Expectation breeds frustration

Question 1:

Milarepa, neither the music is mine nor the guitar. The music belongs to existence, and the guitar belongs to you. You are the guitar, and this whole vast universe is the music.

I am at the most just a passage for the music to reach to the guitar. That's why you don't see my guitar -- because you don't see yourself. Who are you? On whom am I playing my music? You hear my words and you also hear my silences, and naturally you feel a certain music surrounding me. That music is your response, your love, your trust.

In a way I am not here. It has been a long time since I left this small house for the eternity. It is the compassion of eternity that this small house still goes on continuing to function. It is also your love, your prayers, your gratitude that helps my body-mind system to function. I don't have any desire to be fulfilled. All is fulfilled -- and when all is fulfilled a music arises. I don't have any ambition.

Just the other day Hasya was telling me about one beautiful man who is being followed by many people. Lovingly he is called Dada. Bhadra's husband is his follower, and he stays at Bhadra's house. He told Bhadra, "I agree with Osho on every point except one -- that is, he wants to save the world. I have been around the world," he said, "and I am fed up, and I don't see any hope for the world."

He is going to come to Poona. I told Hasya to meet him and tell him one thing, "You must have had a desire to save the world and you are feeling frustrated."

I don't have to save anybody. The world is perfectly saved -- this moment at least. Why not enjoy this moment?

I love talking to my people without any purpose. It is just my joy seeing your faces, seeing your intrinsic capacities. Who cares about the world? -- if it dies next moment, we will still be playing guitars, singing, dancing, celebrating a last farewell to the world.

Who has given the idea to this man Dada that I am a savior? It is enough to save yourself.

I am not a savior and I am not at all interested what happens to the world ultimately. I enjoy the idea, the dream that some miracle will happen and this world will be saved, but it is not my goal; I am not an optimist. Only optimists turn into pessimists. Dada must have been thinking himself to be a savior, and seeing the whole world he is feeling frustrated. I have never felt frustrated by anything, because I have never expected in the very beginning. If you don't expect you avoid frustration.

I am a man of total acceptance.

If this world exists, good; if it does not exist, better. But why should I be puzzled about it? It is my joy, and this joy is not the kind which makes people serious.

I have looked into Dada's books before; his famous book is BEYOND THE MIND.

Strange that a man who knows beyond mind should be frustrated.... Who can be frustrated? No-mind has never been heard to be frustrated. And he thinks he has given up the idea, and this is his disagreement with me. He has given up the idea; I never had the idea. And whatever he is saying is just a repetition of J. Krishnamurti.

J. Krishnamurti has left many orphans in the world, illegitimate children, because he never accepted them as his disciples. But deep down they enjoyed the idea that without being a disciple they are gathering so much wisdom. Soon all of them have become masters. I have come across many masters who have never been disciples. It is simply ego.

With J. Krishnamurti's idea that "nobody is my disciple," you feel relaxed: this is great you don't have to love this man, you don't know the beauties of grace that exist between the master and the disciple. You enjoy only one thing: the ego that you are nobody's disciple. And then these who are nobody's disciples start collecting disciples -- and of all that they are saying, not a single thing is original; it is all borrowed.

I have told Hasya and Kaveesha that when Dada comes here, "Encounter him and put him right. He is misguiding many people."

I am a man who lives moment to moment, and I want those who love me to learn the art of living moment to moment. What happens tomorrow we will see tomorrow. At least one thing is certain: whatever happens, our blissfulness, our ecstasy, our dance, our song will continue -- if not on this planet, then on another planet.

There are millions of solar systems, and each solar system has hundreds of planets, each planet has many moons. Our earth is very poor, with just one moon. Our sun is mediocre; it is six thousand times bigger than the earth, but compared to other suns, which are millions of times bigger than this sun, it stands nowhere in the queue.

What is the problem? We have not asked this planet to be born; it was existence's decision to be here. Why should one worry if existence wants us to take our song and our music and our consciousness to another planet? We will be there... one thing is certain:

this commune is going to exist. The whole existence is there....

Ronald Reagan cannot manage to destroy the universe. This poor earth will be destroyed... that too is possible if existence deep down wills to destroy it. Or perhaps the earth itself has become old, tired, fed up with all kinds of nonsense that man has been doing, and it wants to go into eternal sleep. It is a living being.

But these are not our problems. Our only problem is how to be in this moment, so totally, so intensely that we don't need another moment. This will be enough to give us fulfillment, contentment, ecstasy, which I don't think this man Dada has ever glimpsed.

