the-last-testament-vol-1-14

Roberta Green
Santa Ana Register, Orange County, California, United States
Osho,
The Santa Ana Register is in Orange County, which is appropriate, I think. I’ve done many articles about Rajneeshees but I never thought I’d get the chance to come here.
They said it was safe to tell you that I’m a little nervous! One of the things that I’ve heard you say on videotape, is that you tell jokes to wake the world up. When did the world go to sleep, and is it waking up?
It has been always asleep; only a few individuals in the whole history of man have been awakened – their names can be counted on the ten fingers – not more than that. And it was natural: man has evolved out of the animals, animals are in a deep sleep, they don’t know that they are. That is the meaning of sleep: one is, but one is not aware that one is. No animal is aware of himself.
I agree with Charles Darwin, on different grounds. His grounds are ordinary, mundane, and can be criticized – have been criticized. In fact, he is no longer an accepted scientist about the evolution of humanity, the majority of scientists have deserted him. But I support him on totally different grounds. My grounds are, looking at man’s sleep it is the only possibility that he has grown up from the animals – monkeys, chimpanzees – whatsoever, whosoever was there in the beginning. Man’s sleep proves it. And only rarely, once in a while, a Gautam Buddha, a Bodhidharma, a Socrates. Once in a while there has been a man who has the guts to come out of sleep.
It needs tremendous courage to come out of sleep because we have so much invested in sleep. It is just like a man who is dreaming that he is living in a golden palace, with a great kingdom, with all the luxuries, and you try to wake him up. He is just a beggar on the street.
Only beggars dream of being emperors; emperors never dream of being emperors, that will be simply illogical. The beggar has so much investment in his sleep and his dream that he will resist being awakened in every possible way. He will get irritated, he will oppose you: “Who are you to interfere in my life? Can’t you even tolerate a man who is having a sweet dream?” And even if you force him to be awakened, he is going to fall asleep again, because waking he is only a beggar, asleep he becomes an emperor.
The investment in psychological sleep is tremendous. That’s why all those people – Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, Chuang Tzu, Plotinus, Heraclitus – have failed. They did their best; they struggled against the sleep of man, but still man is asleep, and whatever he is doing proves that he is asleep.
The two world wars prove that he is asleep. The coming Third World War can be prevented only if we can awaken enough people so that they become infectious and go on awakening other people in a chain. And it has to be done so fast, because there is not much time. Otherwise, the sleepy people are going to destroy this earth, this life. The politicians are asleep.
No awakened person can become a politician for the simple reason that he cannot lie, he cannot give you promises that he knows can never be fulfilled. No awakened person will be a politician, because he has no desire for his ego to be fulfilled. There is no ego any more. Ego exists as a substitute self in sleep; the moment you are awakened, ego has no function, it is useless. You are there, now you don’t need it.
The man who knows himself has no inferiority complex. Unless you are suffering from some inferiority complex, you will not be involved in any kind of leadership – political, religious, social. You don’t have the base. The inferiority complex is the cause of everybody becoming ambitious. If they don’t become somebody in the world, in their own eyes they have failed. They want to prove themselves, “We are here! We have been here!” They want their names to be recorded in history, although they know that even the greatest names in history, by and by, go on slipping from prominence, become footnotes, move into the appendix and out the door. Naturally, how many people can we go on carrying? But they want to make their name. That, too, proves something animal.
All the animals of the world have an instinct; scientists call it the territorial imperative. The dog pissing on the tree is simply making his signature, he is saying, “This tree belongs to me.” He won’t allow another dog to come near. Other dogs will smell his urine and will know that this tree is not free, not available, that somebody possesses it. There are animals, particularly lions, who will go on urinating on a vast territory just so that everybody is aware that if they come there they will be getting into danger.
Man also works in the same way. All these nations are nothing but people pissing and making a boundary: this is America, this is the Soviet Union, this is India. You can smell it is a different country, so don’t enter without a visa, without a passport. Otherwise, there is no need for any nations on the earth. What is the need? Can’t we all live as one humanity? It would be tremendously beautiful and tremendously beneficial, because if the whole world is one, you cannot create wars. Unless you find some planets and start creating wars with them, there is no possibility of war.
The only way to let war disappear is to make the world one, with a functional world government, with no political parties in the world, each individual choosing on his own, nobody propagating, nobody trying to get more votes. If we can create a functional world government which only takes care of things like the railways, the post office, the telegraph, the telephone – things which are essential and should be taken care of by the whole commune around the earth – seventy-five percent of all the nations’ income will be freed. It is now being poured out for weapons: atom bombs, nuclear weapons and other weapons.
