Man is born to celebrate

Question 1:

Devageet, you need not be worried about the gossip. The difference between gospels and gossip is whether you are telling it or hearing it; it is not much... and whatever is gossip today will become gospel tomorrow.

Just thinking about your question, I remembered a report that has come to me today about a man I have always respected. He is a great scientific mind, a genius; he has worked his whole life with a total energy and intelligence. His name is John Lilly.

Just today in a press interview it was asked of him -- he is seventy-five years old -- he was asked that if he finds himself on a small island, nobody else is there, and for miles and miles there is no sign of human life, what he would like to have with him. And he said, "I would like the five most sexy women of the world." At the age of seventy-five...!

This man must be crazy.

So if people are gossiping about you, that you have become old, don't be worried about it.

Gossip has a way of functioning of its own....

... Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.

Gossip does not need thinking. It is a very strange fact that nobody ever doubts gossip; even the very skeptical minds simply believe in gossip. People have to be forced for centuries to believe in the gospel, but gossip... people are just waiting to hear something, something juicy. And you should be proud that you have become almost a hero; everybody is deep down jealous of you. Your old age is going to go down in history. It will be remembered for ages to come that "Once upon a time, Devageet became old -- and not only once, but twice within two days!"

Here is a commune of absolutely free people. The only difficulty is:

... When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

Please, Devageet, don't feel in the gutter. Everyone is in the gutter. At least you are looking at the stars -- that's what is making people think you are becoming old, because only old people stare at the stars. At the age of seventy-five, John Lilly, a man of tremendous intelligence, is still in the gutter -- not looking at the stars.

Devageet, it is creditable that you have become old earlier than you should have; you have done a fast race from young age into old age. This is what I call a "quantum leap."

And remember:

... Those who try to serve both God and women soon discover there is no God.

And about your outrageousness... I am also outrageous, because the principle is:

... Whenever in doubt, be outrageous.

What else can you do?

Perhaps the gossip is right. I hope it is right! -- because to me, it is very creditable to become old so soon. It is the beginning of wisdom. I am waiting for the day when people start talking about you, saying that you have become ancient. Old age is nothing compared to being ancient.

... Truth is stranger than fiction, and also harder to make up.

So naturally people make up gossips; it is easier -- very easy!

Bernard Shaw used to say, "I don't know if there are men on the moon, but if there are they must be using this earth as their lunatic asylum." And I agree with that old man, George Bernard Shaw. He was, in this century, one of the men who had tremendous insight into human foolishness.

Once when he was in America for the first and last time -- because he never went again...

When the federal judge told me that I cannot enter America for five years, I said, "Why bother about years? I am not going back ever! One time is enough." And that's what happened with George Bernard Shaw.

He went once on invitation to America. In the first meeting he was addressing the people who had invited him -- very well known people, respectable people, rich people -- and he said, "Looking at you I can almost take it for granted that fifty percent of the people in America are idiots." Of course the whole gathering was outraged: "We are here to welcome you, we have invited you, you are our guest -- this is not the way to start!"

There was silence, but great anger in people's eyes. Bernard Shaw said, "Forgive me, I just said the opposite of what I was going to say."

People relaxed. He said, "I was going to say that fifty percent of people in America are very intelligent, but now I have to change my statement. That was my first impression.

And this is my last impression, it is final: one hundred percent of the people are idiots."

Bernard Shaw had a certain insight into our so-called sane humanity. He was not right only about America, he was right about the whole earth: it is a mental asylum.

But still... a few sutras will be good, either for now or tomorrow when you will be getting older again. Now it is very difficult to say when you will be young and when you will be old. It is going to be up and down, up and down... That's what some sannyasin was complaining about: "Whoever I meet and I ask how things are, they say 'up and down'...

everybody says the same thing: up and down!" But nobody is going up and down so much as Devageet.

... Old age is when a girl gets on your nerves rather than on your lap.

Just so you can figure out where you are:

... Middle age is when you can feel bad in the morning without having fun the night before.

... Intuition is what enables a woman to put two and two together and come up with an answer that suits her.

So beware of women's intuition -- particularly in old age!

... A really old man is a man who tries never to stand between a dog and a lamppost.

