the-last-testament-vol-1-04

Jeff McMullen
60 Minutes, Australia
Osho,
Of the many extraordinary things that you say, the one on which I would never debate you is that you are an ordinary man. How ordinary a man are you?
Extraordinarily.
Are you the new man that you say the world needs?
Yes.
Do you put yourself on a plane with other great men: Jesus, Buddha, Krishna?
No, I am just myself and I don’t belong to any past, past prophets, messiahs. I am the beginning of a new man, absolutely discontinuous with the past. I have nothing to do with Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Krishna, Buddha. To me they are all dead and of no use for the future new man. In fact, they are the barriers for the new man to be born. I am fighting against all those fellows.
Are you a god?
No, there is no God. God is the greatest fiction created by cunning priests, and the new man is not going to have any God. The new man is enough unto himself. No God is needed. God is needed by retarded people.
Was Einstein retarded? He believed in a God.
Then I will have to explain to you that Einstein was a great physicist, he was a genius, but as far as other directions of life are concerned he was below average.
I am reminded: he was traveling in a bus. He gave money for a ticket, the conductor returned change to him. He counted it and said to the conductor, “This is not right, you are cheating.” The conductor counted it again and he said, “Mister, it seems you don’t know how to count.” And this is the greatest physicist of the world.
It is a strange phenomenon that the great scientists are very stupid as far as religion is concerned – they are absolutely ignorant about it. Even the ordinary man is more aware of religion. The expert is basically to be understood as a man who knows more and more about less and less. The ultimate expert is one who knows all about nothing. The religious man is not an expert. His situation is just the opposite: he knows less and less about more and more, and ultimately he comes to a point when he knows nothing about all. And that nothingness has been called nirvana. It is not ignorance, it is innocence.
Osho,
Let me try you on some other “not so ordinary men.” If I give you a name, perhaps you could give me one of your words of wisdom for each of these people: Mahatma Gandhi.
He was the most cunning politician the world has ever known.
Adolf Hitler.
He was the most idiotic politician the world has ever known.
Pope Paul.
He should be behind bars.
Mother Teresa.
It is time for her to jump into a lake.
Osho,
Your followers laugh and yet, with the kind of very unsettling raw statement that you make, you clearly disturb people who see that sort of statement as profane.
I love to disturb people, because only by disturbing them can I make them think. They have stopped thinking for centuries. Nobody has been there to disturb them, people have been consoling them. I am not going to console anybody, because the more you console them, the more retarded they remain. Disturb them, shock them, hit them hard, give them a challenge. That challenge will bring their capacities to the climax.
How would you feel if the Hells Angels – a motorbike gang, leather jackets, helmets, a terror gang – how would you feel if the Hells Angels rode into Rajneeshpuram and disturbed your tranquil oasis?
We will enjoy them, we will receive them as our guests. They cannot disturb us, nobody can disturb us. Even if they throw an atom bomb on Rajneeshpuram, the atom bomb will have a shock, because we will be celebrating, dancing, enjoying. Even death cannot disturb us; we will celebrate it. We celebrate it: whenever a sannyasin dies – even when my father died – we danced, we celebrated. We enjoyed a beautiful departure, a goodbye. So there is no question. Anybody can come, he will have an appropriate welcome.
Then why the armed guards and the perimeter around your existence here? Surely not anybody can come?
Those guards are the responsibility of the Rajneeshees, I am not concerned. I don’t interfere in anybody’s life, I have never interfered in any way. If somebody wants to assassinate me, I am the last person to give him any resistance. I will simply welcome him. I will say, “Glad to meet you. Shoot me and let me be free from the body and its cage.”
But if people who love me want to protect me, I am not going to interfere with their work, either. Those guards have nothing to do with me. They are managed by people who love me. Now, I am an outsider to both – the assassin and the guard. It is between them, they have to settle it. I am simply an outsider.
A technical limitation of film, we have to put a new magazine on.
Okay.
Even in the atomic age.
Okay.
Osho,
Hollywood isn’t easy. You seem very fond of the Wild West here in America. Do you have an equal affection for the wild west of Western Australia? Do you have any intentions of going there and taking your followers there?
I never function through intentions, I am a man of spontaneity – so beware. Any time I can come with my whole circus. I may never come. I never decide for the next moment; one moment is enough to live at one time, and nobody can get two moments together. We always get one moment, so why bother about other things? – because while we are bothering about other moments, this moment will be gone, empty, unlived, and that is the misery of humanity. They go on thinking of tomorrow and today is disappearing. We are the people who are living in the present. So it is possible.
But not likely.
It is likely.
Not at this moment.
Not at this moment. But perhaps tomorrow morning.
Osho,
You do love this theater, you said that. You laughed yesterday… It is a circus. But in another moment will you tire of this circus, the trappings?
