Of the thousand and one goals

THE ONLY DIFFERENCE between men and other animals is that of values. No animal lives according to values; he lives blindly, not knowing why. His life force is unconscious of itself. Many men also live in the same way. They only look like men, but they have not yet transcended the animal. The transcendence of the animal is indicated by the values. But values can be of two types:

one that is imposed upon you from the outside, thou shalt; and one that arises in your own being, I will.

The first kind of value is just a hypocrisy. It is a strategy to make you believe that you have transcended the animals; but in fact you have even fallen below the animals. The animals are at least natural; you are not even natural. Your values distort your nature, distort your simplicity, distort your innocence - but they give you a false notion that you are a man.

The second kind of values are the authentic values. But for them, you have to avoid any kind of imposition from the outside, and you have to allow your own inner being and its still, small voice.

The beginning of man is in the trust that he shows in his own inner voice.

Zarathustra is talking about values in these statements: NO PEOPLE COULD LIVE WITHOUT EVALUATING; BUT IF IT WISHES TO MAINTAIN ITSELF IT MUST NOT EVALUATE AS ITS NEIGHBOR EVALUATES. Everybody has to be himself, not a carbon copy of his neighbor - although the whole crowd in the world, because of its immense majority, destroys the individual and makes him just a carbon copy.

This whole thing goes on in the name of good intentions. Your parents, your priests, your leaders, your so-called saints are all doing one thing; they are not allowing you the freedom to be just yourself, and find your own values. They give you ready-made concepts - what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is evil. They decide for you, and while you let them decide your life and your live's values you are not yet a man. You are just a slave.

The greatest slavery is of the spirit.

They are not binding your bodies and they are not imprisoning your bodies, but they are putting chains on your soul - and that is the worst slavery in the world. And it becomes even worse than it would have been, because the chains are of gold. And the chains of gold convince you that they are not chains but ornaments, that your society is making you richer, that your society is making you better. But chains are chains, whether they are made of steel or of gold. The chains of gold are worse, because there is a possibility of your clinging to them, and forgetting that they are your chains.

With all good intentions, the people who think they love you, the people who think it is their duty to make a man of you, are really the destroyers. Beware of the neighbors. Gather courage to be an outsider; be strong enough to be a stranger - but remain yourself. You are bound to be a stranger if you remain yourself, because then you will find a totally different category of values to live by, to live for - not the dead values that are being imposed on you. The values imposed by your neighbors, by your society, simply create a split in you.

Your own being needs assertion, expression. Your own heart wants to sing its own song. But even that is not allowed. You have to sing the songs of others. They are not a nourishment, and they are not a fulfillment; and they will never bring contentment to your life.

MUCH THAT SEEMED GOOD TO ONE PEOPLE, SEEMED SHAME AND DISGRACE TO ANOTHER: THUS I FOUND. I FOUND MUCH THAT WAS CALLED EVIL IN ONE PLACE WAS IN ANOTHER DECKED WITH PURPLE HONOURS. He is saying that values are not something universal. Every society has created its own values according to its own needs, but those values were created thousands of years ago. Needs have changed; values have remained.

That is why it is very difficult to find a contemporary human being. You cannot be contemporary if you are not moving with the times, but you are lagging thousands of years behind. Life does not stop for you; it goes on moving into new spaces, and your values remain dead, unmoving, and every generation goes on giving the same set of values to another generation. And you never think your misery is caused by many factors. One of the most basic factors is that your values are not in tune with the time, your values are not harmonious with existence - they are not contemporary.

All the religions, all the cultures, all the civilizations belong to the past. They should be dead by now, and we should have taken them to the graveyard - of course with respect. But those dead corpses are moving amongst us; not only moving amongst us - they are dominating us. They have become absolutely absurd and irrelevant. But they are ancient, and you have been told, "Whatever is ancient is right."

