Of the three evil things
BELOVED OSHO,
OF THE THREE EVIL THINGS
... I WILL NOW PLACE THE THREE MOST EVIL THINGS UPON THE SCALES AND WEIGH THEM WELL AND HUMANLY....
SENSUAL PLEASURE, LUST FOR POWER, SELFISHNESS: THESE THREE HAVE HITHERTO BEEN CURSED THE MOST AND HELD IN THE WORST AND MOST UNJUST REPUTE - THESE THREE WILL I WEIGH WELL AND HUMANLY....
SENSUAL PLEASURE: A SWEET POISON ONLY TO THE WITHERED, BUT TO THE LION- WILLED THE GREAT RESTORATIVE AND REVERENTLY-PRESERVED WINE OF WINES.
SENSUAL PLEASURE: THE GREAT SYMBOLIC HAPPINESS OF A HIGHER HAPPINESS AND HIGHEST HOPE....
TO MANY THAT ARE STRANGER TO ONE ANOTHER THAN MAN AND WOMAN: AND WHO HAS FULLY CONCEIVED HOW STRANGE MAN AND WOMAN ARE TO ONE ANOTHER!...
LUST FOR POWER: THE SCOURGE OF FIRE OF THE HARDEST-HEARTED; THE CRUEL TORMENT RESERVED BY THE CRUELEST FOR HIMSELF; THE DARK FLAME OF LIVING BONFIRES....
LUST FOR POWER: BEFORE ITS GLANCE MAN CRAWLS AND BENDS AND TOILS AND BECOMES LOWER THAN THE SWINE OR THE SNAKE - UNTIL AT LAST THE CRY OF THE GREAT CONTEMPT BURST FROM HIM....
LUST FOR POWER: WHICH, HOWEVER, RISES ENTICINGLY EVEN TO THE PURE AND THE SOLITARY AND UP TO SELF-SUFFICIENT HEIGHTS, GLOWING LIKE A LOVE THAT PAINTS PURPLE DELIGHTS ENTICINGLY ON EARTHLY HEAVENS.
LUST FOR POWER: BUT WHO SHALL CALL IT LUST, WHEN THE HEIGHT LONGS TO STOOP DOWN AFTER POWER! TRULY, THERE IS NO SICKNESS AND LUST IN SUCH A LONGING AND DESCENT!
THAT THE LONELY HEIGHT MAY NOT ALWAYS BE SOLITARY AND SUFFICIENT TO ITSELF; THAT THE MOUNTAIN MAY DESCEND TO THE VALLEY AND THE WIND OF THE HEIGHTS TO THE LOWLANDS - OH WHO SHALL FIND THE RIGHTFUL BAPTISMAL AND VIRTUOUS NAME FOR SUCH A LONGING! 'BESTOWING VIRTUE' - THAT IS THE NAME ZARATHUSTRA ONCE GAVE THE UNNAMEABLE.
AND THEN IT ALSO HAPPENED - AND TRULY, IT HAPPENED FOR THE FIRST TIME! - THAT HIS TEACHING GLORIFIED SELFISHNESS, THE SOUND, HEALTHY SELFISHNESS THAT ISSUES FROM A MIGHTY SOUL - FROM A MIGHTY SOUL, TO WHICH PERTAINS THE EXALTED BODY, THE BEAUTIFUL, VICTORIOUS, REFRESHING BODY, AROUND WHICH EVERYTHING BECOMES A MIRROR....
IT BANISHES FROM ITSELF ALL THAT IS COWARDLY; IT SAYS: BAD - THAT IS TO SAY, COWARDLY!...1 TIMID MISTRUSTFULNESS SEEMS BASE TO IT, AS DO ALL WHO DESIRE OATHS....