No, never, because it is such a beautiful circus, and continuously changing. New flowers, new seasons go on coming. I am not tired of it. And the people who make my circus are not the animals of a circus; they are the most intelligent people of this earth, the very salt of the earth. They go on creating something new every day. It is always new, and it is always new also because I never compare anything. Yesterday is gone, I don’t bring it back to compare with today. Tomorrow has not come, who cares? It is always new, fresh.
People get tired because they go on comparing. And comparison means you have lived this thing many times, you have seen this rose flower many times; so slowly, slowly you become blind to it, you start taking it for granted. I take nothing for granted and my people take nothing for granted, so every moment we are ready for any surprise.
The day I left India, I informed my people to prepare immediately, I am going to leave. It was a shock! Ten thousand sannyasins were settling there, making arrangements, purchasing houses, lands. And with twenty-four hours notice I told them to make arrangements, that I was leaving. And ordinarily I never come back to any place that I have left in my life. So I am not tired or bored, I am rejoicing in it as much as possible.
There is a slight technical problem with the film.
You seem to have very ancient equipment in Australia!
This is Hollywood. This is film as distinct from mere television, mere videotape. But the final look – you talk of beauty and goodness – well, the beauty of the film is still the excellence, I think, which is why we take a little more time. But when we get there, it is worth it.
That is good.
Osho,
You sound like you will not go back to India. Even if the moment were to change, that doesn’t seem to be a place you would be drawn to again?
Nothing can be said about it. But in my whole life I have never gone back. The places I have left, I have left. So looking at my crazy behavior of the past, it is very unlikely that I will go to India. But then one never knows, I am not a reliable person.
That is your most reliable quality.
We have had a very peaceful time here for… It has only been a few days but…
Come again and again.
…given the madness that we parade around in for most of the year it’s been very enjoyable. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Come whenever you feel like having a holiday.
You have so many Australians here already, what do you think of us?
I love you. I see a beautiful human being in front of me, open, available. I don’t see you as a prejudiced man. I don’t see you as unintelligent, and I see every possibility of growing more and more into higher and higher consciousness. I don’t predict ordinarily, but I see one of my potential sannyasins sitting here in front of me.
Osho,
Did you follow others, as others now follow you?
No. I have never followed anybody, and I have never allowed anybody to follow me. These are my fellow travelers. My sannyasins are not my followers, they are my friends.
Osho,
I think I am just a fellow traveler too. I am an ordinary man, I am an ordinary storyteller. When I ask about Australians and you say we are open… I think we are open. When Sheela came to Australia, she has learned your skill for how to unsettle people, she has made people burn. Is that really necessary? What do you win with that, wouldn’t you have more support to show…?
We don’t need any support, I am not a politician seeking support. I want to share something, but that is possible only when you are shocked and disturbed in your sleep. I have to wake you up, and Sheela has been doing a good job of shaking people and waking people. She prepares the ground for me. When she has done enough, then perhaps I may come there to find people with whom I can relate heart to heart. And there are millions of people in the world who need just a little bit of shaking and they will be awake. Their sleep is not very deep.
You do seem to like to shake the rich most. Maybe it is the jingle of the coins from the pocket you like to shake loose.
The reason is that the poor man is fast asleep; otherwise he cannot tolerate his poverty. He needs deep sleep, he needs some opium – given by the politicians, by the priests. His sleep is not just ordinary sleep, it is narcotic. The rich man needs no consolation from anybody. The rich man is not worried about heaven and hell. He knows he can purchase everything – the priest, his God, his heaven, his hell – everything can be purchased. He is not in the same situation as the poor man, he can be easily awakened. Between the poor man and me there is a great distance.
And the black man? There are few blacks here.
A few blacks have come, because they are as beautiful people as anyone. The problem is, once a person comes here and just gives us a little chance to shake him and wake him, he is not going to leave the place. So those few black people had come just for three months to live with us – we had invited anybody to come and live with us for three months. They have remained. Many have gone, but they go on continuously writing to us that they miss it and would like to come back, because for the first time they had been treated as human beings.
For the first time a white man has hugged a black woman or a black man has hugged a white woman, made love to a white woman. For the first time he was not thought to be second rate. He was respected, just the way everybody else is respected. There was no discrimination.
The problem is, people are afraid to come, because the politicians are making them afraid. The religious leaders are making them afraid, creating all kinds of rumors, preventing them from coming here because they know perfectly well that anybody who comes here with open eyes, an alert mind, is going to fall in love with this place.
Osho,
It is very peaceful, any visitor here finds it peaceful. One of the rumors about the place is about that side of free love: if there is this much free love here, why the rubber gloves in the hotel rooms? What has changed?