The truth is just the contrary: the older the thing is the more is the possibility of its being wrong, because it was conceived in the childhood days of humanity, and now humanity has come to maturity. Your spirits are in such a ridiculous state - as if a mature young man is still wearing a small child's clothes. Those clothes will not only be ugly, they will be too much of an imprisonment; his movement will become difficult. Your clothes have to change as you grow: your values are the clothes of your soul. They have to change - every day, every moment. Hence, only individuals can have values... living, breathing, with a heartbeat. Societies can only carry corpses, because the individual has the future and the society has only the past. Just a few examples will help you.

In China, for thousands of years, it was thought beautiful that women should have small feet. But to keep them small, they had to put on young baby girls' iron shoes. Those iron shoes crippled the girl; her body went on growing, but her feet remained small. At a certain age the shoes were removed. It was thought that the more highly cultured you were.... Your women would be almost unable to walk, the feet were so small.

In royal families the women could not even move - they were carried; and it continued for thousands of years, such a stupid idea. The feet have to be in proportion to the body and they have to grow according to nature, not according to your idea of what beauty is. It took a long time for intelligent people to fight against it: that this is crippling the women. They cannot move, they cannot work - of course, their small feet look very dainty, but a woman is not in the world just to have dainty feet.

The situation has been the same all around the world, in different ways, because all these societies have developed separately. The world has become one for the first time; people have come closer and seen each other. And that has created the doubt: "What we have been calling values, were not values, because there are millions of other people who have never thought about those values.

They have their own ideas."

Howsoever painful, howsoever unnecessary, only the individual can find, through being more conscious, an insight into what is good and what is not good. And he has to live accordingly; whether it suits the society or not, cannot be the concern or the consideration.

I have been around the world and I was surprised that even in the so-called advanced countries stupid ideas, superstitions, are still pretending to be values; even though they have become dangerous. For example, on Christian holy festivals, friends sit around the dining table celebrating, and they drink from the same cup of alcohol. The cup moves from one hand to another. Even now, when it has become an established fact that your saliva is one of the most dangerous things, it can infect you with the disease, AIDS - which has no cure. But it is their tradition, and it is a holy rite.

They will not listen to medical science, they will listen to the dead past.

Just a single man who has AIDS can spread it to many people, and those others will start spreading it in different ways. Kissing should be prohibited; that is also dangerous, because AIDS does not infect people only by sexual intercourse, it infects in many ways. There are even experts who suspect that the AIDS virus can spread through your breathing, and certainly it spreads through your tears, through your perspiration. Any liquid that comes out of the body can carry the virus.

The values should change. But people cling to the past, and cling so blindly that you cannot believe.... In India, they have worshiped the cow for centuries. Nothing is wrong, it is just an innocent stupidity. But once you move in a direction of stupid ideas, there is no end to where you will stop.

The Hindus, on special occasions, drink what they call PANCHAMRIT, "five nectars." They have given a beautiful name to it, but if you hear what the five nectars are, you will be shocked. Those five nectars are five things coming out of the cow's body: cowdung, urine, milk, curd, butter. They will mix them all - and it has become a holy drink. Nobody even asks the question, "What is holy in it?" - not even a man of the caliber of Mahatma Gandhi.

One of his disciples... and the disciple was not an ordinary man, he had renounced his post as a professor in a university to be with Mahatma Gandhi; his name was Professor Bhansali. He defeated all the holy men in India. He became the holiest man, and by a very simple strategy: for six months he lived only on cow dung and cow urine, and even Mahatma Gandhi praised him as one of the great saints.

This man is utterly insane. He should be sent to a psychiatric hospital rather than worshiped. What contribution has he given to the world? What is great in eating cow dung and drinking cow urine?

Just all that you need is a retarded mind. All that you need is a solidly idiotic approach towards life.

But because other followers of Mahatma Gandhi could not do this, he became unique.