ENTIRELY HATEFUL AND LOATHSOME TO IT IS HE WHO WILL NEVER DEFEND HIMSELF, WHO SWALLOWS DOWN POISONOUS SPITTLE AND EVIL LOOKS, THE TOO-PATIENT MAN WHO PUTS UP WITH EVERYTHING, IS CONTENT WITH EVERYTHING: FOR THAT IS THE NATURE OF SLAVES.
WHETHER ONE BE SERVILE BEFORE GODS AND DIVINE KICKS, OR BEFORE MEN AND THE SILLY OPINIONS OF MEN: IT SPITS AT SLAVES OF ALL KINDS, THIS GLORIOUS SELFISHNESS!...
... TO ILL-USE SELFISHNESS - PRECISELY THAT HAS BEEN VIRTUE AND CALLED VIRTUE.
AND 'SELFLESS' - THAT IS WHAT, WITH GOOD REASON, ALL THESE WORLD-WEARY COWARDS... WISHED TO BE!
BUT NOW THE DAY, THE TRANSFORMATION, THE SWORD OF JUDGMENT, THE GREAT NOONTIDE COMES TO THEM ALL: THEN MANY THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED!
AND HE WHO DECLARES THE EGO HEALTHY AND HOLY AND SELFISHNESS GLORIOUS - TRULY, HE, A PROPHET, DECLARES TOO WHAT HE KNOWS: 'BEHOLD, IT COMES, IT IS NEAR, THE GREAT NOONTIDE!'
... THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.
All the teachers before Zarathustra, and even after him, have looked at things with a very prejudiced mind. They have not allowed the multidimensionality of every experience. They have imposed a certain dimension and conditioned human mind to look at things only in a certain way. Zarathustra's great contribution is that he helps man to look at things in new ways - absolutely new, fresh, and immensely enlightening. You may be sometimes shocked, because he will be speaking against your prejudices. You have to be courageous enough to put aside all your prejudices.
To understand this man of great insight, who looks at things not according to a certain preconceived ideology, but looks at things as they are, in themselves.... He does not impose any meaning; on the contrary, he tries to find: is there any meaning in things themselves? He is very objective, very realistic and absolutely sane. He is not obsessed with any idea and he does not want to propound a certain philosophy or a certain religion.
His approach is so totally different. He teaches you how to see clearly. He does not teach you what to see, he simply teaches you how to see clearly.
The clarity of your vision will bring you the truth. He is not going to hand over the truth to you like something ready-made. He does not want truth to be so cheap. And anything which is very cheap cannot be true. Truth demands you be a gambler so that you can risk everything at the stake. Truth cannot be a possession of yours. On the contrary, if you are ready to be possessed by truth, then only you can have it.
What he is going to say this evening is so contrary to all the religions, all the so-called moralities, that unless you can put your mind out of the way, you will not be able to hear him and you will not be able to understand. And he is throwing diamonds on your path. But you can remain blind; you can keep your eyes closed just so that you are not disturbed in your preconceived beliefs.
He is bent upon disturbing you - because unless you are disturbed you cannot move, you cannot progress; you cannot have any excitement to reach to farther away stars; you cannot be stirred by the longing to become a superman. You have to be shaken - and shaken mercilessly. Only later on will you understand: that was compassion - true compassion.
To support you in your convenient lies is not love. It makes you feel good, but it is very destructive - it is evil. It destroys your possibilities of growth. And Zarathustra has only one single-pointed teaching:
man should transcend himself. But why should he transcend if he is very comfortable? His comfort has to be destroyed; his conveniences have to be taken away; his prejudices have to be shattered; his religions, his gods, his philosophies all have to be burned; he has to be left utterly nude, just like a newly-born baby.
Only from there, from that innocence, from that newness, from that point the superman, the only hope for humanity, can arise and replace this rotten, disgusting mankind. Because we are living in it we have become accustomed to its rottenness. We have become accustomed to his disgusting smell.
