Prologue part 6

IT IS NOT only Zarathustra who is disappointed in man as he is. Almost everyone who has gone within his own self, has known the reality, has experienced the beauty of consciousness, has been disappointed in people.

It is a long, long tradition that people are deaf - and almost dead. They go on living because they don't have the courage to commit suicide. They go on breathing because it is beyond their control, they cannot stop it; otherwise the masses of the world are just a dead weight on the planet.

The masses have not contributed anything to the growth of consciousness, to the growth of the human soul. They have not contributed anything towards making a temple of God on the earth - although they have made thousands of temples and synagogues and churches and mosques.

But they are not making them as the abode of a rejoicing religion; they are making them as the citadels of anti-life preachers - citadels of cowards and escapists. They have organized religions just to prevent... so that religion disappears from the world, because religion can exist only in the individual, never in the collective.

Do you have any organizations of love? - Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism?

Love is simply individual; so is prayer, because prayer is nothing but the most purified form of love.

Love is towards another individual; prayer is towards the whole existence.

To destroy religion, the most clever and cunning way has been to organize it, to give religion a priesthood, to give religion a fixed holy scripture. Life never remains fixed, it goes on moving; and you go on carrying a dead scripture which has lost all relevance to reality. You go on listening to the priests - who do not speak out of their experience, who are simply parrots repeating what the tradition has given to them. Religion is always fresh and new. To make it old and ancient is to kill it.

This has to be understood very clearly - only then Zarathustra may be able to reach to your heart.

FOLLOWING HIS SPEECH ABOUT THE ULTIMATE MAN, ZARATHUSTRA REALIZES THAT THE PEOPLE HAVE MISUNDERSTOOD HIM...

One of my friends, an old man, but he loved me tremendously.... There were only two men in India who were called Mahatmas, 'great souls' - one was Mahatma Gandhi and another was this old man, Mahatma Bhagwandin. He once said to me, "If you are understood, know well, you must not be saying the truth. If you are misunderstood, there is a possibility that perhaps you have uttered the truth." It is a strange fate that misunderstanding by the people should become the definition of truth.

But he was right. People have been living in lies for centuries. So whenever somebody realizes the truth, it is bound to be misunderstood.

... FOR THEY NOW CRY OUT TO HIM FOR THE ULTIMATE MAN. He was talking about the ultimate man to condemn humanity. It was a very philosophical way of saying to man, "If you go on growing the way you are, you will become the ultimate man, and the ultimate man is the most contemptible thing possible. And it is time that rather than moving towards the ultimate man, you should change your path towards the superman."

The superman is not a continuity with you. The ultimate man is only the fulfillment of all your ignorance, all your jealousies, all your anger, hatred. All that is ugly in you will come to its climax - that is the ultimate man. The ultimate man is your continuity. He was condemning the ultimate man to make you aware that there is still time to prevent the ultimate man.

The superman is not a continuity with you - he is discontinuous. You simply disappear with all your ugly desires and give place to a new man, to a new humanity. But the people have misunderstood Zarathustra, as they have always misunderstood. Now they are asking him, "Give us the ultimate man."

They think that the ultimate man is the highest evolved man. The ultimate man is just the most degraded, the most spiritually sick, the last man - because he will lose any interest in creativity, in love, in prayer. The ultimate man has come to the dead end of the street, although he will feel that he has reached the goal and he has found happiness. But his happiness is going to be more miserable than your misery. He is simply your magnified form. Zarathustra's idea was not to condemn you directly, because that hurts your ego and you stop listening. It is better, he thought, to condemn your magnified form so that you can see clearly where you are going, where you are going to land - you are going to land in a graveyard. But just not to hurt your pride, he used a beautiful word for it: the ultimate man. But people still misunderstood him.

First they misunderstood him because he was using the word "contempt" for humanity. He changed the word; it was going against their pride. He used a word that is an indirect attack, but his approach remains the same; and the people also remain the same in their ignorance. Now they are crying out to him for the ultimate man, "Give us the ultimate man!" Telling him he can have the superman, "You can have the superman; we want the ultimate man."

WHILE HE PONDERS ON THIS, THE TIGHT-ROPE WALKER BEGINS HIS ACT - WALKING ACROSS A ROPE SUSPENDED HIGH ABOVE THE PEOPLE IN THE MARKET SQUARE, BETWEEN TWO TOWERS.