Pessimists cannot get it; optimists only hope for it. We are realists, existentialists: we have it right now.

It is not a question of getting fed up, it is not a question of hoping for the future. We take the present moment and squeeze the whole juice of it -- that's our religion. Wherever we will be, one thing is certain: we will recognize each other just by the style of squeezing the juice from the present moment.

Faces may be different, planets may be different, that does not mean anything. We have a key to recognize our people: in their eyes, in their faces, they are always existential.

Milarepa, you are my instrument. Your guitar is my guitar. Your fingers playing on the instruments are my fingers. Can't you allow that?

Ramakrishna was dying. He had a cancer of the throat; he could not eat, could not drink.

His disciples continuously were harassing him saying "Why don't you close your eyes and tell the mother goddess?" -- he was the priest of a temple of mother goddess Kali -- "Just saying, 'Remove this cancer' will be enough."

Ramakrishna said, "Don't be angry with me. I have tried it, but the moment I close my eyes and I see the mother goddess, I forget about the cancer."

All the disciples gathered with Ramakrishna's wife, Sharda, and told her, "Now only you can help."

Sharda went to Ramakrishna and said, "This time you are not going to forget the cancer.

Why are you making so many people miserable?"

And Ramakrishna respected his wife so much; she was almost a mother to him rather than a wife. He touched her feet the very moment he had been shown her as a candidate for marriage. Everybody thought, "This boy is mad. Who touches the feet of the wife? -- and she is not your wife yet."

And the first thing he called to her was, "Mother, don't forget me; I had chosen you."

Everybody in the village tortured him, "You idiot, the wife is not called mother. And touching her feet..." He had three rupees. He offered those three rupees to the feet of Sharda. The family of Sharda also became puzzled: "The man seems to be crazy."

But Sharda insisted that if she will marry anyone, that is the man: "The innocence, the purity... he is no ordinary human being. He has something of the beyond already" -- and he was only thirteen years old.

Since Sharda married Ramakrishna he always called her mother. It doesn't look good not to follow the advice of the mother. He said, "I will try one time more, and because you are telling me, I will put my whole energy to remember what I have to say to the mother goddess."

He closed his eyes... and then opened them laughing. He said, "Sharda, call all the disciples in who have made you their mouthpiece, because I remembered and I told her.

And she said, 'Ramakrishna, you have been using this throat for so many years. Now you have so many throats, your disciples, your lovers -- why can't you eat through their throats, why can't you drink through their throats? Why cling to this body? Why not spread into everybody's body who loves you, who will welcome you in the silences of his heart?'" There was great silence, there was nothing to say.

Milarepa, you hear my music; that music comes from the beyond. I cannot claim any monopoly, any copyright on it. And you want to see my guitar -- just look at your guitar, just look at your hands. In deep love a synchronicity happens. You start doing things which my deepest being wanted to do, but I don't know music; I cannot even recognize which is a guitar and which is a harmonium and which is a saxophone.

I have never been a singer, not even a bathroom singer. I have lived in many houses in this country with many friends, and many times people have asked, "At least we were thinking you will be singing in the bathroom, but you don't sing?"

I don't know singing... I am a song. I don't know singing -- you will have to sing in me.

You will have to allow yourself to be totally available to me.

You can dance and it will be my dance.

You can sing and it will be my song.

You can play on instruments, but your fingers will be in synchronicity with me, and I am in synchronicity with the whole. So it is just formal to say that you are my songs, that you are my music. I am just a small passage; the beyond comes through me to your eyes. And because it is of the beyond it has a tremendous capacity to transform you.

I have not said a single word to you on my own; hence I can claim originality in the literal sense of the word. Ordinarily originality means nobody else has said it, only I am saying it; that is using the word wrongly. Originality should mean it is coming from the origins... origins of life, origins of love, origins of existence.

And you are asking, "And a few sutras for me too."

Milarepa, that is not your business. Devageet has gone mad contemplating on transdental medication. You are already crazy, you can go far -- Devageet you can leave far behind -- so I am a little worried about you. But whatever has to be, has to be. These are a few sutras for you:

If your neighbor does you harm, just buy each of his children a drum.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and the success is sure.

Sex is what happens between a man and a woman before they get to know each other.

Reality is what your mother thinks you ought to live in.

You know you are getting old when the girls at the office start confiding in you.

A woman can keep one secret -- the secret of her age.

