Too much doing

Question 1:

India is in a political mess. The reason lies in its past history.

Before the British government, India was never one country. It was divided into hundreds of small kingdoms. There was no political system; the word of the king was the law. The credit goes to the British government that it put it together and made India a country.

When India was struggling for freedom, my family has been continuously involved in the movement.

Everybody had been to jail, everybody had been beaten, everybody had suffered. But I was not in favor of independence at that time. I said, "Independence needs a certain clear conception of what you are going to do after freedom. Freedom simply gives you the opportunity to do things, but you have no idea what you are going to do after freedom. And this will bring a tremendous turmoil in the whole continent."

The freedom fighters were involved so much in the fight, they could not conceive a certain political system that would work after freedom. On this point I am absolutely against the British kingdom, that it left India in chaos. It had found India in chaos. In two hundred years of effort the chaos has settled - under pressure - not because of any understanding.

I used to say to my father, "The moment India becomes free there will be chaos again, because the pressure will be gone. This peace, and India living as one country without any inner conflict, is superficial. Once the pressure is gone, all their old rivalries - thousands of years old - will surface again." They are surfacing.

To understand India's position clearly one has to conceive of India as almost a continent. It is not a small country. Switzerland, England, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Germany - countries like these are just the size of states in India, and there are thirty states there. It can become thirty countries any day; it has the population, it has the land, and the fight has started for that, because these thirty states speak different languages, have different civilizations, different culture. There is as much difference between them as between countries.

The only hope is that the present prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, is not a politician. He is a non- political man, and that is the only hope. The politician functions for his own interest; he looks at everything through political eyes.

In Rajiv Gandhi I see a great hope, because he is the prime minister but without any political ideology, without any political system in his mind. And that is one of the most necessary things in India. There is no need for it to have a particular system like America or Russia, because each country has its own problems and its own ways of dealing with them; it has its own history. India needs a new perspective for itself.

If a communist is prime minister of India, then there is a system already in his mind that he is going to impose on the country. If a Gandhian is the prime minister, then he has his ideology to impose on the country. The country becomes secondary, the people become means to fulfill a certain end that the politician has decided.

It is because of this that forty years of independence have gone in vain. India has fallen lower and lower, more chaos has erupted, because they were following two things. The British system, which was their inheritance, was not applicable to India. The British bureaucracy that was left behind in India was trained for a certain purpose, and the purpose was to keep the slave country a slave forever.

Those same people are running the Indian government. Now India is independent, but those people have minds which are applicable only to slaves.

So the first thing for Rajiv is to eliminate the whole British bureaucracy that has been left behind. It is against India's future, India's freedom. New blood should enter the government, and the new blood should be taught not to be bureaucratic. In an independent country the government is the servant of the people. In a slave country the government is the master of the people, and the people are just slaves.

The change is so big that the old bureaucracy has to be eliminated. Otherwise, they will continue their old mind and their old strategies and they will not allow India to feel its freedom.

So that is the first thing, that the British bureaucracy should be finished with. And it can be, there is no problem in it. Those people are old, near retirement. Give them retirement; even if it is not time for retirement, still they have to be retired.

Clean the Indian bureaucracy completely of the British impact. Bring in new young people who have no idea of being the masters, but come into the government to serve the people. That should be their basic understanding: that they are servants and the people should be respected.

The old bureaucracy has learned in the British Raj a strategy to go on postponing everything. There was no hurry.

One of my friends - in age he was very old, but we had a certain communion of thoughts - has been fighting a case for almost forty years, and still there is no decision. All the judges who have tried the case died. All the advocates who have been involved died.

The case was against four persons who had published a new history of India, because Britain was teaching lies to Indian students. They published a new history; so the publisher, the printer, the editor, the sub-editor - they were all charged.

The book was banned and a case was started somewhere in 1915, and continued even after freedom came. The government changed; only one person - the writer, Pandit Sunderlal - remained, out of all the people who had been involved in some way in the case. I asked him - he was ninety - I asked him, "When is this case going to be finished?"

He said, "Only when I die, because then there will be nobody left."

The bureaucracy goes on postponing. A file in India about anything moves so slowly.... That has to be changed. Mao did it in China, and has been immensely successful.

Every case has to be finished within three days; in fact, even three days are more than enough.

