Avoid the priests

Question 1:

Devageet: When all else fails, read the instructions.

Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.

Moscow is the city where, if Marilyn Monroe should walk down the street with nothing on but shoes, people would stare at her feet first.

When people agree with you, you must be wrong.

Women's minds are cleaner than men's; they change them more often.

After thirty-five a man begins to have thoughts about women. Before that age he had feelings.

I have told Devageet, "You must cut your sex life to half." He inquired of me: "Which half? thinking about it or talking about it?"

The human race never solves any of its problems -- it only outlives them.

Assumption is the mother of all screwups.

What you resist, you become.

No matter how many excellent decisions you make in a working day, people will only remember the single bad one.

No man is lonely while eating spaghetti -- it requires so much attention.

You can always find what you are not looking for.

In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.

Don't ever prophesy, for if you prophesy wrong nobody will forget it, and if you prophesy right nobody will remember it.

One can survive everything nowadays except death.

Evil, what is evil? There is only one evil: to deny life.

If you can keep calm while all those around you are freaking out, then you don't understand the problem.

Inscription on the tombstone of Peter the Pessimist: I knew this would happen one day.

A KGB agent comes across a Jew reading a Hebrew grammar book on a bench in Gorky Park. "Hey, Jew," he says, "Why are you bothering to read that? You know we will never let you go to Israel."

"Well," says the Jew, "I'm reading it in case they speak Hebrew in heaven."

"And what if you go to hell?"

"Ah," sighs the Jew, "Russian I already know."

So if you really want to get out of confusion, Devageet, read Russian. That's where you are bound to go!

A woman was filling out an application form at the bank when she came to the space for age. She hesitated a long time. Finally, the clerk leaned over and said, "The longer you wait, the worse it gets."

Question 2:

Taglish Bharti, almost everybody needs a push, because almost everybody is just on the border.

Enlightenment is not far away; you are not to go miles in search of it. All that you need is to open your eyes and just see clearly where you are, because in that very place and in that very moment you are already enlightened.

Enlightenment is not something that you can make a goal of, it is your reality. It is really foolish to search for it, because the one who is searching for it, is himself the enlightenment. It is not an achievement, it is a discovery or to be more correct, it is a rediscovery. You knew it at a time when society had not corrupted your mind, when you were still so small that you were incorruptible, so innocent that the society was not capable of teaching you anything to condition your mind. It is the layer upon layer of conditionings that is hiding your light.

You don't have to go anywhere.

You just have to put aside all the conditionings; but it is very difficult. It is difficult because you think those conditionings are tremendously important.

Just today I saw where one newspaper had published one of my talks in which I have said that Adolf Hitler, Krishna and Manu are not much different from each other. Obviously the editor was bombarded from all over the country with letters condemning it: "You should not publish such a thing. Krishna and Manu cannot be compared to Adolf Hitler."

Before I go deeper into it, I would like to tell you something about Adolf Hitler. I received a letter from the president of the neo-fascist party, asking me that I should stop speaking against Adolf Hitler, "because it hurts our religious feelings."

Even I was shocked. It rarely happens that I am shocked. I said, "My God, religious feelings are hurt?!"

And the president says in the letter, "Perhaps you are not aware that Adolf Hitler was a reincarnation of an Old Testament prophet, Elijah."

Now somebody is hurt because I have said something against Adolf Hitler. And what have I said? -- that he has killed millions of people single-handed, just because of a prejudice against Jews. A childish prejudice, because Jews believe -- and they have suffered for that stupid belief for almost four thousand years -- that they are the chosen people of God. Moses gave them this idea: You are the chosen people of God.

Naturally, they have been hated by everybody else. Nobody can accept, "You are the chosen people of God." And particularly Adolf Hitler was very angry. His people, the Nordic Aryans and Germans, they are the chosen people of God. How dare Jews say that they are the chosen people of God?

Of course, these two chosen people of God cannot live together; one has to be demolished! Hitler alone killed almost six million Jews and millions of other people wherever he invaded. And this is the reincarnation of a Jewish prophet, Elijah -- and he is killing Jews in millions!

And the president of the neo-fascist party is threatening me, that I will have to suffer dangerous consequences if I speak again against Adolf Hitler. And when I said that I don't see much difference between Krishna, Manu and Adolf Hitler, Hindus must have felt the same: their hearts are hurt, their religious feelings are hurt.

But Krishna is responsible for the great war in which India suffered so much. Millions of people died in the war, and he was the man who provoked Arjuna to fight. It was a family war, between cousin-brothers, Arjuna and Duryodhana. They were fighting for the kingdom, and when Arjuna saw millions of people in the battle field who were all related to each other -- because it was a family quarrel... some relatives were on this side, some relatives on that side; some friends on this side, some friends on that side.

Even the grandfather of Arjuna, who loved Arjuna immensely, was on the opposite side.

He loved Arjuna and he hated Duryodhana, but he loved the father of Duryodhana, Dhritrashtra, who was a blind man. Feeling compassion for the blind man he wanted his son to become the king -- but he loved Arjuna. Now it was a very strange, tangled situation. Dronacharya, the teacher of both Arjuna and Duryodhana -- he taught them the art of archery -- was the greatest archer of those days, and he loved Arjuna because he even surpassed his master in archery. Duryodhana was far behind, but still Dronacharya had chosen to fight on the side of Duryodhana because there was more possibility of winning. Duryodhana was a cunning man and he had one hundred brothers. Dronacharya had many wives, and being old there was nothing else to do.

Those one hundred brothers had thousands of relatives and friends. They were really powerful, they were all cunning, and they were bent upon having the kingdom.

Arjuna had only five brothers. And those five brothers were deceived by Duryodhana and his brothers into a game of gambling. And in that gambling they lost everything, even their wife. The five brothers only had one wife. Then Duryodhana sent all the brothers for thirteen years to hide in forests and mountains, saying if they were found they would be killed.

So for thirteen years they had been wandering, hiding themselves in mountains and forests, and being chased. Somehow they survived. Now was their only chance.

Duryodhana was already in power, he had the kingdom in his hands and the armies and everything -- the treasure -- and in thirteen years these people had become utterly poor, weak; they had lost contact with friends, families.

But when Arjuna saw the situation -- he was certain about his archery, and he was certain that he could win. But a great question arose in his mind: What is the point? If I have to kill my own brothers and if I have to kill my own grandfather who has loved me, and if I have to kill my own master who has created a great archer out of me... What is the point, even if I win, of killing millions of my own people? Whether they are on this side or on that side, they will be killed.

It is simply a massacre without meaning. I don't care about such a kingdom. And what is the point of sitting on a golden throne when your own people, all of whom you have loved, for whom you would have liked to live... Surrounded by their corpses, sitting on the golden throne...

Arjuna thought, I would feel so embarrassed, so ashamed that I am afraid I would commit suicide. I would not be able to tolerate that situation. If I am defeated then two million people are going to die. If I win, that victory is not worth it.

He decided not to fight. It was Krishna who persuaded him. The whole of SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA is a persuasion. Arjuna goes on arguing against war and violence, and Krishna goes on insisting, "It is your duty, it is your destiny. It is God's decision that you should fight. And this so-called ideology that you are talking about of nonviolence, of no war, of not killing is nothing but hiding your cowardice, your escapism."

So finally he managed to persuade him to be for the war. And that war destroyed this country forever. After that war -- and it is called The Great Indian War, Mahabharata -- after that great war India became poor, lost nerve, was invaded by all kinds of small tribes, barbarians, nomads; it has remained a slave country for two thousand years, such a vast country.

It is going to be the greatest country in the world as far as population is concerned, and it has been dominated by small nations, small tribes. People simply lost nerve, they simply dropped the very idea of fighting. Mahabharata, the great Indian war, was such a deep wound that India lost its guts.

If I have compared Krishna with Adolf Hitler, I don't think I have done anything wrong.

But the prejudices are such that people are not ready to see their conditionings.

Krishna was a non-vegetarian; Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. Krishna had sixteen thousand wives, and only one out of sixteen thousand was his real married wife. The remaining were all other people's wives, whom he forcibly snatched from their families, from their small children, from their husbands, from their old parents.

He destroyed sixteen thousand families and I don't think he would even have recognized those sixteen thousand women. He treated women almost like cattle. Any woman that caught his eye was immediately taken away by his soldiers to his palace.

Hitler remained a bachelor his whole life. Just for three hours before he died he married.

And the only thing he did with his wife after the marriage was to commit suicide because the enemy was dropping bombs on Berlin. He had lost the war. And the woman was insisting for years, "We should get married." But he had been saying, "Wait till I am victorious; I don't have time for anything else. Once I'm victorious and I have proved that the nomad Nordic Germans are the highest and holiest and the God-chosen race... I have no time for anything else."

When he saw that now there is no question of any victory, he is finished, the whole of Germany is gone, his capital is being bombed, he is being searched -- and he was hiding in an underground basement -- he allowed the woman... He told his secretary, "Find any priest and bring him immediately; I want to be married. Let this woman's desire be completed."

A priest was brought in the middle of the night. They were married and after the marriage he took poison, and the wife took poison. And he had ordered his people that after they were dead to immediately pour petrol over them and burn their bodies completely. They didn't even want the enemy to get any trace of their bodies.

Adolf Hitler had no habits like smoking or drinking. He used to get up early in the morning and he used to go to bed early in the evening. He was almost a mahatma, a great soul.

But Hindus will be hurt, because they think Krishna is the reincarnation of God himself; they are hurt because of a conditioning. If they have a little intelligence to see, then they can see that both persons have perpetuated war, violence, cruelty, destructiveness.

Manu has for five thousand years ruled over India, particularly its morality, its caste system, and the harm that he has done to this country is incalculable. Millions of women have burned themselves alive because of Manu, because he prescribes that every wife who is sincerely faithful to her husband should jump in the funeral pyre when her husband dies; she has no right to live anymore. Because of him millions of women down five thousand years have burned themselves alive. This is so ugly.

It is because of Manu that one fourth of India has remained untouchable. They are called the sudras; they are not accepted as human beings... subhuman beings. Even their shadow is thought to be untouchable. If a sudra passes by you and his shadow falls on you, you have to immediately take a bath to purify yourself.

These sudras have been killed for any small reason: if they have entered into a street which is prohibited to them, if they have heard even words of Hindu scriptures, the VEDAS. They were killed because it is prohibited that they should be educated and they should know anything about the VEDAS; because the VEDAS would become dirty if these poor people know anything about them.

These sudras have not been accepted in society. They cannot live inside the city; they have to live outside the city. They have remained utterly poor, and they have been doing all the dirty work of the society. They don't have any dignity, any respect. They are not accepted in any way to be human beings. You don't see them. They live outside the city in their small bamboo huts, which any time -- and this has been happening even today, any day... Hindus, high-caste Hindus, go to their villages, burn their bamboo cottages, burn living beings, rape their women and kill all of them. And it is because of Manu.

And if I have put Manu and Krishna and Adolf Hitler in the same category, then anybody who says I am wrong I am ready to accept the challenge. Rather than writing to that newspaper editor -- and that coward editor immediately has written an editorial asking for forgiveness, that it was his fault that he published my statement. It is not his fault. My statement is my statement, and I stand by it. And anybody who thinks that I am wrong I am ready for any public discussion on the point.

But just conditionings, nobody is ready to look at the actual facts. No Christian will be hurt by this because it is not his conditioning. No Mohammedan will be hurt by this because it is not his conditioning.

Your only problem in life is the religion in which you were born, the society in which you were born, the family in which you were born. But it is unfortunate there is no other way, at least up to now; this is the only way.

And because you are born in a certain religion, in a certain ideology, in a certain morality, you become so conditioned and so attached to all these ideas which are not yours. You become absolutely incapable of seeing what is right and what is wrong. This is the problem which keeps you unenlightened; otherwise there is no other problem.

Taglish, not only do you need a push, everybody needs a push, and really a hard push.

Unless you are shocked and awakened from your deep sleep, from your unconscious acceptance and identity with others' ideas, you will never become an individual; you will never come to know your own light, you will never come to know your own innocence and the flowers that blossom in your innocence.

You have to get rid of all your knowledge; you have to get rid of all your so-called religions. You have to be as innocent as a small child. You are born just as human beings, not as Mohammedans, not as Hindus, not as Christians. All these are prisons in which you have been put from your very beginning, so you have completely forgotten that they are prisons. They appear to be cozy homes; they are not.

It needs tremendous courage to drop out from these prisons. But I think every man, every woman has the courage. Just an invitation is needed, and an encouragement is needed.

And a support from a commune, from friends is needed so that you are not alone; there are other people also on the same path in the same rebellion.

Taglish, remember one thing. If you really want to be alive, contemporary, fresh, and you want to have a future not full of darkness and death but full of eternity and blissfulness, then you will have to take a little risk. A risk of dropping all kinds of borrowed knowledge, all that has been given to you by others, so that you can find what is your own.

I am reminded of one great mathematician, P.D. Ouspensky. He was world-famous when he met Gurdjieff, his master. Gurdjieff was not known outside of a small circle of seekers. He was made famous, world-famous, because of Ouspensky. But the day Ouspensky arrived to meet Gurdjieff, he had already written a very important book.

Perhaps there are only three books which can be said to be really important.

One is written by Aristotle. The name of the book is ORGANUM. It means the first principle of wisdom. The second book is written by Bacon, who is the father of all modern science. His book's name is NOVUM ORGANUM, new principle of wisdom.

