Of the compassionate

THE ORIGINAL SIN has been discussed almost by all religions. They all have different ideas about it. The most prominent and prevalent is the Christian idea. According to Christianity, disobedience is the original sin. The moment one decides that disobedience is the original sin, obedience automatically becomes the greatest virtue. Obedience creates slaves. Obedience is a poison that destroys all possibility of rebellion. Obedience is destructive, destructive of the very dignity of man.

The Christian story is beautiful, although an absolute lie. God, in the very beginning, had forbidden man to eat from the trees of wisdom and of eternal life. The very idea seems to be absurd. On the one hand God is the creator, the father, and on the other hand he is prohibiting his own children from being wise and living eternally. There seems to be a great contradiction.

But the devil pursuades Eve to eat from the tree of wisdom, and his argument is absolutely rational, human and tremendously significant. He says to Eve that if you don't eat from the tree of wisdom and from the tree of eternal life you will always remain animals; and God is afraid that if you eat from the tree of wisdom and the tree of eternal life, you will become gods. He is jealous, jealous of his own children. He is afraid. He does not want you to transcend your animal existence, he wants you to remain ignorant, unconscious, dependent, while you have the potential of being equals of God.

His argument is so profound that it seems the Christian god is not behaving the way a god is supposed to behave. On the contrary, the devil is behaving in a more divine way. In fact, the word devil comes from a Sanskrit root which means divine. The word divine also comes from the same root.

But Eve and Adam rebelled. And as God became aware that they had eaten the fruit of wisdom, he immediately expelled them from the Garden of Eden, afraid that now they will eat from the other tree which will make them eternal beings, immortal.

The story is significant in many ways, because the whole history of man is nothing but an enquiry into gaining more and more wisdom, and an enquiry into finding the eternal sources of life.

All the religions have been trying to make it that man should not go against the commandments that are coming from God, although the commandments are ugly. Man is expected to say yes in spite of himself; only his obedience and faith are going to deliver him. This has made the whole of humanity remain retarded, unevolved. Having all the treasures and yet living in misery, having all potential to reach to the stars, but still crawling on the earth.

All the religions without exception have deprived man of his pride. And the moment man loses his pride, his dignity, he loses his very soul; he falls below the human level of life to sub-human levels.

Zarathustra brings a new light as far as the original sin is concerned, and he seems to be the most relevant and rational amongst all the other mystics of the world. What he says is so pure, so clear, so undeniably true that it needs no argument to prove it; it is self-evident, it is self-luminous.

Says he, "AS LONG AS MEN HAVE EXISTED, MAN HAS ENJOYED HIMSELF TOO LITTLE: THAT ALONE, MY BROTHERS, IS OUR ORIGINAL SIN!" You have such an infinite capacity to enjoy the whole rainbow of pleasures, happinesses, joys, and blessings. But all the religions have been telling you: Renounce pleasures, renounce life, live as minimally as possible. Don't live, just survive. And this has become the way of their saints. This they call austerity, this they call discipline: to wash away the original sin that Adam and Eve committed.

Zarathustra is exceptional, and can be understood only by very intelligent and very exceptional people. That's why there is not a great religion - as far as numbers are concerned - following Zarathustra. There are millions of people who have not even heard his name, and he has given greater original insights than anybody else.

Do you recognize the originality? He is saying the only original sin is that man has allowed himself to enjoy too little! He has not lived totally, intensely, madly! He has not lived with his whole being, he has not been orgasmic. And even if he has enjoyed a little bit, he has enjoyed it full of fear - he will be punished for it. Torturing yourself is going to be rewarded in the other world; enjoying yourself will lead you into an abysmal hell where you will be tortured eternally; forever and forever.

So even though man has enjoyed a little, there was fear; it was always half-hearted, he was never total in it, he never got lost into it. The religions have not been able to take man away from pleasures completely, but they have succeeded almost ninety-nine percent. And whatsoever has remained - that one percent - they have poisoned it. You enjoyed, knowing perfectly well you are committing a sin and you are paving a path towards hell.