There is no need for advocates and legal experts. Then things can be finished soon; they are the people who make complications, raise complicated questions, argue, question. And this goes on for months. That is their business; the longer the case goes on, the better.

India is so poor, it cannot afford this luxury of advocates, legal experts. Why not put the people directly in the court? Then the case can be finished in three days. That's what Mao did.

In the ordinary legal profession around the world, this dictum is followed: even if ninety-nine criminals are freed, one single innocent person should not be punished. That's why it takes so long. Unless it is proved that you are criminal, you are innocent.

This is good for rich countries, luxurious countries who have time, and who have money and who can go on.... One innocent person should not be punished, even if ninety-nine criminals are released.

The idea is good, but not for a country like India. In India the dictum should be: even if ninety- nine innocent people have to be punished, it is okay, but not a single criminal should get out of the reaches of the law. He should be punished. Once it is clear, things will become simpler for Indian jurisprudence.

Rajiv Gandhi has to introduce more and more non-political people into the central government and on the state level.

You will be surprised that in India there have been education ministers who have never been to any school. They could not even sign their own name. Instead of a signature they had to put a fingerprint. And they were education ministers!

Now India has thousands of geniuses, great professors, academicians, but they are not political.

There was no way for them to enter politics.

This is the duty of Rajiv, because he himself is not a politician, and this is a great opportunity to throw out politicians from the government and bring in non-politicians, but experts in their subject.

An education minister should be a vice chancellor, a dean, a professor - somebody who knows about education.

Up to now the situation has been just the reverse. Politicians who know nothing of education become vice-chancellors. And the same is true about everything.

The government has an Information and Films Bureau that should be in the charge of some actor, dramatist, author-people who are concerned with literature. And the government should start weeding out politicians and bringing in geniuses who would not come to politics on their own; they have to be invited.

That's what Kennedy did in America. When he became president, that was one of his "crimes." He brought all the geniuses of the country in some way or other into the government. He invited them, he supported them.

The politicians of the country could not tolerate it, it was too much. Their whole profession was going into the hands of non-politicians. And certainly they prove better, because they know their subject, what they are doing.

The assassination of President Kennedy was a political conspiracy, for the simple reason that he was weeding out the politicians, out of their power positions, and bringing in people who were never known to have any political aspirations.

It will be dangerous for Rajiv, but the challenge has to be accepted because India is falling apart, becoming poorer every day.

The politician always thinks of his future election. He says things which people want to hear, and he never opens his mind about what he is going to do.

The politician is the hypocrite par excellence.

Rajiv has to collect colleagues who are non-political, who will say only that which they are going to do and which they are capable of doing.

You ask me what kind of political system India should have. In fact, no political system is perfect.

The best way is to choose the best part from every political system. There are things which are beautiful in the Soviet system. There are things which are beautiful in the American system. There are things which are beautiful in the British system.

India need not follow a particular system in its totality. The question is not the system, the question is how to provide people with the best.

In forty years, India has been following - knowingly or unknowingly - the old British system. They should see that the British system is a dying system. Britain has no future. It has a beautiful past, it has seen the greatest heights of power, it has been the biggest empire in the whole history of man.

It was said that the sun never set on the British empire, and it was true. Somewhere or other the sun was rising, and the British empire was around the world; wherever it was rising, it was rising on the British empire. Now the situation is totally different. The sun will never rise in Britain. It is going down the drain. That is a natural consequence of exploiting, torturing, murdering, killing people for three hundred years.

Britain has forgotten how to be creative. It has lived for three hundred years just looting other people; it became a parasite. Now the consequence: Britain is always in the dumps, depressed, economically going down, is uncreative. And there is no hope of making another empire again.

Empires are of the past; in the future, empires cannot exist.

Britain has lost its nerve, but in India, the British political system is still continuing. This is dangerous, because that system has led Britain to its dark period. It has to be abandoned.

Every country should have a system that is suitable to it. Communism is not suitable to India, for the simple reason that there are no riches to be distributed. They can only distribute poverty, that's all they have.

Yes, a few people are rich. But in a country of eight hundred million people, if ten families are super- rich, what does it matter if you distribute their wealth? You will make ten more poor people, that's all. Communism is not suitable for India.

India has to have a system chosen from the best of all the systems. It can create a policy of its own.

There are a few problems that may be helped if something from the Soviet Union is chosen - for example, population growth. There is no democratic way to stop population growth. The population growth can be stopped only under a dictatorial regime: it has to be forced.

If you try to persuade Indians it will take hundreds of years, and meanwhile they will be producing so many children that by the time you have convinced them about birth control, it will be of no use:

they will have filled the whole country with so many people that it will have become impossible.

So India has to be very strict about population growth. It has to support those people who use birth control methods. Birth control materials should be free. And secondly, anybody who is practicing birth control, and is not producing children, his income taxes should be less, and his other taxes should be less.

Right now it is a very stupid situation. On the one hand the government goes on saying to the people that the population has to be stopped, birth control has to be used. And on the other hand, the more children you have, the less income tax you have to pay. This is a contradiction.

It seems compassionate that the man who has more children should pay less taxes because he has to take care of the children. But who is responsible for those children? And you are giving an incentive to people to produce more children! All incentives for population growth should be stopped.

A person who remains without children his whole life should be rewarded in every way.

This is going to be something undemocratic, but it will create the situation for democracy one day.

Democracy needs a certain situation to blossom, to flower.

My suggestion to Rajiv is that if an emergency measure is needed, it should be imposed without your having any fear of being called dictatorial. It is better to be dictatorial than have the whole country dying, starving, in hunger.

You will be surprised, what man has done to man in hungry and starving situations. In Bengal when there was so much poverty and the rains had not come for three, four years, people sold their children - just for a few rupees. Mothers ate their own children! Hunger is such a thing... When death is standing before you, who cares for democracy?

Democracy is the luxury of a rich society. Become rich, and democracy will be yours.

So India has to be eclectic in its political system. It should choose something from China, because Mao has been immensely successful in preventing population growth. It should learn something from America, because America has been able to produce more wealth than any other country, more technology, more industry.

But it is possible only if India drops Gandhism and its idiotic ideas. It is possible for Rajiv to drop it. It was not possible for Jawaharlal or Indira to drop it, because they both had grown up under Mahatma Gandhi's influence. It was Mahatma Gandhi who made Jawaharlal the prime minister of India.

But Rajiv is completely out of the influence of Mahatma Gandhi. He is only forty years old; he must have been two years old when Gandhi was assassinated. The new generation has no inclination towards Mahatma Gandhi. The older generation is conditioned by Mahatma Gandhi and his eccentric ideas.

Rajiv has to clean the government of Gandhism. That is poison, because it is against technology, against science, against industry, against mechanization, against everything.

Then how are you going to survive? It will be impossible to survive. If Gandhi is followed word for word, India will be committing suicide. And if it happens, then Rajiv will be responsible for it. Now he has the power to eliminate Gandhism completely. There is no need of such a philosophy which teaches back-to-nature.

I am also a lover of nature, but I say "Forward to nature," not back to nature.

Nature should not be destroyed by technology. On the contrary, technology should be in harmony with nature. It is in our hands what we do with technology. Technology can make nature blossom more. It can help nature come to its potential.

And India has to be technical, industrial, scientific. In the Indian universities the emphasis should be more on science, technology, industry, the latest developments of agriculture. And all those stupid subjects which mean nothing... What are you going to do with the dates of, when Tamerlane came into power, when Nadirshah raped the whole continent? Don't waste time on unnecessary things.

Eliminate them.

Now in India every child has to learn three languages. This is too much. One is his mother language, the second is the national language, Hindi. And third, he has to learn English, because Hindi will not help him to know much that is happening in the world in literature, in science, in technology. And Hindi will not help him to communicate with his own countrymen. There are thirty languages totally different from each other. Now, to force three languages on a child is wasting his mind, his energy.

Reduce the number of these languages. One language is the best, but if it is difficult, then two languages at the most.

Simple things have to be done. All efforts that go into war, and all money that goes into war have to be put into technological and scientific development.

In this world where there are such big nuclear powers, you should not bother about war. And India should be... she has the opportunity to declare, "We dissolve our armies, we dissolve our war efforts; they have already become meaningless. We can be invaded by nuclear powers without any difficulty, so why give them even a little difficulty? If they want to invade us, let them!"

Welcome them. There is no need to fight; welcome them and tell them, "You also can be part of the country. You be here. We are poor, you will have to be poor with us; we can share our poverty."

