On the blissful islands

ZARATHUSTRA IS A mine of original thoughts and extraordinary insights.

God has always been the creator of the world. Zarathustra wants to show that the very idea of a creator of the world destroys our freedom. We become creatures, and anything that is being created can be uncreated. It all depends on a whimsical God. The very hypothesis, the very supposition of God, is so absurd that it seems inconceivable how mankind could have lived with the idea for thousands of years.

The hypothesis of God creates more problems than it solves. It solves nothing - and a hypothesis is needed to solve problems. The hypothesis of God has only created a jungle of problems - all the theologies, all the religions, all the temples, churches, synagogues. And they are all based on such an irrational hypothesis - not only irrational, but inconceivable too.

For example, according to Christianity, God created the world exactly four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ was born. How have they managed to discover this figure - four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ - is anybody's guess, because there could not have been any eyewitness. The very idea of there being an eyewitness means the world was already there.

God must have created the world without any witness. Then who is the man, and what right has he to bring this number of four thousand and four years? On what grounds? Christianity has not given any grounds. There is no possibility to give any grounds, and naturally the question arises of what God was doing before that? - because it is a very short period: from today it is only six thousand years. In the vast expanse of eternity, six thousand years mean nothing.

According to scientific calculations, even this earth is four billion years old, our sun perhaps sixteen billion years old. And our sun is not the oldest star in the galaxy, nor the biggest; it is only a mediocre star.

And against every belief, there have been discovered cities underneath the earth which are certainly seven thousand years old. And there have been found on the Himalayas, fossils of sea animals - which is a very strange thing. What were sea animals doing on the Himalayas? And they are nearly eighty thousand years old.

The conclusion is that eighty thousand years ago, where the Himalayas are today, there was an ocean. In some cataclysmic change the Himalayas arose, and the ocean went downwards. But many animals died in that cataclysm, and their dead bodies remained on the Himalayan peaks; otherwise, there is no way for them to reach there, they cannot come out of the ocean.

In China there has been found fifty-thousand-year-old human bodies, almost intact, because they were covered in snow, and the snow has never melted; it has preserved them.

In spite of all scientific evidence we cannot conceive the beginning of the world. In fact the very idea of the beginning seems to be stupid, because how can something begin when there is nothing? It means out of nothing something begins, and suddenly, for no reason at all. At a certain point of time, the creation begins.

The hypothesis of God has not helped in any way to make life more explainable. But nobody except Zarathustra has proposed a counter-hypothesis: "Forget about the god that created the world. He does not exist."

God is not in the past, God has to be created in the future, God has to come as a crescendo of human consciousness, as the highest peak of human life, human awareness, human spirit. Each human being is carrying the seed of God. This seems to be more scientific, more in tune with the theory of Charles Darwin, the theory of evolution... God in the beginning is the most evolved phenomenon? God can only be in the end, the most evolved phenomenon, not in the beginning.

God can be the ultimate purity, truth, love; the ultimate harmony and silence.

Zarathustra gives the greatest challenge ever given, when he says, "We have to create God." His name for God is "superman."

ZARATHUSTRA HAS RETURNED TO THE MOUNTAINS WHERE HE LIVES A SOLITARY EXISTENCE FOR MANY YEARS, UNTIL ONE MORNING HE HAS A DREAM. Human evolution owes everything to the dreamers, to the poets, to the mystics, to the visionaries... people who will be thought by their contemporaries crazy, eccentric, insane, because they are talking about things which have not happened yet. But their far-seeing eyes, their clarity of vision, has seen them.

Someday, somewhere in the future, they are going to become realities; right now they are only dreams.

And remember, these dreams are not the dreams of Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalysis.

Sigmund Freud never came across any mystic, any visionary, any poet, so he knows only the dreams of the sick, psychologically disturbed, pathological people. And he has fallen into a very human fallacy. He thinks these are the only dreams that happen in the world.

Naturally, in his experience he has come to know only sick people. A mystic will not go to Sigmund Freud for psychoanalysis, nor will a poet go, nor will a creator go. People go whose minds are deeply split, repressed, retarded; people who have not been able to live their lives fully - the unlived parts of their lives become their dreams.

