Chapter 26

[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]

INTERVIEW WITH M. ARCHANA, NAWBHANATH, INDIA

A: Humanity has lived for thousands of years, and has got/now(*) a wrong notions, misconceptions, superstitions; and they have become its very bone, blood, its very marrow.

It has completely forgotten that a child is born neither Hindu nor Mohammedan; neither Indian, nor American. We condition the child with a thousands of years of knowing and destroy his innocence. And the moment a child loses its innocence, he lives in futility. He cannot be himself, he has completely forgotten who he is, and he has been imposed by ideas which he is not.

This schizophrenia is the basic problem of humanity; and my basic message can be, stop this schizophrenic atmosphere. Let every child grow in his innocence.

Don't impose anything, don't try to make out of him; that's the only possibility he may become what is his potential. And only a person is blissful when he becomes himself. There is no other way. All other ways lead to frustration, misery, hell.

According to me there is only one heaven; that is to achieve your reality without interfered by anyone. And there is only one hell; to lose your reality, interfered by your parents, the society, the religion, the priest, the teachers, the politicians.

They all grab the child. And the child is so helpless, he cannot rebel. Naturally he has to follow whatever is being told to him.

The whole humanity is living in a hell. No joy, no love, no flowering; and the simple reason is, we create a split from the very beginning. We try to repress the real and impose the unreal. My message is, it is time enough to stop it.

A: Certainly. The press should be absolutely free, and the freedom of press includes television, radio, and all news media. Nothing should be in the control of the government, because government has all the powers, and individuals have no powers. Who is going to fight for them, and who is going to protect them against the government?

The press to me is more important than the politicians. But it is important only if it is free. For example in this country, the press has not fought that the television should not be government owned, that the radio should not be government owned. They should be public enterprises. Then the press can fight for individuals who have no power, but the press can give them great power.

I was myself once an editor, and I resigned from the post because everything has to be pro-government. Truth is not the criterion. The poor individual is not to be protected. Government is already powerful and press also joins with government. That was one reason I resigned. I said, "I will say what I feel is the truth, whether it goes against government or anybody."

Second thing I found, that they are not interested in any good news. They are interested only in rapes, murders, suicides, divorces, scandal. And I told them that these are dangerous. There may be a million men, and only one man rapes, and he becomes news. What about the remaining?

I told to my owner of the press, that a man has confessed in France that he killed an stranger whom he had never seen. He killed him, he was sitting on the beach, from behind. Even while killing he had not seen him. There was no enmity, but he wanted to be a celebrity, his photos all over the press, and he has achieved his goal. So giving prominence to evil, you are supporting evil. Rather than raising the consciousness of the people, rather than being teachers, you are simply following their lower instincts. You are not serving humanity. You are poisoning humanity. I cannot do that. It does not matter that a man commits suicide. In four billion people around the world, if a man commits suicide, so what? You cannot find anything else worth, newsworthy?

Those four billion people must be doing thousands of things, somebody must be making a beautiful painting. That should be on the first page. Somebody should be carving a statue, that should be on the first page. But your first page is devoted to criminals and politicians, who are really two sides of the same coin. In my definition, the successful criminal becomes the politician and the unsuccessful politician becomes criminal; so there is not much difference.

Politicians should be thrown to the fourth page, and they should not be given importance. Who is making them great? Adolph Hitler was retarded, he could not pass any examination, he was refused from art academy, architecture academy, wherever he applied he failed in the admission examination. And this man became world's one of the greatest leaders. Who made him? If the press had simply ignored him, there would have been no second world war. More than Adolf Hitler, the press is responsible.

Life consists of both things, roses and thorns, but why pay so much attention to thorns? Roses should be brought to the people. It is a psychological revolution. If a person reads everyday about evil, slowly slowly he feels evil is the way of life.

Slowly slowly he feels that even if he commits it, there is no big deal. Everybody is doing it.

And the good is ignored. The readers think that good does not happen anywhere because there is no news. They have even created a proverb, that "No news is good news." That should be changed, "Bad news is no news. Only good news is the news."