... Except for that, she cannot keep any secret!

God invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.

A man never knows what a fool he is until he hears himself imitated by one.

... It is natural. How can you see your face without a mirror?...

Be nice to people on your way up because you will meet them on your way down.

A mistake is evidence that someone tried to do something.

... You can see the mistake all over the world. This is the only proof that God tried to do something. Perhaps he was the creator. Creation may not need some creator, but mistakes need someone to do them. This whole world is a mistake, and I think this is the only proof that God may have been trying to do something....

If a person does not learn from the mistakes of others, he won't live long enough to make all of them himself.

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

Everyone is as God made him, and often a good deal worse.

Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.

It is difficult to climb a ladder with your hands in your pockets, but it is possible if your hands are in someone else's pockets...

Then you can climb any ladder. The people you see at the top, those big chunks, their hands are always in somebody else's pocket.

So whenever you meet the so-called leaders, popes, shankaracharyas, take care about your pockets. They are not interested in you, they are interested only in your pockets....

Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.

The hardest task of a woman's life is to prove to a man that his intentions are serious.

How do you know your therapy group is right for you?

One: It is too expensive.

Two: All your friends have done it.

Three: It focuses on problems you never knew you had.

Question 2:

Sarjano, it surprises me to know that you have a head. Some idiot guy must have given you the idea.

I have not lost my sword -- you have forgotten your head somewhere... maybe drowned in spaghetti!... or do you prefer pizza?

But as far as I know you don't have any head. I have tried to cut it, but what to cut?

Certainly you are brave enough to go on trying again and again and again. This does not suit the Italian; this is the American stupidity! Try again and again and again... For what?

-- for the sake of trying. Everybody in America is so busy trying, and nobody knows for what. Trying itself has become the goal; speed itself has become the destination.

But Italians are far more loving beings, far more centered in the heart. Perhaps that's why you go on living without a head -- the heart is enough. And no master in the whole of history has cut anybody's heart with the sword. But I am not a reliable man, so you be alert!

A story for you...

The English pirate ship was alone on the high seas. Suddenly the lookout came running.

"Captain! Captain!" he cried, "there are five Spanish galleons on the horizon!"

"Quick!" said the captain. "Bring me my red coat."

So he did, and the captain put it on, and the pirate ship defeated the Spanish galleons.

The next day the lookout came running again. "Captain! Captain! There are TEN Spanish galleons on the horizon!"

"Okay," said the captain. "Bring me my red coat."

He put it on and they defeated the ten galleons.

"Captain," asked the lookout. "Would you tell me why you always ask for your red coat before we go into battle?"

"Oh, that's because if I'm wounded, the blood will not show; then the men will not be frightened and we will fight to victory!" the captain replied.

The next day the lookout came running. "Captain! Captain!" he cried, "there are a hundred Spanish galleons on the horizon!"

At these words the captain's face turned white, and he called to his lookout, "Quick, bring me my brown pants!"

Just be alert!

I love you, so I'm going to kill you -- that's certain. Love is a sure killer. But I kill gradually, because in my experience if you kill suddenly, people start escaping.

Gradually, they don't know what is happening, they come to know only when they are gone.

And this place is for only those who are ready to be gone. You become your ultimate flowering only when you are not. It is a strange fundamental law of existence, and there is no way to change it.

The more you are, the less you are.

The less you are, the more you are.

If you are all, then you don't exist. If you are a nothingness, you have tasted existence for the first time.

So, Sarjano, while I go on taking small pieces from your ego, from your so-called personality, you keep yourself engaged in spaghetti and pizza. It is a perfect art!

The authentic master kills the disciple, so that he also can become a pure nothingness, and can become one with the universe. The ancient sages of this country have said that the master is a death. Unless you find a master who can be a death to you, don't waste time. Go on searching, somewhere you will find a master who is going to erase you completely. He will give you your real and authentic being.

Your question is right: I have not lost my sword. It is just because you don't have your head, so you can't see it. But you can feel, and that is far better -- to function through the heart.

Question 3:

Dhyan David, Kahlil Gibran is a man of tremendous insight. What he says is always significant and worth contemplating over. He has forgotten just one thing, which is natural, because he had no experience of that faraway horizon. He talks about the creators -- the poets, the sculptors, the painters, the musicians -- but he forgets completely about the awakened ones. It is not right to forget; in fact he had no idea -- and they are the highest creators. Poets and sculptors and musicians and dancers are very low categories in comparison to a Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu.