I am reminded of a story of a Mohammedan mystic. He used to live in a small cottage, just one room. One night when it was raining hard, somebody knocked on the door. The room was so small that just the mystic and his wife could sleep; there was no place for the third person.

The wife said to her husband, "Keep quiet, because there is no space."

The mystic said, "There is. You open the door! A stranger... so much rain, a dark night, the city is far away... No, this is not human. Open the door."

His wife opened the door. She said, "But what are you going to do?"

He said, "There is room enough for two to sleep. It is enough for three to sit, chitchat, talk." So they all sat and started talking, asking the stranger about his experiences.

At that moment there was another knock. The stranger was near the door, and the mystic said to him, "Open the door, somebody is in trouble."

The stranger said, "But there is no space!"

The mystic said, "If I had listened to that argument, you would not have been here - that was the argument of my wife. There is space. It is enough for three to sit; it is enough for four to stand. You open the door!"

The door was opened, another stranger came in. They stood up, they talked about things. Then there was another knock, and this time it was a strange knock.

The mystic said, "Open the door."

But they said, "It is difficult." The last comer was close to the door; he said, "It is absolutely impossible!"

The mystic said, "Nothing is impossible. We are standing, we will just have to stand a little closer.

But the stranger cannot go."

When they opened the door... it was a donkey. The strangers and the wife all said, "This is too much!"

But the mystic said, "It does not matter who is the stranger. We never asked you, 'Who are you?'

You were in difficulty; he is in difficulty."

They allowed the donkey in. Now they had to stand very close to each other. One of the strangers said to the mystic, "You follow a strange philosophy."

He said, "There is nothing strange. All that we have is our poverty; we will share it with anybody. All that you need is a heart which is willing to share. The rich man's palace has many mansions in it, but you will not find entry. The space is there, but the heart is missing. This is a poor man's hut; the space of course is very limited, but the heart is unlimited."

India can stop all its war efforts, and put all its army - which is one of the biggest in the world - to work in the fields, to work in the factories, to work in other fields of creativity.

The whole army simply exists and waits for a war. It can be declared that India is not going to war with ANYONE. "If anybody wants to come here, we will be his host and we will share whatsoever we have. He can come. There is no need to come with weapons, he can simply come and say, 'I also want to be here.'"

Some country has to pioneer the greatest revolution in the world: a declaration of no war, no defense.

Rajiv, being a non-politician, can understand what I am saying. I had said the same to his mother when she was the prime minister... she heard me. She was one of the most intelligent women I have come across. She said, "You are right, but I cannot do anything. Whatever you suggest is right, but you don't know politics. We think about everything politically.

"We appointed the education minister knowing that he is the worst person to be an education minister. But he has votes. He has money to purchase votes. He donates to the party millions of rupees. Without him we cannot manage - and he wants to be the education minister. That is simply a political bargain."

She told me, "If I even mention your name, my deputy prime minister, Morarji Desai, immediately freaks out. He says, 'Don't read that man's books and don't listen to him and his advice. And don't meet him, because he is absolutely against politics and we are politicians.'

"And none of my colleagues are ready.... Everybody understands what you are saying is right, but nobody is ready, because it will disrupt their constituency, it will disrupt their prestige with the voters.

It will create troubles." So they are looking only for their own power and how to continue in power.

Nobody is interested in the country.

I hope Rajiv will not fall into the same trap. And I trust that he has no desire to become a politician.

While Indira was alive and the prime minister, I had suggested to Rajiv, "You start getting ready. Start being more in contact with your mother, because one day perhaps you will be the prime minister."

And he said, "No. I am not going to be in politics ever. I don't like the whole game." Being the son of a prime minister, grandson of another prime minister, he remained a pilot. He said, "I am perfectly happy being a pilot."

It was simply out of necessity; when his mother was assassinated he had to come into politics, unwillingly. He has no political ambitions, and that is a great hope.

India has maintained a policy of neutrality for forty years-not being either in the Soviet camp or American camp, but remaining neutral to both. The idea was that if you are neutral to both, both will be friendly to you. But in reality, just the opposite happened. Both are suspicious of India. Because you are neutral, nobody knows: in a situation when your support is needed, which camp will you support?

Drop that idea of neutrality.

I am not saying become part of a camp. There is no need to become part of a camp. But drop the idea of being neutral; mix with both the camps and allow both the camps to help you. And both will compete in helping you. If you are neutral they both stand aloof.