Kahlil Gibran has a small story: A woman has come from the village to the city to sell fish. She is a fisherman's wife. In the city, after selling her fish, she comes across an old friend. They used to study in the school together, but she was very rich and they had not seen each other for years. So the rich woman invited her, at least for the night, to stay with her. She had a beautiful palace, she had a beautiful garden, and she was certain that her friend would be immensely pleased.
Before going to bed she brought many, many roses and put them by the side of the bed of her guest.
But time went on passing and the poor woman could not sleep. She turned over again and again, and because she could not sleep her host also could not sleep. Finally the host asked, "What is the matter?" She said, "You will have to forgive me. Just give me my clothes in which I had brought the fish to sell. Sprinkle them with a little water and remove these roses and bring those clothes back to me. If I can smell fish I will fall asleep immediately. These roses will not allow me to sleep."
The roses are removed, the rotten clothes, dirty, are sprinkled with water and the whole room starts smelling fishy. The woman is immensely happy and she says, "Now I can sleep perfectly well. I'm accustomed to this perfume. Roses don't suit me."
We are accustomed to this humanity - that's why we don't see its disgustingness. We don't see its ugliness; we don't see its jealousy; we don't see its lovelessness; we don't see its unintelligent, stupid, mediocre behavior. Listening to Zarathustra you can become aware of a totally different way of seeing mankind.
Zarathustra says, I WILL NOW PLACE THE THREE MOST EVIL THINGS UPON THE SCALES AND WEIGH THEM WELL AND HUMANLY. I would like you to remember the word humanly, because all the so-called religions and spiritual philosophies have been valuing things very inhumanly. Hence I want you to remember the word humanly.
Zarathustra is immensely in love with man. He is no enemy; he is a friend. He hates the present state because he knows you can go far away, you can reach high peaks. This is not what you are meant for. His hate towards the present mankind is because of his deep love for your future, for the distant goal of the superman. He is absolutely against inhuman values. All the religions expect you to follow inhuman values.
If you look into the religious scriptures of all the religions you will be surprised: what they are asking you to do is so unnatural that you cannot fulfill it. Certainly their purpose of asking is something that you are not aware of. They also know you cannot fulfill the demands that they are making on you.
But then why they are making those demands? Their hidden purpose is to make you feel guilty. And the only way to make you feel guilty is to ask something unnatural, which you cannot do, whatever way you try. You are going to fail.
I have heard: A man was purchasing in a toyshop a few toys for his children. The salesman brought something out, and he said, "This is the very latest device in the world of toys. It is a jigsaw puzzle."
The man was a professor of mathematics, so he became immediately interested in it. He tried it this way and that way and he tried it in many ways and the ultimate result was always failure. He said to the salesman, "I am a professor of mathematics and I cannot figure it out. How do you expect small children to succeed in solving the puzzle?"
The salesman laughed. He said, "It is not made to be solved. It represents man's actual situation.
Whatever you do, it doesn't matter what, the puzzle cannot be solved. It is a very modern, a very contemporary understanding of humanity."
All the religions have been giving you puzzles, which are basically and intrinsically insoluble. And their purpose is to make you feel guilty, failures, frustrated, miserable, unsuccessful, unworthy, undeserving. They want to destroy your pride, your dignity, because the more your pride and your dignity is destroyed, the more you will be just like the camel - kneeling down and ready to be loaded.
You will understand yourself that this is your fate: to be a camel; you are not a lion and there is no point in pretending to be a lion.
You are born to be a slave - that's the whole strategy of all the religions, all the political ideologies.
They have a single intention: to make every human being feel that he is born to be a slave, to be a worshiper of a fictitious God, to kneel down and to pray.
The moment you accept yourself to be guilty, undeserving, unworthy, you lose self-respect; you lose love for yourself. And if you cannot love yourself, how can you expect anybody else to love you? It is almost always a shock when somebody says to you, "I love you." You cannot believe it. Nobody believes it, for the simple reason that, "I cannot love myself and this poor fellow is saying he loves me. That means only one thing: he does not know me! Once he knows me all love will disappear."