What he is saying is absolutely right: sex is the only energy you have. But you can use it in a destructive way -- and that too he has forgotten. An Adolf Hitler or a Joseph Stalin or a Benito Mussolini or Ronald Reagan, these people are all abnormally highly sexual. In a few people the sex energy is so much that they cannot be satisfied by only creating children.

This is simply a known fact, that children are created through sex. So sex is certainly a creative force, which can even create life. But there are highly sexed people, and just to produce children is not enough to exhaust their sexuality. They create music; music becomes their outlet. They create art, they create paintings, poetries... and they are thought of always by the society as outsiders, they are not accepted as normal human beings. Something is crazy about them; they are eccentric.

So he has forgotten two things. One is that the destructive people are also highly sexed people, but they use their energy in destruction. It is not automatically decisive that a highly sexed person will be always a creator; most probably he will be a destroyer.

But he is right that sex creates children, creates painting, creates music, creates sculpture.

The world is divided into three kinds of people: the normal sexual people who only create children, the abnormally sexual people who either become destructive, create wars, destroy as much as they can -- and the third category, the creators.

Kahlil Gibran's insight is right, but incomplete. He himself is a poet and a painter, but he knows nothing about awakened consciousness. That is the highest point of creation:

creating yourself as an immortal. Because it is an inner creation, people don't count Gautam Buddha as a creator, or Mahavira or Naropa or Tilopa; they don't consider these people as creators, because they can't see what they have created. They have created themselves, and that is the greatest creation in the world. Just look at Gautam Buddha, his silence, his peace, his understanding, his clarity, his blissfulness, his ecstasy...

unwavering.

No enlightened person has ever committed suicide, but the great creators Kahlil Gibran is talking about are well known for two things: either they go mad or they commit suicide.

They go mad when their energy cannot find an outlet. They are mad in their paintings, in their poetry -- but nothing satisfies, everything falls below their standard. That drives them mad. Almost every great artist in the West has at least once visited the madhouse for a few years. Or when they feel they are exhausted and now there is no more energy left to create, their whole meaning of life disappears. Creation was their meaning. In creating things they had become small gods, and now they are nobody, exhausted, used cartridges. These are the people who commit suicide.

Van Gogh I can give you as an example -- one of the greatest painters the world has ever known passed through all the stages, so he is a perfect example. He was so mad in creating. He was a poor coal miner's son, uneducated, but from the very beginning he started painting laborers, old people, children. And whoever looked at them was amazed:

his painting was almost photographic.

His parents wanted him to be a priest. Fortunately, he did not listen to them. He went to the school to become a priest, but all that he did there was drawings of the professors, the missionaries. He never learned anything else. Finally, he was brought back home. The parents were tired; they told him, "Now you are free. Whatever you want to do... but we are not going to take any financial responsibility." He was even happy in this situation.

He left for Paris.

He was Dutch. His younger brother was employed, and out of compassion every week he used to send him the exact money so that he could purchase bread and butter for seven days. He was afraid to send him enough for the whole month, because that would go into purchasing paints and canvases. But he was not aware what he had done to his brother.

Out of seven days he used to eat three days -- one day here, one day there -- and four days he saved money to purchase canvases, colors, brushes, whatever is needed for painting.

No man has been so mad that he was dying of hunger and starvation, but that was the only way to paint. And the great difficulty was -- otherwise things would have been easier and more comfortable -- he did not manage to sell a single painting, because his paintings were the paintings of a genius, and a genius always comes before his time. This existence has strange laws.

Now his paintings... only two hundred have been saved. He used to give paintings to his friends just for a cup of tea, just for a packet of cigarettes.

Now his paintings are the costliest paintings in the world. The last painting was sold for thirty-five million dollars -- that is the record. Never before was any painting sold at thirty million dollars; the last record was only nine million dollars. I don't think any painting is ever is going to outdo him.

Why could people not purchase his paintings? He was ready to give at any price, just the cost price. He worked for days and he was not asking even for labor. They could not understand those paintings; those paintings needed a genius to understand them. He has painted stars, not the way you see them, but as spirals. Now who is going to believe that these are stars? -- everybody knows what stars are! Only just this year it has been found that stars are not the way you see them, but the way Vincent van Gogh saw them.

Strange, without any scientific instruments without a big lab... tremendous clarity.

It took one hundred years for science to find out that his stars are the only right stars, and all other stars painted are just rubbish. The same has happened about his other paintings.

