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Osho,
I can relate to the taste of good German chocolate, but what about the taste of enlightenment?
Mind has an incurable disease: the name of the disease is duality. It does not matter what the mind is focused on, it immediately creates a division – in the knower and in the known, in the observer and in the observed, in the subject and in the object; in short, between I and thou.
One of the most prominent thinkers of the twentieth century was Martin Buber, and his contribution is of great importance. His whole philosophy he has condensed into a book called I And Thou. And he has given the philosophy the name, “dialogue.”
As far as the mind is concerned, what he is saying is true and relevant. But mind is not the ultimate judge of existence. I had written a letter to Martin Buber when he was alive. I was very young, but I pointed out to him that a real dialogue is not between I and thou, the real dialogue begins when the I and the thou start merging and melting. The dialogue can even be silent, but its basic requirement is that the division should not be there. He did not reply. I wrote him again and I told him, “Your not replying to me shows that you yourself are not convinced of what you are saying.”
You are asking, what is the taste of enlightenment? There is no taste, because you are alone. At the most, in language we can say there is a certain sensitivity, a fragrance, but it is not separate from you. It is you yourself. The taste and the taster need to be separate, and in enlightenment the only barrier is separation.
Just the other day I received, from the same insane Catholic man from the staff of Time magazine, another question: “You teach love, you teach compassion; then why did the people of Oregon in America become enemies to you?” I don’t ordinarily reply to people if I see that they are basically insane, and the question shows insanity absolutely clearly. If he were intelligent enough, first he should have asked, “Jesus has also preached love, has preached compassion, has preached forgiveness – then why was he crucified by the Jews?” If his question were relevant and had not come from a Catholic prejudice, he would have seen the contradiction. And certainly the people of Oregon have not crucified me yet.
Moreover, I was only a tourist in America. Jesus was a Jew, belonged to the same people, was born among them, was brought up by them. And whatever he was saying was not contradictory to the Jewish scriptures. In fact, he was trying to argue for the Jewish tradition; still the people of Judea crucified him. And this fellow, after two thousand years, has the guts to ask me, “If you teach love, if you teach compassion, then why were the people of Oregon not friendly to you?” The fact is that we have lived a past so insane, so insecure, that we are afraid of strangers. And America could not find a stranger man than me. I was not part of their world, I did not believe in their values. I was really making a commune absolutely against all American tradition and pride.
I am basically against marriage; obviously the question of divorce does not arise. I am against the accidental birth of people, because that is the basic cause for the earth being burdened with the retarded. I am in absolute agreement that love should be just play; the moment you start producing children it becomes business. And I cannot agree to produce this kind of humanity. I was teaching that whenever a couple…of course unmarried, because the law has nothing to do with your love. Love should be a freedom between two persons, and if from even one person love disappears they have to separate, as friends, with gratitude for all the beautiful moments they lived together. Loving affairs ending in the courts are absolutely ugly.
And when a couple wants more than love, wants a child, the decision has to be made by medical science, not by them. Because neither the father knows nor the mother, what is going to be the outcome. Adolf Hitler, Ronald Reagan? These idiots could have been avoided.
In a single lovemaking the man releases almost one million sperm, and from that point starts your ugly civilization. All those one million sperm have a life span only of two hours; within two hours they have to reach the mother’s egg. You have seen marathon races, but you don’t understand that the real marathon race is for the poor sperm. It is so small you cannot see it with your bare eyes. In relation to its size, the track that it has to pass to reach the mother’s egg has been calculated as almost two miles. In these two miles, one million people are struggling for survival. It is absolutely understandable that the wiser ones will stand by the side, and the idiots will do everything to reach the mother’s egg. It is not a coincidence that the world is full of retarded people. And once a single sperm reaches the mother’s egg, the egg closes; the remaining one million people are defeated. They have to die, there is no way for them to be alive.