People are dying: in Ethiopia they are dying, thousands a day; in India they are starving, and soon other countries will follow. This third world of poor countries is there because of your politicians. A man who is awake cannot be a politician. He cannot be a religious leader either, because these are all ego claims: “I am the prophet of God; I am the messiah; I am somebody special sent from God; you are just ordinary human creatures, I am divine.” This is simply sickness of the mind, these people are suffering from inferiority complex and covering it with fictions.
Osho,
Who are you?
I am just myself – no prophet, no messiah, no Christ. Just an ordinary human being, just like you.
Well, not quite!
That’s true… Not quite! You are still asleep but that is not much of a difference. One day I was also asleep; one day you will be able to awaken. You can wake up this moment, nobody is preventing it. So the difference is just meaningless; a person who is capable of being asleep is capable of being awake.
Osho,
Is there such a thing as God?
No.
Osho,
What is within us? You talk about turning inward, what does that really mean?
First, let us finish God; otherwise, he will interfere again and again. God is just a projection of the ego. As ego is false and a substitute for a true self, God is the ego of the whole world, a substitute self, because our egos cannot exist without support. They need universal support, and God gives immense support.
When I say go inwards, you are not going to find God at all. You are going to find a pure, silent consciousness, and you are going to realize immediately that the same consciousness pervades all. I call it godliness, not God, because it is a quality. Don’t give it a personality, don’t confine it into a person. Let it remain free, flowing. It is more like a fragrance than like a flower. A flower can be painted, a flower can be photographed; a fragrance can only be experienced, you cannot photograph it, you cannot paint it. It is a quality far superior to the personal God. It is an impersonal consciousness, universal consciousness.
Doesn’t that seem sort of boring?
Boring?
Yeah, because it’s all the same.
Yes, to an asleep person it is boring. The person who is asleep needs colorful dreams, changes every night, marriage, divorce, job change. The asleep person becomes bored very easily for the simple reason that his joy is derived from something, it is not coming from his own inner source.
I have never been bored since I came to know myself. I have been trying in every possible way. Eating the same food for years, I don’t get bored. Sleeping at the same time, waking at the same time, doing the same thing round the clock for years, I don’t get bored because there is no comparison with the past, there is no comparison with the future.
Boredom needs comparison. You have to remember that this rose is nothing new: you have seen it yesterday, you have seen it the day before yesterday. You are bored, and slowly your boredom creates a barrier between you and the rose. You cannot smell it any more, you cannot see it any more. Although you see it, you cannot see its newness, its freshness. The rose that you had seen yesterday is not the same rose. It has the same quality, the same fragrance, but it has its own individuality.
When you feel a cosmic consciousness, you are not lost like a dewdrop in the ocean. For the first time your individuality is revealed to you. For the first time you know the luminous being that you always have been, immortal – that you will always be, that now there is no death. There is a tremendous insight into the beauty and the grace of things, and it goes on becoming bigger and bigger, fresher and fresher. It is not that it remains the same, the universal energy is a constant growth.
That’s why I wanted to finish with God in the first place, because God cannot grow. Where will he grow? He is perfect. Now perfection cannot grow: he knows all, what more is there for him to know? He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent… And you don’t get bored with God?
My godliness is imperfect; it is an opening, always bigger and bigger. It is expanding, and there are no limits to its expansion. And each moment is a discovery for the awakened man. In small things: sipping the tea in the morning, the smell of the tea, the taste of the tea is so new; it is as new as the sun rising outside the window.
It depends on how conscious you are to make the world new every moment. It is already new every moment; nothing is static, everything is changing, is in a flux. The tree that you had left at home, by the time you go back a few leaves may have died, the wind may have taken them. A few new leaves may have come up, a few flowers may have fallen to the ground, a few new buds may have opened. It is only to a sleeping man that the tree is the same. To the awakened man, it is new every moment.
Heraclitus said: “You cannot step in the same river twice.” And I say to you that you cannot step even once in the same river, because while your feet touch the surface of the river, it is flowing. Your feet go into the river, and it is flowing. By the time your feet have touched the bottom, it is not the same river you touched on the surface. Heraclitus is wrong.
Many people have said Heraclitus is wrong, that the world is permanent. I say it from a totally different direction and I know Heraclitus will have to agree with me, because I am not contradicting his basic standpoint, I am refining it. When he says you cannot step twice, he is trying to say that everything is changing; the wife is not the same, the husband is not the same. If people are awake, I don’t think there will be so much despair, gloom, grumpiness, so many complaints about everything.
