Who is this man osho?

Question 1:

Prem Garima, Chintan is certainly passing through a difficult stage, but everybody has to finally pass through the difficult stage of death.

Only a meditator is capable of passing through it as if it is a joke. He can pass through it laughing and singing, because he knows that the fire cannot burn and the death cannot destroy him.

There is no sword that can cut him.

He belongs to the eternal life.

Once a small glimpse of the eternity is achieved, there is no life which can be destroyed by anything. It can be removed from one form into another, but death cannot do more than that -- just the changing of the house.

To the non-meditator death is the end, to the meditator, a beginning. It is a new beginning, a fresh beginning, freed from the old rotten body, the old mind. It is a resurrection; every death is a resurrection. But if you don't know it, you will die unconsciously without experiencing the beauty of resurrection.

If you can die consciously, death is only a door into a new life on a higher plane. But to die consciously, one has to live consciously. You cannot manage to die consciously without a long, meditative, conscious life. Only a conscious life is rewarded with a conscious death -- it is a reward, but only to the conscious man. To the unconscious man, it is the end to all his efforts, ambitions, desires. There is only darkness ahead, not a single light and no possibilities left.

Death simply takes away the whole future.

Naturally, the unconscious man is immensely afraid and deeply trembling, knowing that death is coming closer every day. Since your birth the only thing that has been certain is death; everything else is uncertain and accidental. Only death is not accidental; it is an absolute certainty. There is no way to avoid it or dodge it. It will catch hold of you in the right moment at the right place.

I have always loved the beautiful Sufi story...

A king dreams in the night that a dark shadow is putting her hand on his shoulder. He looks back. He is horrified. It is just a dark shadow, but the shadow speaks and says, "There is no need to be worried. I have just come to inform you -- it is not routine; you are a great king; it is an exception -- otherwise I never come to inform anybody. I come without any information."

The king said, "But who are you?"

The dark shadow laughed and said, "I am your death, and be prepared. Tomorrow, as the sun will be setting, I am going to come to you."

Naturally, this nightmare woke him up. Even after he was awake, knowing well that it was only a dream, he was trembling and perspiring. And his heart was beating so loudly he could hear it himself. He immediately called the council of all his wise men, and particularly the royal astrologers, prophets, and told them the dream. He asked them the meaning of it -- is it true that death is going to happen? The astrologers may be able to figure it out.

The wise men, the philosophers, the astrologers, the prophets, all started arguing about the dream. Perhaps it was the first dream analysis! But they could not come to any conclusion, just as they cannot come to any conclusion today. All the dream analysts, the so-called psychoanalysts, differ in their interpretations. You take the same dream to all and you will get different conclusions about the dream. You will be more confused than ever.

And so was the situation of the king from the middle of the night till the morning; he became more and more confused because everybody was saying something different.

And when the sun started rising, the old man who used to serve the king... He was not only a servant, he had helped the king from his very childhood. He had taken care of him, because his mother had died and his father had appointed the man to take care of the child because he was his most trustworthy bodyguard. So the king respected him almost like his father.

The old man said, whispered in his ear, "These great thinkers and philosophers and astrologers have argued for centuries and they have never come to any conclusion; do you think they will come to any conclusion within twelve hours? Forget it; that is not possible. These are the people who know only how to argue; they never come to any conclusion. They argue well but the question is not the beauty of the argument, the question is what is the conclusion of all your philosophies? There is no conclusion at all.

No two philosophers agree with each other."

The king asked him, "Then what do you propose?"

He said, "My understanding is let them discuss; there is no harm. But you take our fastest horse and get away as far as possible from the palace. It is dangerous to be at this place, for at least the coming twelve hours. After the sun has set, you can start turning back, but not before that." It looked practical. The old man said, "These people can go on arguing; there is no need to stop them. If they come to any conclusion, I will follow you immediately. The best way is towards Damascus, another capital of another kingdom. So I will know where to find you, to give you their conclusion. I will come behind you."