Lovers are great - if they cannot meet in their life, if the society or the parents or the religion or something comes in their way and does not allow them to meet. All great love stories are about lovers who could not meet. I have been wondering... it is strange: there is not a single great love story of lovers who got married. Every old story ends when lovers get married. It says, "After that they lived in happiness forever." But it does not give any details. The story ends there.
I know perfectly well that if Laila and Majnu or Shiri and Farhad or Sohni and Mahival - these three great lovers of the East, by chance had got married, they would have been standing in a court of divorce. There would have never been any great story about them.
The whole work of centuries is only one: to make you hate yourself; not to allow you to accept yourself. Of course they don't say it so clearly. Their ways are devious, but Zarathustra is very clear what their ways are and how they have destroyed human beings and the possibilities of this beautiful planet being turned into a living paradise... not a dream, but a reality.
Sensual pleasure, lust for power, selfishness: THESE THREE HAVE HITHERTO BEEN CURSED THE MOST AND HELD IN THE WORST AND MOST UNJUST REPUTE - THESE THREE WILL I WEIGH WELL AND HUMANLY. That he never forgets: don't try to impose upon yourself inhuman standards which are only going to cripple you, which are only going to cut your wings, which are only going to enslave you in such a deep psychological slavery that it will be very difficult to get out of - because one tends to cling to it; it seems to be safer; it seems to be more convenient; it seems to be more acceptable to the society.
The more a man tries to be disciplining himself into inhuman values, of course he is going to be just a hypocrite. But the crowds will respect him as a saint - for the simple reason that they cannot do it.
They have tried, but this man must be great; he is doing it. Most probably he has a dual personality.
He has two faces: one to show to the world and one which is a private thing, which he lives in secrecy. Life goes underground. On the surface he pretends all those values which are humanly impossible.
The first is sensual pleasure - condemned by every religion without any conditions. But if you look humanly at sensual pleasure... a few things to be remembered. One is: if you renounce sensual pleasure, which is what all your so-called saints and priests are asking you to do, you will become more and more insensitive. It is sensual pleasure which keeps your senses alive, thrilled, dancing. It is sensual pleasure which keeps your sensitivity at its maximum. If you renounce sensual pleasure you are renouncing your sensitivity. You will see the roseflower, but you will not see the beauty of it. You will see the full moon in the night, but you will not see the beauty of it - because to see the beauty, you need sensitivity.
If you cannot see the beauty of a woman, how can you see the beauty of a starry night? How can you see the beauty of flowers? If you are not sensitive you cannot experience the joys of music, the ecstatic pleasure of paintings, sculptures, poetry.
All that is great, all that is contributed by the great geniuses to humanity, you become utterly blind to it, deaf to it. Your sensitivity slowly, slowly becomes dead. And if all your senses become dead you are just a corpse. What is the difference between a corpse and a living man?
The living man is sensitive. All his senses are functioning at the optimum. He can hear the subtlest notes of music and he can see the profoundest beauty of art; he can feel the joy of great poetry. But this is possible only if he allows his sensual pleasure - uninhibited, without any conditionings.
Zarathustra says, the first is the SENSUAL PLEASURE: A SWEET POISON ONLY TO THE WITHERED, BUT TO THE LION-WILLED THE GREAT RESTORATIVE AND REVERENTLY- PRESERVED WINE OF WINES.
Zarathustra is certainly unparalleled. When it comes to state the truth he simply states it without ever bothering whether anybody is going to listen to him or not. It may go against the whole world, but he will stand alone, will remain with the truth.
He is saying, sensual pleasure is... A SWEET POISON ONLY TO THE WITHERED... only to the weak. And the weak have been ruling over the strong. The unintelligent are deciding life patterns for the intelligent. The crowd is making religions to live by, commandments to be followed. All these moralities, ethical codes are created by the withered and the weak, the retarded and the stupid.