And why does Zarathustra call it the original sin? Because a man who has not enjoyed at the maximum, at the optimum, will not know what life is all about, will not know what is virtue, will not know the significance and the beauty of existence. He will remain ignorant, he will remain psychologically sick - because your whole nature is demanding pleasure and your mind, contaminated by the priests, is holding you back.

Every man is in a strange tension. Nature wants to go in one direction and your religions want to take you in the exact opposite direction. Your whole life becomes a fight with yourself. You become your own enemy. And unless you know life in its heights - pleasures transforming into blissfulness, enjoyment turning into ecstasies - you are committing an original sin against life itself.

AND IF WE LEARN BETTER TO ENJOY OURSELVES, WE BEST UNLEARN HOW TO DO HARM TO OTHERS AND TO CONTRIVE HARM. Zarathustra comes to strange conclusions, from very novel directions. Gautam Buddha says, "Do not harm anybody. Do not hurt anybody, because that is a sin." Mahavira says, "Violence of any kind is a sin." Zarathustra comes to the same conclusion, but his whole argument is more profound than Gautam Buddha and Mahavira.

AND IF WE LEARN BETTER TO ENJOY OURSELVES, WE BEST UNLEARN HOW TO DO HARM TO OTHERS AND TO CONTRIVE HARM. I can say with absolute authority that once you are blissful, you cannot harm anybody. Once you have known the eternity of life, and the joyous dance of life, it is impossible for you to harm anyone - because there is no one other than you. We are not separate islands; we are one continent, one single whole.

He is not making it a sin, he is not prohibiting you from harming others. He is simply saying, enjoy yourself to the fullest and you will not harm others, because in your very enjoyment the idea of I and thou disappears. There are no longer others; it is one life in millions of manifestations. In the trees, in the animals, in human beings, in the stars - these are all manifestations of one life, one single life.

If we are harming anybody, we are harming ourselves. But this insight arises in you when you reach to the highest peak of bliss. That's why he says man's original sin is: he has enjoyed himself too little; and a man who has not enjoyed himself will not tolerate anybody else enjoying himself.

These are simple psychological facts. The man who is in pain, in anguish, in anxiety, in misery cannot tolerate anybody else being blissful. It hurts. Why am I miserable and why are others not?

And if the whole of humanity is suffering, then to be blissful in this suffering humanity is to be constantly in danger.

People would like to destroy you. You don't belong to them, you are not miserable enough. You are a stranger. Perhaps you are mad, because when the whole world is so miserable how can you manage to laugh? How can you manage to dance and sing?

Just the other day Neelam brought many articles; a few for me, a few against me, a few neutral.

Every day she brings them. It is amazing. I don't even read them. All over the world, in all the languages people are taking so much trouble - writing for me, writing against me, writing neutrally, being factual. In one article she simple read one line in it. Because I have been seeing them, she feels embarrassed and hurt because people are writing absolute lies about me, not even a fragment of truth in them. So she simply says, "This is disgusting, nasty," and throws it away. And before throwing away that article, she said, "This man is writing utter lies."

One thing, in the beginning he says that I am the most disrespected and the most learned man of the day. He will be shocked, whoever has written it, because I don't want to be respected by sheep and goats, by monkeys and donkeys, by pigs and pygmies. I have never in my life desired any respect.

I don't consider the present humanity worthy enough to have its respect, it is enough to have its disrespect. The men whom Zarathustra calls "supermen" - perhaps they will be able to respect me because they will be able to understand me. Even today there are a few people who understand me; and then their respect is not only respect, it is love, it is devotion.

And as far as being the most learned, that man is absolutely wrong. I do not belong to the category of the learned. My whole life has been based on a fundamental truth which can only be called unlearning. Whatever the society has forced me to learn, through the schools and the colleges and the universities, my work has been how to unlearn it; how to clean myself from all this junk, rubbish and all kinds of crap. I am not a learned man. Perhaps I might be the most unlearned man in the world. And I would hate to be respected by the present humanity - it does not have that intelligence, nor has it that heart, nor has it that being.

