Osho,
Like all other Indian saints, why do you not like to be the
saint of the masses?
I am not an Indian - neither am I an American or a Chinese.
I don’t believe in countries and I don’t believe in any political divisions.
Because of political divisions, humanity has suffered enough - no more of that
nonsense! I have to live somewhere, so I live here, but I don’t belong to
India. I am not a nationalist, because all nationalism is in some way or other
a form of fascism.
If you think you are an Indian or a German or a Japanese,
you are a fascist - and you are a danger to humanity, to peace, to love, to
progress. You are not a religious person. A nationalist is never a religious
person, cannot be. And a nationalist is a neurotic. The whole of human history
is enough proof of it.
I am not an Indian - the first thing. And the second thing:
I am not a saint either.
You ask me: “Like all other Indian saints, why do you not
like to be the saint of the masses?” First, I am not an Indian, and second, I
am not a saint. The very claim that one is a saint is a condemnation of
everybody else. In that very claim, others are condemned. If I am a saint then
you are a sinner - you have to be sinners, otherwise how can I exist? To create
one saint, you will need millions of sinners. It is very costly and
uneconomical.
I would like a world where the sinners and the saints have
disappeared - they are two aspects of the same coin. Lao Tzu says in the Tao Te
Ching: “When the world was really natural and religious, there was not a saint
and not a sinner.” When the saints entered in the world, sin entered. When you
say somebody is a saint, you have started divisions: the good and the bad, that
which has to be done and that which has to be avoided. You don’t accept life in
its totality; you become a chooser.
And I teach choiceless awareness. I don’t teach any choosing
on your part, because whatsoever you choose is going to be a wrong choice -
because you will be there as a chooser. Accept the total and don’t go on
labeling things - this is good and that is bad.
The division between the sinner and the saint is again an
egoistic division. It is very oppressive. It condemns. It is very hateful. A
saint looks at you with holier-than-thou eyes: “I am the chosen one, and I am
going to heaven and you all are going to hell.” No, that is not my outlook at
all.
2
I declare you are also holy, divine. There exists not a
single being who is not holy. To me the word holy means whole. We belong to one
whole; we are all holy, we are parts of one universal consciousness, we are
ripples of one ocean. That’s what Kabir was saying yesterday: the wave is not
different from the ocean. Even the dirty wave is not different from the ocean.
Even the dirty wave is as much part of the ocean as is the clean wave.
And what you call dirty and what you call clean are human
conceptions. A person can be a saint in one country and may not be thought of
as a saint in another. A person can be a saint in one century and may not be
thought of as a saint in another. Just think: Mohammed with a sword in his
hand. Can any Jaina or Buddhist call him a saint? It is impossible. A sword in
the hand? Mohammed cannot be called a saint according to the Jainas and the
Buddhists. Can Mohammedans call Mahavira or Buddha a saint, when people are
suffering and being tortured and you are just sitting under your bodhi trees
doing nothing? What type of sainthood is this? These are escapists, not saints.
You may be surprised to know that Jainas don’t call Krishna
a saint. They call him the greatest sinner ever because he persuaded Arjuna to
go war. Arjuna was going to become a Jaina monk, he was saying, “I don’t want
all this war, all this violence. I want to renounce this world. This is not
worth it,” and Krishna persuaded him, “Do your duty. If God has willed it so,
let it be so. Simply say ‘amen,’ and go into it. Just become a vehicle,
instrumental.”
Arjuna argued and argued, but finally Krishna persuaded him.
So Jainas say the whole responsibility of the Mahabharata War, the great Indian
war, goes to Krishna. He is responsible for the whole violence.
Do you know what the Jainas have done to Krishna? They have
thrown him into the seventh hell. Of course, they are free to do so because
they write their own stories. In the Jaina puranas, Krishna is in the seventh
hell, the worst hell, and he will have to be there up to the very end of this
world.
Now who is a saint? How do you define a saint? And who is
going to define it, and who decides the criteria? Different philosophies will
define differently.