These are not the true dreamers. Zarathustra is, Gautam Buddha is, Lao Tzu is. They have nothing to repress, they don't have any inhibitions, they live their life moment to moment with totality; hence, no residue remains in their unconscious to become dreams. Their unconscious is a pure silence.

Out of this silence, once in a while, they see the future, they see something happening far away.

Zarathustra was living a solitary existence in the mountains, until one morning he has a dream.

FILLED WITH A NEW RESOLVE - the dream filled him with a new resolve - AND AN OVERWHELMING DESIRE TO SHARE HIS WORDS WITH HIS FRIENDS, ZARATHUSTRA SPEAKS THUS:

BEHOLD, WHAT ABUNDANCE IS AROUND US! AND IT IS FINE TO GAZE OUT UPON DISTANT SEAS FROM THE MIDST OF SUPERFLUITY.

ONCE YOU SAID 'GOD' WHEN YOU GAZED UPON DISTANT SEAS; BUT NOW I HAVE TAUGHT YOU TO SAY 'SUPERMAN'.

The distant destiny that once you used to call God was only an empty word, because it was not related in any way with you. There was no bridge between you and God. It was an image created by your fear. You felt alone in this vast universe, and you wanted a father-figure.

It is not strange that everywhere God is called "father." In fact, we have all been brought up by fathers, protected, safe and secure. The idea of father has become a fixation in our mind, and we know this father is mortal - either he is dead or he is going to be dead. And then you will be left unprotected, without any security, with nobody to look up to. It is because of this fear, and for this security, that man has created "God the Father."

Two small boys were playing and a bishop passed by. One boy was a Christian, and he said to the bishop, "Good morning, father." The other boy was a Jew. He stood there wondering, and when the bishop was gone he said to the boy, "You are strange people. This man has no wife, no children, he is a celibate, and you call him 'father'. You can be stupid - you are just a child - and call him father; but he accepts it; and he has not fathered anything in the world."

But it is the same sort of security: the priest becomes the father, the God becomes the father. There are even people like the Germans... their country becomes "fatherland." In the whole world, every country is a motherland except Germany. Perhaps it is below their egoistic attitude of being the most superior race in the world, having the birthright to rule over every other human being. Certainly, their country has to be not a woman, but a man. This is the male chauvinistic attitude.

But we are not alert. These things go on happening around us. Just the other day I was informed...

because I don't read; for ten years I have not read anything, any book, any newspaper, any magazine; only if my secretary comes across something, which I must be made aware of, she informs me.

Just four or five years ago they found a screening system by which it can be scientifically known whether the child in the mother's womb is a boy or a girl; because the boy gives a different kind of vibration from the girl, and the machine simply reads the vibrations.

Just in Bombay - and it is spreading over all the third world countries - just in Bombay, women are going through that screening process, and if it is found that it is a girl and not a boy, then they go for abortion. Ninety-seven percent of abortions are of girls. Man is so stupid that he doesn't understand a simple arithmetic. If ninety-seven percent of girls are to be killed, then the world will be much too full of men. It will create all kinds of sexual perversions, prostitution, homosexuality; or we may have to find scientific ways for people's sexuality.

But nobody is bothered that this is very ugly, and if it is happening, the result will come soon, within a decade, all over the world, and then it will be too late. Even in the twentieth century, man remains crude, primitive, wants the woman only to be a slave; and this is the last step - it is pure murder.

I am not against abortion, but nature keeps a balance. The same balance should be kept in abortions. It is the duty of the doctors and the hospitals that if fifty girls are aborted, then fifty boys should be aborted; otherwise, you are creating a great problem for the coming days. Ugly diseases are bound to spread.

But for centuries, man has been doing things which should not have been done. God has overruled humanity, and God is nothing but an idea. For this idea, millions of people have died; they killed each other, crusades upon crusades - Mohammedans killing Hindus, Christians killing Jews.