If he could have sold his paintings, he could have made more paintings, but he became tired, starved. His only desire was to paint all the phases of the sun, from the sunrise to the sunset, a whole series of paintings.

The day that series was complete he had exhausted all his energy. He simply wrote a letter to his brother, "I am not committing suicide. I have burned myself out. But I am dying happily because what I wanted to accomplish is accomplished -- I am one of the most contented men. The last painting is complete today." And he shot himself dead. He was only thirty-three years of age.

It is true that you have no other energy than sexual energy. All creation is out of sexual energy. In other words, every creation is a by-product of your sexual energy; even if you become the richest man in the world, that is sexual energy. But Kahlil Gibran has forgotten two things: one, that sexual energy can be destructive; second, that sexual energy never brings you to self-realization, which is the ultimate creation.

It seems he was not actually aware. Although he has written books on Jesus, and he spoke in the language of tremendous beauty and poetry, he was looking at Jesus as a poet. He was not aware of Ta Hui or Bodhidharma or Gautam Buddha, and he was not aware what the problem is. In the East, no enlightened person goes mad, no enlightened person commits suicide. Going mad is the function of the mind. Committing suicide is also the function of the mind.

And because the enlightened person is beyond mind, there is no question of madness, and there is no question of suicide. He lives, and he lives totally. He lives, and he lives at the very peak of intelligence and understanding and awareness.

But I want to add this much to Kahlil Gibran's statement: that these people are also immensely sexual, perhaps more sexual than the poets, than the singers, than the musicians. They have so much energy that they are capable of self-realization, that they are capable of giving a rebirth to themselves.

But basically I agree with the incomplete statement of Kahlil Gibran. I would have loved it if he had made it complete, but he himself was not complete. It is a great exercise of understanding if you look at Kahlil Gibran's statements, and then you look at Kahlil Gibran's life. You will be amazed; his life was very ordinary, perhaps below ordinary, and the poetry is reaching to the stars.

Because they are not artists of life -- they are artists creating objects who have forgotten themselves -- their situation is exactly like the scientist's. A man like Albert Einstein has immense energy, and that energy is sexual, because there is no other energy. The word 'sex' has become so condemned that it is better to say it is life energy, just to protect the energy from the centuries of condemnation.

Albert Einstein worked on objects, faraway stars, the speed of light... and he managed to figure it all out. But he never bothered about his own life; he remained focused on the outside.

If a poet turns inwards he becomes a mystic.

If a scientist turns inwards he becomes a mystic.

The energy is the same, but the direction changes.

Kahlil Gibran lived a very miserable life, sometimes ugly. He was a man of great anger, quarrelsome, but he has created great poetry. If you just look at his words, they are pure twenty-four-carat gold. But avoid the man, don't look at him; otherwise your respect for his words will be lost.

The poets, the scientists, the musicians and other creators have a double personality, a split personality, some kind of schizophrenia. One part of them goes on creating, and one part lags far behind.

The mystic is the only person in existence who is not schizophrenic, who is unique and one, organically one, undivided. His life and his words have the same flavor. But I think Kahlil Gibran in the first place was not capable of knowing the interiority of a mystic; and in the second place, perhaps he was afraid to say that a Buddha is created by great abundance of sexual energy. Nobody bothered him, nobody condemned him when he called poets and sculptors and musicians and other creators oversexed. But if he had called Jesus, Gautam Buddha, Mohammed, Moses oversexed, he would have been condemned all over the world.

But I want to say that all great people in the world, destructive or creative, are people of so much energy, life energy, life force, that they cannot contain it within themselves; they have to do something. I would like that they all turn inwards, so their life is not a split and an agony, and so it becomes an ecstasy.

Joe was sitting at the bar, slowly sipping his drink, when his friend, Mickey, came running in.

"Joe," he shouted, "get over to your house real quick. I just stopped off to see you and I heard a man's voice in your bedroom. So I looked through your window and I saw your wife in bed with another man."

"Is that so?" said Joe, matter-of-factly. "What does this guy looks like?"

"Oh, he's tall and completely bald," said Mickey.

"And did he have a thick red mustache?" asked Joe.

"Right, right!" yelled Mickey.

"Did he have a front gold tooth?" asked Joe.

"Damn it, you are right!" replied Mickey.

"Must be that idiot Dick Roberts," said Joe. "He will screw anything."

There are people of that category also -- no life energy, at the most lukewarm. They never create anything. Even to create children is such a task.