They are perfectly good for them, but they forget completely that everybody is not a sheep; there are lions also. And the lion cannot be forced to be a sheep. You can encage the lion, you can imprison the lion. And that's what all strong-willed people in the world feel: they are imprisoned - imprisoned by the small, imprisoned by the weak, imprisoned by the crowd. Certainly the sheep are in the majority.
And just because of their numbers they have been deciding lifestyles which may be suitable to them but which are only imprisonment and death to those who are strong enough. There should be a clear-cut distinction: something can be poison to someone, and the same thing can be a medicine to someone. It all depends on to whom it is being given.
... A SWEET POISON ONLY TO THE WITHERED, BUT TO THE LION-WILLED THE GREAT RESTORATIVE AND REVERENTLY-PRESERVED WINE OF WINES. Zarathustra is saying something of immense importance and greatness: REVERENTLY-PRESERVED. He is making sensual pleasure something sacred. If it destroys you it is not the sensual pleasure, it is your weakness. Be strong! But your so-called religious leaders have been telling you just the opposite:
renounce sensual pleasures and remain weak. And the more you renounce them the weaker you will become, because you will lose all restorative power, all rejuvenating power. You will lose the contact with existence - because it is through the senses that you are connected with existence. If you close your senses you have already prepared your grave.
Zarathustra will say just the opposite. If sensual pleasure destroys you, that means you need to be more strong. And discipline should be given to you so that you can become more strong. Sensual pleasure has not to be renounced; weakness has to be renounced. And everybody should be made so strong that he can enjoy the "wine of wines" without being destroyed by it, but on the contrary, made stronger, younger, fresher.
Sensuality has been so much condemned that it has made the whole world of human beings utterly weak, insensitive, unconnected with life. Most of your roots have been cut; only a few roots have been left so that you can just survive in the name of life.
SENSUAL PLEASURE: THE GREAT SYMBOLIC HAPPINESS OF A HIGHER HAPPINESS AND HIGHEST HOPE. Sensual pleasure has to be understood as an indication that even greater happiness is possible. It all depends on your being artful. It all depends how you use your life energies. It all depends if you don't stop at sensual pleasure. Sensual pleasure is only an arrow indicating that there are greater pleasures, that there are greater happinesses, that there are greater fulfillments.
But if you renounce sensual pleasure... it is like you see on a milestone an arrow showing you that this is not the place to stop - go on! The renouncers are saying, "Erase that arrow. Renounce that milestone." But then who is going to indicate to you that you have still a long way to go.
Until you reach to the greatest joy of life... sensuous pleasure is only the beginning, not the end. But if you deny the beginning you have denied the end. It is such a simple logic, but sometimes whatever is obvious is easily forgotten. All the religions have been teaching you, "If you deny sensuous pleasure, then only you will be able to have spiritual blissfulness." It is absurd and illogical.
Sensuous pleasure is going to be a stepping stone towards spiritual blissfulness. You are destroying the very stepping stone. You will never reach to the higher stage - you have removed the ladder.
The ladder is something to be transcended, but not renounced! Remember the difference between transcendence and renunciation.
Zarathustra will say, "Transcend but never renounce, because if you renounce there is nothing to transcend." Enjoy the sensuous pleasures in all their variety and as intensely as possible. Exhaust them, so that suddenly you become aware "the world of sensuous pleasures is finished and I have to go beyond." But the sensuous pleasure has shown you the way. You will be grateful to it; you will not be against it. It has not taken anything away from you; it has only given to you.
SENSUAL PLEASURE: THE GREAT SYMBOLIC HAPPINESS OF A HIGHER HAPPINESS AND HIGHEST HOPE.
TO MANY THAT ARE STRANGER TO ONE ANOTHER THAN MAN AND WOMAN....
The sensuous pleasure is a bridge between man and woman. And certainly, they are strangers to one another.
This is not something unfortunate. The greater the distance is between man and woman, the greater is the attraction. The more different they are, the more there is a pull to come together. The more they are strangers to each other, the more there is a deep enquiry to understand each other.