You can see it in India; Gautam Buddha influenced the whole country, but once he was dead, all the Buddhists simply disappeared. In the East, India is the only country which has no Buddhists. What happened? - Either they were killed, burnt alive, or they had to escape from India to Tibet, to Sri Lanka, to Japan, to China, to Korea, to Thailand, to faraway lands, just to survive. The whole of Asia is Buddhist, except India, and Buddhism was born in India. Is it not amazing?

Indians go on bragging, "This is the country of Gautam Buddha." And what have you done with the Buddhists? Even in the temple, which was raised in the memory of Gautam Buddha's enlightenment in Bodhgaya, a brahmin who is not a buddhist, is the priest. For centuries his family, generation after generation, has supplied the priest. Now they are the owners of the temple and the land.

Buddhists have been killed: it was such a massacre that not even a priest was available for the memorial temple that was raised for Buddha. Buddha's whole effort was against brahminism, his revolution was against brahminism - and a brahmin is the priest in his temple.

Zarathustra is right: Don't any longer call that distant vision God. That word has done enough harm.

Let us say the superman - because superman is your growth. God is absolutely unrelated to you; superman is your heights, your depths, superman is your spring.

Superman is absolutely rooted in man, it will grow out of man. Hence, superman is not a hypothesis, it is a tremendously significant vision of man's growth, a challenge for a pilgrimage. Move out of your smallness, move out of your meanness, move out of your hate, of your jealousies; and you will find yourself turning into a superman. Superman is nothing but you, refined, purified, fulfilled, using your intelligence in its totality.

Zarathustra is not talking a new theology. He is talking about the science of man.

GOD IS A SUPPOSITION; BUT I WANT YOUR SUPPOSING TO REACH NO FURTHER THAN YOUR CREATING WILL. Drop all such suppositions. A supposed God is a false God.

I am reminded.... In my school days in the arithmetic class, all the problems in arithmetic are "suppose...." The very first day I came into conflict with the teacher. I said, "Why should I suppose?"

He looked at me and said, "I have taught thousands of students, and I am just going to be retired; nobody has ever said, 'Why should I suppose?' This is arithmetic."

I said, "Whatever it is, the question remains: you are asking me to suppose something, but why should I suppose - unnecessarily creating a problem - and then I have to solve it! I withdraw myself from the very beginning. I don't suppose!"

He said, "Then you cannot learn arithmetic."

I said, "Most probably I will never need mathematics. Talk something of reality... supposition?

Everything is supposition." But the whole of theology is just a supposition - arithmetic is more honest, they use the word "suppose." Theology is more dishonest. It does not say, "Suppose there is a God"; it says, "There is a God."

Zarathustra says, "Your supposition should not go further than your creating will." You have forgotten that you can create, that you have a will. Find it out, bring it forth, make it a reality. To you it may appear a supposition in the beginning, but to me it is a reality.

That's why he is saying, I WANT YOUR SUPPOSING TO REACH NO FURTHER THAN YOUR CREATING WILL. That's enough. The work of your supposing is finished.

COULD YOU CREATE A GOD? Certainly nobody has ever asked this. People have been asking whether God created us. Zarathustra is asking, COULD YOU CREATE A GOD? If you can create a god, then god becomes a reality. If you cannot create a god, that god remains a supposition.

And we have been tortured by this supposition long enough. We have been enslaved by a hypothesis for thousands of years. Unless we destroy this hypothesis, man can never stand on his own feet.

He can never be free. How can you be free? If you are just created by God, you are a puppet. Once he thought to create you - it was a whimsical idea. In the first place there was no need to create - or was there any need? He created you as a whim. But you cannot depend on such a whimsical person, he must be getting tired. One day he can destroy everything that he has created.

If you are just a creature then there is no point of talking about enlightenment, no point of talking about your realization, no point of talking about love, of freedom. You don't matter any more. If God is a reality, you become false. It is a great choice to be made: either you choose yourself, or you can choose God; but choosing God means committing suicide as human beings.