WHEN HE REACHES THE MIDPOINT, SUDDENLY A FIGURE DRESSED AS A BUFFOON APPEARS FROM ONE OF THE TOWERS AND PROCEEDS TO FOLLOW THE TIGHT-ROPE WALKER, SHOUTING OUT AND ABUSING HIM. HE MAKES TO JUMP OVER THE TIGHT- ROPE WALKER, WHO LOSES HIS BALANCE AND FALLS, LANDING QUITE CLOSE TO WHERE ZARATHUSTRA IS STANDING.

ZARATHUSTRA STAYS WITH THE DYING MAN LONG AFTER EVENING HAS COME AND THE CROWD DISAPPEARED. LATER IN THE NIGHT THE MAN DIES, AND ZARATHUSTRA DETERMINES TO LEAVE THE TOWN, AND BURY THE BODY WITH HIS OWN HANDS. HE MEETS WITH THE BUFFOON, WHO TELLS HIM HE IS HATED IN THE TOWN; THAT IT IS GOOD THAT HE IS LEAVING; AND WITH SOME GRAVEDIGGERS, WHO MAKE FUN OF HIS CARRYING A CORPSE.

He has done no harm to the people; but to tell the truth has always been an invitation for people to hate you. Nobody wants to know the truth, because it shatters their lies - and their whole life consists of lies; it is based on lies.

Every child is fed all kinds of lies with the mother's milk. Naturally the man of truth is going to be hated. He is a disturber. You are feeling very comfortable with your lies, and suddenly he comes and creates doubts in you, disturbs your faith. You lose the old confidence - it is natural that you will hate this man.

P. D. Ouspensky, one of George Gurdjieff's best disciples, who made Gurdjieff known all over the world, otherwise Gurdjieff would have died absolutely unknown... perhaps known to a few people.

He wrote a book, IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS, and dedicated the book to George Gurdjieff.

The dedication is beautiful. The book is about Gurdjieff's teachings; its subtitle is FRAGMENTS OF AN UNKNOWN TEACHING. In the dedication he says, "To George Gurdjieff, the disturber of my sleep."

But it is very difficult not to hate these kind of people, who disturb your sleep, your comfortable lies, your convenient lies, your consolations.

The buffoon and a few gravediggers laugh at him. They have always laughed. Whatever they cannot understand... they cannot even accept the fact that they have not understood it, because that will show their ignorance. By laughing, they are pretending that they understand everything. You are simply being stupid, talking of things which go against the tradition, against the orthodoxy, against conventions. You are simply being stupid, telling people things which are going to disturb their comfortable life.

Is it a comfortable life?, or a comfortable death? Is it sleep that these people like Zarathustra disturb?, or is it your death? - because sleep is a miniature death. The man of truth wants you not only to be disturbed in your sleep, but to be disturbed in your death. Only disturbance may wake you up.

But people love convenience. Who cares about truth or lies? Very few people are interested in knowing the truth, at the cost of losing their old comfort. And you cannot blame them either, because they don't know that comfort is not blissfulness, that convenience is not ecstasy, that somehow just to drag yourself from the cradle to the grave is not life.

AFTER HAVING SOUGHT FOOD FROM AN OLD MAN ALONG THE WAY, ZARATHUSTRA FINDS HIMSELF IN THE FOREST, AND HAVING LAID DOWN HIS DEAD COMPANION, FINALLY SLEEPS. HOURS LATER, HE AWAKENS....

AND THEN HE SPOKE TO HIS HEART THUS:

A LIGHT HAS DAWNED FOR ME: I NEED COMPANIONS, LIVING ONES, NOT DEAD COMPANIONS AND CORPSES WHICH I CARRY WITH ME WHEREVER I WISH.

BUT I NEED LIVING COMPANIONS WHO FOLLOW ME BECAUSE THEY WANT TO FOLLOW THEMSELVES - AND WHO WANT TO GO WHERE I WANT TO GO.

A LIGHT HAS DAWNED FOR ME: ZARATHUSTRA SHALL NOT SPEAK TO THE PEOPLE BUT TO COMPANIONS!

I was saying to you last night that Zarathustra comes so close to my heart for the simple reason, that his experiences are exactly my experiences. I don't want any followers either; I don't want any believers, I don't want a crowd. I have dropped the idea of being concerned about humanity - they are not going to listen. It is a hopeless task. And wasting my time with those who cannot even understand is a great wastage, because the same time can be given to those few who can be fellow travelers, who can be companions.