If I have been against all kinds of sexual perversions, if I have been against homosexuality in particular, my basic reason is spiritual - because a man loving another man or a woman loving another woman, they don't have any magnetic pull; they don't have any tension. They are so alike, they are almost the same. There is not going to be any enquiry; there is not going to be any exploration. They are not going to understand anything more than they know already, because they know themselves - what can the other man be more than they are?
Homosexuality is absolutely unspiritual, because it cannot give the sharpness to your sensuality.
And it cannot make your sensual pleasure an indicator of higher happiness. Homosexuality is a kind of being stuck. It is no longer a journey. You are not going anywhere.
The meeting of men and women is a journey; it is an exploration. It is an effort to understand the polar opposite. It is to understand the dialectics of life. It is a great lesson. And without this lesson you cannot move higher in consciousness, in happiness, in spirituality.
But man has fallen so low. Zarathustra was very predictive - that the days are coming soon when man will become so small that he will not be worthy even to be called man. It seems those days have come.
One of the reasons of Holland's parliament to decide that I cannot enter Holland was that I have been speaking against homosexuality. Even I could not believe it: Holland's religion is homosexuality?
But it certainly shows that the members of the parliament in Holland and the prime minister and the cabinet of Holland all seem to be homosexual, because not a single person stood up and said, "This is derogatory to the whole nation. What do you mean by it - if a person has spoken against homosexuality, has he committed a crime? Are you a nation of homosexuals? Is he against your nationality?"
When I heard this I immediately informed my people, "Tell the parliament that the name of Holland should be changed: it should be homosexual land - that will be more appropriate." But man has fallen very low. And the reason he has fallen so low is because of your saints, because they have been teaching you to be celibates, which is against nature. It is celibacy which is the cause of homosexuality.
And now one American bishop has come out and openly declared - and he has not been refuted by the Pope or by any other Christian association or Christian church - he has openly said that celibacy does not include homosexuality. You can be celibate and you can be homosexual. Celibacy simply means you cannot be heterosexual. It only prevents men meeting women; it does not prevent men making love to another man or a woman making love to another woman. It is not against lesbianism or against homosexuality.
And the Pope is silent! And his silence says much, because he knows perfectly well that more than fifty percent of his bishops, archbishops, cardinals, priests are all homosexuals.
Homosexuality was born in monasteries - Christian, Buddhist, Jaina. Wherever so many celibates were forced to live together, a single sex... nature finds some way, however perverted it may be.
These people who have been against sensual pleasure, they have destroyed man in such a subtle way and they have created a perverted humanity. And they are still our leaders. They are still our guides to spirituality.
AND WHO HAS FULLY CONCEIVED HOW STRANGE MAN AND WOMAN ARE TO ONE ANOTHER!
Only a man of deep sensual experience can understand the vast difference and the uniqueness of men and women. There is no question of equality and there is no question of inequality; they are simply unique beings. And between them only friendship is possible.
This whole nonsense of marriage makes the man important. The woman becomes just a shadow.
Why, after marriage, does a woman have to take her husband's name? These are subtle ways to make it clear to her that now she is secondary. She does not any longer have her own identity; her husband is her identity. Naturally, marriage can never be peaceful. Wherever there is an effort of domination there is going to be conflict and struggle. And all marriages create only hell.
LUST FOR POWER: THE SCOURGE OF FIRE OF THE HARDEST-HEARTED; THE CRUEL TORMENT RESERVED BY THE CRUELEST FOR HIMSELF; THE DARK FLAME OF LIVING BONFIRES.
LUST FOR POWER, BEFORE ITS GLANCE MAN CRAWLS AND BENDS AND TOILS AND BECOMES LOWER THAN THE SWINE OR THE SNAKE - UNTIL AT LAST THE CRY OF THE GREAT CONTEMPT BURSTS FROM HIM.