The king was convinced by the old man. He left all those great philosophers discussing, and slipped quietly out of the palace with the best horse he had. The whole day the horse was running as fast as possible. They did not stop to eat or even to drink water. It was not a time to think of water or food. And the horse seemed to be in a certain understanding that it was a very critical moment for his master.

They reached near Damascus, just outside the city, as the sun was setting. They stopped in a mango grove and as he was tying the horse to a tree, he patted it and he said, "You prove to be a great friend. You have never run so fast before; you must have understood my situation. And we have come hundreds of miles away."

As the sun was setting he immediately felt the same hand on his shoulder from behind.

The shadow was there and said, "I also have to thank your horse. I was worried whether you would be able to reach this place at the right time or not. That's why I had come to inform you. This is the place destined for your death, and your horse has brought you right on time."

Whether you run or you stay it doesn't matter death comes. Death has started coming closer to you from the very moment you were born. In what form it comes does not matter.

Bertrand Russell has said that if there were no death in the world, there would have been no religion. He has some great insight there: without death, who was going to bother about meditation? Without death, who was going to bother to know about the secret mysteries of life? One would have remained always concerned with the mundane and the worldly. Who would have turned inwards? There would have been no Gautam Buddha.

So death is not just a calamity, it is a blessing in disguise. If you can understand, if you have this much intelligence -- that after birth, death is approaching every moment closer - - you will not lose your time in trivia. Your priority will be to know what this life is before it ends: Who is living in me? What force? For every intelligent man and woman this is the priority. Everything else is secondary to knowing oneself.

Once you know yourself, there is no death.

Death was only in your ignorance.

In your meditative consciousness, death disappears just as darkness disappears when there is light brought in. Meditation brings the light in, and death is found to be the greatest fiction. It appears only from the outside that somebody is dying. From the inside nobody has ever died, and that is where your life source is.

Chintan is taking his death very joyously, very peacefully. He will die consciously. He is giving every indication that death cannot make him unconscious, cannot knock him unconscious. He will retain his consciousness, and he will have a laugh as he will be dying, because the whole world is living in an illusion.

Life is neither born nor dies.

It has been before birth; it will be after death. Birth and death both are small episodes in the eternal stream of consciousness and light.

Garima, you are asking for some jokes for him....

Giovanni bumps into his friend Alfredo on the streets of Rome, and notices that his friend is looking very depressed.

"How was your holiday in-a Miami Beach?" he asks.

"Mama mia," replies Alfredo. "It was-a terrible. I go-a to Miami and check into-a bigg-a hotel. In-a the morning I go down to eat-a breakfast. I tell-a the waitress, 'I wanna two pissis-a toast.' She bring only one piss. I tell-a her, 'I want two piss.' She say, 'Go to the toilet.'

"I say, 'You no understand, I wanna two piss on-a the plate.'

"She say, 'You better no piss on da plate, you sonna va bitch.' I don't even know the lady and she call me sonna va bitch!

"Later I go eat at the bigga restaurant. The waitress brings me a spoon and knife but no fock. I tell-a her, 'I wanna fock.' She tell me, 'Everyone wanna fuck.'

"I tell her, 'You no understand. I wanna fock on-a da table.'

"She say, 'You better not fuck on-a table, you sonna va bitch.'

"So I go back to my room in-a hotel and there is no shits on-a my bed. I call the manager and tell-a him, 'I wanna shit.' He tell me to go to the toilet. I say, 'You not understand. I wanna shit on my bed.'

"He say, 'You better not shit on-a bed, you sonna va bitch.'

"I go to the check-out desk and the man at the desk say, 'Happy Holidays, Peace to you.'

"I say, 'Piss on you too, you sonna va bitch, I gonna go back to Italy.'" Just tell Chintan: Avoid Italy and go anywhere else.

Question 2:

Prem Samarpan, everybody is certainly beautiful. When I say this, I mean potentially, I do not mean actually. If actually everybody was beautiful, this world would have been a paradise.