Why does he think he needs companions - not believers, but friends; and living ones? Because the world is so full of dead people. Most people die long before their actual death. People die nearabout the age of thirty, although their actual death may happen nearabout eighty. For fifty years they appear to be alive, but there is no life in them, no song in them, no dance in them. Why they are living, they know not.

Who are they? - they have never asked the question. Why they are here, from where they have come, to where they are going - they will tell you, "Don't raise such questions, because they disturb our peace. And it does not matter from where we come and to where we are going." They have no interest in discovering the meaning of life, the significance of their own being. They have no interest in their own roots or in their own flowers.

The hippies used to say a very significant thing: never believe a man beyond the age of thirty, because most people die at thirty. There was some fragment of truth in it. It is very rare to find a man living at the time of actual death. It is possible only if you go on growing, if you go on discovering, if you go on loving, if you go on singing, if you go on dancing; if you never lose interest, if existence remains always a wonder to you, and you have the eyes of an innocent child, so full of wonder that each and every thing is a mystery to you. Then you will live to the very end of this life; not only will you live to the very end of this life - such a man knows no death.

Death happens only to dead people.+ If a man has been alive, full of juice, full of youth, his last breath is only the death of the body. His consciousness, which is so alive, goes on dancing into another form on a higher level. He knows no death; he knows death as a freedom from a prison. He was confined in a small body which was going to be sick, which was going to be old, and now he is free from it and he is moving into a fresh and new body. And if this aliveness comes to its ultimate expression, he is not going to be confined in any body anymore, he will be part of the universal life - formless, infinite, and eternal. This is our real home: eternal immortality, universal existence.

But millions of people are concerned only with trivia. They are in the majority, in a big majority; and that majority helps them to remain dead, because they find everybody else is just like them. That is the reason why they don't like strangers, they don't like outsiders like Zarathustra. They are not the same as the crowd. They create suspicion. They create doubt about their own life, about their own style, about what they are doing. But the majority is doing the same thing: it is a great confirmation that whatever you are doing must be right - because the whole world is doing it.

But all the evolution that has happened - it is not much, but whatever evolution has happened in consciousness - the credit for it goes to a few strangers like Zarathustra, a few outsiders who risked their life to be hated, to be condemned, to be misunderstood, to be laughed at. They are the only people who are the very salt of the earth - without them humanity would have remained part of the animal kingdom. The little difference that has arisen between you and the animals is the contribution of these outsiders, whom you have rewarded greatly: by crucifying them, by stoning them to death, by poisoning them....

I NEED COMPANIONS, LIVING ONES, NOT DEAD COMPANIONS AND CORPSES WHICH I CARRY WITH ME WHEREVER I WISH.

What are the believers? They may be believing in one religion or in another - they are not companions. In fact a Christian will feel that it is sacrilegious to feel himself a friend of Jesus.

Jesus is God; they are poor human beings. A Hindu will not be able to conceive of himself as a companion of Krishna or Rama. He can worship them, but he cannot dance with them.

Why is Zarathustra interested in companions? Because no man of his caliber, of his consciousness, would like to reduce you to blind followers, to blind worshipers - it is simply disgusting. He wants friends, fellow travelers in the search of truth.

BUT I NEED LIVING COMPANIONS WHO FOLLOW ME... not because following is going to give them truth, they follow me ... BECAUSE THEY WANT TO FOLLOW THEMSELVES. This is a very significant statement: They are not following me blindly, they are following me with clear insight that this is the way to follow themselves.

You are here. Nobody is a follower here, everybody is a fellow traveler. You are all together, not because you believe in a certain theology, religion, philosophy, but because you are all interested in the search for truth. That is the only binding thing between you; otherwise, you are all individuals.

There is no contract, there is no savior; all are searching, and it is helpful to search together. Things become simpler. Somebody may find something and may make it available to all, somebody may find something else... and existence is so full of treasures that you can all find treasures and share them with each other - this is companionship.

All the religions have depended on believers. Zarathustra gives a new insight: believers are dangerous. They are not seekers, they are not searchers; they are simply believing in someone who pretends to be their savior. He will find the truth; they have only to believe in him. Truth is not found that way. Everybody has to seek and search.