I am not a saint, because I don’t allow myself to be defined
by anybody else. I am just myself. Call me sinner, call me saint - that is your
attitude - but I am simply myself. And I leave myself undefined because, to me,
reality is indefinable and I am part of reality, as you are part of reality.
When you want to renounce something, renounce definitions,
renounce categories. Don’t allow anybody to pigeonhole you.
The moment you know your indefinable quality, you have
transcended the world and you have attained to nirvana, you have become
enlightened. An enlightened person is not a saint nor a sinner, cannot be.
These are the categories of unenlightened people. People who have not yet
become aware - they think in terms of good and bad. One who has become aware
knows nothing as bad, nothing as good. He is simply a witness to all.
So I am neither an Indian nor a saint.
3
“Like all other Indian saints, why do you not like to be the
saint of the masses?” And who are these masses? These neurotic people all
around, this insane world all around - these are the masses? Who are these
masses? These people who are blind - these are the masses? This vast darkness
all around the earth.?
I don’t belong to the masses; I cannot. I belong to the
whole but not to the masses. The politicians belong to the masses - because
they have to exploit the masses and they have to lead the masses, of course
they have to follow the masses too. If you want to become the leader of the
masses, then you have to show that you follow the masses. That is the bribery
you have to pay. If you want to exploit the masses, you become the saint of the
masses.
I am not interested in any sort of exploitation. I am
myself. If somebody wants to partake of the truth that I am, he can come. He
can participate in my being.
And remember, I don’t allow an easy approach, because I want
everybody to know well that truth has to be paid for. You have to sacrifice
much. It is not cheap. And I don’t want to make it cheap. I don’t allow you an
easy approach towards me. I will create all sorts of hindrances between you and
me. Only those who are really seekers and have an intense fire in them will be
able to approach me.
I am not interested in the masses at all. I am not a
politician, and I am not interested in becoming a leader of the masses, nor the
servant of the masses, because those are just diplomatic games, political
games.
I am here, available. If you have the intense desire and
thirst, you can approach me. And again I repeat: the approach is not easy. I
will hinder you in many ways; I will test you in many ways. Only when I feel
that you are really ready to surrender, to sacrifice yourself, only when I see
that truth is even more valuable to you than your life, then you belong to me -
otherwise not.
This question has come from some Indian who has fallen into
the wrong company here. He should not be here, really. He has asked at least
fifteen questions, all foolish. But he seems to think that he knows much.
Friend, you are in the wrong company. Escape from here!
These are mad people, these are not scholars here, and I am not interested in
scholars and I am not interested in pundits and people who think they know. If
they know, they know -why should they come here? What are you doing? Such a
wise guy, what are you doing here? You should not be here in the first place.
You know already? Very good. I am happy that you know. Then go to the masses
and help the masses and become a saint of the masses. What are you doing here?
Why are you wasting time here?
If you don’t know, only then come to me. And if you don’t
know, then don’t ask questions as if you know. Then ask questions out of your
ignorance.
These questions are parrot-like things; you simply go on
repeating words.
I have heard:
4
Once upon a time there was a parrot who could say only three
little words: “Who is it?” One day when the parrot was alone in the house there
was a loud knock on the door.
“Who is it?” screeched the parrot.
“It is the plumber,” the visitor responded.
“Who is it?” repeated the parrot.
“It is the plumber, I tell you,” was the reply from the
outside. “You called me to tell me your cellar was flooded.”
Again the parrot called, “Who is it?”
By this time the plumber became so angry that he fainted. A
neighbor rushed over to see the cause of the commotion and, gazing at the
unfamiliar face of the prostrate plumber, he asked, “Who is it?”
The parrot answered, “It is the plumber.”
The pundit is a parrot, and a very foolish parrot at that,
because parrots can be forgiven, but human beings cannot be forgiven so easily.
If you know, there is no need to be here. If you don’t know,
then please never ask questions from your knowledge, from your so-called
knowledge. The first lesson here is to know that you don’t know.