Potentially everybody is beautiful -- yes, even Ronald Reagan. But the actuality is what matters. Actually, he is the ugliest man today, Adolf Hitler number one. Kaddafi has called him "Adolf Hitler number two." I made a statement that Kaddafi should correct his statement. He is not Adolf Hitler number two, he is Adolf Hitler number one. The real, poor Adolf Hitler, has become number two.

Adolf Hitler had very little power. Ronald Reagan has millions of times more power, and he is as fascist and as fanatical as any Adolf Hitler. This is the actuality.

Everybody is beautiful but everybody does not prove to be beautiful, because very few people attain to their potential; they go astray. They don't grow to be what they were born to be. They grow in an insane society and naturally, learn the whole art of being insane.

Because here, whoever is more insane will be the winner.

The sane person will stand out of the race. And the insane will not take any note -- whatever happens to him or to others, and whatever the cost, he is going to be on the top.

Your presidents and your prime ministers are your most insane people. Their right place is in madhouses, but they are ruling the whole world. In three thousand years they have managed five thousand wars. And the insanity has gone on growing; it has not been stable. Today it has reached its peak, and Ronald Reagan is standing on almost an Everest of nuclear weapons, ready to destroy the whole of life on this beautiful planet.

Hence, I have to make this strange statement: I love him; I respect him as a human being if he comes back to sanity... but he is going more and more insane and senile. Retarded, he has always been. It would have been perfectly good if he had remained in Hollywood as a cowboy actor. But when he became the president, he started behaving in the same way as if he was acting in a cowboy film.

It is real life; it is not a film, but he has not been able to assimilate the fact.

When he became the president, he came to the White House with his only friend, a chimpanzee. Now, if you cannot find any friendship in human beings and you find friendship with a chimpanzee, it shows something about you. It also shows something about the chimpanzee -- that he is an intelligent fellow.

On the first day they had both gone for a walk on the beach. An old drunkard watched these two fellows. He could not believe it and he could not resist the temptation either.

He went close to them and said, "Mr. President, it does not look right to have a chimpanzee as your friend. It is humiliating to the whole of America."

And as Ronald Reagan was going to say something, the drunkard said, "You shut up -- I am talking to Mr. President."

This man Ronald Reagan has gone completely astray, and he is now the most powerful man. In the hands of a great insane person is so much power that you are living moment to moment in tremendous risk. He can blow up the whole earth just by pushing a button, and I don't think that he will hesitate to do it.

His fanatical and fascist mind is capable of doing any idiotic thing. He has behaved with me, with my people, with the commune -- a group of meditators in a desert, just five thousand people in a vast desert of one hundred and twenty-six square miles, far away from any American town, at least twenty miles away from any town... He became so much interested in destroying the commune -- which had not done any harm to him, or to his country -- just because he could not tolerate a peaceful commune, joyous and happy and celebrating.

Hundreds of news media people and visitors from all over America had started coming to see what was happening: how in five years we had transformed the desert into a beautiful oasis. My garden alone had three hundred peacocks, and the commune had almost two or three thousand deer. It was such a dream come true.

As the news started spreading in America, Ronald Reagan began to fear that people would ask: If these people can turn even a desert into an oasis and can live so beautifully and so peacefully, with no court, with no law, with no government, why should the richest country of the world not live as peacefully and as joyously and as lovingly?

Why should there be thirty million beggars on the street in America? And we had absorbed a few hundred beggars into our commune. Those beggars could not believe it when we behaved with them on equal terms. They wrote letters to me saying, "For the first time we have recognized that we are also human beings. You have given us dignity and respect; otherwise, we had been treated almost like dogs, stray dogs."

Ronald Reagan and his government became absolutely antagonistic for the simple reason that we were so successful in creating a utopia. He could not tolerate us; he destroyed the commune. He had the power; he arrested me for no reason. He fined me sixty lakh rupees for no crime, and after that I was deported from America and the commune was crushed.

Now, where there were five thousand people living, and where every year on festival days for one month, there used to be twenty thousand sannyasins -- a great festival of love and joy and meditation and silence and creativity...