Just look around at your values, which make you pious, which make you religious, which make you holy, which make you virtuous. Have they any validity, any rationality, any intuitiveness, any support for your consciousness? Or is it just that the rotten scriptures of the past - written by uneducated, uncultured, uncivilized people - are dominating you through them?

A TABLE OF VALUES HANGS OVER EVERY PEOPLE. BEHOLD, IT IS THE TABLE OF ITS OVERCOMINGS; BEHOLD, IT IS THE VOICE OF ITS WILL TO POWER. And all these values that a certain society accepts, are nothing but will to power. Now Professor Bhansali has not done anything that can be called spiritual. It has not given him any awakening, any enlightenment, it has not given him any realization of his own self; but it has given him great power. In Mahatma Gandhi's ashram there were two great men; one was Mahatma Gandhi, the other was Professor Bhansali.

The visitor first will go to Mahatma Gandhi to touch his feet, and then they will go to Bhansali, to touch his feet.

People can be persuaded to do anything, meaningful or meaningless, if they see that their instinct for will to power is satisfied. They can do anything - almost unbelievable.

The Jaina monks and Jaina nuns cannot use modern toilets. Obviously, they are not mentioned in their scriptures. On the contrary, their scriptures say, "You should not defecate or urinate in water."

That was good, twenty-five centuries ago; otherwise you will pollute the water, and people have to drink the same water. But this is how human stupidity is: they cannot use the modern toilet because it has water in it. And in a big city like Bombay you cannot go out of the city, so what are they doing?

They are urinating in buckets, defecating in buckets; and in the night, when everybody is asleep, they are throwing all that garbage and crap on the street. These are the holy men of the Jainas, and the holy women.

The Jaina monks and Jaina nuns cannot take a shower; they cannot even clean their teeth, they cannot use any mouthwash. The idea was that to clean your teeth, to have your mouth washed, to have a shower is decorating your body; and Jainism is against the body - the body is your enemy.

It is so difficult to come close to Jaina monks and Jaina nuns, because they stink: it is disgusting.

And to talk to them... I had to tell them, "Please, keep as long a distance as possible," because even their breath is foul. The air that comes from their mouth is sickening, and their whole body, which has been accumulating layers of perspiration and dust, is obviously nauseating.

But this is thought by the Jainas to be a great spiritual value. These people have renounced their bodies; they are no more servants of the body. It is ugly, but hallowed by the tradition. The community of the Jainas is cultured, civilized, educated, rich, but they cannot change it. These tables of values are unchangeable. You cannot improve on your scriptures: they are the final word.

No word can be final, because tomorrow will bring new things in life, tomorrow will bring new experiences to life. If you are intelligent you will have to change your values and your lifestyle.

Only idiots can go on carrying dead corpses. And when you are carrying so many dead corpses you cannot be alive yourself - you become just another corpse amongst the dead.

WHAT IT ACCOUNTS HARD IT CALLS PRAISEWORTHY: Whatever is thought to be hard is called by people praiseworthy. Nobody bothers whether that hardness is of any value, or not. Somebody is standing on his head, and people praise him because it is hard. Somebody is walking on a tightrope stretched between two towers, and it is praiseworthy. It enhances nothing, but this is how values have been created.

WHAT IT ACCOUNTS HARD IT CALLS PRAISEWORTHY; WHAT IT ACCOUNTS INDISPENSABLE AND HARD IT CALLS GOOD. Strange definitions. I have seen one man in Varanasi who has been standing for years with one hand raised. His hand has become almost like a dead branch, thin, just bones. All the blood has gone, in accord with gravitation, into the body. Now, even if he wants to bend it, he cannot; it has become stiff. People go to worship him.

I inquired, "What is the quality that you are worshiping."

They said, "Quality? For almost 12 years he has been keeping one of his hands up towards the sky."

But I said, "That simply shows that man is mad. This is not the way to keep your hands - he has killed his hand."

But it is hard - you cannot do it - and it becomes a value. And if something is indispensible, then it becomes good too.