Aristotle is thought to be the father of Western logic, mathematics and related sciences, and Bacon is certainly the most important figure who has created the whole of science, the whole technology that has made the West strong, rich, affluent, healthy.

And the third important book is Ouspensky's TERTIUM ORGANUM, the third principle of wisdom. This seems to be the most important of the three. And the first thing Ouspensky had written inside the book, not out of any egoism but out of sheer truthfulness, "Before the two ORGANUMS existed, TERTIUM ORGANUM, my book, had already existed, because it is more fundamental than those two, Aristotle's and Bacon's books."

It is certainly one of the most well-written books I have come across, and I have seen more books than perhaps any living human being.

When Ouspensky reached Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff was nobody and Ouspensky was a world- famous mathematician. Gurdjieff gave Ouspensky an empty paper and a pencil and told him, "Go into the other room" -- no other introduction -- "and first write down on one side what you know on the fundamental questions of life, and on the other side write what you do not know -- because this will be decisive. Whatever you know I will never discuss with you. You know it, there is no need. Whatever you do not know I will teach you."

There were at least twenty disciples sitting in that dark room, doing nothing, just silently sitting. Ouspensky had not expected such an introduction. The man who brought him had been resisting for almost nine months saying, "Unless the master says 'yes,' I cannot introduce you." And after nine months of waiting he was brought into his presence, and this was the behavior that he got.

He said, "It is strange," but he went into the other room -- there was nothing else to do.

And for the first time in his life he started thinking, Do I know it, do I know anything about God? -- and I have been writing about God. Do I know anything about the human soul? -- and I have been writing about it. Do I know anything about consciousness? -- and I have been writing about it.

He could not write a single word on the side where he was supposed to write what he already knew. He came back after half an hour and returned the paper empty. And he said, "Forgive me, I tried hard. But really I don't know anything. You will have to teach me from ABC."

This is the way to drop your conditionings. This is the way to realize your ignorance.

What your ignorance is finally turns out to be your innocence. It looks like a death when everything that you know and that you have been attached to is taken away. But on the other side it is a resurrection.

So if you really want to wake up and if you also want to become part of the great hope for humanity and the future of man, then die to the past, so that you can be reborn to the future. Less than that will not do; more than that is not needed.

Question 3:

Prem Kabir, one has to begin not by loving oneself, because you don't know who you are.

Who are you going to love?

If you start by loving yourself, you will love only your ego, which is not your self, which is your false personality. Almost everybody loves his personality; everybody loves his ego. Even the ugliest woman, if you say to her, "How beautiful you are," will not refuse to accept it.

I have heard...

Two old men meet on a street corner. "Where have you been for the past eight weeks?"

"In jail," says the second man.

"In jail? How come?" says the first man.

The second old man replies, "Well, about eight weeks ago I was standing on a street corner and this beautiful young girl rushes up with a policeman and says, 'He is the man, officer. He is the one who attacked me.' And you know, I felt so flattered, I admitted it."

How many things you have admitted that you know perfectly well are not true. People say you are so loving, so sincere, so truthful, so beautiful, so honest -- and you never deny. This is not the love I have been talking about.

Yes, I would like you to love yourself, because unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody else. You don't know what love is if you have not loved yourself. But before you can love yourself you have to know yourself; hence love is secondary, meditation is primary.

And the miracle is, if you meditate and slowly, slowly get out of the ego and out of your personality and realize your real self, love will come on its own. You don't have to do anything, it is a spontaneous flowering. But it blossoms only in a certain climate, and that climate I call meditation. In the climate of silence -- no-mind, no disturbance inside, absolute clarity, peace and silence -- suddenly, you will see thousands of flowers have opened within you, and their fragrance is love.

Naturally, first you will love yourself, because that will be your first encounter. First you will become aware of the fragrance that is arising in you and the light that has been born in you, and the blissfulness that is showering on you. Then loving will become your nature. Then you will love many; then you will love all.

In fact, what we know in our ignorance is a relationship, and what we know in our awareness is no longer a relationship. It is not that I love you; it is that I am love.

And you have to understand the difference. When you say, "I love you," what about others? What about the whole existence? The more narrow your love is, the more imprisoned. Its wings are cut; it cannot fly in the sky across the sun. It does not have freedom; it is almost in a golden cage. The cage is beautiful, but inside the cage the bird is not the same bird that you see in the sky opening its wings.

Love has to become not a relationship, not a narrowing, but a broadening.

Love has to become your very quality, your very character, your very being, your radiance. Just as the sun radiates light not for anyone in particular, unaddressed, meditation radiates love unaddressed.

Of course, first it is felt within oneself, for oneself, and then it starts radiating all around.