And by the way, I should also mention to you -- to make Kahlil Gibran's insight more clear -- that no impotent man has been a poet or a sculptor or a scientist; the question of being a mystic does not arise. Perhaps impotency is the worst situation a man can find himself in. But strangely enough all the religions are teaching people to be impotent; they call it celibacy.

Because of this idea of celibacy, religions have been absolutely uncreative. The energy was there in people... they could not create, because to create you need an esthetic sense, you need a loving heart, a feeling individuality. To become celibate they have destroyed all these qualities. So the only possibility for their expression of sexual energy is either perverted sex, homosexuality, lesbianism, or destruction in the name of God, in the name of truth, in the name of Christianity, in the name of Islam.... They have been continuously destroying each other.

Perhaps nobody has looked at the psychology of why it happens. It has nothing to do with their metaphysics; it has something to do with their inner life force. They cannot contain it... then a crusade, jihad, a religious war -- Jews fighting with Mohammedans, Mohammedans killing Jews, Christians killing Mohammedans, Christians killing Jews.

Hindus have completely destroyed Buddhism in India. Buddha was the greatest man on the earth in the past history... and he has left such a great impact on every intelligent being in this country.But when he died, within five hundred years the old priesthood of the Hindus, the brahmins destroyed everything that they could.

You will not believe that Mohammedans not only killed human beings, they also destroyed great pieces of art, because they were worshiped as religious -- beautiful statues of Buddha, great temples.

In every ancient well in India there are beautiful statues, because out of fear that their statues would be destroyed, people have thrown them into the wells. So whenever an ancient well is cleaned or looked into, they are surprised..."What is the matter?" In every well are beautiful statues of Mahavira, of Bahubali, of Gautam Buddha.

There was no need to destroy the whole statue because a superstition exists all over India that if a statue is a little bit damaged -- one ear is missing -- it is no more worshipable; it has to be removed. There are millions of statues so beautiful... somebody's ear is missing, somebody's nose is missing, somebody's hand has been cut -- that was enough, and they have been thrown out.

I happened to be in a city near Katni in a small place in Madhya Pradesh. There are thousands of statues -- the village consists only of statues, so beautiful that thousands of people must have worked for thousands of years -- but nobody lives there. I enquired, tried to find out in old gazettes of the government, and I found only one reference in an old scripture. That village was the village of sculptors. Being afraid that their statues will be destroyed, they covered their statues with mud and escaped, burned their houses so nobody will think that there is a village.

Now it has become a thick forest, wild trees have grown, but it must have been a very great place when it was alive. Those statues show that the village must have contained thousands and thousands of great artists. Now it is a ghost village. Only statues... they have been discovered during the British regime; their mud has been taken away. It was one of the great discoveries.

In Khajuraho, one of the most famous cities of temples, there were one hundred temples.

It is simply mind-boggling to see a single temple; it takes almost one day, there are so many statues. You cannot find a single inch which is not carved... and huge temples.

They were also buried under mud, small mud hills. Only thirty could be saved; the Mohammedans destroyed seventy.

They have been discovered again, and there is no sculpture anywhere in the world -- I have looked into all kinds of sculpture that existed and exists in the world, but the beauty that Khajuraho sculpture has is just superhuman -- so perfect that one cannot believe things can be made so perfect, so beautiful.

Religions have only destroyed, because they prevented the creative dimension. In the name of celibacy only two things have happened: destruction and AIDS. These are the two great contributions of all your religions. And if man is intelligent enough, there is no need to say that these religions should disappear. They have done enough harm. We don't need them at all; we can be religious without religions.

I have made you serious again! Once in a while I forget. So for no reason at all, just for a good laugh, because I hate to leave Buddha Hall unless I see you all are rejoicing and laughing...

A Polish worker went to a local bank to deposit his wages of one week. Worried about the dire conditions of the Polish economy, he enquired what would happen if the bank collapsed.

"All our deposits are guaranteed by the ministry of finance," the teller replied.

"But what if the ministry of finance could not honor the guarantee?" the worker persisted.

"In that case the Polish government itself would intercede," the teller said with growing irritation.

"But what if the government would go bankrupt?" the worker asked with undiminished concern.

"In that case our socialist comrades in the Soviet Union would naturally come to our assistance," the teller retorted.

"But what if the Soviet Union collapsed?" the Polish worker persisted.

"Idiot," snapped the teller, "is not that worth losing one week's wages?"

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.

The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here