Twenty-five centuries have passed and Zarathustra is not yet understood, is not even now loved and respected. Perhaps the man who can love people like Zarathustra has yet to come. The clarity, the intelligence, the silence which is needed to understand him is absolutely missing in present-day human beings.

And the reason it is missing is that they have not allowed themselves to actualize all their potential.

They have not allowed themselves to go the way of nature, the way of the Tao, they have not allowed themselves to flow with the stream. They have listened to wrong people, who have been teaching them to swim upstream, in which they are going to be frustrated and they are going to be failures - and then they become condemners. The moment a person fails in achieving his goal he becomes a condemner. And because everybody has been told to make goals which are anti-life, anti-pleasure, anti-nature - failure is absolutely certain.

These miserable people cannot understand a blissful man, and the man who has not known bliss enjoys only one thing, the suffering of others. Every early morning he is waiting for the newspaper just to know how many crimes have been committed, how many people have been murdered, how many people have committed suicide. Because good news is no news, only something bad, something disgusting is news. Anything natural is not news, howsoever beautiful it may be.

Just the opposite happens when you are blissful, you want everybody else to be blissful, too; because your blissfulness becomes multiplied by everybody else being blissful too. Harming anybody becomes simply impossible. It is not a discipline, it is not a vow that you have taken in a temple according to any religion; it is a simple outcome of your own blissfulness; that you cannot harm. You know life enjoys itself in being blissful, how can you destroy any other life? Just as you enjoy, every form of life wants to enjoy.

Certainly, if everything around you is dancing and ecstatic, it is going to make your own ecstasy far richer. The reward is here, now. Harming others becomes impossible, because it is harming your own joy. And helping people to be blissful is not to be a service to them, but a service to yourself, because their joy is going to enhance your joy. The more people are blissful in the world, the more there is an atmosphere of celebration. In that atmosphere you can dance more easily, you can sing more easily. This is a great contribution of Zarathustra.

THEREFORE I WASH MY HAND WHEN IT HAS HELPED A SUFFERER, THEREFORE I WIPE MY SOUL CLEAN AS WELL.

FOR I SAW THE SUFFERER SUFFER, AND BECAUSE I SAW IT I WAS ASHAMED ON ACCOUNT OF HIS SHAME; AND WHEN I HELPED HIM, THEN I SORELY INJURED HIS PRIDE.

He is always original in seeing things. The same things have been seen by millions of people, but Zarathustra finds an angle which is absolutely virgin. He is saying, "Whenever I help somebody who is suffering, I know I am hurting his pride, I know he is feeling shame that he is suffering. Because of his shame I feel ashamed, and because I have helped him I have sorely injured his pride."

Rather than expecting to have pleasures in heaven because I have helped somebody who is suffering - opening an account in paradise, counting on one's virtues - he says "I wash my hand because I have hurt somebody's pride. I have seen him suffer, I have seen him naked, I have seen his wounds which he was hiding. Although I have helped him - but what is my help? His pride is hurt, and I have to wash my hands. I have to do something so that he does not feel ashamed, so he does not feel that his pride has been hurt; on the contrary, he feels that he has obliged me, he has given me an opportunity to help a brother. He is not obliged to me, I am obliged to him."

'BE RESERVED IN ACCEPTING! HONOUR A MAN BY ACCEPTING FROM HIM!'

Be reserved, be very, very careful and cautious in accepting.

HONOUR A MAN BY ACCEPTING FROM HIM. It may be a small thing, a roseflower, or just a good morning, or a handshake, but accept it with such love, with such grace. He has honored you. Let him feel that he has been accepted.

In this world millions of people are suffering because nobody accepts them. Everybody asks them, "Are you worthy? Do you deserve?" Nobody accepts them as they are, and certainly, everybody is whatever he is. It is not his fault existence needs him the way he is; he must be fulfilling a certain need of which you are not aware. You are not aware of many mysteries of life, and if life is accepting a man, who are you to reject him?