COULD YOU CREATE A GOD? - SO BE SILENT ABOUT ALL GODS! BUT YOU COULD SURELY CREATE THE SUPERMAN. And that which you can create will bring joy to you, will make a god of you, because you will become a creator. This is a totally different approach. You are not to go in search of God - you will not find Him. You have to become a god. And to become a god means to create something higher than you, better than you, superior to you, which surpasses you in every way.

PERHAPS NOT YOU YOURSELVES, MY BROTHERS! BUT YOU COULD TRANSFORM YOURSELVES INTO FOREFATHERS AND ANCESTORS OF THE SUPERMAN: AND LET THIS BE YOUR FINEST CREATING! Perhaps you yourself cannot create the superman, but you can create the situation. You can start the work. Perhaps after four generations the work will be completed - the superman will have arrived. You can at least be forefathers and ancestors of the superman - AND LET THIS BE YOUR FINEST CREATING!

GOD IS A SUPPOSITION: BUT I WANT YOUR SUPPOSING TO BE BOUNDED BY CONCEIVABILITY. He is infinitely a sensible man. He says, "Your supposing should be bounded by conceivability." You cannot even conceive God. If you try to figure out, "What do you mean by God?", nothing will arise in your mind; or something will arise, which has been told to you from your very childhood, forced in your mind.

Just in front of my house there used to be a temple, a beautiful temple. My father once said to me "I know, if I say to you 'Come with me to the temple,' then it is impossible. That's why I am not inviting you. I am not saying 'Come with me.' I am leaving it up to you. It is a beautiful temple, it has a very beautiful statue of god - believe in it or not. But what is the harm to come and see?"

I said, "Okay, I am coming, but then don't be angry with me."

He said, "Why should I be angry, I should be very happy that you are coming."

Then he prostrated himself before the god, and I laughed and he was angry and I said, "I have told you before that you will be angry."

He said, "But why did you laugh?"

I said, "You are prostrating yourself before a god, and I have seen rats pissing over the god. I am a constant visitor, but I don't come when people come in the morning. I come in the afternoons when there is nobody. This place is so silent, I can almost forget the world. I sit here silently, I enjoy; and I have seen rats running over the statue, pissing over the statue; and you are asking me why I am laughing?

"A god who cannot protect himself from the rats is not going to protect you! Just get up. If the rats see it, what will they think of me? You are my father."

He said, "Never come with me!"

I said, "I have not come with you; you seduced me to come with you, you tricked me, and I warned you not to become angry because I knew that was going to happen."

How many temples are there on the earth, of how many religions? And how many different kinds of gods have they imagined? And they will not even see the stupidity of their imagination. In India you will find thousands of gods. In this part of the land, Ganesha, the elephant god, is worshiped most. Even the very well-educated, professors in the university, and the vice-chancellors, they also worship it - and nobody ever thinks at all.

I would like to tell you the story of Ganesh, just to make it clear.... He is supposed to be the son of Shiva, one of the Hindu trinity of gods. The Hindu god has three faces, it is called trimurti, just like the Christian trinity: one is Brahma who creates the world, the other is Vishnu who maintains it, and the third is Shiva who destroys it. This elephant god, Ganesha, has the body of a man, of a very ugly man because his belly is so big that he is all belly; and on top of it he has an elephant's head.

The story is: Shiva has gone out, and his wife Parvati was taking a bath. It seems she has taken a bath only once in her life, because she collected all the dust from her body and made Ganesha. This elephant god is made by collecting all the dust... I have always wondered how thick the layer of dust was, that she must have been carrying on her body. Just playfully taking a bath, cleaning her body, she collected the dust and made a statue of it. And because she is a goddess she breathed life into him. This is how he became the son of Parvati and Shiva - although Shiva has no contribution in it; he was not even aware that he has a son.

She told Ganesha, "You sit outside and don't let anybody come in. If somebody comes, tell him, 'My father is out. Come some other time.'" At that time he did not have the head of an elephant. But as chance would have it, Shiva himself came; and he prevented him with his sword, this little boy, and said, "Don't come in, my father is out. Come some time later on."