In Mahatma Gandhi's ashram, mosquito nets were not allowed because that is luxury. Mosquitos must have been happy, but what about the poor inmates of the ashram? It was impossible to sleep.

There were so many mosquitos, that even in the daytime it was impossible to sit without being bitten all over. Gandhi has discovered a very ingenious idea, that you should spray kerosene oil on you face, on your hands, or anything that is exposed, because the mosquitos are more intelligent than man; they smell the kerosene, and they don't come close to you. But how can you sleep with that smell?

Mahatma Gandhi's son, Ramdas, was very close to me. I used to go to Wardha - the ashram was outside Wardha - and Ramdas once invited me: "Why don't you come and be with us for few days?"

I said, "I can come, but what about the mosquitos? I cannot use kerosene oil on my face and on my hands, and you know I am allergic to smell." Even if I was not allergic to smell, this stupid act I could not think of as an austerity, as something good - although it was indispensible. Those who wanted to live in the ashram, they had to use it.

I said, "In the daytime I can be there. But in the night I cannot stay in your ashram."

But even in the day it was so difficult. I told Ramdas of my experience in Sarnath near Varanasi.

Sarnath is the place where Gautam Buddha gave his first sermon, but he came only once to Sarnath.

For forty-two years he was travelling, going through the same city twenty times, twenty-five times, because he had chosen only a small area of Bihar.... The very word "Bihar" means "where Gautam Buddha walked around."

I was staying in Sarnath - which has one of the most beautiful Buddhist temples, in memory of his first sermon - with a Buddhist monk, one of the most learned Buddhist monks I have come across, Bhikkhu Jagdish Kashyap. He was the director of the Pali institute which studies and does research work on Gautam Buddha and his works. Even in the day we had to sit inside the mosquito nets. He will sit in his mosquito net, I will sit in my mosquito net.

I said, "It looks very awkward," and I told Jagdish Kashyap, "Now I know why Buddha never came back to Sarnath."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "Simple, because he had no mosquito net, and the Sarnath mosquitos are, in my experience, the biggest."

But strange superstitions go on living for no reason at all. In Calcutta I have seen a very strange scene. I had to tell my chauffeur to stop, I wanted to see what was happening. There were almost one hundred beds lined up by the side of the street.

I said, "Who is going to sleep here on the street?"

The chauffeur said, "You may not know: the Jainas cannot kill any insects; and the parasites which grow in the beds, bed-bugs, they cannot kill them. Out of compassion they put their beds here, and they pay anybody one rupee a night if he sleeps on them, because those bed-bugs have to be fed."

This is charity!

And I said, "What about those poor people who sleep here?"

He said, "They sleep here by their own will. We are not responsible for that." The poor people are sleeping there; in the morning they get one rupee, and the whole night they cannot sleep. The bed-bugs must be feeling very, very grateful to Mahavira, and to the whole Jain mythology. But it is thought to be a good, virtuous act.

AND THAT WHICH RELIEVES THE GREATEST NEED, THE RARE, THE HARDEST OF ALL - IT GLORIFIES AS HOLY. One Christian saint remained on a pillar in Alexandria, a twenty foot high pillar, for almost seven years. He never came down from there, he stood on the pillar, sat on the pillar, slept sitting on the pillar. It was dangerous, and just because it was so dangerous he became a great saint. Thousands of pilgrims were coming to pay their respects to him. Now, around the pillar, there stands a very beautiful cathedral in memory of the saint. But the saint did nothing. He only sat on the pillar for seven years. Certainly it was difficult - and it was stupid. How can it make you holy? Otherwise we should make pillars in every city, and people should sit on the pillars for their whole life, and the whole world becomes a holy place.

But anything that is very rare, and hardest of all, is glorified as holy. In Russia, before the revolution, there was a Christian sect which used to cut off their genitals... every Christmas time, piles of genitals, blood flowing all over, and people touching their feet - they have done a great thing.