LUST FOR POWER: WHICH, HOWEVER, RISES ENTICINGLY EVEN TO THE PURE AND THE SOLITARY AND UP TO SELF-SUFFICIENT HEIGHTS, GLOWING LIKE A LOVE THAT PAINTS PURPLE DELIGHTS ENTICINGLY ON EARTHLY HEAVENS.
LUST FOR POWER: BUT WHO SHALL CALL IT LUST, WHEN THE HEIGHT LONGS TO STOOP DOWN AFTER POWER! TRULY, THERE IS NO SICKNESS AND LUST IN SUCH A LONGING AND DESCENT!
One has to look at the whole thing. Lust for power has created slavery, has destroyed humanity in many ways. Lust for power is burning in every heart. Zarathustra is not in favor of this kind of lust for power - it is destructive and ugly.
But there can be a creative way, and that creative thing he calls will to power, not lust for power. Will to power is a totally different phenomenon, but the religions have not made the distinction. For them lust for power is all - there is nothing in it which can have something to contribute. But Zarathustra feels there is so much potential in it that it can become the greatest creative force in the world. But it has not to be lust. And it cannot be called even lust.
LUST FOR POWER: BUT WHO SHALL CALL IT LUST, WHEN THE HEIGHT LONGS TO STOOP DOWN AFTER POWER! TRULY, THERE IS NO SICKNESS AND LUST IN SUCH A LONGING AND DESCENT! Will to power makes a great change. Will to power simply means not power over others.
Lust for power means power over others. Will to power means becoming in oneself more and more powerful, more and more radiant, more and more strong, more and more integrated, more and more a lion, an individual.
Will to power has nothing to do with the other. It is your own exercise of rising to the heights. It is your own discipline to reach to the highest peak of your being. It is not destructive of anybody; on the contrary, it can be an inspiration for others. It has to be an inspiration for others. It can be a great incentive: if a single man who was one day amongst you is now on the highest peak of consciousness, it may create an urge, a longing, a will - which is asleep in you, which is dormant in you - that you can also be a high peak, that it is also within your capacity.
Will to power is simply will to be oneself - will to freedom, will to create, will to attain immortality, will to proclaim to the world, "I have always been here and I will be always here." It is will to eternity.
But the religions have taken only the negative side, and they have never talked about the positive side. And with the negative side they have condemned the positive side also. They deceived humanity; they never made any distinction - that everything has its positivity, its negativity. They condemned the negative and that was right, but they never praised the positive, and that is where there cunningness is.
THAT THE LONELY HEIGHT MAY NOT ALWAYS BE SOLITARY AND SUFFICIENT TO ITSELF; THAT THE MOUNTAIN MAY DESCEND TO THE VALLEY AND THE WIND OF THE HEIGHTS TO THE LOWLANDS - OH WHO SHALL FIND THE RIGHTFUL BAPTISMAL AND VIRTUOUS NAME FOR SUCH A LONGING! 'BESTOWING VIRTUE' - THAT IS THE NAME ZARATHUSTRA ONCE GAVE THE UNNAMEABLE.
AND THEN IT ALSO HAPPENED - AND TRULY, IT HAPPENED FOR THE FIRST TIME! - THAT HIS TEACHING GLORIFIED selfishness. About selfishness, certainly he is absolutely the first man in the whole of history who glorified selfishness... THE SOUND, HEALTHY SELFISHNESS THAT ISSUES FROM A MIGHTY SOUL - FROM A MIGHTY SOUL, TO WHICH PERTAINS THE EXALTED BODY, THE BEAUTIFUL, VICTORIOUS, REFRESHING BODY, AROUND WHICH EVERYTHING BECOMES A MIRROR.
IT BANISHES FROM ITSELF ALL THAT IS COWARDLY; IT SAYS: BAD - THAT IS TO SAY, COWARDLY!....
According to Zarathustra the only thing bad is cowardliness and the only thing good is courageousness. Out of courage are born all the virtues, and out of cowardliness are born all the sins, all the crimes.