The husband is bored because it is the same wife, the same geography he has to explore every day. The wife is also bored; the moment the husband starts making an approach, immediately she has a heart attack, a headache, anything will do, but somehow, “At least one holiday – just go to sleep silently, don’t disturb me.” And this is the same woman who had been dreaming about this man one day, writing beautiful poems and letters to him – and this is the same man.
What has happened? What went wrong? Why are they thinking to divorce each other? They have become bored, and they think that the other is responsible for the boredom. My point is that your sleep is responsible for all boredom. No divorce is going to help: the other person will bore you just the same.
Osho,
What does it take to wake up?
It needs people who can shock you. Your sleep is deep; it is no ordinary sleep, it is spiritual sleep. You need people who can shock you and break all your shock absorbers. Every person has grown buffers around his sleep. Even if a shock is given, the buffers absorb it, it never reaches to the person.
The real function of a religious man is to teach how to break the buffers, how to come out of the shell of darkness in which you have been living for many lives. No prayer is going to help, only a master; and by a master I mean a craftsman who has broken his own buffers, who has somehow sneaked out of the shell of sleep. That is the function of a master. But all the so-called religious leaders go on putting more buffers on you.
Osho,
I just spent two weeks covering Billy Graham, who is a Southern Baptist evangelist.
I know him.
What do you think of him and people like him?
Just worthless, and dangerous to people’s spirituality, because these people like Billy Graham – who are helping people, comforting people, consoling people – are making their buffers thicker and thicker. These are not the people who shock you. You need a Gurdjieff, you need a Krishnamurti, not Billy Graham. Billy Graham is simply a good salesman amongst sleepers. And, of course, sleepers will be very much impressed; this man is giving them what they want.
When you come to a person like Gurdjieff he is not going to give you what you want, he is going to give you what really is your need, because the wanting comes from your sleep and your need comes from your real being. So, a man like Gurdjieff will not have gatherings like Billy Graham. He will shock you so much that you will never come near him again. Billy Graham is good entertainment, with nothing spiritual in it.
Osho,
Rajneeshees love you. Are you giving them what they want?
No, never! I am giving them what they need.
Then why are they still here?
Because they have started loving the shocks that I give them.
Does that mean that they are awake?
Getting… Taking time, turning this side and that side, pulling up the blanket, but I am after them! No blanket can help, no tossing and turning can help. I will do everything to force them to jump out of bed. And I have all kinds of devices so they cannot sleep.
Like what?
Like my methods of meditation. You have to breathe so heavily for ten minutes that not only will you start awakening, but somebody else sitting near by will start wondering what is happening! In the Dynamic Meditation they have to scream for ten minutes. Whatsoever they feel like: shouting, roaring, screaming. These are methods to break their buffers.
I have lived in many cities and finally I decided that I cannot live in a city. It is impossible, because every day the neighbors were complaining to the police that they cannot sleep in the morning: “This man gathers people who scream and jump and dance and sing and do all kinds of crazy things. And we are tired and we want to sleep. Even on Sunday morning, these people won’t leave you alone: just at five o’clock they start.”
I have 112 methods of hitting you. If one misses, another will do.
Do you only hit people who want to be hit?
Certainly, I never hit anybody who does not want to be hit. That’s why I never go anywhere. You have to come to me, because otherwise that is against the freedom of the individual. If he wants to sleep, it is his decision, and he is completely free to sleep. If he wants to hang around Billy Graham, who am I to create any disturbance and tell him that he is hanging around an idiot?
Osho,
Why are some people afraid of you?
Just because of the way I hit and shake and wake you. They don’t want to wake up, they want to go on sleeping. They really want only consolations, not revolutions in their lives. They want to be consoled, “Don’t be worried, Jesus Christ will take care of you. Just have faith in Jesus Christ, and that’s enough. Don’t be worried; have faith and you will be saved, he is the savior.”
This is a consolation. You start feeling you have to do nothing, only at the most go to the congregation on Sunday morning and have faith in Jesus Christ, which costs nothing. Yes, one day it used to cost, at that time it was significant.
Wouldn’t Jesus be pretty upset with the scene that you are describing?
I mean, he said things like, “Take up your cross,” and “Lose your life to find it,” which isn’t like what you’re talking about.
Jesus is two thousand years old. Don’t compare a bullock cart with a Rolls Royce: they both do the same work, but please don’t compare.