In California universities they have conducted a one-year survey, that why evil fluctuates; sometimes it reaches a height, sometimes it falls down? And they were surprised that whenever there is a boxing match, evil rises to thirteen percent than the normal; and it continues at least for one week before it normalizes again. Rapes happen, murders happen, suicides happen. If boxing is creating thirty percent raise in the evil, then boxing should be absolutely stopped. It is the criminal really. And no newspaper should report about boxing. It is ugly, but that ugliness gives people that you can also be ugly.

To be ugly is not bad.

News media has to play a great and important role. First, freedom from government; second ignoring the bad, which is very minute compared to the good; and thirdly, creating a forum for each problem to be openly discussed.

And the whole news media can be involved in it, in open discussion. That is human; it is not human that holding a sword in your hand and KORAN in your other hand and telling "You can choose." This is not argument. This does not prove that the KORAN is right. It simply proves that the man does not want to die.

Things have changed. Christians are also coming in one hand bread, in another hand BIBLE. But to satisfy one's hunger is not giving intelligence, is not giving the right to choose what is good and what is wrong. Whether the BIBLE is wrong or right, hunger cannot decide it.

The press has a great responsibility, but man has come of age. These are primitive methods of deciding who is right. We have intelligence, we can argue, we can go to the subtlest argument, and the whole press should be available.

And out of that argument, a conclusion which will be more unanimous, not mine or not somebody else's, will come out.

News media is the very soul of the century. Right now it is not so. It only creates sensationalism, it only fulfills people's demands. In economics they have a theory, wherever there is demand there is supply. The news media is doing that.

Whatever people demand, if they demand pornography, supply pornography because there is market.

I want to change that rule. I want to reverse it. I want to say "Wherever there is supply, demand is bound to be created." Don't go on fulfilling the demand, because the demand is coming from the lowest strata of the society. Supply from the highest intelligentsia of the society, and create the demand. And I know it happens, even against all economic theories.

When there was no car, nobody was demanding for it. The moment car arrived, supplies arrived before; and now millions of people are owning cars. If that can happen in things, why it cannot happen in thoughts?

So my message to the news media is that you are not behaving responsibly. You are not taking care of humanity. You are simply exploiting people by supplying them whatsoever they want. You should be the inversity(*), in the real sense, for the people.

A: I love criticism; but I don't see there are any critics of mine. They have not read my books, they can't even tell the names of my books, they are not true critics. They are simply living on gossiping, hearsay, and I have not come a single criticism which was really based on my statement. First, they distort the statement and then they criticize it. This is simply criminal. And to distort a statement is very easy. Just leave a word, take a certain part out of context, and then criticize it.

For example my book, "From Sex to Superconsciousness" is against sex. It is for the transformation of sex. And my critics have been criticizing me that I am preaching sex. This is not criticism. These are cowards. Even books have been written against my book, and I wasted my time in looking into them. They have not answered a single question.

Criticism is healthy; but it is healthy only when you first understand what the person is saying, and then criticize. And that has been the traditional Eastern way. If Gautam Buddha criticizes VEDAS, first he quotes VEDAS, exactly as they are. In fact he brings all the implications; perhaps the man who wrote those Vedic sutras was not aware. If you read the first part, you will be surprised that how he is going to criticize. He brings the best out of the VEDAS, raises it to its highest golden peak, and then he starts his criticism.

This is the right way of criticism, and that has been done down the ages in the East; but now it is no more so. I have been criticizing people, but never out of context. And never distorting their statements. My first duty is to explain their statement as beautifully as possible. And then to criticize it. Then it is a work of genius. Otherwise, the so-called critics are just dogs barking, and the elephant goes on without even paying any attention to them.

I have seen thousands of lies told about me, and it is thought to be criticism. It is not criticism. Just out of the blue, they manage my statement - the public is uneducated - and then it is very easy, because they have already made loopholes in the statement. Then they can criticize it and pat their own backs, that this is stupid.

In the East we had a great tradition; when Shankara came to Mandan Mishra - Mandan Mishra was one of the great philosophers of this age, old, of the age of Shankara's father, and Shankara was only thirty - he came and he asked outside the village the girls who were drawing water from the well, that "Can you show me Mandan Mishra's house?" All the girls laughed.

They said, "There is no need. You simply go in the town. Where you see even parrots reciting VEDAS, that is the house of Mandan Mishra." And he saw there many kinds of birds around the campus where Mandan Mishra lived reciting beautiful songs from the VEDAS, from the UPANISHADS; for the first time in his whole tour of India he was a little shaken. But he went in, touched the feet of Mandan Mishra because he was his father's age, and asked him that "I have come to argue with you. I don't agree with your philosophy."

Mandan said, "That's perfectly good. With all my blessings, you enter in the debate; and I will pray that you are right. You are young, I am almost gone.

Defeated or victorious does not matter. What matters, that truth should be in the hands of the youth. If you can prove your truth, nobody will be more happy than me. This is a culture where discussing, criticizing, but," Mandan said "there is a difficulty, you will have to find a judge, who will decide?"

Shankara said, "I will choose your wife to decide, to be the judge." This is humanity. Now there is every possibility the wife will help Mandan to win. But that was not the climate. She will help the truth to win, to whom it belongs it does not matter. And when she is the judge, Mandan Mishra is no more her husband, he is simply a contestant in an argument.

The argument continued for six months. Both were giants; and finally Bharti, the wife of Mandan Mishra, declared that Shankara has half-win. That was strange.

Nobody wins half. Shankara said, "I don't understand."

She said, "You will. I am Mandan's wife. Unless you defeat me too, your victory remains half. So now Mandan will be the judge and I will be the contestant with you. If you can defeat me too, we both will be your disciples."

Shankara was very much confused, what to do. The argument was absolutely right that in India the wife is half of the husband, so you cannot win the husband alone and be victorious, you have to win the wife too. And he was afraid also, because he had seen the woman for six months, even stopping Mandan that you are going wrong. And the first thing she asked Shankara is that you have talked about spirituality, Brahma, God, those things are finished. I want to ask you about sex.

Shankara was a celibate. He said, "I don't know anything about sex."

Then the wife said, "The victory will remain half. You cannot declare yourself victorious over Mandan unless you declare victorious over Bharti too."

Shankara said, "Give me six months' time, so I can learn about sex and come back."

The time was given to him. This is a cultured way of criticizing, discussing; and the world media should be now raised to such a standard that it becomes the platform for all causes, even for unpopular causes. It is a strange fact that what is an unpopular cause today may turn out to be a popular cause tomorrow. In Marx' day, communism was an unpopular cause. Today half the world is communist.

The media should give facilities, without any prejudice; and particularly Indian journalism is lacking far behind. In America I felt the power of news media.

(Tape side B begins) Even the government was afraid. They could have killed me, they could have tortured me as long as they wanted. But the whole media was after them. And the media is free, no government censors, and media has special concessions, no conditions over it; and they managed me, within twelve days out of the jail, which was absolutely illegal, without warrant, without showing any cause, why they are arresting me on the points of twelve loaded guns.

But the media made it available to the whole world. And then a simple innocent man, who had no weapons in his hands, became more powerful than the most powerful nation in the world.

They went all those twelve days wherever I was, their helicopters, their cameras, their photographers, were all around the jail. The jailers were afraid. One jailer said to me, "This has never happened. These people, why they are interested in you."

I said, "They are not interested in me, they are interested in your illegalities. And they will expose it to the world, and how long you can keep me in? Once I am out, one word to the press and it will go around the world. You have all the powers, I have no power. But the news media is more powerful than your nuclear weapons. Why you are afraid of these people. If you want to kill me, kill.

If you want to harass me, harass. But you know, the media is there, you cannot do anything."

In those twelve days the media proved stronger than the government. And they had to bring me to the court because of the media, otherwise there was no reason. They won't allow me to phone to my attorneys, they will say to me that the attorney can phone to you but you cannot phone. And the attorney has no way to find out where I am. You have been forcing me to sign under a false name, David Washington. Now the person who receives the call will say that Bhagwan is not here. But, just tomorrow morning it was all over America that if you want to contact Bhagwan on phone, contact David Washington. He has been forced to sign under that name.

Immediately they changed the jail, then they never asked me to sign under a false name. And even while taking me out from one jail to another, there was time at least to cross the steps to the car. That was enough, the media was there, just to ask one thing. "Are you harassed, have they touched your body? Just say a word, and this bureaucracy cannot stand."

But in this country the situation is totally different. The journalists are weak, they are fulfilling the needs of the poor country, giving them entertainment, fulfilling their sensations. And, on the other hand, polishing the boots of the bureaucracy.

It has to be more human and more for the individual, because the state has enough energy, enough power; the individual is powerless. But Indian journalism is still not compassionate. It is far below than the Western world. It has to raise its standards.

A: There is no need to stop all critical attitude. All is needed is, present exactly what I am; and those false attitudes will disappear. Just present on each subject, point by point, where I stand, and the false criticism will itself disappear. It has no guts.

I have been challenging religious leaders, political leaders, for a public open forum debate. None of them has accepted it. He knows that what I am saying can not be contradicted. And what they are saying is trash. So just try to present to the press what actually I stand for.

People don't know what I stand for. They just read the newspapers and the critics. They don't care even to inquire whether this critic is criticizing you on the right points or not. Is this your position that he is criticizing? Not a single newspaper has asked me; for the certain reason because it is also helpful for them. For their circulation it is good. People want something ugly to be said about somebody, and they are not seekers of truth that they will go and find out in the libraries whether that man has said it or not.

So no need to worry about them, the positive way will be to make people available on all essential points what is my stand. And then let them criticize.

Then people can see both the sides.

A: It was a paradise. It can again become a paradise. It has done few stupidities which have destroyed its paradise. First, the fall of India begins with Mahabharata, the great Indian war, and the man responsible is Krishna. He persuaded Arjuna to fight it. The whole GITA is philosophy of violence.

I am sometimes surprised how Nietzsche missed GITA, because he had discovered MANU SAMHITA, and he praised it. Perhaps he thought GITA is a religious book and he did not look into it. Otherwise he would have praised it even more. Manu, Krishna, Nietzsche and Adolf Hitler all belong to one party.

Arjuna wanted to go to the Himalayas and to meditate. Seeing all the warriors gathered into chakra(*), he could not conceive, even if I win the war, what will be the point, because these are friends, brothers, uncles divided on both sides, they have played together, they have studied together. It was a family quarrel. Even Arjuna's teacher, Brahmacharya, was on the other side. Krishna was on Arjuna's side, his armies were on the other side, because both were brothers, Priyotana(*) and Arjuna, and both had asked their friends to support them. Now that was the only way to divide.

Seeing the whole scene he said, "It is not worth. Let them do. At least my people I have loved will remain alive. If I win, then all these will be corpses here. Then even sitting on a golden throne, what joy it will give it to me. I will be crowned.

Just let me go. It is futile." And Krishna continued to persuade him, argued for war, argued for violence, and his final argument was such that Arjuna's conditioned mind could not reject - that was it is God's will that you should fight.

If I had been in place of Arjuna, I would have said to him, "Before you know God's will, I know God's will. His will is to go to the Himalayas and meditate.

What proof you have that the message from God to me is wrong, and your message from God to you is right?"

But the poor fellow, conditioned with the idea that Krishna is himself an incarnation of God, agreed. Millions of people died, and the best, and the very backbone of this country forever got fractured. Since then, India has not been able to stand on his own feet. Otherwise it was known as a golden bird in the whole world.

These two thousand years, India has been a slave, without any resistance. Those people like Tulsidas are telling to people that not even a leaf moves without the will of God. So if the invaders have come, that is will of God. If you are going to become a slave, that is will of God. That is a test of your trust in God. These are the criminals to me, who made this whole country a slave land. And although you are independent, but that slave psychology is inside.

It is still working. If you are poor, it is God's will. To fight against it is to fight against God. If you are poor, it is a test of your trust, of your faith. Be contented wherever you are, as you are, this is the whole philosophy of your so-called religions. Naturally, if such a philosophy dominates people, people cannot be rich. Otherwise the poverty of this country can disappear so easily, but the problem is that other things will have to disappear with it - that it is not God's will that you should be poor, that it is not your past life's evil actions that you are poor.

You are poor only because you are not making your intelligence work. You are poor only because you are not using modern technology. And there were people like Mahatma Gandhi for whom all technology stops at the spinning wheel.