TIMID MISTRUSTFULNESS SEEMS BASE TO IT, AS DO ALL WHO DESIRE OATHS.
ENTIRELY HATEFUL AND LOATHSOME TO IT IS HE WHO WILL NEVER DEFEND HIMSELF!
WHO SWALLOWS DOWN POISONOUS SPITTLE AND EVIL LOOKS, THE TOO-PATIENT MAN WHO PUTS UP WITH EVERYTHING, IS CONTENT WITH EVERYTHING: FOR THAT IS THE NATURE OF SLAVES.
WHETHER ONE BE SERVILE BEFORE GODS AND DIVINE KICKS, OR BEFORE MEN AND THE SILLY OPINIONS OF MEN: IT SPITS AT SLAVES OF ALL KINDS, THIS GLORIOUS SELFISHNESS!
TO ILL-USE SELFISHNESS - PRECISELY THAT HAS BEEN VIRTUE AND CALLED VIRTUE.
AND 'SELFLESS' - THAT IS WHAT, WITH GOOD REASONS, ALL THESE WORLD-WEARY COWARDS... WISHED TO BE!
Zarathustra is saying that selfishness is simply the nature of things. But the cowards want unselfishness to be the virtue, because in unselfishness the cowards are going to be the winners.
In India you will find beggars all over the country. And every beggar is saying, "Give me something.
Giving to the beggars is virtue, and you will be rewarded immensely for it." Now the very existence of beggars should show that the society is sick, that the society is insane; that it goes on producing children which it cannot feed; that it is absolutely illogical that one section of society will accumulate the whole money of the land and the millions will be left starving.
You will be surprised to know that half of the wealth of the whole of India is in Bombay - one city.
And a country of nine hundred million people is utterly poor, undernourished; even to manage to get one meal a day is to be very fortunate. There are millions of people who are simply living on the roots of the trees. They eat the roots of the trees;fruits they cannot afford. And by the end of the century nearabout half a billion people will die of starvation only in this country. I am not talking about the whole world - because this is going to happen almost all over the world.
Virtue should be intelligence, virtue should be logic, virtue should be reasonability. But to give to the beggars... maintains the beggars. These beggars produce more beggars; these beggars get married; these beggars produce children - because it is economically profitable to have children because those children start begging. The more children you have, the better is your profession.
Zarathustra is saying, "Selfishness is the only virtue; unselfishness has been the desire of the cowardly - that they should be helped, that somebody should protect them, that somebody should provide food for them, that somebody should take care of their sicknesses, that somebody else is responsible if they are sick, if they are hungry, if they are starving. Nobody is responsible for that.
A society which is sane will prevent all kinds of people who need unselfish service.
We can manage a society which is healthy; we can manage a society which is rich, comfortably rich, comfortably healthy. But this is possible only if everybody takes his responsibility on his own shoulders.
That's what he means by selfishness.
And if you have too much to share, that should be your joy, not a duty. That should be your joy, not a virtue.
BUT NOW THE DAY, THE TRANSFORMATION, THE SWORD OF JUDGMENT, THE GREAT NOONTIDE COMES TO THEM ALL: THEN MANY THINGS SHALL BE REVEALED!
AND HE WHO DECLARES THE EGO HEALTHY AND HOLY AND SELFISHNESS GLORIOUS - TRULY, HE, A PROPHET, DECLARES TOO WHAT HE KNOWS: 'BEHOLD, IT COMES, IT IS NEAR, THE GREAT NOONTIDE!'
Zarathustra calls the greatest moment in humanity's life "the great noontide" - when selfishness will be simply healthy, when everything that has been condemned before will be dropped and everything that is natural and human will be declared as our religion, as our spirituality. Nature itself is our religion, and there is no need for any other religion.
'BEHOLD IT COMES, IT IS NEAR, THE GREAT NOONTIDE!'
... THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.
Okay Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.