Osho,
Speaking of Rolls Royces, two questions: one is, why Rolls Royces and not Ferraris?
And the other is: what does waking up have to do with the material world?
I read all these stories that people asked you if you’re the guru to the rich, and there are all these Rolls Royces… And there’s all this money, all this stuff… This is a beautiful place, and it obviously didn’t come from nowhere. What does waking up have to do with the material world?
That, too, is giving a shock to the whole world. I can manage even with the oldest model of Ford – the same model in which God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden of Eden – but that will not shock anybody, not even the Oregonians. Even they have better four-wheelers. All my efforts are to shock people; my ninety Rolls Royces have shocked millions of people around the earth. Can you see the joke? And I am going to make them 365, one for every day. That will give heart attacks to many people, but I wonder what it has to do with them; it has nothing to do with them, but they are certainly shocked.
Why do you care?
I care out of my compassion. It comes with the cosmic consciousness itself. It is a quality of cosmic consciousness, you cannot separate it.
Osho,
A couple of years ago you talked about the world coming to an end: earthquakes, floods and wars. Do you still see that happening?
I will go on saying, “Yes, it is going to happen,” because if it is emphasized continuously that it is going to happen, it can be prevented from happening. If the whole world becomes alert that it is coming close, something has to be done to prevent it. Politicians go on saying, “Don’t be worried, nothing is going to happen.” It is the same as they were saying before the Second World War, before the First World War, “Don’t be worried, we will take care; and God is with us.” The Third World War can happen only if people are not alerted beforehand.
If people are alerted in every country, in America and Soviet Russia, then these same people will prevent, and hang their politicians rather than have a Third World War. This will be far better, when I see the president of America hanging from the tree, and by his side the Soviet prime minister and the Queen of England. Just hang all these people on one tree, make it a great memorial, and be finished with the Third World War.
I have been saying those things because they are possible; but if you say to people that they are only possible, then they think there is nothing to be worried about, it is only a possibility, far away. People don’t see that far ahead; they don’t have that farsightedness. They are too occupied in their day-to-day affairs. They have to be hammered continuously to realize that the war is coming closer, that the holocaust is coming closer and something has to be done to prevent it.
My prediction is not the prediction of an astrologer. I don’t mean that it is bound to happen, that it is destined to happen, no; I am not an astrologer. My prediction comes from a man who wants that it should not happen, and the only way is to emphasize that it is going to happen. It is almost certain unless you wake up.
What do you think the odds are?
Not much – I am here, my people are around the world; we are going to make a great fuss. And we are not going to pray to God – that I can leave to Billy Graham. God has never helped.
For five thousand years the wars have been continuing, and in every war God has been asked to help. And sometimes it is very hilarious: the Germans were asking the Christian God to help them, the English were asking the same Christian God to help them, the French were asking the same Christian God to help them, the Americans were asking the same Christian God to help them, Mussolini was asking the same Christian God to help him.

I have heard a story that after the war ended, one German general was staying with an English friend. At the tea table the talk drifted toward the Second World War. The German said, “I have always wondered what went wrong. We were strong, we had a rare leader, we had unity, we had a strong nation. What went wrong?”
The Englishman said, “Perhaps you forgot to pray to God.”
The German said, “No, we were praying to God every day. All our armies were praying to God every day.”
The Englishman laughed and said, “Then I know what is wrong. You must be praying in German, and God understands only English! Next time, don’t do that – pray in English, and then see.”
We are not going to pray; there is nobody to whom prayers can be addressed. But we can create a great fuss among the masses around the world. And we are going to, if the moment comes. Right now I am gathering my people and they are coming in thousands every day. Around the world I have communes just like this. Even in the Soviet Union I have my sannyasins. Of course they have to be underground there, they have to meet in basements.
The Soviet government is already persecuting my sannyasins, although they are not wearing red clothes, not wearing the mala, so there is no reason for them to find out. But even if somebody has one of my books, that’s enough; or somebody has my picture in his house, that’s enough. One person is caught, and they persecute the person, they harass the person to the point that he has to give addresses of others, other contacts. But, strangely enough, the more they persecute, the more new young people are becoming sannyasins in the Soviet Union itself.
We will create as much disturbance as possible to prevent the Third World War, because it is not only a question of some nation being victorious and some other nation being defeated. If it was only that, I would not have cared. It is a question that nobody will be victorious, nobody will be defeated, and all life will disappear from this beautiful planet.
Osho,
Is that why you have decided to talk to the press, and also to start talking again ( because it’s somehow the moment?
Certainly, that is one of the most important reasons I have started to talk to the press. I want the word to be spread through all possible media. And I don’t belong to the past and past methods; I am a contemporary man, perhaps belonging to the twenty-first century. I will use every way of approaching people in as many directions as possible, because we don’t have much time. The decisive moment will come by the end of this century.
In the coming fifteen years, nuclear weapons will have piled up so much that the politicians will be under a great pressure: “What to do now?” Except a nuclear war, they will not be able to see any other possibility. Already so many nuclear, atomic and other weapons exist on the earth that they can destroy this earth seven times. They can kill each person seven times. And the poor people in the world are not Jesus Christ that they will be resurrected. Once dead, they will remain dead.
Even Jesus Christ was never resurrected: it is a fiction. Once a man dies, he dies. Jesus Christ did not die on the cross, that is true, because he was brought down from the cross within six hours, and to die on the Jewish cross in those days a person needed to hang at least forty-eight hours. Because the blood would ooze slowly out of his hands and legs, it took twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Jesus was brought down after six hours, and then he disappeared from the cave. This was a simple conspiracy between a rich disciple of Jesus and Pontius Pilate.
Jesus escaped from Israel, and died in India – in Kashmir; I have been to his grave, his grave is there. It is a strange coincidence that Moses also died in Kashmir, not in Israel. When they found Israel, Moses was already out of date. It took forty years for him to find a third-rate place like Israel; in forty years almost all his contemporaries were gone. It was a tedious journey, hungry, thirsty – only one-third of the original people remained.
Meanwhile, children were being born, and by the time he reached Israel he could not feel any connection with his own people. The first generation gap was felt by Moses. A new generation had come which had no idea of Egypt, of their slavery. That all looked like mythology. He found a way out because one of the tribes of the Jews was lost somewhere on the journey. It was just an excuse, “Now that we have found the holy land, you settle and I will go in search of the lost tribe,” and that tribe had reached Kashmir.
Kashmir is completely Jewish, although there are no Jews. They have all been forced to become Mohammedans, but you can see from their noses that they are nobody else than Jews. Moses died in Kashmir, he must have been ancient by the time he reached Kashmir. His grave is there, Jesus’ grave is there. Jesus lived long in India: when he was crucified he was only thirty-three, and he died at the very ripe age of 112. That is inscribed in Hebrew on his grave, but in India nobody knows Hebrew.
These are the only two graves in which the head of the dead person is not pointed toward Mecca: the other graves are Mohammedan – when Mohammedans make a grave the head has to be pointed in the direction of Mecca. If the feet are put toward Mecca it is a great sin, so all the graves are directed toward Mecca; only these two graves are not.
And both the graves have Hebrew inscriptions. Of course, Jesus’ grave is not inscribed Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is a Greek translation of the Hebrew, Joshua, the messiah. Messiah means Christ in Greek, and Joshua got changed to Jesus in Greek. On the grave it is absolutely clear, but Christians are not interested.
I talked with prominent Christians, I talked one time with Stanley Jones, a world famous Christian theologian, but they were not ready even to go there. I said, “On my expense, you come with me and I will show you the grave of Jesus.” And it is strange that Christians are taking no interest in it, because if it is proved that this is the real grave of Jesus Christ then there will be trouble, their whole Bible will be upset.
Osho,
This morning you said that someone who has a slave, is a slave to that slave. And I wonder, watching the two men with guns and reading about the threats on your life and the threats on this community, what people who would want to do that kind of harm are enslaved to? And I wonder if you’re afraid?
I am not afraid; otherwise I would be carrying the gun. But the people who love me are concerned, and I don’t prevent anybody. I don’t even prevent any assassin: if he comes I will say, “Hi! Do your job the best you can.” I will not prevent him, so why should I prevent my people if they want guards? Let them have them. Those guns in a nuclear age are only toys; they mean nothing. Why should I prevent them? They are not carrying nuclear missiles on each side, just toy guns.
I respect their love. Whatsoever those people can do, they are ready to do. It is out of respect for their love that I don’t object to those guns, and I know that those guns mean nothing. In this world a bomb can just be thrown on this small commune, and you can create an American Hiroshima. What will those guns do? And it will be good that America also has one Hiroshima, otherwise you are missing something. Japan has two, Hiroshima and Nagasaki; you should at least have one. And my commune is here, available.