It is being careful about my people. They should take every precaution that they don’t get AIDS, which is spreading fast, and there is no cure for it. Once you have AIDS, you have only two more years to live at the maximum. That is the maximum, most probably within six months you will be finished. I would not like my people to be finished that ugly way. Love is free, AIDS is not free.
Osho,
You are more certain about some of these things than scientists that I have talked to. What is it, how does an ordinary man become a guru, an Osho, with such clarity and certainty about these things?
Only an ordinary man can become so certain, so clear. The extraordinary man is so much burdened with his ego, with his knowledgeability, with his schizophrenic mind, with all kinds of arguments.
I am reminded of Immanuel Kant, one of the most important philosophers of the West. A woman fell in love with him and he said, “I will have to think about it.”
Now, you don’t think about love – either yes or no – but Immanuel Kant is a big philosopher. He thought about it for three years and he managed to find all the arguments for marriage and against marriage. The trouble was, they were equal. After three years he went to the woman’s house and knocked on the door. He had gone to say, “Forgive me, I cannot decide. The arguments are equal, fifty-fifty.” But the woman was not there…
Please finish.
Let them change [the film.]
Talking to Australians will not be like Good Morning, America. We don’t plan to exhaust you. There is enough wit and wisdom and magic and theater already in what we have, to fill twice the length of our television program. But there are one or two more special questions that I would like to bring to you, if you could.
Okay.
Osho,
The dam that you have here is named after Gurdjieff – this is not the question for the camera, but I am curious about it – he was also a fellow traveler on the road. Was he to you at least, if not an inspiration, a remarkable man?
He was an immensely remarkable man, in fact nobody else has been so remarkable in this century. But he was an ordinary man. He never claimed that he was a prophet, he lived just like an ordinary man – but he was most remarkable. His insight and clarity are just inconceivable.
He moved, whereas you sit still – do you think one is superior? He seemed to be a traveler; whereas you are traveling here, but you physically rest anywhere. It seems not even very important to you, where you are in that sense. Do you think one is a superior choice to the other, or…?
No, there is no question of any superiority. It is just with whom your heart starts beating. It is just a question of liking, loving – somebody may like Mozart and somebody may not like him. Somebody may like Vincent van Gogh and somebody will think him crazy, mad.

[noises are heard, caused by problems with the video equipment]

If you are ready, I have to finish my answer.
He still has his hands in the magic bag.
So when he is ready please tell me, because I don’t forget anything.
You can talk about things that you don’t want to put on the film.
Osho,
Without giving you the wit and wisdom of yet another ordinary man, one thing might be useful – maybe more to the Rajneeshees – but I think the toy soldiers that you have here are a little silly. I know that they are doing it out of love for you, but it would seem to me out of kilter with the serenity of the place. Probably the more peaceful side of what you do here in this oasis in the desert is enough defense, without the Wild West trappings. That seems to me what governments and armies do, and I don’t think that the Rajneeshees need to be the same as the rest.
You have not been here long enough, and you have not seen… I have been attacked many times.
Here though, or in India?
In India. Efforts were made to poison me, to kill me. I know those guns are silly – in an age which is nuclear, they are carrying toy guns. But what is the harm, if they enjoy and they feel that they are doing something?
It doesn’t upset you?
It is perfectly okay. Let them enjoy. They are toys, but what they are doing – their love is not a toy. They cannot have nuclear weapons, otherwise they would have nuclear weapons too. Whatsoever they can…

[the film is ready]

I come back.
Would you like me to pick up on where we were talking?
Yes.
Osho,
You said that Immanuel Kant couldn’t choose…
Yes, that will do.
…between one very simple matter of love. Could I interject and ask you something on that?
Just wait, let me finish because I had not finished it.
He knocked on the woman’s door. There was no woman, an old man opened the door and recognized Immanuel Kant. Kant asked about the woman, he said, “She was my daughter, but she has been married for three years and she has two children, too. She does not live in this town anymore. What business do you have with my daughter? You go and think a little more.”
Thinkers are the most clumsy people in the world, most indecisive. I am not a thinker. I simply see, and whatsoever I see I say it without bothering about the consequences. I am an absolutely open person – there is nothing private in me.
Osho,
The same question then, that Immanuel Kant had to answer: the yes or no about love. Are you in love with Sheela? Is she your…?
I am in love with so many women around the world. Sheela, of course, is one of them, but I cannot point out a single woman that I love. I love – and my love is not addressed to anybody in particular. And I have loved so many women, I don’t think anybody else could have managed it. Even Gurdjieff is far behind me in that matter. He loved many women, but not more than a dozen.
If Sheela is that special, is Sheela the power behind the throne? Is she the heir apparent to your spiritual kingdom?
No, there is no power, no kingdom. I am here, she is just a fellow traveler, as others.
It is a kingdom with more Rolls Royces than any other city in the world.
