate, people were feeling very angry and hurt -- because Lincoln's father was a shoemaker, and a shoemaker's son has defeated the great aristocrats. They were offended.

One arrogant aristocrat could not tolerate it. Before Lincoln started speaking, he said, "Wait a minute. Do you recognize me? You used to come with your father to my house sometimes because your father made shoes for my family. You used to help him." And the whole Senate laughed. This was an effort to humiliate Lincoln.

But you cannot humiliate people like Abraham Lincoln. He said, "I am very grateful to you that you reminded me of my dead father at this moment. Because my father was the best shoemaker in the whole country, and I know that I can never be the best president as he was the best shoemaker. He is still ahead of me."

What criterion do you use? How do you manage?

That's why my idea is that the days of democracy are over.

A new kind of system is needed, based on merit. We have thousands of universities all over the world. Why have ordinary, unknowledgeable, ignorant masses choose people who will be holding tremendous power for five years in their hands? And now the power is so much that they can destroy the whole world.

Meritocracy means that only people who are educated in a certain area should be able to vote in that area. For example, only the educationists of the country should choose the education minister. Then you will have the best education minister possible. For the finance minister, you should choose somebody who knows finance, somebody who knows the complexities of economics. But this choice is possible only for people who are trained in economics, in financial matters -- and there are thousands of people. For every post, the person who is chosen should be chosen by experts.

The health minister should be chosen by all the doctors, the surgeons, the medical experts, the scientists who are working in the medical field. Then we will have the cream of our genius, and we can depend on this cream to make the life of all humanity more peaceful, more blissful, more rich.

This idea I call a meritocracy. And once you have chosen all the people, then these people can choose the president and the prime minister. They will be our geniuses; they can choose the prime minister, the president from the country, or they can choose from the members of the parliament. And for the parliament we should also make gradations.

For example, people who have at least a post-graduate degree should be able to vote. Just becoming twenty-one years old does not mean you are able to choose the right person. At twenty-one years, you don't know anything about life and its complexities. At least a post-graduate degree should be held by those who choose the members of the parliament or the senate or whatever you call it. In this way, we can make an educated, refined, cultured government.

Before the world government happens, each nation should pass through a meritocracy. And once we have enjoyed the fruits of a meritocracy then these people will be able to understand that if we can combine the whole world into one government, life can certainly be a joy, worth living -- not to renounce, but to rejoice.

Up to now, whatever has happened has been accidental. Our history up to now is nothing but a history of accidents.

We have to stop this. Now we have to decide that the future is not going to be accidental. It will be created by us; and to create our world can be the greatest creation possible.

-Osho, "Sermons in Stones, #29"