I am just giving you some hints. If you start behaving like that, you are old!

... An old man is a man who knows tomorrow why the things he said yesterday did not happen today.

His wisdom is as bogus, as hollow as his old age is.

Just to encourage you, Devageet... you are in the dumps:

... The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Don't be worried! You have got a new idea that you are old. You will be thought a crank until you really succeed to be an old man. Then all this gossip will disappear.

I don't think you are that old, but I certainly think that you are old enough... But still you will see the time, if pollution continues, when walking on water will no longer be a miracle; anybody will be able to do it. And if you can see this happening, this miracle of everybody walking on water, what more do you want? Old age or young age, you have seen the last miracle on the earth.

But I hope that people will go on gossiping about you. They are finding... they are almost researching about you!

Devageet's old Jewish mama... I never knew that he is a Jew! People are really doing an in-depth search.... Devageet's old Jewish mama met an old friend who she had not seen for years. "And how is your son getting on?" asked the friend.

"Oy veh," said his mama, "don't ask. He has grown his hair down to his shoulders, he never shaves from one year to the next, he left the university and all day long he is doing nothing but transdental medication."

"Ah well," said her friend, "what is the use of worrying? Transdental medication is fine.

It is better than sitting around all day doing nothing."

And here is a question from Devageet:

Question 2:

Devageet, this is the sign that you are passing old age and entering into ancient age. You have even forgotten poor Basho's haiku. You are saying, "Sitting silently, the joke comes and my noodle vaporizes all by itself."

If Basho hears it, he will hit you so hard that neither you nor the noodle will be ever able to rise again. You are not supposed, just in old age, to forget the haiku, one of the most famous and one of the most beautiful things ever uttered. In ancient age it is of course okay, because one goes senile.

Basho's haiku... I have to remind you again, because it is the very foundation of all meditation:

Sitting silently, doing nothing The spring comes And the grass grows by itself.

As far as I know, Basho may have never heard about the word 'noodle'. These strange things are brought here by Sarjano. He is feeding people noodles, spaghetti and all kinds of creepy things.... Avoid that fellow! God never made -- as far as I know, in any description in the whole BIBLE -- noodles, spaghetti, pizza. It is absolutely the devil's invention.

Just come back down to where you really are; don't believe this gossip. And if the gossip continues, I will manage to bring you down again and again.

A beautiful woman and a young man both went for the same lion tamer's job at the zoo.

The manager said he would give them both a chance, and told the girl to go into the cage first.

The girl, wearing a long fur coat, did so. A huge lion immediately started to charge at her.

Suddenly, she opened her fur coat and stood there completely naked. The lion stopped dead, spun around, and went meekly back into the corner.

The manager was amazed. He turned to the young man and said, "Well friend, do you think you can do better than that?"

"I would like to try," the young man replied. "Just get that crazy lion out of there first."

Question 3:

Antar Dharmesh, it is certainly the most important and the most fundamental question one can ever ask. I have been talking to you about freedom continuously -- from every possible angle, every possible implication.... It seems you are hearing me but not listening to me.

You are saying, "My longing for freedom is so deep, so strong, more than anything else I know..." and I have been telling you, there are things which you cannot desire, which you cannot make an object of your longing.

Freedom is your intrinsic nature -- svabhav. It is your very nature; you don't have to attain it. You don't have to make any effort for it. You don't need even to desire or long for it -- it is already there.

You are born free, but you are living in chains. Those chains you have accepted, and you have accepted them very willingly, very joyously, because those chains are made of gold.

Those chains are made of power, prestige, respectability; they are covered with beautiful flowers. So not only have you accepted them, you go on desiring more and more because you think they are ornaments. You think they are the very aim of your life, the very meaning and significance.

This is the trouble: freedom is not a problem such that you have to achieve it; the problem is how to get rid of the chains. And the first thing you have to encounter is to recognize chains as chains not as ornaments, a prison as a prison not as a home, a marriage as a bondage and not love. And there are a thousand and one chains all around you.