After I was out of America, his own U.S. attorney gave a statement in a press conference that they had no evidence against me of any crime; hence, they could not send me to jail.

Moreover, they did not want to make me a martyr. That shows their deep desire -- they wanted to kill me, but they prevented themselves because that may have strengthened the sannyas movement around the world. Thirdly, he said, "Our priority was just to destroy the commune and not allow Osho into America for fifteen years."

I was not thinking that they would continue their harassment, but even today that harassment continues. They have forced all the governments of the world to pass laws so that I cannot enter -- not only America, but any country in Europe. Now this is absolutely criminal. Wherever I was, he forced that government to deport me.

Just the other day I found out that one archbishop of Greece has been caught at the Paris airport, hiding a large amount of heroin in his religious paraphernalia. I was deported from Greece and I was just a tourist. I was going to be there for only two weeks more; I had already been there two weeks. I was deported on the demand of the archbishop, the highest authority of the Greek Orthodox church, on the grounds that my presence in Greece will destroy its tradition, will destroy its religion, will destroy its morality.

I could not believe that we are living in the twentieth century. I had not even left my house, the compound. And if a religion, a morality, a church, twenty centuries old -- because the Greek church is the oldest church as far as Christianity is concerned -- can be destroyed by a tourist in two weeks' time, is it worth saving?

But the force behind was Ronald Reagan. In Uruguay I was given a one-year resident's permit. The president was interested in me. He had been reading my books and he was very happy that I had come to Uruguay. That would open the door of Uruguay to international visitors, sannyasins. It is a poor country and it would be an economic help to the country. It is a beautiful country, a small country.

But as I was given the one-year resident's permit, immediately, special agents from Ronald Reagan arrived. And Ronald Reagan himself phoned the president of Uruguay, saying, "Osho has to be deported within thirty-six hours. You have a choice: If you want to keep him in Uruguay, you can, but then you have to return all the money that has been given to you as loans in the past; that comes to billions of dollars. And the money that you are going to get in the coming two years, which also comes to billions of dollars, will be canceled. You can choose."

The secretary to the president of Uruguay told me, "I have seen for the first time, tears in the eyes of the president, and he said, 'Osho's coming to Uruguay at least has made one thing clear to us, that we are living in an illusion that we are independent. We are not even free to accept a guest in our country. Now America is blackmailing us. They know that we cannot pay all the loans; we don't have... and we cannot afford to have the future loans withdrawn because all of our plans for the coming five years will have to be dropped. Our whole economy will collapse.'" He agreed, "I will send Osho away, although it is against our legal court and against the constitution of Uruguay. Once you give a man one year's residence, unless he commits some heinous crime -- murder, rape, or something of that category -- you cannot take away his residential status. But I am ready to commit something against the constitution.

I will send him; I will persuade him to leave by himself."

But Ronald Reagan insisted, "No, he has to be deported; he has not to be persuaded to leave."

The president of Uruguay begged him that this was going too far: "In the first place he has every right to stay, because he has not committed any sin. He never goes out of his house. Secondly, to deport him what cause will we show?"

President Ronald Reagan was stubborn. "That is not our problem, but he has to be deported."

The president of Uruguay tried. He sent a messenger to me, "Shift your jet plane from the international airport to a small airport nearby. And leave from there, because the American Embassy is watching the international airport. There will be no need for us to deport you."

But American detectives must have been watching the president; they must have been watching me also. Before I reached the small airport, the American ambassador was there ahead of us and he had phoned the president to send all the officials with all the necessary documents for deportation: "Without deportation he cannot be allowed to leave the country."

I was deported. I had to be stopped for two hours at that small airport, and for no reason.

But they have made my passport a historical document. I had been deported from twenty- one countries without any reason -- against the constitutions of twenty-one countries.

Reagan's idea has been to close the whole world to me and then force the Indian government -- which he is doing continuously -- to allow no sannyasins to reach me. I have been informed by my friends from Washington that the attorney general said, "Our whole effort will be to completely silence Osho."

One reporter asked, "What do you mean by silence? Do you mean that he should be assassinated?"