Yes, seekers can have a togetherness, but it is a togetherness only of friendship. Nobody is trying to mold you according to certain ideals. You are accepted as you are, you are loved as you are; you are nourished by all the companions, with their friendship, with their tenderness. You are all encouraged by everybody else. Alone you may get discouraged, because the search is in the area of the unknown, and finally the search will be in the area of the unknowable. It is good to have companions. There will be dark nights.

I am reminded of a very famous Persian song in which there are a few lines which say, "The night is dark, sing a little loudly, dance a little more madly; one does not know when the dawn will come."

But when you are so many you can help even those who are weaker, with your strength. You can sing loudly and you can dance madly, because who knows how long the night is going to be dark?

Who knows when the dawn will come?

AND WHO WANT TO GO WHERE I WANT TO GO. It is not following. Zarathustra is saying, "I am a seeker of truth and I will find companions who also want to seek, to search." Among the Sufis there is a small sect which is called the Seekers: that is their name. They are all companions. And in this unknown world, in this mysterious existence, it is better to have companions with you. One can be lost, but companions can manage even to find the lost one.

A LIGHT HAS DAWNED FOR ME: ZARATHUSTRA SHALL NOT SPEAK TO THE PEOPLE - he has dropped the hope of transforming humanity - but only to companions.

After twenty-five centuries I have come to the same conclusion: that I will speak only to sannyasins - that is my name for companions - that I will not speak to the people. It is sheer wastage. Time is precious and very limited, and I would like to devote my whole energy to those who are ready to go into the search; who have not gathered to see a rope walker, who have not gathered for entertainment.

One of my friends met Krishnamurti just three days before he died. He reported to me that Krishnamurti was very sad and the only thing he said was, "I worked hard to reach people, but rather than transforming them I have simply spent my own energy, just like a river getting lost in a desert. The people who have been listening to me have thought it not more than good entertainment.

The very word entertainment hurts me - that my whole life has been the life of an entertainer."

And it seems so. He died and there has not been even a small stir anywhere, all over the earth.

A man who lived for ninety years and has been serving humanity since he was twenty-five - and it seems he has been dead for centuries. Nobody thinks about him, nobody is concerned that he needs at least some homage. He was one of the greatest giants of this century, but the Nobel Prize committee never even considered his name - because he was not a politician.

In the beginning he was also trying to reach to the people. But he was opposed by churches, by religions, condemned by all the priests; slowly, slowly he dropped the idea of humanity.

He had a few people, in a few cities of the world. In India he used to visit only New Delhi, Bombay, Varanasi and Rishi Valley, where he has one of his schools - just four places; and the same was true around the world. In these places almost the same people heard him for thirty years, forty years, fifty years.... Still it is very saddening that people who heard him for fifty years continually have not changed a little bit. He could not manage to find the companions. He tried his best. But humanity is becoming more and more adamant, more and more sleepy, drugged, more and more dead. It is becoming very difficult to wake people up.

ZARATHUSTRA SHALL NOT BE HERDSMAN AND DOG TO THE HERD! Even five hundred years before Jesus Christ, Zarathustra had a far greater insight. Jesus was continually saying, "I am the shepherd and you are all my sheep." This is a humiliation. It does not appear right on the lips of Jesus, but he repeats it continually.

He escaped from Judea. There was not any resurrection - because he was never dead. The Jewish cross is the most painful way of killing a man, because a man dies, drop by drop. A healthy man will take at least forty-eight hours, hanging on the cross, before he dies. And Jesus was only thirty-three years old - healthy and young; after six hours his body had to be brought down.

That was a conspiracy between one of Jesus' rich followers and the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate:

that Jesus should be crucified on Friday - and make it as late as possible, because Jews stop all kinds of work at sunset. Their sabbath, their holy day, begins, and when the holy day is there, nothing can be done. So it was postponed. They tried to gain some time. In the afternoon he was crucified, and by the evening he had to be brought down, because now he would have to be crucified again.

He was alive, although he had fallen into a kind of coma, so much blood had flowed out of his body.

A Roman soldier was guarding the cave, and everything was arranged that he should be removed from the cave. It would take a few days for him to be healed - but take him out of Judea, so he is beyond the power of the Jews.

In his youth he had been to India. There are records in the Buddhist monastery in Ladakh that he had visited Ladakh, and he had remained in the monastery for few months, to understand Buddhism.

When he had to leave Judea he thought of Kashmir again. He lived to be one hundred and twelve years old in Kashmir, in a small village. I remembered it, because the village is still called the "village of the shepherd": Pahalgam - that is the Kashmiri translation of the "village of the shepherd." Still his grave is there, with Hebrew inscriptions. His name is not "Jesus" on the grave, but "Joshua," which was his actual name, given by his parents. "Joshua" is Hebrew. It became "Jesus" when Christian gospels were translated into Greek.

Greeks have given you two things: they changed the name "Joshua" into "Jesus" and they also changed - they had to change, whenever you translate from one language to another, changes happen - "messiah" into "Christ." Jesus Christ himself never heard that he would be known as "Jesus Christ," in the whole world. He knew his name was Joshua and he was the messiah of God.

"Christ" is a Greek word for "messiah."

Jesus had never thought himself, that he was a Christian. He could not have thought about it. He had no knowledge even of Hebrew - he was uneducated. He spoke a language, Aramaic, which is a primitive kind of Hebrew, used by villagers.

Nobody amongst his followers ever said to him, "Is it right that you should call yourself the shepherd and reduce us from human beings to sheep?" But in a way he was right: the crowds of humanity are nothing but crowds of sheep.

Lions move alone. Kabir has a statement: "Lions and saints never move in a crowd. They are enough unto themselves." Only sheep - full of fear, afraid to be alone - live in a crowd, move in a crowd. Have you ever seen a crowd of sheep moving? They don't even leave spaces between two sheep, they are rubbing each other's bodies. It is warm and cozy, and it gives them a certain protection. Each sheep thinks, "I am not alone. There are thousands of others with me."

Five hundred years before Jesus, Zarathustra says, ZARATHUSTRA SHALL NOT BE HERDSMAN AND DOG TO THE HERD! He wants only to be a companion, a friend. TO LURE MANY AWAY FROM THE HERD - THAT IS WHY I HAVE COME. He has come from the mountains to lure many away from the herd, from the crowd of people - THAT'S WHY I HAVE COME. THE PEOPLE AND THE HERD SHALL BE ANGRY WITH ME - obviously. I know it by my own experience. The whole world is angry with me, and their anger has a logic behind it. I am taking a few courageous people out of their herds, out of their folds.

The German government is the most angry. In their parliament they even discussed it, that once German young men and women go to this dangerous man, something happens to them: they come back totally changed. "In the first place, many of them never come back. In the second place, if they come back they are no more part of our crowd. They are no longer Christians, they are no longer Germans."

THE PEOPLE AND THE HERD SHALL BE ANGRY WITH ME: THE HERDSMAN SHALL CALL ZARATHUSTRA A ROBBER. He is absolutely right. Just a few days ago, it was reported to me that the American government has finally succeeded in putting my name on the wanted list of criminals with Interpol - the International Police. Now I am a "wanted criminal."

I am not hiding - but it is just to make every government antagonistic to me. There is no crime that I have committed, but any government seeing my name among the "wanted criminals" - those are the international criminals - will immediately stop me if I ever want to enter their country. Interpol cannot do anything - because I have not done anything. But just the name on the list will help the American government to convince other governments that the man is an international criminal.

If to help people to become lions instead of sheep is a crime, I am a criminal. If to help people to be just human beings - not Christians, not Jews, not Hindus - is a crime, I am an international criminal.

And all the religions will agree, because nobody wants their sheep to be taken away from the fold. I am a robber.

No country wants nationality to be condemned. I am against nationality, because it is one of the worst things that has happened in the world. I want a world without nations. Nationality is not something to be glorified; it is the cause of all the wars, all the bloodshed. Naturally, all the nations will agree I am an international criminal.

Zarathustra's insight is immense: I SAY HERDSMEN, BUT THEY CALL THEMSELVES THE GOOD AND THE JUST. I SAY HERDSMEN: BUT THEY CALL THEMSELVES THE FAITHFUL OF THE TRUE FAITH.

BEHOLD THE GOOD AND THE JUST! WHOM DO THEY HATE MOST? HIM WHO SMASHES THEIR TABLES OF VALUES, THE BREAKER, THE LAWBREAKER - BUT HE IS THE CREATOR....

The British parliament decided that I cannot enter England because I don't believe in any kind of law. The American government has been telling every other government that I am a law breaker.

But those laws are the reason that thousands of people are behind bars. They should be in the hospitals, in the psychiatric wards; they need treatment, they need loving tenderness. It is the society which is responsible for making them murderers or rapists or thieves - but nobody punishes the society. The victims are punished. Why should a man rape if all the societies were not so much obsessed with sex and its repression?

It is the religions and the societies who are against sex, which are causing all kinds of perversions.

The rapist is one of the perversions. The man needs psychiatric help, not a punishment in a jail, because in jail he will become more perverted.

America has just accepted that thirty percent of prisoners in the jails are homosexuals; and whenever a government accepts anything, multiply it by three. If they say thirty percent, that means ninety percent. Not less than that. And they are enforcing that no homosexuality should happen in the jails; otherwise, their jail term will be lengthened. And the prisoners have raised their voices, "It is none of your business."

If two persons are willing to have a relationship and you don't allow women in the men's ward....

Women have a separate jail, men have a separate jail. Let men and women be together in the same jail and homosexuality will disappear. But to force people... and one day they will be out of jail; after ten years repression of their sexuality they will not be in control. They will rape - and then again the law will throw them into jail. And it is the jail that created the rapist. It is a vicious circle.

You think it is the criminals who made the law necessary? Or is it the law which needs criminals; otherwise, all the judges, all the advocates, all the attorneys will be out of employment? They both need each other. The business goes on perfectly well. Criminals are needed for judges to be judges, for great advocates and experts of law to earn immense money; to have jailers and a great staff to control the prisoners.

Somewhere the vicious circle has to be broken; the causes should be removed. And if still somebody is found committing a crime for which no reasonable cause exists, there is no need to send him to the court. He needs careful psychological treatment. Something is wrong - either in his chemistry, or in his biology, or in his mind - which is treatable.

Perhaps the rapist has more hormones of sexuality than ordinary people; this has been suggested by psychologists. All that is needed is that his extra hormones should be removed - or antibodies which can nullify the extra hormones in his body should be injected. When he commits a rape, he commits it almost under compulsion; he cannot resist, he cannot control himself.

Yes, I am not a blind follower of law. Laws were made in the past. We have to live in the present.

And we will have to live in the future. And there are so many stupid laws which make man commit crimes.

There is a certain limit in India. If your profits go beyond that limit, then you have to pay one hundred percent taxation. Now why should one work hard to create so much profit that one hundred percent will be taken by the government as tax? If he has the capacity to produce that profit, naturally he will not show it in his books. It is the government who is forcing the man to commit a crime. One hundred percent taxation cannot be supported on any grounds. In fact, the man who produces that much profit should be rewarded by the government, rather than punished.

My logic is very clear. If a man produces a certain amount of profit, he should be given a hundred percent reward on it. That will become an incentive for other people to create more and more profit.

In a poor country we need more profit, we need more productivity.

And these are not the only laws. There are conventions of the society which function almost like laws. You cannot go against the conventions. Even today, in Hindu society, the lowest and the poorest strata called sudras, untouchables, are not allowed to read the religious scriptures. That would be breaking the conventional law of the society. Strange, you want people to be religious, you want people to be honest, sincere, truthful, moral, and you don't allow them even to read the scriptures.

And if some sudras revolt against it, their whole villages are burnt, along with living people. Even today, almost every alternate day, there are reports from different parts of the country that a sudra village has been burnt. It is easy, because sudras cannot live in the city. They have to live outside the city, and they are so poor they cannot have houses made of concrete and steel. Their houses are made of grass. Just a single man with a lighted torch runs through the village putting fire to every house, and finishes the whole village.

Laws that are against human evolution, laws that are inhuman, laws that make a society poor, laws that go against scientific discoveries should be dropped. Because Zarathustra is right: these law breakers are the only creators. Only they sacrifice themselves for humanity to be a little better.

THE CREATOR SEEKS COMPANIONS, NOT CORPSES OR HERDS OR BELIEVERS. THE CREATOR SEEKS FELLOW-CREATORS, THOSE WHO INSCRIBE NEW VALUES ON NEW TABLES.

THE CREATOR SEEKS COMPANIONS AND FELLOW-HARVESTERS: FOR WITH HIM EVERYTHING IS RIPE FOR HARVESTING. BUT HE LACKS HIS HUNDRED SICKLES: SO HE TEARS OFF THE EARS OF CORN AND IS VEXED.