It is almost amazing that a few wise people have also reached the mother’s egg. It seems just accidental. A Gautam Buddha or a Bertrand Russell – perhaps they got into the crowd and could not get out of it. The crowd is not small. And they were simply pushed by the crowd; perhaps some idiot was pushing them from behind. I cannot conceive them to be so competitive that they would have reached on their own. Some accident, perhaps just chance that they entered the track first, because one million people cannot enter the track simultaneously. And there is no referee to give them a signal – Go on! So a few enter first, a few later. It seems to be just chance.
If you look at humanity, how many people of any worth have you created? And how many people have lived without any dignity, without any joy?
I am in absolute agreement with the idea of a scientific determination, and not to leave it – because this is the most important thing – to the idiots themselves. They can be eliminated, but then we will have to think in a totally new way. We will have to manage our lives not according to the old, which was not management but an absolute chaos.
It is not necessary that your sperm will have an Albert Einstein, a Rabindranath Tagore, or a Picasso. I don’t see any reason why we cannot have banks in the hospitals, medical colleges, where people can contribute their sperm just as they contribute blood. Now science is ready to read the intrinsic program of the sperm: how long it will live, whether it will be strong or weak, whether it will suffer diseases, whether it will be intelligent, whether it will have a certain genius. This is an old stupidity that your child should be only from your sperm. From the sperm bank you can choose. If you want a scientist, if you want a poet of the qualities which only very few people have attained in the whole of history, if you want a painter, if you want an absolutely healthy human being, intelligent, beautiful, you can choose.
And rather than you injecting it, let medical science inject a single sperm so there is no possibility for any Ronald Reagan to reach the mother’s egg. These people have to be eliminated completely. They don’t have a place in the future vision of mankind.
Just think of a world of utterly talented people, healthy, with a longer life span, creative, sensitive. We can make this world really a garden where every plant blossoms, releases its fragrance, joins the dance that is existence.
This man’s question reminded me how blind people can be and never be aware of their blindness. Jesus is crucified – that is perfect – and after Jesus, the Christianity that he unknowingly produced has burned thousands of living beings alive. No other religion is so criminal as Christianity, but this man cannot see that. He can see only enough to ask why I was not liked by the people of Oregon. It simply shows that the people of Oregon are the most retarded people in the world. After Oregon I have been trying to find someone who can defeat them, but I have not been able to find anyone. They are absolute idiots.
Just because they were afraid of me and my people – afraid, because things happened when we purchased the land in Oregon. The land was for sale for almost forty years and nobody had purchased it, at any price, because it was only a desert. What are you going to do with a desert, one hundred twenty-six square miles?
I wanted to make the point that the people who surrounded that desert were not inventive, not intelligent – we changed that same desert into an oasis, and that hurt the Oregonians. Because when we had purchased the land they laughed. They used to come and say, “What are you doing? You can pour in millions of dollars; this desert is not going to produce anything.” And we made the desert one of the most beautiful places you can conceive. That became a wound in the hearts of the Oregonians.
And the United States Attorney blurted out after deporting me… he was asked by a reporter in a press conference, “Why have you not jailed Osho?”
He said, “There are three reasons. One, our priority was to destroy the commune…”
That shows the reason – why should they destroy the commune? We had created a desert into a living place. Five thousand sannyasins were living there; we made roads, we made dams, we had grown sufficient food for ourselves. We made all kinds of arrangements – a small oasis. We had fifteen thousand specially-made tents which could be air-conditioned, which could be heated so that they could be used around the year. Each celebration day – and the celebrations used to last for three weeks – there were twenty thousand people from all over the world. Oregon was shocked, they could not believe it.
We had every facility. There was not a single beggar – and the people who come to me are, of necessity, bound to be the most intelligent ones. The unintelligent cannot even conceive of what I am saying.
There was a heart surgeon who was known all over the country. We had our own hospital, the most qualified doctors, nurses. We had our own school, and I had made it a point that the children should not be part of the family, they should be part of the commune. Their fathers and mothers could meet them, could invite them for a visit, but they could not prejudice their minds. Those children were growing – for the first time in the whole of history – without being conditioned that they were Christian, that they were Hindu, that they were communist. No conditioning – we were allowing them to grow to whatever their inner potential is.
I don’t believe in poverty. And the man from Time magazine has asked, “If you love people, you are compassionate, then why did you have ninety-three Rolls Royces?” But he is not aware that I don’t have a single cent. Those ninety-three Rolls Royces had come from people who loved the commune. Of course, nobody can use ninety-three Rolls Royces simultaneously, and they were all the latest model, the same model. I am not mad! It was just because of the gratitude of my sannyasins that they did not want to use a car that I was using. But they had their own cars.
The commune had two hundred cars of its own, one hundred buses of its own, four airplanes and a small airport of its own. We changed the whole shape of the desert, and everybody was working not as a laborer but out of love, out of creativity. And even after working the whole day, people were dancing in the evening; late in the night you could hear the flutes, the guitars. This was the pain in the neck of Oregonians, that “We have been living here for three hundred years and we could not make any use of this land. These people within five years have changed the whole face of it.” We created the most luxurious commune that has been ever created. The whole commune was centrally air-conditioned….
And we were not at all concerned with America or with Oregon. The nearest Oregon town was twenty miles away from us and people were so happy in the commune, nobody wanted to go anywhere. Finally we had to get rid of so many cars, airplanes, because what is the point? Nobody wants to go anywhere.
And the poor fellow is still haunted by my ninety-three Rolls Royces. He does not think for a moment that I have not kept any Rolls Royce from those ninety-three; I have not even looked back toward them. I never went to the garage. They were not mine.
But he is asking the question, “When the whole world is poor, how could you manage a commune to live comfortably?” What do you mean? If the whole world is sick, do we also have to be sick? If the whole hospital is filled with sick people, do you want the doctors and nurses also in the beds?
I am absolutely against poverty. That became the problem, that I had abolished poverty in the commune. And what can be done in one place can be done in every place, because it is the same earth – better earth. The commune became their priority – to destroy it so nobody could compare, and nobody could ask why America has thirty million beggars.
We had absorbed three hundred beggars from America into the commune. And the beggars themselves told me, “For the first time we have recognized that we are human beings, because nobody here treats us the way we have been treated our whole life, like stray dogs. We have felt for the first time that we are also human beings, and a tremendous dignity and self-respect has arisen in us.”
Now this was the problem: if the commune was going to become well known all over America, the American politicians would have been in tremendous difficulty. Hence the Attorney General – who is a close friend of Ronald Reagan; they have been educated in the same schools, same colleges, and they were also working in Hollywood together. And as Ronald Reagan became the president immediately he called his friend to be the Attorney General of America….
The second reason the United States Attorney gave was: “We did not want Osho to remain in jail because we were afraid that would make him a martyr.” You can see the meaning hidden in it – the desire was there, but because of the fear that if they kept me in jail, then sannyasins all over the world were going to protest, were going to become stronger, were going to be in every way against the American domination of the world….
And the third thing is really hilarious. He said, “And moreover, the third thing is that we don’t have any evidence for the charge that Osho has committed any crime.” Now the US Attorney says he doesn’t have any evidence against me! Then why am I being punished with a fine of almost half a million dollars? Why have I been harassed into six jails unnecessarily? Why was I arrested in the first place without any arrest warrant, just under the threat of loaded guns? Why was I not allowed bail?
And the woman magistrate who did not allow me bail behaved so strangely…I had never expected a woman to behave that way. The government attorney for three days continuously tried and failed to prove that there was any reason for my arrest. The question of bail does not arise – in fact the people who arrested me should have been punished! And the government attorney accepted in his final statement, the concluding line was, “We have not been able to prove anything against Osho.” But the magistrate…and that was such a surprise to me; she said, “You may not have been able to prove anything, but I have reasons of my own and I am not going to give him bail.”
I have respected women more than any man in history, but unfortunately I have to exclude this magistrate in Carolina from my respect. And she must have suffered a deep guilt, because what was she doing? I was told by my jailer, because he could not believe it either. He was on the point of retirement, he had a lifetime of experience, and he said, “I have never seen such a case. When you cannot produce any evidence and still you refuse to give bail, this is unheard of!” And he told me that the reason was that the woman was being bribed from the White House. She was just a magistrate, and she had been bribed that if she refused bail to me, she would be made a federal judge.
For this promotion, she must have felt deep guilt. Just the other day I came to know that she is suffering from cancer, is on her deathbed. That guilt must have created the cancer; otherwise the woman was perfectly healthy, in fact more healthy than ordinarily you expect women to be. I feel sorry for her. She got the promotion, but in a wrong direction.
And my chief attorney Niren is here – he is my sannyasin. He has been going through all the jails where they mistreated me in every possible way. And they are lying – I have to speak with Niren about the points where they are absolutely lying. I have an inner, intuitive guarantee that in the Oklahoma jail I was poisoned, poisoned with thallium, which has shown its effects over the last two years. It remains deposited in the body and becomes active over a period of time. But it has to be given in small doses; if you give it in a big dose, then the effects will be immediate. This was the reason why the bail was refused and I was dragged for twelve days from one jail to another jail.
And in Oklahoma – Niren has been there – they simply denied that I have been in that jail. I knew that’s what they were going to say. I reached Oklahoma in the middle of the night; it was purposefully arranged so that the whole airport was dark and there was no traffic, and still they were afraid that somebody might see me. They took me out through a secret door, out of the airport.
At the airport the man who was giving my charge to the US Marshall who was driving the car whispered in his ear…but I was sitting just behind him, and what he whispered made me certain about my intuitive feeling. The man said, “Remember one thing: this guy is world famous and all the world media are focused on him, so don’t do anything directly. Be very cautious whatever you do.” Now these words indicate with absolute certainty that they were ready to do something, and the instruction was given: it has to be done in such an indirect way that nobody will ever be able to find….
But I was not alone in the car. Another prisoner, a woman, was also sitting by my side. I told her, “Listen carefully to what is being said.” Niren has to find that woman, because all records have disappeared – records about me, records about that woman, because she will be the witness. When Niren reached there he found that on their computer there is no record. They have made their records on the computer since 1986. He had to force his way, insist that “I have an absolute guarantee that he has been in this jail and I want to look into the records in your basement.”
In the middle of the night they took me through the back door into the jail. There was nobody else, they eliminated any kind of witness, but existence has its own ways…. And the US Marshall who brought me insisted that I could not write my own name, I had to write the name of David Washington. I should be called David Washington while I am in the jail, and I have to respond to this name.
I said, “I am not going to write anybody’s name. You are forcing me to do something illegal and unconstitutional, for which you will suffer one day.”
He was also tired, in the middle of the night; half an hour we struggled. He said, “You are a strange person, I want to go home!”
I said, “You can go to hell! But I am not going to write David Washington.”
Then he said, “I will fill in the form.” And he filled in the form – my understanding was that this would be an absolute proof. He filled in the form and I signed my own signature. He looked at my signature…of course he could not understand; nobody can understand what I write.
He asked me, “What have you written?”
I said, “It seems it is David Washington.”
Niren found the document and he has brought a photocopy of the document, but my signature is missing. Still, that document indicates one thing: “David Washington, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon.” And that is in the handwriting of the US Marshall of that jail. My feeling is they have simply destroyed the form on which I have signed, knowing that it will create difficulty, and they have filled in another form. I would like Niren to go back to Oklahoma, because the question is very simple, that on this form there is no signature, either of Osho or at least of David Washington. Some signature is needed; otherwise what is the value of this record?
I entered the jail, that is certain now. That “Rajneeshpuram” they have forgotten is enough proof. Niren has to take whatever he has managed to get to the experts. Whose handwriting is that? And he has to insist on getting the signature, because I have signed it, so either they are hiding the original and they have managed another, or they have destroyed it. But the man has to be caught.
And these people go on lying. He said to Niren, “I treated Osho the best. In no other jail he was treated the way I treated him.” In fact the truth is that I was treated the worst in Oklahoma. And I have witnesses. Just by chance they put me in an isolation cell with a small window – and the glass of the window was completely dark, so dirty you could not figure out what was beyond the window. But just across from me there was another person. I don’t know him, but one thing is certain: he was an orthodox Hindu sannyasin, because he had orange robes. And his face…I tried in every way to clean the window and to see that man, and just a few days ago that man was here – perhaps he may still be here – and he told Anando, “I am a witness that Osho was brought to Oklahoma and was put into the cell just across from me.”
Niren has to find the girl, who was released that very night. She is a fat girl, nearabout thirty years of age – but a courageous one; almost a jailbird. The way she was behaving in the jail was as if it were almost her home. Niren has just to advertise in Oklahoma and the girl will respond.
Niren has also to ask the pilot of the plane, because there is only one US Marshall’s plane – that makes things simple. They all became very friendly to me – the pilot, the copilot, and a woman who was serving food to people. And they all felt that this was strange: “From North Carolina it is only five or six hours’ flight to Oregon, and you are being tortured unnecessarily for twelve days! There is no rationality in it.” So he has to interview those people about whether they had dropped me in the middle of the night at the Oklahoma airport. And particularly the woman, because she was very much concerned about my well-being. There was no vegetarian food but she managed some fruits, some juices, and she was sorry…“We never thought that in America such uncivilized behavior, such undemocratic behavior, is still prevalent.”
And when these government people say things to you – I have to listen to Niren’s interviews; he has brought all the tapes – don’t trust them. Because in those twelve days they were all lying to me. Every time I was taken from one jail to another jail they would say, “You are going to Oregon,” and I would end up somewhere else. It continued for twelve days – free travel all over America! I enjoyed it. And I became convinced that if this is the situation of the country proclaimed to be the most democratic, what will be the situation of other countries?
Just by chance Niren met Judge Leavy, who finally gave me the punishment of four hundred thousand dollars, deportation for five years from America…and for fifteen years if I come back to America and commit any crime, then there will be no trial for it; I will be jailed. It will be enough that somebody has complained against me.
Niren met him on the plane and for two hours they were together. Niren asked him, “You were watching Osho for three days; millions of people see something in his eyes – have you looked into his eyes?” And Judge Leavy was lying, because I was looking into his eyes and he was avoiding; he has not looked into my eyes. And even if he had looked into my eyes, he would not find anything. He has lived with criminals his whole life. He knows the eyes of crime, he does not know the eyes of innocence.
I had my cap, and he said to Niren, “I hesitated whether to tell him to remove the cap or not” – because this stupid idea exists in America that to wear a cap in the courtroom is insulting to the court. My own understanding is that to cover your head is a respectful gesture. A court has to be a temple of justice. But he said, “Finally I asked him to remove his cap.” I removed the cap and with the removal of the cap I removed all my respect for American courts and the American constitution.
I am not fussy about small things. But from that moment, whatever I have heard about Judge Leavy became absolutely absurd. He is not a man of justice. He knew perfectly well that I have not committed any crime, and he punished me. Four hundred thousand dollars, knowing perfectly well that I don’t have a single cent, and he deported me without any reason. I looked at the man…he will suffer for it; perhaps he has also been bribed in the same way, because now he has moved to a higher court. Just one step more and he can move to the Supreme Court. If he is a man of any guts, he should admit that he was not concerned with justice, he was concerned with his own promotion.