But all around the world people are suffering for a simple reason that they don't have anything to give, that nobody wants them as they are, that everybody demands them to be somebody else - then they will be accepted. And nobody can be somebody else. In the very effort he becomes crippled, in the very effort he becomes distorted, in the very effort he loses his natural grace and his natural destiny, he goes astray. And this creates misery.

... THUS I ADVISE THOSE WHO HAVE NOTHING TO GIVE.

I, HOWEVER, AM A GIVER: I GIVE GLADLY AS A FRIEND TO FRIENDS. BUT STRANGERS AND THE POOR MAY PLUCK THE FRUIT FROM MY TREE FOR THEMSELVES: IT CAUSES LESS SHAME THAT WAY. Do you see his insight? He says, "I give to my friends, because it will not hurt their pride. They will rejoice with me. I have accepted things from them; I have accepted them, they will accept me. But to the poor, but to strangers, I would suggest it is better they PLUCK THE FRUIT FROM MY TREE FOR THEMSELVES: IT CAUSES LESS SHAME THAT WAY. Their pride will not be hurt, and they will not feel inferior to me. It is very difficult to find a man of deeper insight into human psychology.

AND WE ARE THE MOST UNFAIR, NOT TOWARDS HIM WHOM WE DO NOT LIKE, BUT TOWARDS HIM FOR WHOM WE FEEL NOTHING AT ALL. You can love someone, you can hate someone, but don't be neutral, don't be indifferent. You can like, you can dislike - in either case you are taking a standpoint. But don't say, "It does not matter to me." The moment you become neutral you are simply saying that whether that man exists or dies it makes no difference to you.

This is the greatest harm that you can do to somebody. Hate will not hurt so much. At least you hate, there is a relationship. And hate can turn into love any moment, because love turns into hate - they are convertible. Likings can become dislikings tomorrow and vice versa, but indifference remains indifference.

Indifference is the worst kind of behavior a man can adopt. But watch yourself, how indifferent are you? How many people do you love, how many people do you hate? How many people do you like, how many people do you dislike? The number will be very small. And what about the millions to whom you are simply indifferent? If in Ethiopia one thousand people die every day, you simply read it in the newspaper and you don't lose even a heartbeat. Ethiopia is far away, it is almost another planet; and obviously you cannot care about the whole world.

It is not a question of care. It is a question of the expansion of your consciousness. Ethiopia should be part of the map of your consciousness. But in Ethiopia people were dying because they had no food, and in Europe food was being destroyed in the ocean because they had superfluous food - mountains of butter, mountains of foodstuff. Just the cost of destruction was two billion dollars. That was not the cost of the food - it was just the cost of taking the food to the ocean and throwing it into the ocean. One wonders, does man really have a heart, or is it just a fiction?

The same was happening in America. Every six months in Europe and America - both places - billions of dollars are wasted in destroying food, and in the poor countries people are dying. And death by starvation is the ugliest, because it takes such a long time, and so much unnecessary suffering. A healthy man can live without food for three months, then he will die. But these three months will be hell, they will appear like three lives.

A man who knows life as a joy will also understand that other living beings are in the same category; they also want to live, they also want to enjoy. If I can do something it is not for them, it is not a service - it is just my joy, my pleasure to share myself.

BUT IF YOU HAVE A SUFFERING FRIEND, BE A RESTING-PLACE FOR HIS SUFFERING, BUT A RESTING-PLACE LIKE A HARD BED, A CAMP-BED: THUS YOU WILL SERVE HIM BEST.

AND SHOULD YOUR FRIEND DO YOU A WRONG, THEN SAY: 'I FORGIVE YOU WHAT YOU DID TO ME; BUT THAT YOU DID IT TO YOURSELF - HOW COULD I FORGIVE THAT?' What can I do about that? Doing something to me you have done something to yourself, too. I can forgive you for what you have done to me, but what can I do about what you have done to yourself? You cannot hurt anybody without hurting yourself. It is just impossible to behave in a disgusting way with anybody; you are at the same time behaving disgustingly with yourself.

