Just the other day I saw a panel on the TV. One rabbi, one Protestant priest and one Catholic monk were discussing me. And they came to the conclusion... the rabbi suggested, "It is time now -- we should make an effort to have a dialogue with this man." I could not believe it -- a rabbi talking to the Catholic priest, suggesting that a dialogue is needed. Why? There were so many rabbis in Jesus' time, why wasn't a dialogue needed with Jesus? Or was the crucifixion the dialogue?

 

And this idiot Catholic agrees. He does not even say, "You, being a rabbi, do you believe in dialogue? Then what happened with Jesus? Was the crucifixion a dialogue?" No, he does not ask that. Nor does the rabbi wonder what he himself is saying. Jesus was a Jew -- it would have been perfectly right for the rabbis to have a dialogue with a Jew. If he has gone astray, bring the Jew back on the right path; or perhaps he is right, then you come to his path. But was the crucifixion the dialogue? It was not even a monologue!

 

But now they are all established. The Catholic, the Protestant and the rabbi have no trouble because now they are part of the vested business. And they all know that they are doing the same things, they are in the same business. Jesus was a trouble; perhaps a dialogue was not possible. It is not possible with me either, but the reasons are different.

 

With Jesus the dialogue was not possible because he was the messiah, but who were you? A dialogue is possible only amongst equals. He is the son of God. Who are you? -- son-in-law? You have to be a somebody, otherwise what dialogue? No, it was not possible because Jesus was so egoistic that the rabbis knew perfectly well a dialogue was not possible. Once or twice they had approached him.

 

Once a rabbi asked Jesus, "On what authority are you speaking?"

 

He said, "On my own authority -- and remember, before Abraham was, I am." Abraham was the forefather, the ancientmost; and Jesus says, "Before Abraham was, I am. What more authority do you want?" Now this man is saying, "Blessed are the meek," but he himself is not meek; "Blessed are the poor, blessed are the humble.... n But what is the reason? Why are they blessed? "... because they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven."

 

A strange argument! Here you lose; there you gain a thousandfold. But what do you gain? -- the same things. Here you are poor, there you will be rich. Here you are a beggar, there you will be a king. But what is the qualitative difference? -- just here, and there -- two different spaces. And these people are trying to be meek and humble and poor for one simple reason: to inherit the kingdom of God. Now this man is provoking and exploiting your greed. All the religions have been doing that.

 

A dialogue with me is also impossible, but for different reasons.

 

First: I don't know myself -- about that no discussion is possible -- and that is the most fundamental thing to be discussed. What dialogue is possible? Either you have been within or you haven't.

 

If you have been within, then just looking into your eyes is enough -- that's the dialogue. If you have not been within, then too just looking in your eyes is enough. The dialogue is finished before it begins.

 

With me a dialogue is impossible because I am not a scholar. I cannot quote scriptures, I always misquote them. But who cares? -- because I don't pay any respect to those scriptures. I don't believe them to be holy. They are just religious fictions, so misquoting from religious fictions is not a problem at all. In fact I have never read them carefully. I have gone through them, here and there just looking -- and even then I have found so much garbage.

 

So what dialogue is possible with me, on what points? There needs to be a certain agreement, and there is no agreement possible because I say there is no God. Now what dialogue is possible? You will have to prove God; then the dialogue can begin. Or bring God to the witness box; then we can discuss whether He is truly a God or just a phony American.

 

I don't believe that there is any heaven or hell. What dialogue is possible? Yes, in other religions you can have dialogues because these are the points of agreement. A Mohammedan, a Christian, a Hindu, a Jew -- they can discuss God. One point is certain, that God is. Now, the question is only about His form, attributes, qualities -- but the basic thing is agreed. They all agree on heaven and hell. Now, it may be that somebody believes in seven hells, somebody believes in five, somebody believes in three. This is only a question of numbers, not so very important. With me what kind of dialogue is possible?

 

When I heard the panel, I started wondering that if a dialogue has to happen, how is it going to start? From where? There is not a single point of agreement, because all those religions are pseudo, they are not true religions; otherwise there would have been some possibility.

 

With Bodhidharma I can have a dialogue. He says, "I do not know who I am." That's enough agreement. Now we can hold each other's hand and go for a morning walk. Now there is no need to say anything more: all is said.