I don’t object to their guns. They have not done any harm to anybody in four years, and they are not going to do any harm to anybody. Perhaps this is the only place in the whole world where there is no crime, no fighting, no theft, no rape, no murder, no suicide. We have the police sitting uselessly. I have my guards, but they must be getting bored with their guns. I don’t think they will have any chance to use them, but my people are concerned. I respect their love for me, and if they want to do some small thing, let them.
Osho,
Could we talk about sex? What place does it have in relationships between human beings?
I don’t have any relationship with human beings.
That’s not what I asked, although…
And that is not what I have answered. I know what you have asked. First, get over your nervousness.
I thought it was gone.
No, it happens to every journalist, so don’t be worried. I love people, but the way they are, they need immense changes. Because I propose those changes they become hostile, because they think I am taking away very precious things from them. I am taking away only their chains, but they have been in those chains for centuries. They have already accepted them as ornaments, so my compassion and my love and my concern only create hostility in them.

In the French Revolution it happened that there was a castle in France, Bastille, where they used to imprison people who were sentenced to remain in prison till they die. Their hands and legs were chained with heavy chains, and they were put in dark cells with no light, even in the day it was night.
When the French Revolution happened, the revolutionaries thought that those people should be freed. They went to free them, but those people fought against the revolutionaries, saying, “We don’t want to go out of the prison. We are comfortable here, and now to get into the world again, to think of earning our bread again… We have been here for forty years and may be living just a few years more. At this stage we are not in a position to come out. In fact, even the sun makes us afraid. We have lived these forty years in darkness. Have mercy on us. Just leave us where we are.”
But revolutionaries are always fanatic people. They forced them, they threw them out of the castle and took away their chains. You will not believe it, but half of those prisoners returned to their cells in the night and asked the revolutionaries who were holding the castle, “Please, chain us again. We miss our chains; that weight has become part of us, we cannot sleep. If we do not feel the chains we cannot sleep.”

That is the situation of humanity, so many spiritual chains: God, heaven, hell, Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, communist. All kinds of chains are there – political, social, psychological, spiritual – and I am speaking against them all. I want to cut them.
Naturally, they feel offended. They cannot understand me, but I can understand them. I’m not hostile toward them; they are hostile. I don’t feel badly that they are hostile toward me. The hostility went so far that efforts were made on my life in India. But still I can understand their problem, so I will not go to them; I will wait here and spread the message.
I particularly depend on the young generation, the intelligent people around the world, and they are getting interested in it. I don’t have anybody retarded, average; you can meet my people and you can meet Billy Graham’s people and you can see the difference. Most of these people have been professors, doctors, engineers; they have degrees, Ph.D., D.Litt. Almost everybody is at least a university graduate. These are intelligent people, not gullible. Billy Graham cannot impress a single sannyasin; and, of course, I cannot impress anybody from Billy Graham’s audience. Anything I say will create hostility, enmity.
That is the art I have been practicing my whole life, how to influence people and create enemies. So I have stopped influencing… I am just here, and if anybody feels thirsty the well is available. If you don’t feel thirsty it is your business, but I’m not preventing you from drinking from my well. I’m available, but I will not even call you to come and drink from my well.
The well is there, open, available, so those who are intelligent are going to be caught in my net sooner or later. And I want only the intelligent people, because they are the people who will be able to prevent what is going to happen to humanity.
The ordinary masses and the crowds, the cripples and the blind and the sick who go to Billy Graham for some spiritual miracle, to be healed, they are not my people. If somebody is sick, we have a hospital. I don’t think there has ever been any miracle in the world, or that there can ever be. Everything happens according to existential laws. If sometime you see something like a miracle, you have to do some research and find how it happened. Mostly it is psychological.
There is psychological blindness: now it is a known fact that if a person does not want to see, somewhere deep down in his psychology he has come to the conclusion that he does not want to see. Perhaps he loved a woman who deceived him, and she was the one for whom he wanted his eyes always to be there. Now he does not want to see anybody, and a miracle happens: he goes blind. Nothing is wrong with his physiology; the eye specialist cannot find anything wrong with his eyes, the eye hospital cannot help him. Billy Graham can help him.
But he was not blind, and that is why he has started seeing again. He was simply psychologically blind. He really needed a great crowd of believers around him, shouting, “Hallelujah, the glory of God, the miracles of Jesus.” This whole atmosphere around him makes him courageous enough to see again. The credit should simply go to the crowd, but it goes to Billy Graham. Nothing happens in nature which is against the universal laws.
Do those laws change?