Then you love not only human beings, you love trees, you love birds; you simply love, you are love.

You are asking, Prem Kabir, "What does it mean to love myself?"

It means meditation.

It means to be yourself.

And nature will bring love as a reward.

Just don't listen to the priests. They are the enemies of love. They have been teaching the world to hate yourself and to hate the world, because they have been teaching either it is a sin that you were born or it is because of the evil acts of your past life that you are suffering in this life. But no religion accepts this life with joy and rejoicing, as a gift, as a reward of which you are not worthy, of which you don't claim any right. You have not earned it.

So the first thing is, avoid the priests. They have taught you life-negative values. And my effort here is to bring back life-affirmation. That's what I call loving yourself, accepting yourself not as a sinner. How can you accept yourself if you think you are a sinner? How can you love yourself if you think you are nothing but full of guilt, nothing but an accumulated past of evil acts of millions of lives?

You will hate yourself. And that's what your priests have been saying: renounce life, hate life, hate pleasure, hate everything, and sacrifice everything if you want to enter into paradise. Nobody has ever returned from paradise, so there is no evidence of any paradise anywhere, no proof, it is just a futile exercise which has never been able to come to a conclusion.

The old priest was warning his congregation about sin.

"Sin," he said, "is like a big dog. There is the big dog of pride, and the big dog of envy, and the big dog of greed, and finally, there is the big dog of sex. And you have to kill those big dogs before they kill you and prevent you from getting to heaven. It can be done. I know, because over the years I have done it. I killed the big dog of envy, the big dog of pride, the big dog of greed -- and yes, my children, I killed the big dog of sex."

"Father," came a voice from the back of the church, "are you sure that last dog did not die a natural death?"

You cannot change nature. If you can simply live naturally, transformations come. If they come, then sex disappears -- but not by your efforts. By your efforts it goes on hanging around you. The more you repress it, the more you have it. The more you live it, the more is the possibility to go beyond it.

An old couple were sitting at home one evening listening to the faith healer on the radio.

"Okay folks," he began, "God wants to heal you all. All you have to do is put one hand on the radio and the other hand on the part that is sick."

The old lady got up, shuffled over to the radio and put her hand on her arthritic hip. Then the old man put one hand on the radio and the other hand on his fly.

His wife looked at him with contempt and said, "You old idiot. The man said he would heal the sick, not raise the dead!"

Live naturally. Live peacefully. Live inwardly. Just give a little time to yourself, being alone, being silent, just watching the inner scene of your mind. Slowly, slowly thoughts disappear. Slowly, slowly one day the mind is so still, so silent as if it is not there. Just this silence... in this moment you are not here, as if the whole Buddha Hall is empty.

In this silence within you, you will find a new dimension of life. In this dimension greed does not exist, sex does not exist, anger does not exist, violence does not exist. It is not a credit to you; it is the new dimension beyond mind where love exists, pure, unpolluted by any biological urge; where compassion exists for no other reason -- not to get any reward in heaven -- because compassion is a reward unto itself.

A deep longing exists to share all that treasure that you have discovered within yourself, and to shout from the housetops to the people, "You are not poor! Paradise is within you.

You need not be beggars, you are born emperors." You just have to discover your empire, and your empire is not of the outside world; your empire is of your own interiority. It is within you and it has always been there, just waiting for you to come home.

Love will come, and will come in abundance -- so much that you cannot contain it. You will find it is overflowing you, it is reaching all directions.

Just discover your hidden splendor.

Life can be simply a song, a song of joy.

Life can be simply a dance, a celebration, a continuous celebration. All that you have to learn is a life-affirmative lifestyle.

I call only that man religious who is life-affirmative. All those who are life-negative may think they are religious; they are not. Their sadness shows they are not. Their seriousness shows they are not.

A man of authentic religion will have a sense of humor. It is our universe, it is our home.

We are not orphans. This earth is our mother. This sky is our father. This whole vast universe is for us, and we are for it.

In fact, there is no division between us and the whole. We are organically joined with it, we are part of one orchestra.

To feel this music of existence is the only religion that I can accept as authentic, as valid.

It does not have any scriptures, it need not have. It does not have any statues of God, because it does not believe in any hypotheses. It has nothing to worship, it has only to be silent, and out of that silence comes gratitude, prayer, and the whole existence turns into a godliness.

There is no God as a person. God is spread all over: in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, in humanity, in the wise, in the otherwise.

All that is alive is nothing but godliness ready to open its wings, ready to fly into the freedom, ultimate freedom of consciousness.

Yes, you will love yourself and you will love the whole existence too.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.