You are dragging them; your life has become a drag, a burden, somehow hoping to reach to the graveyard. Each moment seems to be so long, one wants relief and rest. And it seems in this world you can find relief and rest only in the grave -- anywhere else you will find yourself again in the chains, in the prisons. The names will be different, the shape of the chains may be different, the forms may be different, almost opposite to what you used to have.... A Christian becomes a Hindu, a Hindu becomes a Christian; they only change jails -- nothing changes, no transformation in being and no freedom of the soul. They have only changed old chains for new chains.

And remember: new chains are more dangerous than the old, because the old can be broken more easily than the new. The new are more sophisticated, more technologically perfect. The old were not so perfect, they had loopholes; you could have easily slipped out of them. But the new, the imprisoners who are your parasites, have closed all possibilities, all windows, all doors. Even the small cracks from where you can see the open sky... everything seems to be absolutely closed. And you go on suffering.

It is so strange to think that man, who is born to celebrate, lives only to suffer. Even trees are more fortunate, wild animals are more blissful, birds in the sky are more ecstatic.

Only man goes on dragging his heavy chains, and every day the load goes on becoming more and more heavy.

Freedom is not the problem at all.

Don't ask how to attain freedom; that will give you a wrong direction. You will start thinking what efforts to make for freedom -- you are asking from a wrong direction. Ask how we have lost our freedom. You were born free -- then how did you become a slave?

You were born just as a human being -- then how did you become a Mohammedan or a Hindu or a Christian?

One of the most important novelists of America has asked me a question: "Osho, what do you think about the Jewish and Arab conflict in the Middle East? What is the solution, and what are the implications for the future?"

I had to write to him saying, "Before I can specifically answer your question, I would like to give you my bird's-eye view of the whole human situation, because what is happening in Israel between Jews and Arabs is nothing new. It is happening all over the world, in different names -- between Hindus and Mohammedans, between Christians and Jews...

just the names are different, but the same violence, the same murder, the same suffering.

And people are clinging to their suffering...."

So I told him a few significant points. First: as long as there is a God, man cannot be at peace. It is God who is dividing man. He is the ultimate enemy of humanity; otherwise what is the difference between a Hindu and a Mohammedan and a Christian and a Jew? -- just their idea of God. And that idea is nothing but an idea, just an empty hypothesis.

There is no God anywhere; there is no evidence anywhere, there is no proof. And if somebody says he has seen God, he is simply a madman. He is deluded; he has been hallucinating and he needs psychiatric treatment. If we had treated our saints through psychiatry, humanity would have been in a peaceful state.

Now God is your greatest chain. Are you ready to throw it away?

Your holy scriptures are dividing you, because every scripture demands that it be the only holy scripture. That necessarily creates conflict: Hindus cannot believe that THE BIBLE is holy... great competition. The VEDAS are holy because they are the ancientmost scripture in the world; God himself wrote them. It is so stupid to talk this way.

I have talked with learned Hindu scholars and asked them, "Have you ever thought about your VEDAS, which you claim that God has written? Just look at the content... the very content shows that it cannot be written by God; there is an intrinsic impossibility." And I was surprised -- great scholars like Omkarnath Maharaj, who was thought to be the authority on the VEDAS, were shocked by my question. He said, "I have never thought about it."

I said, "You are the greatest authority. Open the VEDAS anywhere, at any page. I don't insist on a certain page -- open it at random and read the content. The content will give you the proof that it cannot be written by God."

He had a copy of RIG VEDA by his side. He opened it at random, and what was the content? He was so shocked. The content was: "A brahmin is praying to God..." Now, how can God write it? -- "A brahmin is praying to God, saying, 'I pray so much, but you don't listen; there is a limitation to patience. This year you have proved it: just let your clouds rain on my fields, and not on the fields of my enemies.'" This kind of rubbish is written by God? It is intrinsically an absolute proof that some stupid brahmin is writing it.

But even after that he continued. After two years I saw him again. I said, "You have not stopped."

He said, "To encounter you... I feel such a deep fear in me."

I said, "Why should you be afraid? Just because you have been preaching nonsense..."

THE BIBLE is full of pornography, five hundred pages of pornography. And when I said it, immediately ten Christian associations forced the magistrate of Kanpur to issue an unbailable arrest warrant. I have my people everywhere to fight for me; they immediately took a stay order from the Allahabad high court. It is absolute nonsense; the judge should first see THE BIBLE -- and I am ready to point out the exact five hundred pages which are pornographic.