You cannot insult somebody without insulting yourself.

THUS SPEAKS ALL GREAT LOVE: IT OVERCOMES EVEN FORGIVENESS AND PITY. When you say "I pity", it is not love; because to whomsoever you show your pity, you make him feel inferior.

Love never makes anybody feel inferior. It gives superiority. It brings out the best in the other. PITY and SERVICE TO THE POOR are ugly words; DUTY... these are not words of love. These are the conveniences of a miserable society. These are not the sharings of a blissful world.

ALAS, WHERE IN THE WORLD HAVE THERE BEEN GREATER FOLLIES THAN WITH THE COMPASSIONATE? AND WHAT IN THE WORLD HAS CAUSED MORE SUFFERING THAN THE FOLLIES OF THE COMPASSIONATE? You may have never thought that compassion can also cause misery. But that's what it has done. Mohammedans have killed millions of people - out of compassion. Christians have killed millions of people - out of compassion. The compassion for the Mohammedan is - if you are not a Mohammedan then become a Mohammedan, because only a Mohammedan will be saved on the last day of judgment. Even if you have to be forced, on the point of a sword, it is compassion. And if you are still unwilling to become a Mohammedan it is better that you are killed, because to be killed at the hands of a Mohammedan you have some chance of being saved.

Christian missionaries go on spreading in the world that unless you are a Christian you cannot be saved. There is only one savior, Jesus Christ. Those who don't follow Jesus have to be brought somehow into the fold. In the past, they used to be forced by violence, by murder, by arson. Today the means of converting them has changed, but the basic idea remains the same. First they used to come with a bible in one hand, and a sword in the other; now they come with a bible in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other.

The hungry, the starving cannot resist the temptation. Even if he has to become a Christian - he does not know anything about religion, his whole life he has known only one thing and that is hunger. The bread certainly seems to be a great redemption. But by giving bread to the poor you are purchasing their souls. And the idea is, the more people you make Christians, the more you accumulate virtue. You are not concerned with their being saved, you are concerned with your own account, your own virtue. Compassion has done much harm. The coming man has to rise above compassion. The new man has to learn sharing - not for any reward, not for any compensation, but just out of sheer joy. It is joy to share. If you have bread and you can share with a hungry man without hurting his pride, if you can share with those who are unfortunate and yet remain graceful, that will be true virtue.

WOE TO ALL LOVERS WHO CANNOT SURMOUNT PITY!

THUS SPOKE THE DEVIL TO ME ONCE: 'EVEN GOD HAS HIS HELL: IT IS HIS LOVE FOR MAN.'

It is a very strange statement. Zarathustra is speaking through the mouth of the devil, because he cannot say it directly. He cannot say it directly because he has declared God to be dead, and if God is dead the devil cannot survive, they both are fictions, complementary to each other; they can only exist together. But just to make a significant statement he uses the metaphor of the devil: Thus spoke the Devil to me once: 'Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man.'

It reminds me of Jean-Paul Sartre, who was one of the most significant philosophers of our century.

He says, "The other is hell." And it is the conclusion of a long life of many love affairs; but each love affair ended in a state of hell. Finally he draws the conclusion that it does not matter who the other is, the other itself is hell. The other has his own likings, dislikings; even lovers cannot be in harmony, because harmony is a totally different discipline. Unless you have learned to be in harmony with yourself, how you can be in harmony with anybody else?

So it is good if lovers just meet on the beaches, in the parks - just once in a while. Everything seems to be great and beautiful because both are alert and keeping on their masks, their makeup; they are saying sweet nothings to each other.

But once they start living together it becomes difficult to go on being false twenty-four hours a day.

It becomes heavy, and the mask goes on slipping; you cannot hold it on for twenty-four hours. And you cannot go on saying the same old sweet nothings again and again - they become boring. Soon you find there is nothing to talk about. Your love becomes a repetition, a mechanical repetition, as if you are seeing the same old film again and again and again.

I have heard about a villager... when for the first time in his village came a movie, a touring movie, he saw the matinee show. Everybody had left, but he was sitting there. The manager came, "What is the idea? Because the show is finished, and now we will have to clean for the next show." The villager said, "You can bring the ticket for the next show, I am not going anywhere, I will see the next show. And if I am not satisfied, I will see the third show, also." There were three shows every day.

The manager thought the man seemed mad, but he gave money, so he said, "Perhaps, let him see it." After the second show, the manager came again just out of curiosity to ask, "Are you satisfied?"

The villager said, "Satisfied? My foot! I have to see the third show also. This is the money, bring the ticket." But the manager said, "What is the problem? If I can be of any help?..." He said, "Nobody can be of any help. But I'm not going to go unless I'm satisfied." The manager said, "What is your satisfaction? How can you be satisfied? You just tell me."

The villager said, "In the film, there is a beautiful woman just standing on the bank of a beautiful lake, undressing. She's almost undressed, just the last piece of cloth has remained; and unfortunately, a train comes and by the time the train has passed, the woman is swimming in the lake. I'm waiting, because in India, it is impossible that the train will come always at the right time. Someday it is going to be late; if not today, tomorrow I will come, the day after tomorrow I will come. One day it is going to happen that the train will not come, only then I will be satisfied." The manager said, "My God, it is going to be very difficult!"

But what are you seeing in your film? - the same film, and even the train does not come. And every night you decide enough is enough, but after twenty-four hours you start thinking perhaps... one never knows, something may be different. And it has been going on for your whole life.

The moment anything becomes a repetition you start behaving like a robot. And everything is bound to become a repetition, unless your intelligence, your meditativeness, your love is so great that it goes on transforming yourself and the person you love; so that each time you look in the eyes of the person you love it is something different, it is something new - new flowers have blossomed, the season has changed.

Unless one remains changing, even love becomes hell; otherwise, everybody would be in love in the whole world, but everybody is living in his own hell - private hells, just like attached bathrooms.

To live a life which never becomes a misery, which never becomes a hell, one has to be fresh every moment, unburdened of the past, always trying to find new dimensions to relate with people, new ways to relate with people, new songs to sing. One should make it a point, a basic point, that I will not live like a machine; because the machine has no life - it has efficiency. The world needs you to be a machine because the world needs efficiency.

But your own being needs you to be absolutely non-mechanical, unpredictable - each morning should find you new. That is the way of the superman, that is the way of the sannyasin.

SO BE WARNED AGAINST PITY: 'THENCE' SHALL YET COME A HEAVY CLOUD FOR MAN!

TRULY, I UNDERSTAND WEATHER-SIGNS!

'BUT MARK, TOO, THIS SAYING: ALL GREAT LOVE IS ABOVE PITY: FOR IT WANTS - TO CREATE WHAT IS LOVED!'

Pity, sympathy, compassion are far lower than love, because love is a creative experience. Lovers create each other. In their creating each other continuously, they remain new, they remain fresh.

'I OFFER MYSELF TO MY LOVE, AND MY NEIGHBOR AS MYSELF.' Never deceive your love, because no deception is going to be unknown, undiscovered; soon the other will come to know your deception. Never lie to the person you love; be authentic and be sincere, and be just an open book - not hiding anything, not pretending anything. Remain yourself.

'I OFFER MYSELF TO MY LOVE, AND MY NEIGHBOR AS MYSELF.' Hence, there is no need of feeling a burden of pretensions, lies, deceptions, hypocrisies. Just be authentically yourself.

THAT IS THE LANGUAGE OF ALL CREATORS.

ALL CREATORS, HOWEVER, ARE HARD.

Love as creativity is a tremendously significant idea. Love not only as a relationship between two static persons, but love as a creative whirlpool, love as a dance, so fast, at full speed, that it is difficult to find who is the lover and who is the beloved. And the dance goes on becoming more and more deep, and the dancers disappear and only the dance remains. One can make his life a beautiful dance, a creative act of love.

Zarathustra teaches love as the highest value. Love to him is God, love to him is religion.

... THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.