Women were not to be left behind, but they don't have genitals to cut off, so they started cutting off their breasts. Many women cut off their breasts; and they also became holy.

After the revolution it was prevented, and it took years for the communist government to make it a crime. That which was holy became criminal. That sect disappeared by and by. In these seventy years I don't think that it has survived; but once it was one of the holiest sects in Russia - and all that they were doing was only an idiotic act.

It was done in the name of celibacy. But perhaps nobody thought that sexuality is in your mind, not in your genitals; that is why you can dream about it. Your genitals are only extensions of your mental state. The center of sex is in the mind; that is why you enjoy pornography. Your genitals cannot see pornography, they cannot even grope! It is your mind which is the seat of your sexuality, so even if you cut off your genitals it does not mean you will not think of sex again. My own understanding is, you will think of sex more than anybody else. It will become your obsession - but it will remain in your mind.

WHATEVER CAUSES IT TO RULE AND CONQUER AND GLITTER, TO THE DREAD AND ENVY OF ITS NEIGHBOR, THAT IT ACCOUNTS THE SUBLIMEST, THE PARAMOUNT, THE EVALUATION AND THE MEANING OF ALL THINGS....

MAN FIRST IMPLANTED VALUES INTO THINGS TO MAINTAIN HIMSELF - HE CREATED THE MEANING OF THINGS, A HUMAN MEANING! THEREFORE HE CALLS HIMSELF: 'MAN', THAT IS: THE EVALUATOR.

EVALUATION IS CREATION: HEAR IT, YOU CREATIVE MEN! VALUATING IS ITSELF THE VALUE AND JEWEL OF ALL VALUED THINGS.

But this valuation should come from your own awareness. It should serve something beautiful, something good, something human. It should bring into the world something of the divine. Otherwise you go on doing things believing that they are good, that they are holy. But anybody without any prejudice can see that they are simply stupid, and stupidity is not a value. Man has to create values.

Freedom is a value, love is a value, joy is a value, creativity is a value.

Anything that enhances life and gives meaning to life, anything that makes life more liveable, more loveable, anything that makes life a glory, a splendor, that gives life a taste of godliness - that is good. But that kind of valuation has to come out of individual experience, out of individual meditation, individual consciousness; it cannot be imposed by the society, by the past.

ONLY THROUGH EVALUATION IS THERE VALUE: AND WITHOUT EVALUATION THE NUT OF EXISTENCE WOULD BE HOLLOW. HEAR IT, YOU CREATIVE MEN!

A CHANGE IN VALUES - THAT MEANS A CHANGE IN THE CREATORS OF VALUES.

You have to go on changing, for higher values.

For example, the woman has not been accepted down the ages as an equal to man. The day man accepts the woman with respect, and gives her dignity back to her, it will be a great value.

Creators of many things which are not of much utilitarian use... for example, a man playing on a bamboo flute is not of much use. But his songs, his music, can stir in your heart something that was fast asleep, can wake up your own musical self. But rather than respecting a flute player, you respect a scientist who creates nuclear weapons. Anything that is destructive should be condemned: It is a dis-value. And anything that creates for life more joy, should be accepted, respected, appreciated.

A dancer is far more valuable than a man who creates atomic energy to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The dancer can create an urge in you to dance - can make your life richer.

HE WHO HAS TO BE A CREATOR ALWAYS HAS TO DESTROY. The old values have to be destroyed if you want higher values to be created. To create anything you have to destroy much.

You have to destroy the superstitions, you have to destroy the theologies, you have to destroy the religions, if you want the whole of humanity to be religious, to be spiritual, to be meditative, to be loving.

If you want the whole of humanity as one, then the old value of nationality has to be destroyed. It has been praised for centuries: Nationality is a great value; and the politicians have been trying to make it even a greater value than religiousness or spirituality. The nations have to be destroyed, because they are only man-made lines on the map. They don't exist on the earth. All these divisions amongst humanity don't allow freedom of movement, freedom of marriages, between one nation and another.