But strangely, Christians and Jews both go on calling the Old Testament a holy scripture, written by God. It seems... is God just a pornographic writer, just on the board of editors of PLAYBOY?

These are the problems. Every prophet, every messiah, every avatara, every tirthankara is claiming that only he is the right one. You think only ordinary people are competing with each other? -- that is not true. Your so-called great men are so ugly in their competition, you cannot believe it.

In the times of Mahavira, twenty-five centuries ago... Mahavira and Buddha were both contemporaries, and there were six others; eight people were contending that they were the twenty-fourth tirthankara of Jainism. Even Gautam Buddha was one of the candidates. And because Mahavira proved to be more orthodox, more in tune with the Jaina ideology of self-torture and masochism, he won the battle. Even Buddha lost the election. Frustrated because he lost the election and Mahavira was accepted as the twenty-fourth tirthankara, he started a new religion.

If you look without prejudice, you cannot believe it -- why are there so many wars, why is there so much lunacy, why is there so much insanity? Even your great peaks, your highest suns behave like children.

Jesus goes on declaring that he is the only son of God. Naturally, he cannot accept Gautam Buddha or Confucius or Lao Tzu or Basho or Bodhidharma -- not even as cousins. The family is very closed, and a very strange family at that!There is no woman in the family. And in fact the woman is the very center of a family; without a woman you can have a house but not a home. Strange company: God the father, Jesus Christ the son, and a strange fellow -- nobody knows who he is, whether he is male or female -- the Holy Ghost. These three people go on dominating the whole world. This is their trinity.

For centuries intelligent Christians have been asking, "At least give one place to a woman," but such is the macho male mind that he will not allow it. Even the mother of Jesus is not allowed in the holy family. A woman cannot be accepted high on the ladder of hierarchy.

Christians cannot accept Mahavira or Buddha as people of real religious importance.

These are the problems that have been dominating humanity for centuries. In particular in Israel the problem has become a very burning issue, because the whole of the Middle East is Mohammedan. But Mohammedanism is only fourteen hundred years old, Christianity is two thousand years old. So before Mohammed was born, Jews had already entered the Arabic world, and they had their own settlements. Then Christians came and they started making their own settlements....

The problem is this special rock, which is said to be the central piece of the great Jewish Temple of Solomon, which was destroyed by the anti-Jewish elements long ago. Only the rock which was the central piece remains; it is called the "Rock of the Dome."

Now, Jews claim that it is their holy place, because it is the site of their great temple. And Christians claim that this is the place where Jesus was crucified, so it is their holy place -- not Jewish but Christian. And then comes another contender, and in a very strange way...

Six hundred years after Jesus, Mohammed established a new religion -- because the Arabs had no religion of their own. They were a nomadic race, wanderers; they had no organized religion. Mohammed collected those Arabs under the name of Mohammedanism. He himself was an Arab, and naturally had great influence. For his whole life he was fighting -- war and war, not a single day of rest -- and on his sword was his message: "My message is peace." It was written on his sword!

George Bernard Shaw is not wrong: this world seems to be dominated by lunatics of all kinds. If peace is your message... and certainly he believed that peace was his message, but it had to follow his conditions: if the whole world becomes Mohammedan there will be peace. But how is it possible? He has named his religion... Mohammedanism is not the name given by him to his religion; the name that he has given is Islam, and Islam simply means peace. A strange kind of peace! -- the prophet of peace fought his whole life, murdered and butchered.

And he left the ultimate problem behind him -- the story is really hilarious -- when he died. Many prophets, many saviors, many avataras, many tirthankaras, many buddhas have died before, but he found his own style. He died not in an ordinary way. In fact, he never died. He simply went to heaven alive -- and not alone, but sitting on his horse! And just as he was going towards heaven, sitting on his horse, just to take a little rest he descended on that rock. He could not find anywhere else to rest.