Now declare that you are part of the whole world, you are not neutral, you are friendly to everybody:

"It makes no difference whether the other person is Russian or American; we are in positive friendship with the whole world."

Neutrality is a negative word. It shrinks you, it keeps you away. And if you are so far away, nobody is going to bother about you and nobody is going to trust you.

Drop the idea of neutrality and create the idea of friendship. Do you see the difference between the two? "We are a friend to the whole world, we are not against anybody, and we don't interfere in anybody's area, territory. We are perfectly happy if Russians want to be communists, we are perfectly happy if America does not want to be communist. But as human beings, we are friends to all. Your ideologies are your problem. We connect with human beings, not with ideologies."

And being in a positive, friendly relationship with the whole world, you will be supported from every source; everybody will trust you, and you need the trust.

Open the country to the whole world. In forty years, India has become almost a closed country - closed in the sense that no foreign industrialist will create industry in India, because the fear is that the country can go in for nationalization any moment. Make the world aware, "We are not going for nationalization." Make it a guarantee that anybody who wants to invest in India is welcome.

India has the cheapest labor in the world. The same commodity in America will cost eight times or ten times more. If it is produced in India, it will be cheap. Use the Indian labor. Indian labor is unemployed. And tell the whole world, "You can invest your money, your money is safe." Make it a guarantee, a contract, "Your money will never be nationalized." And there are millions of people in the world who have money, who want to invest it. And they cannot find cheaper labor than in India.

India will get employment; the unemployed poor will no longer be poor. India will learn, through all these people, techniques, technology, new industry. And these countries will have cheaper commodities than they can produce in their own country.

Certainly they will have to send their experts. They will be able to employ more experts, and India will be helped by the new experts coming from the rest of the world. You can learn from those experts.

It has to open its door, welcome everybody who wants to come in, and create an atmosphere of friendship towards all.

Ideologies don't matter at all, you cannot live on ideologies alone. You need first, bread. Jesus says, "You cannot live on bread alone." That is only a half statement. The other half has to be remembered:

you may be able to live with only bread, but you cannot live without bread at all.

India needs to be introduced to the new, contemporary world, and there is not much difficulty - just a non-political mind is needed. And I am happy that Rajiv has a non-political mind, is intelligent, very active, industrious, understanding. And if India misses Rajiv, there is simply darkness ahead, because in India there is no other national leader.

There are people like Morarji Desai still alive, but he has passed ninety years of age. He has been senile for thirty years; now it is risky. These people should be in mental asylums, and they are moving freely around in the country, talking all kinds of nonsense.

Morarji believes that if you drink your own urine that is a total medicine, a cure-all. He drinks his own urine the whole day, and he preaches it.... Now, such idiotic ideas... because urinating is really taking all the poisons out of the body. That's its function. Anything in your food that is not good for your body should be taken by the urine out of the body as quickly as possible. Drinking it is something for which you need to be certainly thirty years senile - at least.

PS:BelovM?BELOVED OSHO

Question 2:

There is no difference at all.

Every sannyasin, wherever he is, has a heart-to-heart connection with me.

That's the whole meaning of sannyas.

Sannyas is not an intellectual conviction; it is a kind of love affair. So where you are does not matter.

The question is important. Certainly, I am here... it makes a little difference to the people of this commune. I go on hammering on them for intensive and total life, for joy, for dance, for song - morning and evening, five hours continuously.

In the other communes I am not physically present, but what I am saying to you will reach within two days all over the world, in every commune. They will have the videos, the tapes. The distance makes no difference at all. They just have to understand that what I am saying is not only to the people of this commune, it is addressed to every sannyasin wherever he is.

And we have made an exchange program, so that sannyasins will be coming here from other communes, and sannyasins from here will be going to other communes. So those in other communes can learn the intensity and totality here, and the people from this commune can teach the intensity and totality there.

Soon we will make it a world-wide moving commune - people from one commune moving to another commune. My idea is to create a belt of sannyasins around the earth.

So don't be worried. You will pick up. There will be a few differences which are found here too. For example, the Italian sannyasins cannot be German sannyasins. They are spaghetti, what can you do? Slippery, greasy - beautiful, but Italians will be Italians. And I don't have any complaint about it, it is perfectly good to be an Italian. But the Italian commune cannot be so intense, it is bound to be a little lazy, but there is no harm.