No, the universal laws never change. Everything changes according to the universal laws, but the universal law itself never changes.
Where did it come from?
It is always here, it does not come from anywhere – why should it come from anywhere? The question is absurd. If I say it comes from New York, you will ask me from where it came to New York. The question is absurd, because whatsoever answer is given, the question will remain the same: from where did it come? From where did God come? Nobody asks such a simple question: from where God came? From New York? New Jersey? I have come from New Jersey, but from where did God come?
Universal law is to me exactly what God is to the believer, to the faithful. But calling it universal law makes a tremendous difference. You cannot worship a law, you cannot pray to a law; the law has no ears, no eyes. The law goes on functioning the way it has always functioned, it won’t change for any prayer.
All prayers are simply asking that you should be treated as an exception. Somebody is praying to God, “I am blind, please give me eyes.” In the first place he is distrusting God, because God made him blind. Who else can make him blind? He wants to change God’s mind. “Please give my eyes back.” And he is ready to bribe God, “I will believe in you, I will worship you. I will go every Sunday to the church. I will donate to the church, to the congregation.” These are all bribes: “Give me my eyes back.”
These simple people – most of them simpletons – who gather around Billy Graham and people like him, can be easily exploited. All the religious leaders of the world have been doing that for centuries in the name of God. All the religions, not only Christianity.
My religion is more a science than a religion. If somebody is sick, he should go to the hospital; we have a beautiful hospital here. If somebody needs education, he should go to the university; we have our own university here. If somebody is feeling anxiety, anguish, tension, nervousness, he should go to the meditation classes. If somebody is having some problems about relationships, wife and husband and children and friends, we have therapy groups for him. For every need we have a scientific process.
But miracles are not possible here, because I don’t want to exploit gullible people. And what is the point? The world is on the threshold of committing global suicide and somebody makes a small miracle, gives some solace to one human being, when the whole of humanity is on the brink: it is stupid. These people should think on a larger scale.
I am absolutely concerned, because I see what is going to happen if humanity remains the way it is. But the problem is that if people are not going to listen to me, then it is their business. As far as I am concerned, my work is finished. If this earth simply dies out, it makes no difference to me. I am making an effort with my people, that whether the Third World War happens or not, get enlightened. Be awake. Because perhaps this earth may not be able to survive after this century – only fifteen years are left.
It is a great device, too. When you are challenged with global death and the gap is only fifteen years, you have to think about yourself. For the first time, you cannot go on living the same old way, doing the same old stupid things. Something essential that can bring a transformation to your being before the world comes to an end becomes significant. So if my people are awakened, I don’t care: if those people don’t understand, let them have the Third World War also, let them be satisfied to their hearts’ content.
Osho,
Do you think things like bioengineering would produce people that would be more likely to want to be awake?
I believe in bioengineering. I want science to create a better man in every way, but the problem is that all the governments are forcing the scientists to create more and more destructive weapons. They are forcing them into the service of death.
I would like all the scientists to be in the service of life. Then bioengineering certainly can create far superior men, healthier, more talented. In fact, we can fill the whole earth with geniuses; there is no reason why not, we have all the basic things in our hands. We can make man live at least three hundred years very easily: without getting old, without having cancer, without having AIDS. This is all that your old past has given as a heritage.
We can have people we need – we need more Albert Einsteins, we need more Picassos, we need more van Goghs – and bioengineering can make it available. All kinds of artists, scientists, geniuses, mystics, philosophers, scientists… We can fill the whole earth with such intelligence and glory that people like Billy Graham will have to commit suicide, nobody will go and shout around them.
Osho,
Are you concerned about the world population?
Certainly, I am very much concerned about the world population, because if we can somehow postpone the nuclear war, the world population is going to kill humanity. It is growing with such speed that unless science is diverted toward human needs, it is very difficult not to have many Ethiopias. And it is a sad thing that all around you there are people dying and you cannot do anything, you feel almost helpless.
Everything can be done, but all science is geared toward death. Who cares about Ethiopia or India? Who bothers? Their whole concern is how to be more powerful than the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union’s scientists’ whole problem is how to be more powerful than America. And small, stupid nations also are lined up either behind America or behind Russia. There are a few fools like India, too, who think that by remaining unaligned they will be in a better position and can have the friendship of both sides. They are wrong, they don’t understand the ABC of politics: unaligned, they are the enemy of both parties, not friends. Nobody can trust them, and nobody can help them.