So now that rock has become the contention of three religions. Judaism claims it as theirs. Jews are ready to kill and die for it; millions of Jews have died for it. Christians have been sending crusades, having religious wars continually, to take possession of the Rock of the Dome. And the whole area is an ocean of Mohammedans, who claim that this is their holy rock because Mohammed stayed there to take some rest before he left finally, with his horse, towards heaven.

For these fourteen hundred years it has been war almost every day. And at the end of the first world war Britain and America, both Christian countries, played the most ugly game against the Jews.... Jews are one of the races which have suffered most. Of course, they have their part and their contribution in their suffering. They have suffered most because they were the first to claim, "We are the chosen people of God, and it is our basic right to rule over the world. Other human beings are inferior human beings."

Because this idea irritated everybody, without exception, Jews have been continually murdered, butchered. Adolf Hitler alone killed six million Jews, and it goes on.... But the ultimate meanness has been committed by America and England -- and even Jews could not understand the strategy.

After the second world war, the American and British forces were in control of Jerusalem, where the rock is, and the small country of Israel which had never before been in existence. For many centuries Mohammedans had lived there; it was part of the country of Palestine. But after the second world war, Jerusalem and Palestine were under the control of American and British forces, and America played the ugliest politics that you can conceive. It created, under an armed force, a new nation for the Jews. It called the new nation Israel, for the Jews.

It had not been in existence for many centuries. Once it had been a land for the Jews, in the days of Moses, then it was lost to Mohammedans for centuries. Christians had been trying to recover it but they could not, neither were the Jews successful -- they could not be! Only six percent of the land belonged to the Jews and ninety-four percent of the land belonged to the Mohammedans. How can you make Israel a sovereign nation? But under pressure of arms they managed to create a new land. It was great strategy, and perhaps nobody else has pointed it out....

I find myself standing alone in many situations; sometimes I think I should not unnecessarily bother about things when nobody is even thinking about them.

My understanding is that America and Britain conspired to create the Jewish state so that now Jews will be in trouble for eternity. This is a very sophisticated diplomacy. And the Jews were happy; they thought that America and England were helping them, that they were favorable to them, that they were giving them the homeland for which they had been hankering for centuries.

And America had killed two birds with one stone. In America, Jews are among the richest people, so they have great power over the American congress. They have a lobby of their own, and because politicians depend on contributions from rich people for their elections, they cannot avoid the Jews. They cannot ignore them; their presence is too important -- they have cash money. So this was a good chance to have their money contributed to American politicians.

The American politicians managed to create the state of Israel for the Jews, but the state was forcibly imposed on the Mohammedans. Now, they cannot tolerate it -- Mohammedans are very fascist, and this insult they cannot tolerate -- so there is continuous war.

Israel has to purchase war materials from America, and American Jews continuously have to send millions of dollars for the survival of Israel. In this way, America has destroyed more Jews than Adolf Hitler -- and has created not just a single-blow slaughter, but a continuous situation that will go on and on for centuries till not a single Jew is alive in Israel.

And any day the American politicians can pull out their support. They have done that in Taiwan. They were supporting Taiwan against China, and Taiwan depended absolutely on American support -- but for how long?

Taiwan is a small island. It was the private property of Chiang Kai-shek, who was the dictator before Mao and the communists took over China. The old name for Taiwan was Formosa; Chiang Kai-shek had made it his holiday resort, a private property. And as the communists took over China, Chiang Kai-shek, with his family and friends, escaped to Taiwan and changed its name from Formosa. They created a new nation with the help of America -- Taiwan. America helped, and with billions of dollars and new factories, it became a nation.

But how long can you manage against mainland China, the biggest country in the world?

Finally, you have to give up. America dropped Taiwan and joined hands with mainland China -- because that was China's condition: "Unless you stop supporting Taiwan, China is not going to support you." They needed China's support immensely -- because China and Russia together could become such a great force, it was a beautiful and necessary step for America to bring China towards them. But Taiwan was lost, and Taiwan is very angry.

But what can you do? Now China is making every effort to absorb Taiwan back into China, and Taiwan cannot fight, it has not the power. The same is going to happen to Israel, any day.

It has happened the same way in Iran: it was American support that kept the shah of Iran in power. He had no hold on the people; the people are fanatic Mohammedans under the control of Ayatollah Khomeini, but because of American support, American army bases...