In your laziness, be intense and total!

Of course, the German sannyasin has a different approach. He will be hard-working; he will be serious, he cannot understand jokes. But slowly slowly... Here he starts understanding jokes.

But real Germans, like my Haridas who has been with me for fifteen years, still ask others "What is the meaning of this joke? Why were people laughing so much?" But there is no harm in it. If you don't understand a joke, you don't lose anything.

So there will be differences between the communes in every country. In England they are bound to have long faces, very serious; the whole burden of the earth is over their head. They used to call it - when their empire was around the world - the white man's burden. They are always complaining, grumpy. But this gives variety.

We have all kinds of people, and I don't want them to become all exactly alike. This gives richness; the variety makes sannyasins the richest people in the world. So these small differences will be there.

Other communes are also picking up. Seeing this commune functioning in such a beautiful manner, they are also picking up in their own way.

I am available to each of my sannyasins as much as I am available to people here, because my physical availability is not of any importance.

Your feeling of love knows no distances of space and time.

Wherever you are, your heart is turned towards me.

Each of my sannyasins is connected to me directly.

There is no pope in between.

You have to understand the structure. Each sannyasin is connected to me directly. Because you all are connected to me directly, you have a certain love towards each other. But your connection remains individual.

I don't want to create a mob.

My whole effort is to create unique individuals.

And all types of people are accepted with respect. The lazy one has his own uniqueness, and we can use his laziness. Just a little intelligence and you can use everything... because the lazy man can be a good meditator. Sitting silently, doing nothing, and the spaghetti prepares itself!

Italians are bound to be different from Indians or English or Germans. But as far as their sannyas is concerned, their love towards me is exactly the same.

Just a few days ago one Italian journalist - a lovely and intelligent person, was taking my interview.

I told him, "I recognize my people immediately."

He asked me, "What do you mean?"

I said, "I have recognized you. You are going to be my sannyasin soon!"

He looked all around, because he had perhaps never thought of sannyas. He has come to know the commune, the sannyasins, what is happening here. And just the other day, Savita informed me he has taken sannyas.

Intelligence, wherever it is, is going to belong to me sooner or later.

You ask if any man dying here within a twenty-five-mile radius will become enlightened: the same will start happening in other communes soon. I am preparing for it. I am consolidating small centers into bigger communes, because a certain quantity of energy is needed.

So if a commune has at least five hundred sannyasins, it will start having a five-mile radius. It can have a twenty-five-mile radius too, but that needs at least one enlightened person to be in the commune. That too, is possible... because my whole understanding of enlightenment is a very simple one.

Anybody who is ready to be a little courageous can become enlightened.

Enlightenment is your potential.

It is not something far away that you have to reach.

You don't have to go to Everest and sit there to find enlightenment.

I have heard a story that when Edmund Hillary reached Everest, he could not believe his eyes: a Hindu monk was sitting there in a lotus posture, meditating! Before Edmund Hillary could open his mouth, the Indian monk said, "How much for the watch?" On Everest he is meditating, and asking the price of the watch! He should have been in a market. But the mind does not change, you can change places. You can change from a market and go to Everest, it does not matter to the mind.

But enlightenment is everybody's potential.

Wherever you are you can become enlightened. You just have to drop all the crap that others have given to you.

You have to be courageous enough to face nothingness, utter silence. And in that moment - a split moment - everything has changed.

So soon my communes will be having enlightened people, a few of the communes already have.

Then the radius will become twenty-five miles there too.

There are enlightened sannyasins. It is just out of gratitude that they don't want their names to be declared. While I am here, they don't want themselves to be declared as enlightened. I would love to declare them, but I can understand their difficulties. People will start feeling jealous, people will start feeling competitive. People will start finding faults in them. Why create trouble for those people? But their energy will be used.

Somebody has asked, "Osho, You say, 'My people will be going there to the other communes.' It hurts. Aren't the people in other communes your people?"

They are my people... but don't be concerned too much with my language. And if I say "My people here will be going to my people there," it will simply make the sentence unnecessarily complex. And "My people from there will be coming to my people here".... Don't feel hurt; all sannyasins are my people. And many more who are not sannyasins are also my people, on the way!

And I have opened a new area of sannyasins, that is, underground sannyasins - a special concession for communist countries, Mohammedan countries, the Middle East.