Shiva could not believe it: "Who is this fellow? Preventing ME!" He became so angry he took away the sword and cut off the head of the child, and went in and asked Parvati, "Who is that boy?"

She said, "What happened?" He said, "I have finished him." She said, "You don't know, he was your son." And then she explained the whole thing, and she started throwing a tantrum: "Bring my son back!"

So he went out to look for the head... where the head has gone. They used to live on the Himalayas, so it must have rolled down somewhere into some valley, into pieces; just the boy was sitting without the head. So he ran around, found a small boy elephant; he cut off his head and glued that head on Ganesha.

These kinds of foolish things... and for thousands of years people go on worshiping.

God is beyond your conceivability. Whatever you can conceive will be just an idea. That's why there are so many gods, because different people conceived them.

He is asking a very pertinent question, GOD IS A SUPPOSITION; BUT I WANT YOUR SUPPOSING TO BE BOUNDED BY CONCEIVABILITY. COULD YOU CONCEIVE A GOD? Forget about creating, you cannot even conceive a god! All your conceptions will be just imaginary.

BUT MAY THE WILL TO TRUTH MEAN THIS TO YOU: THAT EVERYTHING SHALL BE TRANSFORMED INTO THE HUMANLY-CONCEIVABLE..., he wants religion to be humanly- conceivable, not an absurdity,... THE HUMANLY-EVIDENT, THE HUMANLY-PALPABLE! YOU SHOULD FOLLOW YOUR OWN SENSES TO THE END! He is not against your senses, as all the religions are. He is all for them: they are your nature. They are windows through which you connect with existence. YOU SHOULD FOLLOW YOUR OWN SENSES TO THE END!

There is nothing like repression in the whole philosophy of Zarathustra. He is a pagan, a realist, a man who trusts in nature and existence.

AND YOU YOURSELVES SHOULD CREATE WHAT YOU HAVE HITHERTO CALLED THE WORLD.

Because you lived under this false notion that God created the world, is why the world is in such a mess. Once God is removed, once the idea that God created the world is removed, then the responsibility falls on you.

You have to create the world.

And then the world will be more human, more loving, more joyous, more dancing.

AND YOU YOURSELVES SHOULD CREATE WHAT YOU HAVE HITHERTO CALLED THE WORLD:

THE WORLD SHOULD BE FORMED IN YOUR IMAGE BY YOUR REASON, YOUR WILL, AND YOUR LOVE! AND TRULY, IT WILL BE TO YOUR HAPPINESS, YOU ENLIGHTENED MEN! Now again he changes his address. If you have understood this much... and the people he must have been talking to, his disciples, must have shown indications that they have understood it. It is so simple, it is so natural, it does not ask you to believe in anything. It simply tries to make you aware of all your capacities of will, reason and love.

AND TRULY, IT WILL BE TO YOUR HAPPINESS, YOU ENLIGHTENED MEN! If you can fall in rapport with Zarathustra's approach, you have already become enlightened.

BUT TO REVEAL MY HEART ENTIRELY TO YOU, FRIENDS: IF THERE WERE GODS, HOW COULD I ENDURE NOT TO BE A GOD! THEREFORE THERE ARE NO GODS A very beautiful argument, and a very strange one too. He is saying, "If there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god? How could you endure not to be a god? Because without being a god, you would always remain inferior, you will always remain a slave. No, it cannot be endured. God cannot be endured, cannot be tolerated." This is a very psychological argument - not logical.

THEREFORE THERE ARE NO GODS. Because I don't feel any inferiority, because I don't feel any competition with any god, because I feel absolutely contented, fulfilled, I don't see any need of God.

In my health, in my joy, in my purity, in my holiness, I am so enriched. There is no question for me to be jealous of anyone else. Existence has given to me all that I could have ever dreamt.

THEREFORE THERE ARE NO GODS.

I, INDEED, DREW THAT CONCLUSION; BUT NOW IT DRAWS ME.