It is an established fact that marriages should happen between unrelated people. Then children will be more beautiful, more intelligent, stronger, and their life will be longer.

Cross-breeding is being used with animals, and now cross-breeding is being used with trees. In the Soviet Union there are many fruits which were not created in those six days when God created the world, and they are far sweeter, far more delicious, because now it is man.... By cross-breeding the trees, a new fruit comes into being.

You must have seen beautiful dogs; they are not created by nature, they are created by cross breeding. Now bulls are being brought from New Jersey to create more milk-producing cows, because Jersey cows are the best milk-producing cows.

You are being scientific about animals and about trees, but you are very unscientific about human beings, and you can see the result of it. For example, in Europe, all the royal families go on marrying amongst themselves. They cannot marry a commoner, so just a few families are continually marrying amongst themselves. You can see that from these royal families not a single genius is born, not a single talented person is born, but only retarded people. Have you looked at the picture of the Prince of Wales? Just the face shows retardedness. Have you seen the picture of Queen Elizabeth of England? Can you call her beautiful? And they all suffer from diseases which they go on giving to each other.

Humanity has known the fact for thousands of years. That is why we prevent marriage between brother and sister, because the same blood will not create enough tension, enough challenge. It may create a child, but it will be simply a dodo. But even to marry in your own caste is marrying somebody who must have been, a few generations back, your cousin, your sister, your brother.

People should marry as far away as possible, and if we can discover some day, on some other planet, human beings, then inter-planetary marriages will be the most scientific thing.

PEOPLES WERE THE CREATORS AT FIRST; ONLY LATER WERE INDIVIDUALS CREATORS.

INDEED, THE INDIVIDUAL HIMSELF IS STILL THE LATEST CREATION. He is not yet complete.

It is my effort with my people to make you all individuals, and I consider it the greatest creativity: to create individuals. Because the individual is the crown of the whole of evolution.

... IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN CREATORS AND LOVING MEN WHO CREATED GOOD AND EVIL.

FIRE OF LOVE AND FIRE OF ANGER GLOW IN THE NAMES OF ALL VIRTUES.

ZARATHUSTRA HAS SEEN MANY LANDS AND MANY PEOPLES: ZARATHUSTRA HAS FOUND NO GREATER POWER ON EARTH THAN THE WORKS OF THESE LOVING MEN: THESE WORKS ARE NAMED 'GOOD' AND 'EVIL'.

It is easy to understand that "good" is a great value created by loving human beings. It will take a little more intelligence to understand that evil is also created. In existence there is no evil, no good.

For example, the people who are creating nuclear weapons are also creative, but creative of evil.

And that will be a great day, when we stop creating evil and the whole energy of man's creativity creates only the good, only the beautiful, only the divine.

TRULY, THE POWER OF THIS PRAISING AND BLAMING IS A MONSTER...

HITHERTO THERE HAVE BEEN A THOUSAND GOALS, FOR THERE HAVE BEEN A THOUSAND PEOPLES. ONLY FETTERS ARE STILL LACKING FOR THESE THOUSAND NECKS, THE ONE GOAL IS STILL LACKING.

YET TELL ME, MY BROTHERS: IF A GOAL FOR HUMANITY IS STILL LACKING, IS THERE NOT STILL LACKING - HUMANITY ITSELF?

This is a tremendous insight and understanding of Zarathustra. There are thousands of goals, because humanity is divided into thousands of pieces; there is not one goal for the whole of humanity. He has raised a very pertinent question. If there is still not one goal for the whole of humanity, then can you say that humanity itself exists?

Indians exist, Chinese exist, Negroes exist, Europeans exist, Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians exist; but one humanity is just a word. And unless there is one humanity there cannot be one goal. They will come both together, simultaneously.

I repeat his words: Yet tell me, my brothers: If a goal for humanity is still lacking, is there not still lacking - humanity itself?

... THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.