Ayatollah Khomeini was living in France and directing his people in Iran to be ready any moment, because how long can America support the shah? Sooner or later it becomes a burden.

One day it did become a burden. And the moment America left Iran to itself, the shah of Iran had to run away, because he knew that he could not survive. Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran with flags flying, and Iran is now in the hands of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Mohammedan priests. They have created in Israel a hell for the Jews, and with such beautiful tactics that even the greatest Jews like Martin Buber could not suspect it.

I am the one-person majority who wants to say to the world that this is cunning politics.

America and England are not favorable to the Jews, and the proof for it is that the Vatican pope has not accepted Israel as a sovereign nation; they have not given their recognition.

So on the one hand Christianity gives no recognition to the nation; on the other hand they created the nation in a place where they are surrounded from all sides by Mohammedans, and they will be killed and crushed.

Just for crucifying one man, Jesus, for two thousand years millions of innocent Jews have been crucified -- just as Jesus was innocent but killed by his contemporaries. Now these people, after two thousand years, have nothing to do with those people who crucified Jesus. But they are being tortured in Russia, they are being tortured in Germany; they have been tortured everywhere, wherever they have been. And now Israel is the ultimate strategy: they will keep being tortured for eternity until Israel disappears again.

So I have given my answer to Tom Robbins, because he is going to write a book and he wants my opinion. I know he must be surprised, because nobody has ever said this, that Israel is a strategy of Christian politics to destroy Jews -- not directly, but by creating a situation so that Mohammedans can do the job and Christians can keep their mask that they have been so helpful, even to the enemies. They have followed Jesus' philosophy:

Love your enemies. They have been pouring money and help in the form of outdated arms -- armaments which are of no use, which have to be thrown out, either into the ocean, or in Israel.

And at the same time American Jews go on helping American politicians because they are helping Israel. So the American politicians exploit their money, they exploit their support.

Just by chance, yesterday when I dictated my letter to Tom Robbins, I received the message... We were fighting in the Supreme Court of Oregon to prove that our commune in Oregon had been destroyed absolutely illegally, and that the government had taken control of the land without any reason or rhyme. And we have won the case in the Supreme Court: the Supreme Court has specifically made it clear that the government has been absolutely illegal in restricting the use of the commune's land, its other properties.

So now it is again in our hands.

I have said to Tom Robbins that my suggestion is that if you want to help the Jews, Oregon should be given to them as a new Israel. Move the Jews from Israel and give Israel to the Mohammedans; it belongs to them, it is ugly to keep their land.

And as for me and my people, we offer our commune land as a beginning. It is enough for at least one hundred thousand people. We give all our assets -- all our houses, hotels, roads, dams, fields -- everything that we have in Rancho Rajneesh we give them as a friendly gesture, without taking any money for it, with the condition that Rancho Rajneesh should be the capital of the new Israel.

And let America show its real face. If they want to help them... half of the state of Oregon is already owned by the federal government, and it is very sparsely populated so there is no problem. Half the land already belongs to the federal government; give that land to the Jews.

And Jews are in a new trouble in Israel. There were a few Jews who have remained in Israel forever, since the days of Moses, so they are very orthodox -- utterly orthodox.

They have not seen the outside world, they are still four thousand years back; their mind is of that type. The second layer has come from European countries. That layer is a little different, because it is no longer so orthodox. It has seen the developed countries of the twentieth century; it has forgotten all the old traditional ways. And the third layer, which has completely forgotten what Judaism is, has come from America.

Now they are fighting amongst themselves. Full-scale riots are going on in Israel amongst the Jews themselves. Mohammedans are killing them from all around, and Jews are killing other Jews because the orthodox Jews say to the European and American Jews, "Go back! You are no longer Jews."

For small reasons... for example, on the sabbath every week, the orthodox Jews stop working by the evening on Friday. They want the new Jews who have come from Europe and America to close their discos, their restaurants, their movie houses, on Friday night.

They cannot conceive it. I have heard:

Three rabbis were talking about whose synagogue was the most advanced. One rabbi said, "Of course it is my synagogue. We allow smoking inside the synagogue; we allow drinking, drugs, anything, in the name of God."