 

After nine years, when Bodhidharma was returning to India, he gathered four of his chief disciples and he asked them, "Condense religion into a single statement so that I can know whether you have understood me or not."

 

The first one said, "Compassion is religion. That is Buddha's basic message: compassion."

 

Bodhidharma said, "You have my bones, but nothing else."

 

The second disciple said, "Meditation. To be silent, to be so utterly silent that not a single thought moves inside you: that is the essence of religion."

 

Bodhidharma said, "You have my flesh, but nothing more; because in what you are saying, you are only repeating my words. In your eyes I don't see the silence; on your face I don't see the depth that silence brings."

 

The third one said, "It cannot be said. It is inexpressible."

 

Bodhidharma said, "You have my marrow. But if it cannot be said, why have you used even these words? You have already said it. Even in saying'It cannot be said, it cannot be expressed,' you are saying something about it; hence I say you have only the marrow."

 

He turned towards the fourth. There were tears in the disciple's eyes and he fell at Bodhidharma's feet. Bodhidharma shook him and asked him again and again, "What is religion?" But only tears of joy... his hands holding his feet in gratitude. The disciple never spoke a single word, not even that it cannot be said, it is inexpressible.

 

Bodhidharma hugged him and said, "You have me. Now I can go in peace because I am leaving something of me behind."

 

Now with these rabbis, Catholic priests, Protestant priests, what dialogue is possible? Two thousand years have passed and the rabbis have not apologized yet for crucifying Jesus. He may have been an egoist, he may have been wrong, he may have been teaching something faulty, but nobody has the right to crucify the man -- he had not harmed anybody. All that was needed was a gentlemanly argument, but they were not competent enough to argue with him.

 

Crucifixion is not an argument. You can cut off my head -- that is not an argument. That does not mean that I am wrong and you are right. In fact, cutting off my head simply proves that you were incapable of arguing your point. It is always the weak who become angry. It is always the weak who want to convert you at the point of a sword. After two thousand years and still... I wonder that not a single rabbi has apologized. Why should they? They think they were right then and they are right now.

 

I wonder what kind of Catholic is this monk and what kind of Protestant is this priest who are sitting with the rabbi and discussing me. They should talk first about themselves, about why they are sitting together.

 

All these people have been egoists. Now, rabbis go on teaching people to be humble but they cannot give an apology. That is impossible. They have not even mentioned the name of Jesus in their scriptures, in their books. You will not find any mention of Jesus, his crucifixion or the birth of Christianity in Jewish sources, no: "It is not even worth mentioning." But the same is the situation of other religions. Mohammed says, "I am the only messenger of God. One God, one messenger and one holy book, the Koran -- if you believe in these three things, that's enough, you are saved."

 

That brings me to the second point, that all these religions have been against doubt. They have been really afraid of doubt.

 

Only an impotent intellect can be afraid of doubt; otherwise doubt is a challenge, an opportunity to enquire.

 

They have all killed doubt and they have all forced on everybody's mind the idea that if you doubt you will fall into hell and you will suffer for eternity. Never doubt. Belief is the in thing; faith, total faith -- not even partial faith will do, but total faith. What are you asking from human beings?something absolutely inhuman. A man -- how can he believe totally? And even if he tries to believe totally, it means doubt is there; otherwise against what is he fighting? Against what is he trying to believe totally?

 

There is doubt, and doubt is not destroyed by believing.

 

Doubt is destroyed by experiencing.

 

They say, believe!

 

I say, explore.

 

They say, don't doubt!

 

I say, doubt to the very end, till you arrive, and know and feel and experience.

 

Then there is no need to repress doubt, it evaporates by itself Then there is no need for you to believe. You don't believe in the sun, you don't believe in the moon -- why do you believe in God? You don't need to believe in ordinary facts because they are there. But they are not ultimate truth.

 

A rose flower is there in the morning; in the evening it is gone. Still you "believe" in it but you don't need to; you know it, there is no question of doubt. This "belief" in a rose flower is a simple belief, not against doubt. Just so that you don't get confused between a simple belief and a complicated belief, I have a different word for it: it is trust.