The attorney general said, "No, we don't mean that, but it will almost be assassination."

The strategy is that no other country allows me to enter. My country of course cannot deport me, but it can prevent people from reaching me.

Many television companies have written saying, "We are continuously being refused. We are asking to come to Poona; they immediately refuse, and they don't give any reason why."

Newspapers have been refused permission to reach me. Thousands of sannyasins from all over the world have been refused visas. Somehow thousands have already got their visas, because now I have taken away the orange robe, the mala -- so they cannot figure out whether the person is a sannyasin or not.

I am not a serious man, so I have told my sannyasins, "If they ask you, simply ask, Who is this man Osho? Do you want us to go to him? Where is Poona? We were never thinking of going but you seem to be interested..." Although many people have got visas, some have been turned back from Bombay airport and from Calcutta airport, back to their countries. This is because, the American government has given the Indian government a whole list of the people who were living in the commune. They are asking continuously, that every sannyasin who is here should give the police commissioner his full address and how long he is going to be here, so that, even if you have reached me one time, the next time you cannot. We have not given any names; we have asked them, "On what grounds are you asking? If you are asking one religious institution, you should ask all the religious institutions of the country to keep a record of anybody who comes there and make a report every day. And if you want, you can open an office in front of the ashram, and anybody who comes you can take his name. That is your business; that is not our business. It is not our concern and it is against our philosophy and religion to discriminate between people of different countries or different races, or different colors. And we will not do anything against our own thinking."

So they are at a loss what to do, because if they do anything against the constitution we are going to fight. But Ronald Reagan goes on insisting. The American Embassy goes on insisting to the Indian government to prevent people from reaching here. Twice, the American Embassy has been here to watch how many people there are around the ashram. And now the police commissioner has asked US, "Why does the American Embassy come again and again to the ashram? This is strange."

They should ask the American Embassy. How do we know? And why should we bother?

If all the embassies of the world start coming it is perfectly good. We are not doing anything criminal here.

But this man Reagan has lost his humanity.

Prem Samarpan you say everybody is beautiful -- but everybody does not actualize his beauty, does not actualize his consciousness. Everybody is capable of enlightenment, but that does not mean that Ronald Reagan is enlightened. Everybody is beautiful, but that does not mean that when you see a beautiful cobra, you should not avoid it. Even if you are enlightened, please avoid it! Appreciate the beauty, but avoid it.

What is the difference between a dead snake lying in the road and a dead politician lying in the road? Whom will you avoid first? If Ronald Reagan is lying dead on the road and a dead snake is lying on the road, I suggest, although both are beautiful, that you avoid Ronald Reagan first! Politicians cannot be trusted whether they are really dead or not.

And if you see a politician and a snake lying dead, you will also see one thing: there will be skid marks in front of the snake, not in front of the politician.

Question 3:

Prem Maharaj, all that I want to say to you is in my gaps. I use the words only to create gaps. So when I am simply looking at the pages, I am giving you a chance to receive the message which cannot be said in words, which can only be relayed, transferred, in utter silence.

There is an ancient proverb: "People will believe anything, if you whisper it." Particularly if you want the women to hear anything, whisper it! But I go one step further. If you really want to express the truth, don't say anything about it, just leave the gap. Let people hear without your saying anything. That's the only way truth has always been transferred -- from one silent heart to another silent heart.

In utter silence is the only possibility to meet, to merge, to share.

A joke for you Prem Maharaj. The purpose of the joke is not the joke. The purpose is the laughter that follows, because in that laughter your thinking stops. In that laughter, you are no more mind. And after the laughter, just a very small gap and I can reach to the deepest core of your being.

An Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Russian were arguing about the nationality of Adam and Eve.

"They must have been English," the Englishman offered. "After all, only a gentleman would share his last apple with a lady."

"They surely were French," the Frenchman asserted. "They were so hopelessly in love."

"They could only have been Russian," declared the Russian. "Who else would walk around naked, have but one apple to eat between them, and think they were in paradise?"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation