Chapter 20

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only. The interviewer's remarks have been omitted where not relevant to Osho's words]

QUESTION:* BHAGWAN, ALMOST TWO MONTHS AGO I MADE THE INTERVIEW TOO FOR BRAZILIAN NEWSPAPER, AND THAT INTERVIEW HAS PROVOKED A STATE OF SHOCK THERE. ONE WEEK AFTER THE PUBLICATION, THE SAME NEWSPAPER MADE INTERVIEWS WITH PRIESTS, INTELLECTUALS AND HOMOSEXUALS. ALL WERE AGAINST YOUR STATEMENTS. I BROUGHT SOME OF THE REACTIONS AND I WOULD LIKE YOU TO COMMENT.

FATHER DOMINGOS*, ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT AND PROGRESSIVE PRIESTS IN BRAZIL, SAID, "MR. BHAGWAN IS PROPOSING JOY. IS IT ENOUGH FOR BEING HAPPY TO HAVE GOOD HOUSE AND GOOD FOOD? AND HOW TO LIBERATE THE SPIRIT?"

HE IS ALSO SAYING THAT YOU DON'T HAVE GOOD INFORMATIONS AND THAT YOU DON'T KNOW THE WORK OF THE CHURCH WITH THE POOR, AND ESPECIALLY THE POPE'S STATEMENT WHICH SAYS, "WHEREVER IS PRIVATE PROPERTY THERE IS HUMAN MISERY, AND THE CHURCH HAVE TO FIGHT AGAINST IT."

ANSWER:* There are so many things in that statement.

First, the church has private properties. So what the nonsense he is talking about? The first thing the churches should do, they should disown private properties if they mean business. Otherwise this is bullshit.

Rome has the most richest private ownership than anybody else, and pope is the head of the biggest private empire. What kind of service they are doing to the poor? They are creating poverty in the world. Being against birth control, being against abortion, being against the pill, they are creating poverty, more population than the earth is capable to support. This is the service to the poor?

You create the poor and then you serve the poor.

In the first place, why create the poor? There is no need for poverty in the world.

If the church drops its stupidity against birth control methods, the poverty can disappear. But they would not drop that. Not that any spiritual thing is involved in it, but for the simple reason that if there are not poor people, whom they are going to convert into Christianity? Whom they are going to make Catholics?

They need orphans, they need beggars, they need starving people because only they can be converted.

In India I have looked for almost half a century for a single rich man who has been converted to Christianity. I have not found. All the people who have been converted to Christianity are the poor people.

Poverty is their whole game -- power game. Greater the number, bigger is their power. It is simply the politics of numbers.

Secondly, service to the poor is very necessary for the Christian. If there is nobody who is poor, then you cannot go to heaven, you cannot be a saint. Your whole base of the religion disappears. The poor is a must. He should exist because only stepping on the shoulders of the poor people you are going to become a saint, you are going to reach to heaven and be rewarded by God.

But if everybody is comfortable, happy, luxurious, who needs your service? And without service there is no Christianity. The whole Christianity depends on the idea of service: service is religion.

If service is religion, then the poor, the sick, the old -- they are absolutely needed.

Without them the whole edifice of religion will disappear.

And he is saying to me that I do not know.

I have lived in one of the most poor countries of the world and I have seen how the poor people are being exploited by the Christians.

They are exploited by the Christians, they are exploited by the communists. Very strange bedfellows, Christians and communists. Kremlin and Vatican together.

Pope the Polack sleeping with Josef Stalin.

The communist needs poor people. Without the poor his revolution dies. They both need the poor.

I want to destroy poverty. And to destroy the poverty, the first thing is to destroy the idea that poverty is something spiritual. It is not.

Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor because they shall inherit the kingdom of God."

I say to you, "Cursed are the poor because they have already inherited the kingdom of the devil."

Why give them hopes which cannot be fulfilled, promises which cannot be kept?

All these hopes and promises prove only opium to the people and nothing else.

So the first thing is that poverty has nothing spiritual about it. It is nothing blessed. It is a curse, because when you think poverty as something spiritual, blessed, God-given, how you are going to destroy it? It seems very contradictory.

Mahatma Gandhi in India was telling that the poor are the children of God. That means God is looking very well after his children. And who are the rich?

Children of devil? Then I think it is better to choose devil as your father than God. He is looking far better after his children.

On the one hand Mahatma Gandhi says the poor are the children of God and poverty is something spiritual. And on the other hand he wants poverty to disappear.

I see a contradiction there. Do you want spirituality to disappear? Do you want God's children to disappear?

And what Mahatma Gandhi is saying is nothing but pure Christianity. He was ninety percent Christian. In his life, at least four times he was on the verge of becoming a Christian. He was constantly thinking of becoming a Christian for the simple reason because no other religion teaches service to the poor.

The first thing to me is to withdraw the idea that poverty has something divine in it.

The second thing, the poor person has to be made clear that most of his poverty is created by himself.

Rich people produce very few children. It is the poor who go on creating children by dozens. And the spiritual teachers of all religions help them to produce children by dozens.

These people are serving the poor or creating more and more poverty, making the world more and more poor?

So the second thing is that the poor should understand their responsibility. For thirty years, total birth control -- no children. That will be true service.

Thirdly, the poor are in the grip of the priests of different religions. They may give them different explanations. For example, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, they say, "You are poor because in your past life you committed grave crimes.

This is the result of it. The theory of karma. You have to suffer it. It is better to be finished with it; suffer it silently, patiently, without any complaint and without any grudge so that in the future life you are not born poor.

Now, this is a very great strategy to distract the mind of the poor from the social structure, the economic structure which makes him poor and give him a phony explanation for which no proof exists, no evidence. And a simple logic is enough to destroy it and its credibility.

You put your hand in the fire. Will it burn now or in the next life?

Action certainly brings its consequence, but it is connected. It is not disconnected and so far away that one death has to happen between. There seems to be no reason why.

You do something good, you should be rewarded now. No. In the next life you will be reaping a great crop of joy, happiness, comfort, luxury -- but in the next life.

Strange. What is the connection? Why the consequence should be so delayed?

Nobody knows about the next life. Nobody knows about the previous life. That gives the priest a good ground to deceive the poor.

The reality is that he is economically exploited right now. So his eyes have to be taken away from the past, away from the future, and focused in the present. He has to fight for his rights now. He produces and somebody else enjoys the fruit.

And the priests go on helping him to remain patient.

No.

I cannot say that. Enough is enough. Some impatience is needed. Some revolution is needed.

And the poor has to revolt.

And the church has been nothing but a protection for the rich. It is using the poor in two ways: making its number bigger by serving the poor, opening the hospitals, schools, so making his bank balance in the other world better, and, secondly, he is protecting the rich. And because he is protecting the rich, the rich are pouring their riches into the churches.

From where all these riches have accumulated in the Vatican? From the poor people or from the God? Who gives all these donations to the Vatican? All these big cathedrals, churches in thousands around the world -- who creates them?

And for what purpose?

The rich people bribe the church because church is a very great protection against revolution.

I want to destroy poverty completely, but with the poverty the church will die together. It has no place at all anywhere.

The poor should stop producing more population and should put their whole energy not in future lives in paradises but fighting for their right, because they produce and somebody else goes on becoming richer and richer. They go on producing and they go on becoming poorer and poorer.

Strange kind of economy.

This economy has to be changed.

But the church has no place then, because whom will it protect? Revolution will burn this social economy and these churches and temples and mosques and all their bogus ideologies.

I do not respect poverty. I respect wealth.

And I say blessed are the rich because theirs is the kingdom of God -- right now.

It is not a question of tomorrow.

And wealth has not been understood well. Wealth is a creation. Everybody is not a Henry Ford just as everybody is not a Picasso.

You respect Picasso for his genius, because he paints in such a unique way that only he can do it. But you never bother to give some respect to Henry Ford. He also creates something which is far more important than Picasso's paintings. He creates wealth.

Man can live without Picasso's paintings. Man cannot live without wealth. And Picasso's paintings can be purchased. But wealth has to be produced, you cannot purchase it.

If the population of the earth can be reduced to one-fourth of what it is now -- and what it is now is the responsibility of all these idiots: bishops, cardinals, priests, popes....

For thirty years I have been talking about birth control. It has brought me only condemnation. Stones have been thrown at me, poison has been given to me, knives has been thrown at me, efforts to kill me has been made. That was my reward because I was talking about birth control and the priests became alerted.

In thirty years time India has doubled its population. When I had started talking it was only four hundred million. Today it is eight hundred million. If they had listened to me, they would not have been poor. Only fifty percent of the country is poor. That means these four hundred million people that have increased have made the country poor.

But I was condemned in the name of morality, in the name of God, that I am teaching something immoral, that if people start using birth control methods then there is a possibility of immorality spreading.

I had encountered Hindu priests, Jaina priests, Buddhist priests, and I asked them, "Then your moral people are not very moral. Then it is just the fear that if they make love to some other woman than their own wife and she becomes pregnant, they will be caught. They will be in trouble. So it is only the fear that is keeping them moral. This is not morality. If they are really moral, birth control methods cannot make them immoral. There is no reason."

And they had no answer to it.

They were using the name of God, that God is giving birth to children. And I am teaching people to prevent children. That means I am against God.

I had an encounter with one of the shankaracharyas, the equivalent of pope to the Hindus. I asked him that, "What are the basic qualities of God?"

He said, "That is irrelevant for the subject we are discussing."

I said, "It is not irrelevant. If you are not courageous to say because you are afraid, you will be caught into it. I will say -- that all your scriptures give God three qualities: that he is omnipotent, all-powerful; omniscient, all-knowing -- past, present, future; omnipresent, everywhere present. If God has these qualities and he can make this whole universe from nothing...."

Because there was nothing. In Hindu scriptures God makes the universe out of nothing. Naturally, they have to accept that position because if there was something already then God is not a creator. Maybe a contractor. If he has to be a creator, then there must not be anything: no matter. Out of nothing he creates this whole immense universe.

"Do you accept it?"

He said, "Yes, I accept it."

I said, "Such a God. Cannot he remove a small pill? If a man is using a condom, cannot he make a small hole in it?"

Omnipotent God, just needs a little safety pin. And he is all-present, everywhere.

Even in your bedroom while you are making love he is just between you and your beloved. He can make all your condoms punctured before you use them.

"So why you should be afraid? He cannot even make a small hole in the condom.

He cannot change the quality of a small pill. And you still want to call him omnipotent, all-powerful? Then drop these qualities. And if you want to keep these qualities, then drop your argument against me, that I am telling people to do something against God.

"The other quality of God is that he knows everything. So whether the person is going to use birth control methods or not, he knows from eternity -- before this person was even born. He knows that he will use birth control methods. It is not out of his knowledge.

"And if he wanted, he could have prevented the scientist who created the pill. It is such a small thing. Just before he was going to create it, his heart would have stopped -- and there would have been no pill and no problem.

"If God has allowed the pill to happen, birth control methods to be manufactured, it is according to his will. You are talking against God, I am not talking against God."

But the problem is poor illiterate, uneducated people. They cannot understand subtleties of arguments.

If they had listened to me, India would not have been poor now.

If they still listen to me, India can recover from poverty. Otherwise, by the end of this century, India's population will be one billion. It will have gone beyond China. For the first time in the history it will be the biggest, the largest populated country in the world. Otherwise it has always been number two. China has been number one.

Poverty can be stopped, but not by service. How long Christians have been serving the poor? Two thousand years. And the poverty has been increasing.

Strange kind of service, that you go on serving the poor and the poor go on increasing.

A true service will be that the poor decrease and disappear.

My suggestions are very simple.

Create one world. Nations are outdated.

Create one world government, because unless there is one world government the fear of war will always remain. And war goes on taking seventy-five percent income of every nation. Every nation is just surviving on twenty-five percent of its income.

Just think if hundred percent income is available to the country, it will change the whole face. Poverty need not be there.

One government, one world -- then there is no need for nuclear weapons. Then there is no need for having big armies. It is sheer foolishness that millions of people are just sitting unproductively, doing nothing, just polishing their guns.

Every morning doing the march: left turn, right turn, forward, backward.

Polishing their boots.

And it is not one or two person. Millions of people around the world.

All these people should be working, producing.

And they are given the best food, best clothes. They are given the best hospitals, the best doctors, best surgeons, best medicine. They are to be kept in perfect health because any moment they may be needed for war.

So these useless people are getting the best and doing nothing.

One world means there is no need for such big armies. Maybe a small police force is enough -- just for hooligans, Mafia, small gangs of criminals. But there is no need for nuclear weapons, atomic plants, and no need for millions of people simply go on polishing their guns.

The poverty can be so easily eradicated. If we can create one world government, then we can create the World Academy of Sciences. So all the scientists of the world, who are right now in the service of death, can be put in the service of life.

There is no need to go to the moon. When the earth is starving, you are wasting billions of dollars to go to the moon -- for what?

Whenever I think the first man standing on the moon, I always think he must have thought, "What the hell I am doing here? It is good that nobody is seeing.

Otherwise I must be looking silly. There is nothing to see."

And so much effort, so much science, so much technology for something utterly useless.

A world academy of sciences will put all the efforts into producing better food, more food, better fruits, new fruits. In Soviet Russia they have done some crossbreeding between fruits: apple crossbreed with lemon. A new fruit which has never been in existence, with a new taste.

You can create thousands of new fruits, new crops, new food.

You can make this earth a paradise without any difficulty. All that is needed that the worship of death should be stopped. The possibility of war should be completely eliminated. The humanity is one, hence there is no question of war.

National governments can exist, but they will be only functional because they won't have any armies. They will be just like post office, railway board.

Nobody cares who is the head postmaster general. There is no need to know about him. All that is needed is that you receive your post in right time. It is a functional thing.

As nations lose their war machines, politicians lose their significance. They should disappear from the first pages of newspapers, televisions, radios. They have no need to be there. Those pages should be given to the creators: musicians, poets, people who have done something to make life more richer, more glorious - - mystics, those who have opened doors of new mysteries of consciousness.

Right now everything is simply insane.

And it can be put right very easily. Only the intelligentsia of the world has to stand up courageously and say that, "Now it is time. That we don't want any nations. That we don't want any passports and we don't want any visas. This whole earth is ours."

There are countries where people are dying without food. In America thirty million people are dying by overeating. Now, this is incomprehensible. These thirty million people in a world which is dying with hunger are simply psychologically sick.

And they are also dying, because they are eating too much.

You will find these people always near the freeze, always something or other.

Either they are drinking something ... if nothing, then they are chewing gum. Just mad people.

I cannot conceive anybody chewing gum. And these people are educated people, have educational degrees, maybe professors in the universities -- and chewing gum! They should be hospitalized. Chewing gum cannot be forgiven! I have compassion for all, but not for people who are chewing gum. Compassion cannot be stretched that far. Just their mouth has to continue, go on doing something.

And they are perfectly aware that people are eating. They don't have even water to drink. For four years there has been no rains in Ethiopia so all water has evaporated.

In Europe they drowned millions of tons of oranges in the ocean -- just few days before -- because keeping them in the market was lowering the price. Just to drown them, they had to waste one hundred thousand dollars -- just to throw them in the ocean. And nearby in Ethiopia people are dying with thirst.

If the world is one, this cannot happen. Then wherever, whatever is needed will be moved. If there are too many oranges in Europe, they should be moved to Ethiopia. If there is too much wheat in Russia....

There was a time when there was too much wheat, that they were burning wheat in the railway trains instead of coal. People are dying around the world, but in Russia they are burning wheat because that is cheaper than burning coal.

In one world this will be absurd.

There are countries where is so much coal you can take coal to Russia. Wheat can move to countries where it is needed.

Now Russia is almost one-sixth land of the whole world, but the population is only two hundred million. More people can be absorbed there. Sixth part of the land, and the world population is four billion, and they are only two hundred million.

They talk about friendship with India. They should take at least two hundred million Indians to Soviet Union.

They have such a vast land. It is because of their vast land that all the conquerors who have tried to conquer Russia failed.

Napoleon Bonaparte failed because the land is so big, by the time you reach Moscow winter comes -- and a winter which only Russians can survive.

The same happened to Adolf Hitler. The same stupidity he committed. And the same was the result. Russia simply was trying to postpone, playing hide-and- seek, waiting for winter to come. And once winter sets in, then nobody can survive. All your vehicles stop, your planes no more function. Everything becomes frozen. Your people have never seen such cold. Their blood seems to be frozen.

You cannot win, for the simple reason, the land is so big that whatsoever you do.... It spreads from one corner of Europe to almost the other corner of Asia. It covers two continents.

If there is one world government, it will be very simple to divide population, to help people move, to make it possible for crossbreeding, to mix races -- because better children are produced.

Farther away are the parents, the best is the product. It is true about trees, it is true about animals, it is true about man. It is not good to go on getting married in the same small community. It gives retarded children, it gives blind children, it gives at the most normally stupid children -- which make the majority of humanity. Just normally stupid.

This whole scene can be changed. All that is needed is intelligent people of the world should stand up, because it is a cause for which no sacrifice is big enough.

My idea of serving the poor is not the idea of Christians. They have served enough, and nothing has happened.

And my people don't want to go to heaven anyway. So that is no more a motivation. And my peoples understand it, that it is their responsibility. Why they have been continually producing children? For their responsibility.

Why we are to destroy our own growth, our own silence, our own way of life?

They don't listen to us. They listen to the priests.

Then they should ask the priests that, "Ask your God. He gives the children.

Now he should give bread, he should give butter and he should give other things too."

Otherwise, hang your priests in every church.

What is the need of keeping Jesus Christ statue hanging there? Hang a real priest in every church! These are the criminals.

On the front of the Vatican, hang the pope, because these are the people who have been teaching you wrong things, and they have led you into this situation.

My people want to live happily, and if you want to learn to live happily you will have to learn the ways my people are living. If these people can be happy, if these people can be without children for four years, then what is the problem?

If for four years these five thousand people were also producing children, here also we would have been really poor. But we have understood that we don't want to be poor, then don't increase the population.

It has been asked to me again and again, "Then how You are going to increase Your commune?"

I said, "What is the need of increasing it? And if there is any need, we purchase readymade clothes."

They say, "What do You mean?"

I say, "There are readymade people already all around the world. Others are producing. We can pick up from anywhere. There is no need for us to produce.

If we need people, people are all over the world too much. We can invite. We can choose.

When you give birth to a child, you cannot choose. You don't know whether he will be crippled, blind, paralyzed -- who knows what? It is better if our commune has more than its needs and feels that we can bring few children. There are so many orphans in the world -- choose the best. Adopt them.

But we are not going in the same way to serve them. Let the Christians do it. It is not my philosophy. It is not my responsibility.

Q:* STILL THE SAME PRIEST. HE IS ASKING IF MR. BHAGWAN HAS CALLOUSES ON HIS HANDS. AND MORE, HE ASK, "MR. BHAGWAN, HAVE YOU BEEN HUNGRY? HAVE YOU BEEN CRYING YOUR LIFE? DID YOU LOVE ANYONE IN YOUR LIFE?"

A:* I have never been hungry. And I have intelligence enough to provide food for myself even though for thirty years I don't have a single cent with me. But I live the way only an emperor can live.

And my hands have done never anything. These are the most bourgeois hands in the whole world. But they are very expressive. All that they do, they speak.

And there are many things which I cannot say, but my hands can say. That's the only work they have done. And I think they have done it beautifully.

And I am perfectly proud of it. It has been my creation. Every gesture is creative.

As for loving, I have loved more people than anybody else in the whole history of man. And I have received love also in the same way, more than anybody else in the whole history of man.

And I don't see why people should be hungry. They are hungry because they have been following stupid teachings of Jesus Christ. They are hungry because they are following still the moral code five thousand years old written by Manu in India. All kinds of garbage they are carrying as holy and trying to follow it, which deprives them.

For example, in India Mohammedans are the second biggest community after Hindus, but they are very poor. I was continuously wondering what is the reason that all the Mohammedans in the whole country -- and India has the biggest number of Mohammedans than any country. Although it is not a Mohammedan country, but it has the biggest number of Mohammedans than any other country. Why they are all poor?

And as I looked into their scriptures, I found the reason. The reason was that they have been prohibited by Prophet Mohammed that interest is a sin, so never give money on interest, one thing. Never take money on interest.

This is the reason they are poor, because they cannot take money on interest and they cannot give money on interest. And the whole economy functions on interest. You take money from the bank on interest, you take loan from the government on interest, but they cannot take it. It is sin.

Now, a stupid idea keeps them poor. Am I responsible for it? Should I go and serve them?

If they are hungry and poor, this is one reason.

The second reason, Mohammed has given them the opportunity that they can marry four women. If one woman marries four men, that will be very helpful in reducing the world population. One woman can marry as many men as she wants, there is no harm. It will not create more poverty because she can give only birth to one child. How many husbands she has makes no difference.

But one man and four women is a dangerous thing. Now that man can have four children every year. So Mohammedans are having more children than anybody in India. Naturally, every man goes on dividing his poverty into so many children, they all end up almost like beggars.

They cannot do anything, they cannot be well educated because the money is not there. They have to do very unskilled work which cannot pay much. Now who is responsible for this?

And why Mohammedan priests go on telling them to marry four women?

Because that increases the number of Mohammedans. That's how they have become the second biggest religion in the world. Christianity is first, Mohammedanism is second. And if they continue creating children with four wives, any day they can surpass Christianity.

Their only problem is how to find four women, because nature produces in a very balanced way: almost the equal number of men and women. So the idea of having four women creates criminals. They will rape some woman.

Now, Hindus will not accept a woman back if she has been raped by a Mohammedan. Hindus think they are the purest race. Now that woman has fallen. The Mohammedan has to marry her.

If a Mohammedan falls in love with a Hindu woman, she has to marry the Mohammedan.

So they have to search in every possible way for as many women as they can manage. And because they have four women, the men become lazy. They start living on women's labor.

Now, the women are illiterate. What they can do? They can do cleaning or things like that. But four women can manage at least one lazy man. So men become lazy, women are burdened with work, with children, and poverty goes on growing.

My approach is very simple. I trust in man's intelligence, and if people put their intelligence together....

For example, five thousand people are here. If they were living in the old way, the family way, then there would have been at least one thousand families. One thousand kitchens. One thousand women unnecessarily engaged in kitchen, cleaning, washing clothes, bringing up children.

And naturally, a woman who has nothing else than just to keep up the house somehow together becomes irritated, annoyed, angry, because she has no scope for her own growth. She has no sky to fly. And her whole anger becomes arrowed towards the husband. So directly or indirectly she is nagging. She becomes a pain in the neck -- literally. But she is not responsible.

Every family is miserable. Children are a torture. They are a continuous nuisance. She has to keep up with those children the whole day. And the whole day she is burning, boiling inside. And this man, her husband, is responsible for this all. Naturally there is continuous fight, continuous quarrel. Life is not a joy, and poverty is bound to be there.

In this commune families have dissolved.

I am against families because family is the unit of the nation, of the society, of the church. If family dissolves there cannot be any congregation, there cannot be any nation, there cannot be any church.

Five thousand people can be taken care of by one kitchen far more efficiently, in a far better way. And only very few people are involved in the work.

Few people can take care of the whole commune's laundry. There is no need for them to worry about it. Few people can take care of the cleaning of the whole commune.

Economically it saves much. Economically money becomes irrelevant. In the commune there is no transfer of money. There is no need. Clothes we purchase wholesale for five thousand people. Naturally they are cheaper than anybody can purchase. Everything that is needed we purchase wholesale: medicine, shoes.

It is cheaper.

And whatever is saved can make the commune more comfortable.

And because the family is dissolved, the barriers between people are no more there. Five thousand people feel almost as one organic unity.

They work for themselves. They work hard because they know they are working for themselves. If they are making houses, they are making for themselves.

In the outside world everybody is working for somebody else. That makes work a burden, a necessity, a slavery. You have to work because you need money.

Here you work because you want your commune to live more comfortably, have all modern equipments available.

The world has passed the family. It is unnecessarily hanging around and keeping people poor.

Cities should be divided into communes, not in families, and every commune should look after itself. And everything should be common.

It is just a question of little intelligence, not a question of service to the poor.

And we have enough intelligent people around the world who can manage it.

And they will have to manage it, otherwise we cannot survive. Okay?