And I am not saying that you don’t know. If you know, it is
very good; but I am not interested in knowers. You can go and teach the masses
and help the poor people. It is because of you and people like you that they
are still poor, and it is because of you and people like you that they are
still living in hell. And they will live in hell unless leaders like you stop
serving them. Unless do-gooders like you stop doing good, they will remain in
their misery.
But my interest is only in those people who have come to
know that they don’t know, that they are ignorant. In India it is very
difficult. Knowledge has become part of the Indian blood. For centuries they
have been like parrots, repeating shastras, scriptures, memorizing - not
knowing anything but feeling very egoistic that they know. Whenever such a
person comes here, I am simply surprised: why should he come here? Out of all
the places, this place is not for you, people like you - not at all.
Only come here if you can throw your knowledge away outside
the gate. Where you leave your shoes, leave your knowledge too, your head too.
Only then can you understand what is happening here. If it is not possible for
you, there is no need to come.
5
And I am not interested in the masses, because if you are
interested in the masses you have to be manipulated by the masses. I am not in
any way a mass man, because I am very individual. I have my own way, my own
life, my own style, and I don’t allow anybody to interfere with it. If you want
to become a man of the masses, the whole mass interferes with you. They teach
you how you should sit and how you should stand, and what you should say and
what you should not say, and what you should eat and what you should not eat,
and when you should go to bed and when you should get up. They teach you
everything.
It is very ironical that the people who think they are
leaders of the masses and gurus of the masses in fact are the slaves of the
masses. The masses teach them how to be. They don’t have any freedom. And the
masses go on looking from everywhere: “Are you really following what the masses
want to be followed? Are you really following the idea of the masses, what a
saint should be like?” Or if you are not following it, then you become a fallen
saint, then you are a sinner.
I don’t allow anybody to dictate my life. I don’t allow
anybody’s life to be dictated by me. That’s why I don’t give any discipline to
my people. I simply confer freedom on them and the responsibility to be free.
Never interfere with anybody’s life, and don’t allow anybody to interfere with
your life. Be individualistic. I am not a socialist, I am not a communist. I
believe in the individual. I am absolutely an unashamed individualist.
I was moving around the country, I was moving among the
masses for many years, but I was surprised to see the fact that the masses try
to manipulate you. Rather than learning anything from you, rather than taking
anything from you, they try to manipulate you.
Let me tell you one story I was just reading the other day:
Farmer Jones, of Clinton, New Jersey, made history at the
State Fair one day when he bought a prize rooster for the highest price ever
paid in the history of the poultry trade. When he got it home, however, he found
he simply could not control the rooster’s romantic tendencies. Not only the
hens, but the ducks, geese, and swans, not to mention a few stray nanny goats
and sows, fled before the rooster’s tireless onslaughts.
Farmer Jones finally collared his bird and grumbled, “I did
not pay a record price for you to waste your energies on every form of animal
life in New Jersey. You are henceforth to confine your activities exclusively
to the hens. Keep on the way you are going, and you will die of exhaustion.”
The rooster made light of his owner’s fears, but sure
enough, Farmer Jones found him a few mornings later flat on his back, his eyes
glazed, his legs straight up in the air, with a couple of buzzards ominously
circling closer and closer above him.
“What did I tell you, you darn fool?” roared the farmer. “I
knew the life you were leading would get you sooner or later!”
But then, to his amazement, the supposedly expired rooster
opened one eye and whispered hoarsely, “Pipe down, will you? When you are
trying to romance a buzzard, you have got to play it their way!”
6
If you want to become a saint of the masses, you can become
one only in their way. I am not interested in anybody else’s way. I have found
my way and my goal. I only allow people here who are ready to understand me and
who are no longer obsessed with wanting to control me or are obsessed with
wanting to be controlled by me. I am a free man, and I confer freedom on you.
My sannyas is a declaration of freedom. It is not a discipline. It is a
freedom.
Osho, Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language
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