That is true. I am a man of very simple taste; I like the best of anything – this is certainly true. I would like this city to be in many ways the only city in the world which has that capacity. Certainly, we have ninety or more Rolls Royces, no city of a comparable membership can claim that. In every way: we don’t have a single beggar, we don’t have a single thief, we don’t have any crime, no murder in four years – in America, where twenty percent of the presidents are being murdered – no prostitution.
In many ways this place is unique, and we are going to make it more and more unique and beautiful. Just the stupid politicians cannot understand a simple thing: that we are not doing any harm to anybody. Don’t prevent us from doing things which are not harmful – but they go on, they are so afraid.
The governor goes on speaking against us and we have been inviting him, “First just come and visit. Be here and see the people and the place, and then if you feel to speak against us, speak against us. We have no problem with that. But at least be acquainted, at least be a gentleman.”
It doesn’t feel like Jonestown to us.
It is just the opposite of Jonestown. They were death-oriented; we are life-oriented, we love to enjoy everything. They were just an unintelligent group of people – mostly black, uneducated, knowing nothing – following this man who was telling them, that if they go with him they will enter into the kingdom of God.
We are creating the kingdom of God here. In fact, we are waiting for God to knock on our doors some day and say, “Let me come in.” We are just the opposite. Reverend Jim Jones and his people are really the logical conclusion of Jesus and the Christian theology.
Not the logical conclusion of the power of one man over a group of people?
That was exactly what Jesus was doing, that is exactly what the popes have been doing – that is why I say he is the logical conclusion from Jesus through all the popes and all the Christian theologians. They have all been trying to prove the power, the glory of Jesus, his special-ness and his special connection with God… And if you follow him then you need not worry about the future, he will take care of you.
Here I teach people that nobody can take care of you. I am not your savior. I am not going to help you in any way to enter into the kingdom of God, but I can explain to you how we can live here in the kingdom of beauty, love, joy. To me God is a dead word. It is a dirty word, a four-letter word.
I think I would prefer to end our interview with the beauty of something you said earlier, rather than the ugliness of Jonestown.
I would like to talk to you a little more, if we can turn the microphones off – they need to get a few more shots of us sitting here, if we can continue talking…
Okay.
Do whatsoever you want to do.
For our purposes we are trying, in the space of the very condensed television program, to get your essence. It is trying to compress what you have been saying – for fifty-three years or fifty-three lifetimes – into a sixty-minute program, which is almost an impossible task. But we think that we have caught for the sake of our film some of the magic and the tranquility of this experience.
Good.
Osho,
I hope you don’t mind my saying that I enjoyed the circus and the theater of it as much as…maybe that is close to a spiritual feeling, but to me you are truly one of the funniest people that I have ever met.
That is right.
You have a wonderful sense of humor. And where did you learn such timing?
I have never learned anything, I just go on doing naturally whatsoever I feel to do. Whatsoever I have to say, I say – because I don’t have any obligation to anybody, and I don’t have any commitment to anybody. I don’t belong to any party line. I am absolutely free to be funny, to be shocking.
I don’t even bother about contradicting myself, because to me it seems that a man who remains consistent his whole life must be an idiot. A growing person has to contradict himself many times, because who knows what tomorrow brings in? Tomorrow may cancel this day completely, and I am ready to go with life with no hesitation.
Did you love those contradictions when you were a debater many years ago?
I have always loved the contradictions, because for me contradictions have something of tremendous value. They appear contradictions to the intellect, but the deeper you go into them, you will find they are compensatory, they are not contradictions.
They somehow depend on each other: if one disappears, the other will not be there. For example, if there had been no British rule in India there would have been no Mahatma Gandhi – no possibility. If there had been no Adolf Hitler, forget all about Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin. Life exists in such a way that it makes contradictions, complementaries. I have always loved them.
Osho,
Would you be happy then, if some of these people who now follow you wandered off to some other sphere of discovering what is, to them, themselves?
I will be happy and I will bless them to go there, because they have come here to seek some truth, some tranquility, some sanity. If they feel they can get it better somewhere else, I will be the first person to send them and help them to go. I have been doing that for years. In fact, I have had to do it in such a way that they don’t feel they are leaving me. Even against their will, I had to bless them and tell them to go.
I knew that they loved me, but now their minds were in difficulty; they wanted to go somewhere else, but their love for me had become an attachment. I had to destroy that attachment – only then could they go. And I have been destroying many attachments for their sake, because I don’t want anybody to be a slave. Out of freedom they have come to me, out of freedom they should go. And if they want to remain here, out of freedom they should remain here. This is not a concentration camp, it is a meditation camp.
Good.
This has been not so much an interview as a conversation.
No, I loved it.
I will find out later how much is on the television film, but…
Do whatsoever you feel like doing. Just remember one thing: I love you, and whenever you feel alone, sad, tired, come here. Again and again, come here.
Good.