To me, wearing red clothes and a mala does not mean anything. To persuade you, I may give great explanations, esoteric, supernatural meanings of the color and everything. But in fact, it is just to give you an identity and the courage to stand in society alone.

It will make you strong, because everybody will be hostile. And it will give you a chance also to spread my word, because people will start asking you, "What has happened to you? Have you gone crazy? nuts? or what? Why do you go on wearing red clothes and a mala and the picture of this madman?"

They don't mean anything, but they are useful instruments for shocking people outside. If somebody is shocked, that means that is the beginning of his sannyas! His heart has already received its first shock, now many more will be coming.

But in communist countries they will simply imprison people, persecute them, kill them. In Mohammedan countries, they will simply kill them. Then it is pointless.

There, my sannyasins are underground sannyasins. They don't wear red, they don't wear the mala.

Still they are being persecuted, still the government is trying to find out who are the people in connection with me.

People are being called by the KGB in Russia to be interviewed continuously every week, tortured with the same questions.

I have received the message, "Should we say who we are?"

I said, "There is no need to tell those idiots. It is enough that you know who you are."

But underground or overground, the moment your heart opens towards me, I am with you wherever you are.

Question 3:

I am not only certain, I am absolutely certain. It is my experience, because in many lives I have worked with many people who were seekers of truth. And whosoever became enlightened never returned.

I have seen enlightened people dying and unenlightened people dying. And both the deaths are so different.... The enlightened person, dying, becomes just a luminous light which spreads and goes on spreading all over existence. And the unenlightened does not become a luminosity, but just a dark spot which moves from this body and enters into a womb.

I have not said anything about it, because I don't want to give you anything that you have to accept as a belief. It is my experience, but to you it will remain a belief till you come to see the death of an enlightened man, and you are alert and aware enough to see the luminosity that does not go to another womb but simply becomes the whole.

Just wait; when I die you will have existential experiential proof of what I am saying. If you are in a hurry, I can die now. You have just to say. I can give you the proof, but then I cannot come back. So think it over, and tomorrow write the question again. If I receive your question again, then tomorrow I die and you can see what happens here, just in my chair.

As you become aware, you will become aware of many things which you cannot relate to others, because it is not their experience.

I am not telling you everything that is my experience. Perhaps one day - because I am a man of the moment - I may decide one day to say everything, whether you can experience it now or later. But up to now, I have tried not to say anything that becomes a belief in you. I don't want to clutter your mind with beliefs. I want your mind to be uncluttered so that everything that I say you can translate into experience immediately.

For this question, remember, with anybody dying - enlightened or unenlightened - sit silently without any thoughts. Just watch and you will see one of two things. If the person is enlightened, a luminous light is released and goes on spreading like a cloud of light all over existence. And if the person is unenlightened, you will see just a dark spot jumping out of the body and almost immediately entering some womb somewhere.

Try it. Otherwise, finally I will be there, and I will give you the existential proof of it.

Question 4:

All fear is of the unknown. Anything that you do not know you feel afraid of, naturally. Who knows what it will turn out to be?

But this is one of the essentials of sannyas, that wherever you feel something unknown and a fear arises in you, that is the place to enter in spite of your fear, because the unknown carries the mystery of life.

From the known one has to move into the unknown.

And only the person who has become accustomed to entering into the unknown without fear becomes aware of a new dimension, the unknowable.

The unknowable is the ultimate experience.

The unknown is just the bridge between the known and the unknowable.

Question 5:

Doing nothing is difficult because it has no challenge for your ego. Your ego lives on challenge. The more difficult a thing, the more your ego is nourished in doing it. Not doing anything, ego starves.

And if you continue not doing anything the ego dies.

Meditation is nothing but a preparation for the death of the ego.

That's why meditation means doing nothing - just being. Difficult, hard, but not impossible. And once you have tasted the simplicity of doing nothing, and the relaxation of it, it becomes easier and easier.

To me, doing something is the problem. Many people have asked me why I go on keeping my left leg over my right leg the whole time. Just doing anything is difficult, even to move the legs! I leave them to meditate. And they know me, that nothing is going to change my approach. They go on sitting for hours the whole day.

Somebody has asked, "Why, Osho, have You stopped leaving your shoe on the floor?"

Just the same thing. First, taking your foot out of it, and then putting your foot in it again - too much doing! Okay?