GOD IS A SUPPOSITION: BUT WHO COULD IMBIBE ALL THE ANGUISH OF THIS SUPPOSITION WITHOUT DYING? SHALL THE CREATOR BE ROBBED OF HIS FAITH AND THE EAGLE OF HIS SOARING INTO THE HEIGHTS?

The very idea that "God is" takes away from you everything that is valuable. Then your strings are in the hands of God. He wants you to fight - you fight. He wants you to love - you love. He wants you to live - you live. He wants you to die - you die. You are just a thing. Your life is not your own: he has breathed that life into you, he can take it back. You are living on borrowed life - it is humiliating.

You have, in the idea of God, destroyed the beauty of all the creators. You have taken away the soaring into the heights of the eagle; you have taken away the possibility of enlightenment of human beings; you have taken away the most cherished value of freedom. Just for a supposition, you have destroyed all that is beautiful in life. Zarathustra is ready to take away that supposition and give you your freedom, your creativity, your flight, your love, your godliness.

Once God is no more there, then this very earth can be transformed into a paradise, because then it is up to you how you want it to be. Your destiny is no more in somebody else's hands. You are for the first time masters of your own life, of your destiny, of your distant future.

I CALL IT EVIL AND MISANTHROPIC, ALL THIS TEACHING ABOUT THE ONE AND THE PERFECT AND THE UNMOVED AND THE SUFFICIENT AND THE INTRANSITORY. Great is the courage of Zarathustra. He is saying, I CALL IT EVIL - what you call God, I CALL IT EVIL AND MISANTHROPIC. It is against humanity. It is very unkind, rude... ALL THIS TEACHING ABOUT THE ONE, AND THE PERFECT, AND THE UNMOVED, AND THE SUFFICIENT AND THE INTRANSITORY.

BUT THE BEST IMAGES AND PARABLES SHOULD SPEAK OF TIME AND BECOMING: Forget all this nonsense. From now onwards, THE BEST IMAGES AND PARABLES SHOULD SPEAK OF TIME AND BECOMING.

Because we have accepted the idea that God created, there is no question of becoming. He has created dogs, he has created monkeys, he has created trees, he has created man: everybody is a being: becoming is out of question. Becoming will mean you can improve on the work of God. But once the supposition of God is removed, instead of being, becoming becomes our life.

Then you are no more dirty water, unflowing, becoming dirtier and dirtier every day. You become a river, a flowing, a change, each moment bringing new life and new juices to you, new beauty and new grace.

THEY SHOULD BE A EULOGY AND A JUSTIFICATION OF ALL TRANSITORINESS. All that is changing and changeable should be praised, not the permanent, because the permanent is always dead; the living is always moving. The living is always becoming, never being. Zarathustra teaches becoming instead of being, he teaches change instead of permanence.

ALL FEELING SUFFERS IN ME AND IS IN PRISON: BUT MY WILLING ALWAYS COMES TO ME AS MY LIBERATOR AND BRINGER OF JOY.

WILLING LIBERATES: THAT IS THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF WILL AND FREEDOM - THUS ZARATHUSTRA TEACHES YOU.

Becoming implies willing. You have to will, you have to create yourself every moment. The responsibility is no more on some hypothetical God. The responsibility is on your own shoulders.

You cannot complain against any fate. If you are miserable, you are responsible. If you are joyful, if you are blissful, it is your will, it is your creation.

Zarathustra raises willing to the highest creative quality in man. You can will this earth to become a paradise. You can will this man to become superman; your will is the greatest power in your hands.

But people have lived not as "willers," but as "sufferers of feeling." The feeling is something for which somebody else is responsible - somebody insults you and you feel anger. Somebody praises you and you feel joy. A lottery comes up in your name, and you dance. Feeling is a dependability.

Somebody else from outside is needed to do something. Something has to happen to you.

That's why Zarathustra calls out :ALL feeling SUFFERS IN ME AND IS IN PRISON. But my willing is a totally different matter: MY willing ALWAYS COMES TO ME AS MY LIBERATOR AND BRINGER OF JOY. Willing liberates - because willing makes you creators, willing makes you gods. Willing transforms you into superman.

... THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.