The world is almost cut in two parts, and the population is growing more in the poor countries, because the poor man has no other entertainment than sex. The rich man has many other things, he can afford many other entertainments: he can listen to music, he can enjoy Mozart, he can see a great dancer, he can go to the theater, he can have the best wine available. He has all the beautiful books to read, all the beautiful statues to collect.
But the poor man has nothing other than sex as his entertainment. So he goes on producing, and the religious leaders help him to go on producing, because they want larger numbers.
Osho,
Do you advocate enforced birth control or sterilization?
Certainly – absolute birth control for twenty years – because it is not a question of small importance. If for twenty years there is absolute birth control, it will give two things to humanity: one, the population will start disappearing. I want the world to come to one-fourth of its population, only then can it be a beautiful garden of life.
And, if people become accustomed to birth control for twenty years, sex will not remain a serious problem. After the pill, sex has no significance at all – it is just fun. It has nothing profane about it, and nothing sacred about it. It is just a biological game, and if two persons feel like playing tennis, let them play.
Osho,
What about diseases like AIDS?
They are also contributions from your religions, because your religions first forced celibacy on people: monks and nuns. Celibacy is absolutely against the laws of biology, against your body. Nobody has ever been celibate unless he was impotent, and nobody can ever be celibate. He can pretend he is celibate, but from the back door he will find all kinds of perversions. Homosexuality was born in the monastery, that is why I say it is a religious contribution.
Monks living in separation from women, nuns living in separation from men – what do you expect? Those monks are going to start homosexuality. It is now a well-recognized fact that animals in the wild never become homosexuals, but in zoos they do. It is very revealing; in the zoos, if there are no females the animals become homosexuals. And your monasteries are nothing but zoos; they converted men into homosexuals, women into lesbians.
AIDS is the ultimate outcome of homosexuality, and the pope should take responsibility for it. Mother Teresa should take responsibility for it, the shankaracharya should take responsibility for it, Ayatollah Khomeini should take the responsibility for it – these are the people.
My approach is: stop this nonsense of celibacy. Let your monks also have fun with their biology; it is a gift of nature, beautiful. Let your nuns also enjoy their bodies. Why are you making them dead before they are dead?
If I am listened to, I will make nunneries and monasteries mixed, and I will take away all barriers which prevent people from taking sex just as fun. It is not a sin, it is not something to be repressed. That is as stupid as somebody repressing urination; I wonder why there has not been some religion preaching celibacy as far as pissing is concerned? And believe me, there will be people who will follow that ideology also. Of course they will have to piss somewhere, hiding, but before the world they will be celibate.
AIDS is certainly one of the major problems, just as major as a Third World War. Unless homosexuality and lesbianism disappear completely, we cannot prevent it from spreading. So heterosexuality should be preached from every pulpit; it should be rewarded, praised, and the people who do not follow heterosexuality should be put under treatment, they are psychologically sick.
If we want AIDS to disappear, then homosexuality and lesbianism have to disappear, otherwise there is no way. Medical science has not been able to figure out any medical cure for it. It is a sure killer: once you have it, you can live at the most two more years. That is at the most, more probably you will live not more than six months; and it is good if you die sooner, because the longer you live, the more you will spread it.
Now the rich people who have AIDS are hiding it, only the poor people become exposed. The rich people have their private physicians; they can manage that the physician keeps his mouth shut. They don’t want their families to know that they have AIDS, they don’t want anybody to think that they have AIDS.
I know senators in America who have AIDS, I know senators who are homosexuals. But the trouble is that these people are in power; the doctor cannot say anything, and they go on and on spreading it. There have been great artists, painters, poets who were homosexuals. We should look to stop every homosexual from having any further contact with any man or woman.
If we cannot stop them… We have found two persons having AIDS in our commune: we immediately put them into isolation far away in the mountains, with everything comfortable provided for them. All that we can manage, we give to them; but they should not mix with the other people of the commune, because AIDS can be caught not only by sexual intercourse, it can be caught even by kissing.
Kissing should be completely prohibited all over the world. Of course people will feel a little awkward, they will need some substitute. My substitute is that lovers should start changing from kissing to rubbing their noses together. And enjoy it, what else can be done? There are aboriginal tribes where this already happens; they rub their noses, they don’t kiss. They are far more scientific. Kissing is not hygienic at all; rubbing noses is perfectly hygienic.
If you don’t have a cold.
That is not much of a problem. A cold is such a small problem that even if you catch it, nothing is wrong in it. It lasts for seven days if you don’t take any medicine; if you take medicine it lasts one week, so what is the problem in it?