The second rabbi said, "That's nothing, forget all about it. You are still old-fashioned.

These things we have been allowing for centuries. We allow you even to bring your girlfriends; we don't even ask whether the woman is your wife or not. Bring your girlfriends; the synagogue is just a religious kind of movie theater where you will not find people with their wives. If they have to be with their wives, then what is wrong with their house?"

Those movie houses... and do you know why it becomes dark? It is not for the film, it is because so many stories go on inside the movie hall. All those stories are possible only in darkness.

So the second rabbi said, "We allow girlfriends and dancing, and if people want to make love, they can even make love. We ignore it, we don't create any interference."

The third rabbi said, "You are both idiots. You don't know. In our synagogue we are living in the twenty-first century."

They said, "What more can you do?"

He said, "What more? On our synagogue there is a signboard: 'On Jewish holidays the synagogue is closed.'" This is the ultimate form of religiousness!

So those three layers of Jews are cutting each other's heads.

My suggestion is not just to make a joke of American help; I mean it! I am sending the message to Israel: "You enter into the commune; let that be your beginning. And tell the American government -- and you have every right to ask because you have been giving all those politicians money, they are all paid servants to you -- that you want a New Israel in the New World."

And why bother about a rock? Make a beautiful Temple of Solomon again! The new is always better than the old. Why should you bother? Do you think religion is like wine, that the old is better than the new? Don't condemn religion that way. Just fresh, new, with modern architecture -- make a great temple, the greatest in the world. Once it was the greatest temple in the world, but why unnecessarily get into trouble which cannot end? -- there is no possible way.

And then you will know America's real face. Then you will know how friendly they are to Israel and how friendly they are to the Jews. They are fundamentalist Christians.

Ronald Reagan is a fascist Christian; he will not allow it. This will be a good test of their friendship.

I don't believe in any religion, but I certainly believe that people should not be put into unnecessary misery, slaughter, massacre, every day trembling with fear. And now it has become much more dangerous, because Jews are fighting with Jews, and Mohammedans from all around have become terrorists; they are destroying in every possible way the very foundation of the Jewish state. And just see: the Vatican has not even given formal recognition to the sovereignty of the state of Israel; that shows the real Christian mind.

But this is our world. Perhaps my people are the only people who are free from chains.

God is your chain, religions are your chains; the idea of sin, the idea of virtue are your chains.

Freedom consists in a single thing, and that is your awareness. Act out of awareness and you will be acting out of freedom -- and without interfering in somebody else's freedom.

Freedom knows how to respect others' freedom.

You don't have to do anything, Dharmesh, to attain freedom. It is already there within you. Just drop the chains.

And those chains are such that you have started loving them; you have become accustomed to them. It will be a little painful to depart from your miseries, a little painful to depart from your old sufferings, familiar friends, and enter into a new area of freedom, awareness. But except that, there is no hope for humanity.

All that is needed is just a little intelligence. You have been deprived even of that.

And the pope is angry with me, the shankaracharyas are angry with me, the imams are angry with me, for the simple reason that I want you to be intelligent. They want you to be absolutely fools, idiots, retarded, so you can be enslaved, tortured, harassed, sacrificed, and you will not revolt against it.

Paddy goes into a pub one day and sees a very well-dressed man sitting in the corner. But what he notices most are his beautiful shoes. So he goes over and asks about them and the man tells him they are crocodile shoes.

But Paddy has never heard of a crocodile, so he goes over to his friends and asks them.

They tell him that it is a very dangerous animal that lives in the swamps of the Amazon jungle.

Paddy is determined to have a pair of these shoes, so he sells his house, his car and his wife, and sets off for South America. Once he is there he eventually finds a man with a boat, who is willing to take him up the Amazon.

After many weeks they reach the heart of the jungle and Paddy sees a crocodile, swimming around in the swamp. So he immediately dives in and has a terrific fight with the beast. They are thrashing about in the water for over an hour until, tired and bleeding, Paddy manages to haul the dead crocodile into the boat.

With his last strength, Paddy turns the crocodile over onto its back, takes one look at it and shrieks: "My God! It has got no shoes on!"

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.

The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here