 

You trust a rose flower. It blooms, it releases its fragrance, and it is gone. By the evening you will not find it; its petals have fallen and the wind has taken them away. But it was not an eternal truth; you know it as a fact. And you know again there will be roses, again there will be fragrance. You need not believe; you simply know from experience, because yesterday also there were roses and they disappeared. Today again they appeared -- and tomorrow nature is going to follow its course.

 

Why believe in God? Neither yesterday did you have any experience of God, nor today -- and what certainty is there about tomorrow? From where can you get certainty for tomorrow? -- because yesterday was empty, today is empty, and tomorrow is only an empty hope, hoping against hope. But that's what all these religions have been teaching: destroy doubt.

 

The moment you destroy doubt you have destroyed something of immense value in man, because it is doubt which is going to help man to enquire and find. You have cut the very root of enquiry; now there will be no enquiry.

 

That's why, in the whole world, there is rarely, once in a while, a person who has the feel of the eternal, who has breathed the eternal, who has found the pulse of the eternal -- but very rarely. And who is responsible? All your rabbis and all your popes and all your shankaracharyas and all your imams -- they are responsible because they have cut the very root of enquiry.

 

In Japan they grow a strange tree. There are, in existence, three-hundred or four-hundred-year-old trees, five inches tall. Four hundred years old! If you look at the tree, it is so ancient but such a pygmy of a tree -- five inches tall. And they think it is an art! What they have been doing is to go on cutting the roots. The earthen pot in which the tree is has no bottom, so once in a while they take up the pot and cut the roots. When you cut the roots the tree cannot grow up. It grows old but it never grows up. It becomes older and older, but you have destroyed it. It may have become a big tree, because mostly those trees are bo trees.

 

Japan is a Buddhist country, and Gautam Buddha became enlightened under a bo tree. The bo tree is called a bo tree in English too, because under it Gautam Siddartha became a Buddha, attained bodhi, enlightenment. The full name is bodhi tree, but in ordinary use it is enough to call it a bo tree. So all those trees are bo trees. Now no Buddha can sit under these bo trees. You have stopped who knows how many Buddhas from becoming Buddhas by cutting these bo trees.

 

The tree under which Buddha became enlightened was so big that one thousand bullock carts could rest underneath it. It was so big. It is still alive -- not the same tree of course, but a branch of the same tree. Mohammedans destroyed the tree. They could not tolerate that a tree exists underneath which somebody became far greater than their Mohammed. They burned the tree, they completely destroyed the tree.

 

But one of the emperors of India, Ashoka, had sent one branch of the tree as a present to Ceylon with his own daughter, Sanghamitra, who had become a sannyasin. Sanghamitra carried a branch of the bo tree to Ceylon, and from that bo tree a branch has been brought back again and put in the place where Buddha had become enlightened. It is part of the same tree, but the third generation.

 

But what these people in Japan are doing shows something significant: it is what religions have done with man. They have been cutting your roots so you don't grow up -- you only grow old.

 

And the first root they cut is doubt; then enquiry stops.

 

The second root they cut turns you against your own nature, condemns your nature. Obviously when your nature is condemned, how can you help your nature to flow, grow and take its own course like a river? No, they don't allow you to be like a river, moving zigzag.

 

All the religions have turned you into railway trains, running on rails, running from one station to another -- and mostly just shunting, not going anywhere but still on rails. Those rails they call discipline, control, self-control.

 

Religions have done so much harm that it is almost incalculable -- their pot of sins is full, overflowing. It just needs to be thrown into the Pacific, five miles deep, so deep that nobody can find it again and start again the same idiotic process.

 

The small number of people in the world who are intelligent should get rid of all that their religions have done to them without their knowing. They should become completely clean of Jewishness, of Hinduism, of Christianity, of Jainism, of Buddhism. They should be completely clean -- just to be human is enough.

 

Accept yourself.

 

Respect yourself Allow your nature to take its own course. Don't force, don't repress.

 

Doubt -- because doubt is not a sin, it is the sign of your intelligence. Doubt and go on enquiring until you find.

 

One thing I can say: whosoever enquires, finds. It is absolutely certain; it has never been otherwise.

 

Nobody has come empty-handed from an authentic enquiry.

 

- Osho, "From Ignorance to Innocence, #11"