Beyond that, all technology is wrong. We will have to put aside all these people, howsoever people have worshipped them, made them saints. But they are the culprits. And this is where I am in a continuous trouble. You ask, "Can this country become a paradise again?"

It can. But you will have to drop these saints, Krishnadas and Mahatma Gandhi and Krishna. These are the barriers who are creating your mind. And it is your mind who is going to work.

Now even the Shankaracharyas are teaching against birth control. Now these people should be behind the bars. Birth control should be a virtue, not a sin. And anybody who is talking about celibacy, Hindu, Jaina or Buddhist or Christian, should be a criminal, because celibacy creates perversions in sexuality. It does not make man healthy, intelligent. He becomes more and more dirty in his mind, and that dirty mind cannot create paradise. That dirty mind can create only a hell. They have created it. There is no need for any proof.

By the end of this century the population of the country will be one billion, that means one hundred crore people. We cannot create a paradise with one hundred crore people. Half of the population will have to die, and somebody will be your brother and somebody will be your sister, and somebody will be your friend, and somebody will be your lover; and you will see them starving and dying all around. Fifty crore people dying, what hell can be more?

And we cannot do anything. It is time still, I started talking about birth control thirty years before. If they had listened to me at that time, they condemned me, that I am teaching immorality. If they had listened to me that time the population was forty crore; now it is eighty crore; if they had listened to me the population would have remained forty crore, or even less. But they are not going to listen even today.

It is very easy to control population, to bring new technology from the whole world. All that is needed is a guarantee from the government that any capital coming from outside the world should never be nationalized. Technicians are available, who can come and teach and be here. The country should be open - it is closed.

In forty seven and in eighty five, no technological progress has been done for the simple reason to protect Tata's and Vila's(*) and those people. Because who is going to purchase Ambassador. If the whole world is allowed to produce their cars here, labor is here, material is here, only technicians are needed, capital is needed, then who is going to purchase Ambassador? To save Ambassador its monopoly, four hundred percent taxation has to be paid if you bring a car from outside. This is ugly, but the reason is because Vila(*) has been feeding the politicians, giving the money for the politicians for election; and the same is true of other super-rich people.

So you see people in the government, they are not the real government, there are king-makers behind. They have to be exposed. And the government has to be put right, that you are keeping the country poor.

The whole world is ready to pour money, technicians, technology; but one guarantee is certainly needed - that you will not nationalize it. And there is no need to nationalize it. Stop the population growth, open all the doors for the whole world, to open all kinds of industries, all disemployment disappears, and nobody is poor, all labor is used. And this will be only a transitory time. Within twenty-three, thirty years we will be able to make everything on our own.

But for forty years after independence, nothing has been done. The politician is interested only in his power. The rich is interested in only in getting more richer.

And between the two, the poor is crushed and goes on becoming poorer and poorer.

So my suggestion is very simple. One, nobody should be allowed in the country, pope or Mother Teresa or their kind, to preach against birth control. They are enemies, they should not be here. If they preach birth control, they should be kicked out. They have their own interest. Create more poor people, more orphans and more catholics.

Now the pope is coming here, if the government is sensible enough, it should make a condition that he should not utter a single word against birth control, or abortion. He can teach his spirituality, if he has any, but this seems to be his only spirituality. All over the world he has been teaching the same thing, that this is a sin against God. And if he is not willing to do that, then tell him that you are not welcome here.

And open the doors for the whole world. There is money, there is technology, but there is not labor. We have labor, cheap labor, the same car that can be produced there in two lakhs we can produce in one lakh. Just we need the technicians, the money, the plants to produce it. Our labor is so cheap.

In America I came to see that almost everything was ten times costlier than it is here for the simple reason that labor is not available. Even the richest cannot afford servants. And this country is full of people who have labor, but don't have any place where to use it. They are all educated people, who are ready to do anything, but no employment.

So the only way is, India becomes an open investment land, with full government support and a guarantee, not only by this government, but a guarantee for any government to follow, that the money that has come from out cannot be nationalized. And within ten years you will see. Your country is a paradise. There is nothing great in it.