I can understand Niren’s difficulty, but you have to gather courage and you have to encounter these people. When Judge Leavy said, “I did not see anything in his eyes,” you should not have remained silent. Because if a blind man cannot see the sun, that does not mean the sun is not there, or if a man who is interested in climbing ladders cannot see the roses, it is not the fault of the roses. To see the sublime, to see the divine you have to be unprejudiced, you have to be open and receptive.
For three days I also watched him. Just a dead man with no guts, hoping for perhaps just one more promotion. He may not have seen anything in my eyes but I have seen even into his soul.
According to me, our judges are greater criminals than our criminals. Moving from one jail to another jail I have seen such innocent people. But I have not seen in the courts, in the officers, in the marshals, in the judges, anybody who can be called innocent. They are all playing into the hands of those who can give them a little more prestige, a little more respectability. I would like Niren to tell Judge Leavy that what I have seen in him is just a dead soul – utterly ugly, criminal, without any guts; just a greedy person and nothing else.

Enlightenment is not something separate from you. What is the taste of innocence? What is the taste of silence? What is the taste of purity? You cannot taste them because they are not objects.
You are the taste!
And when everything else has disappeared in your utter aloneness, a merger, a meeting with the cosmos happens. You cannot call it a taste, the word ‘taste’ is too small. It certainly creates a dance in every cell of your being, in every fiber of your being. It transforms you from base metal into gold. But it is not a taste, it is a transformation.
You cannot describe it, you can only enjoy it.

Now it is time for prayer….

“How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you are on.”

This is the whole philosophy of relativity of Albert Einstein!

“When you read a biography, remember that the truth is never fit for publication.”

Truth is so simple, there is no sensation in it. No publisher is going to waste money in publishing truth. These thousands of papers, magazines, weeklies, are full of untruth. The more untruth, the greater is their subscription rate, the more they are read. But remember it: for this untruth we are destroying beautiful trees around the world.

“The quickest way to make anti-freeze is to hide her nightdress.”
“Prepare for eternity: tidy up your room.”
“To live to be a hundred, first you have to live to be ninety-nine and then be very careful for a year.”
“When a woman steals your boyfriend, the best revenge is to let her live with him.”
“If you are not confused, you are not paying attention.”
“There is only one way to handle a woman. The trouble is, nobody knows what it is.”
“If you are single, all the good men are married. If you are married, all the good men are single. If you are over sixty-five, all the good men are dead.”
“Misery to a woman is an alive secret and a dead telephone.”
“There is nothing like good food, good wine and a bad woman.”
“Love may be blind, but it knows its way around in the dark.”
“You have not lived until you die in California.”
“A wedding is a ceremony where a man loses control of himself.”
“Success is relative. The more success, the more relatives.”
“It is better for a woman to be beautiful rather than intelligent, because men’s eyes function better than their brains.”

A sexy blonde with a stunning figure boards a bus and finding no empty seats, asks a gentleman for his, explaining that she is pregnant.
The man stands up at once and gives her his seat, but can’t help commenting that she does not look pregnant.
“Well,” she replies with a smile, “it has only been about half an hour, and it really makes me very tired!”

Paddy is obsessed by golf – it has become his only topic of conversation.
Maureen is slowly going bananas with the constant discussion of birdies, drivers and sand traps, of his golf clubs, his caddies and his scores.
Finally at dinner she snaps, “I am tired of you talking about golf twenty-four hours a day! I don’t want to hear about it at this meal!”
“But what shall I talk about then?” asks Paddy.
“About anything,” says Maureen. “Talk about sex for goodness’ sake!”
“Okay,” says Paddy, “I wonder who my caddie is screwing these days?”

After the prison riot, the head warden calls the three ringleaders into his office and says, “Now then, I would like to know two things: First, why did you revolt? And second, how did you get out of your cell?”
One of the men steps forward and says, “Warden, we rebelled because the prison food is so awful.”
“I see,” replies the warden. “And the cell, what did you use to break the bars?”
The prisoner steps back in disgust and says, “This morning’s toast!”