THE CREATOR SEEKS COMPANIONS AND SUCH AS KNOW HOW TO WHET THEIR SICKLES.

THEY WILL BE CALLED DESTROYERS AND DESPISERS OF GOOD AND EVIL, BUT THEY ARE HARVESTERS AND REJOICERS.

It is absolutely unbelievable that twenty-five centuries ago insights of such tremendous value were possible to a man.

The crowd, the people, will condemn all the rebels, all the rebellious spirits, as destroyers. But to create, one has to destroy. Unless you destroy the false, you cannot create the real. Unless you destroy the ugly, you cannot create the beautiful. Unless you destroy the lies, you cannot make place for the truth. The creators have always been called DESTROYERS AND DESPISERS OF GOOD AND EVIL. And who decides what is good and what is evil? Who has the right to decide it?

In different societies, different things are thought to be good; different things are thought to be evil.

I used to move around India. I came up against many strange conventions. In Rajasthan there is a tribe of nomads; these are the forefathers, the original tribe, from which gypsies in Europe branched off. The gypsies are from Rajasthan. They still speak Hindi - of course with a few distortions. They have been called gypsies, because first they reached Egypt and remained in Egypt, and from Egypt they moved to Europe. Because of Egypt they became "gypsies." But now it is well established their language is Rajasthani Hindi, their stories are about Rama and Krishna. Their original home is Rajasthan, and in Rajasthan the nomads still exist.

They have a strange idea: whenever a young man is to be married, he has to prove how many times he has been jailed for theft - that is a qualification. If a young man has not been a thief and has not been jailed, it is very difficult for him to find a wife. Who is going to give his daughter to this good-for-nothing?

In my own home town I had a friend, a Marwadi. They also come from Rajasthan, they are the richest people in India. I used to go to his home and when the time of his marriage came, I became aware of a strange convention. A boy in a Marwadi family gets the most beautiful wife according to a certain rule: how many times his family has been bankrupt. Because Marwadis are very clever - so whenever they have enough money and prestige, they simply go bankrupt.

Of course in that same place they cannot stay any longer. They move to other parts of the country.

And they have the money, they are not really bankrupt. Each bankruptcy means a great deal of money.... So the parents of the daughter enquire, "How many times has your family been bankrupt?"

- that is a criterion whether you are rich enough or not.

What is good and what is evil? As far as conventions in the world are concerned they have all grown out of the unconscious mind of man. The real criterion of good and evil is only one - and that is possible if you are fully conscious: only the fully awakened and enlightened person knows what is good and what is bad. And how does he know it? The enlightened person cannot do anything bad; that is just impossible for him. So that which is impossible for the enlightened man to do is bad, and that which he enjoys doing is good. Except that, all other criteria are arbitrary.

Humanity will know what is good and bad only when millions of people are awakened. In your deep sleep and unconsciousness, you cannot decide what is good and what is bad; you simply carry the old heritage. But according to Zarathustra, these people who will be despised, who will be hated, who will be called destroyers are really the harvesters and rejoicers.

I WILL NOT BE HERDSMAN OR GRAVEDIGGER. I WILL NOT SPEAK AGAIN TO THE PEOPLE:

I HAVE SPOKEN TO A DEAD MAN FOR THE LAST TIME.

I WILL MAKE COMPANY WITH CREATORS, WITH HARVESTERS, WITH REJOICERS: I WILL SHOW THEM THE RAINBOW AND THE STAIRWAY TO THE SUPERMAN.

THUS BEGAN ZARATHUSTRA'S DOWN-GOING.

My definition of religion is not renunciation of the world, but rejoicing in the world. The world is an opportunity to rejoice. Only idiots, cowards, renounce it. Those who are intelligent, those who are brave enough, rejoice in it. Rejoicing should be the foundation of all true religion - not renouncing, but rejoicing.

Zarathustra is a life-affirmative mystic. Enjoy life. Squeeze from every moment its whole juice, because it is a gift of God, a gift of existence, and to renounce it is simply going against existence, going against God.

There are difficulties in the world, but the difficulties are because you are not intelligent enough to solve them. And by escaping from the world you will not become intelligent; you will become even more retarded.

An authentic religion will make people more intelligent, more conscious, more rejoicing. A life of song and dance is the only religious life.

... Thus spake Zarathustra.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.