---
section: Library
booktitle: "From the False to the Truth"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "FALSE"
dategiven: "05 July 1985 am"
place: " in Rajneeshmandir"
chapternum: "Chapter #8"
chaptertitle: "With me begins a new era of enlightenment"
acode: "8507050"
shorttitle: "FALSE08"
audio: "Yes"
video: "Yes"
esttime: "123mins"
displaytitle: "From the False to the Truth: Chapter #8"
---

```style
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  font-style: italic;
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}
```
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<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
WHY HAVEN'T OTHER ENLIGHTENED MASTERS TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT GOD, JESUS, HEAVEN AND HELL?</p>


The phenomenon of enlightenment is very rare. It should not be so, because everyone is born enlightened and then enters into a dark tunnel of religions, cultures, civilizations, education. Enlightened you are born, unenlightened you die. That's why I say it should not be so rare.


It should be just the contrary; most of the people should be enlightened, to find unenlightened people should be difficult. But that's not what has been happening down the ages.


The society is not interested in enlightened people. They are dangerous, contagious. They cannot be enslaved -- and all societies want people to be enslaved, exploited, oppressed.


The enlightened person is rebellious, against all that man has been doing to other human beings. That's why all the societies from the very beginning start closing the doors and the windows from where any light can enter the child. They will start making him a Christian. Now, no Christian can be enlightened. He will have to drop his Christianity before he becomes enlightened. The same is true about Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, communism, fascism.


The enlightened person has no "ism." He need not be concerned with any ideology. He has his own eyes open, he can see; he need not think. Only a blind man thinks about where the door is to get out, where the road is to move on. Only a blind man waits for someone to help him to cross the road. Only a blind man needs a guide, a master; if you have eyes, you cross the road yourself, you find the door yourself. In fact, there is no question of finding: you don't even think about it, you see it.


Please understand the difference between seeing and thinking. Thinking is a very poor substitute for seeing. If you have not seen a lotus flower, howsoever you think about it, you will not be able to figure out what a lotus flower is. The moment you see it, thinking stops. There is nothing to think about; the thing itself is in front of you. And a lotus flower is so beautiful that it is bound to stop your thinking process at least for a second. Only in that second will you experience the beauty, the grandeur, the godliness of the flower.


The world is divided into civilizations, societies, cultures. They all do the same thing to the visitors coming into the world, the new people -- the children. Mankind has committed the greatest crime against its own children. The children are dependent on you, they think you know all -- and you know perfectly well that you know nothing.


The children are very curious about each and every thing. They are continuously asking, their enquiry is constant. You try to shut them up -- not because their questions are irrelevant, but because you don't have answers. And you know perfectly well that by the time they reach your age, they will understand the situation -- and they will do the same with their own children. This goes on and on, generation to generation; hence very rarely have there been enlightened people.


Of the people who are known as enlightened, at least eighty percent are just bogus. How can they criticize God, Jesus, heaven and hell? In fact, they are accepted as enlightened because they accept Jesus as the son of God. They are accepted as enlightened because they go on telling people they have seen God, met God, talked with him; he has sent messages through them to you. How can they criticize God? That is their foundation. How can they criticize heaven and hell? Their whole enlightenment, saintliness, wisdom, depends on these fictions. Destroying them, they will destroy themselves.


Hence, eighty percent of your so-called enlightened people are more unenlightened than you are. But it is a strange world. The blind go on leading other blind. Of course, finally they all fall in a ditch someway or other. But the other blind far away in the line don't know that the leader and the close followers have fallen in a ditch and disappeared.


I cannot accept anything that is not my own experience. I have enquired without any investment. I do not want to be worshipped; hence, I am not dependent on you. I do not want to become a God to you; hence I am absolutely free to say what is the truth.


Eighty percent of enlightened people have been either Christians or Hindus or Mohammedans or Buddhists. To me this is something of a fundamental contradiction. A man is enlightened and is still a Mohammedan? Then what is the difference between blind people and enlightened people? At least he should renounce Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Christianity. He should simply say, "I am myself. I am not a sheep, and I don't need any shepherd. I am a man of my own consciousness, and I have a light of my own. I don't need THE BIBLE to guide me, or the VEDAS to be my vision. I have my own vision."


An enlightened person cannot belong to any religion. He belongs to existence. So you can cut off eighty percent of your enlightened people without any difficulty.


Ten percent of enlightened people remain silent. You never come to know about them, for the simple reason that you cannot understand silence. And to be enlightened is one thing; to give it an expression is totally different. And unless the enlightened person starts expressing his vision, his experience, his realization, how are you going to know about him?


Why do ten percent choose to remain silent? It is because to be articulate is a different quality, it does not come in the same parcel as enlightenment. You don't expect an enlightened man to be a painter necessarily. You don't expect him to be a poet necessarily. Why should you expect that he will be able to be articulate with words? And it is a very difficult job. Perhaps the hardest job in the world is to tell you about something you know nothing about.


Even Gautam Buddha remained silent for seven days after his enlightenment, thinking, "What is the point? First, I cannot say what I have seen; there are no words for it. Words are impotent and the experience is so immense, so vast....


"Words are so small, they are for day-to-day use. They are not made by enlightened people, they are made by blind people living in darkness. Those words have connotations of ignorance. Now, to express light through those words is almost impossible."


"Secondly," Buddha thought, "even if I speak, manage somehow to deliver the message, who is going to listen?"


People are interested in money, in power, in politics, in becoming bigger and bigger, higher and higher compared to others. Who is really interested in enlightenment? It is just an accident if you come across a man who is enlightened and get infected. The thing is contagious, and there is no way of preventing it -- and no antidote.


So Buddha said, "Even if I speak, people are not going to listen. Perhaps they may hear, but hearing and listening are totally different things."


When I am speaking even buffaloes are hearing, donkeys are hearing, but they are not listening. Hearing is a simple thing; you have ears, that's all, nothing else is needed. The buffalo will go on chewing the grass -- and you will go on talking about enlightenment. And man is not much different; in fact he is worse, because the buffalo at least has no rush of thoughts in her mind. She is a simple being, just chewing grass, enjoying the morning sun, the cool air -- tremendously happy.


Have you seen any buffalo laughing? You must think that buffaloes don't laugh because they are in tremendous misery. You are wrong. You laugh because you are in tremendous misery. You need the laughter just to keep you going.


Jews have the most beautiful jokes in the world, because they have suffered the most in world. Strange... I have been searching my whole life for a single Indian joke -- I have not found one.


They have lived peacefully. India has never invaded any country, has never been aggressive, violent, has had no desire to become bigger and bigger, huge; India has never been imperialistic. It has been invaded by many people, and for two thousand years it has been a slave country under Hunas, Turks, Moguls, British people, Portuguese people, French, you just say the name -- and India has been invaded by everybody.


And why did such a vast country, almost a continent, yield so easily? They were not interested in fighting. Small groups of people... what is England? -- not bigger than a district in India. What is its population? If all the Indians had pissed simultaneously, England would have drowned. No atom bombs would be needed!


I have heard that when for the first time the Americans reached the moon, walked on the moon, they were surprised: a few Indians were sitting there. They could not believe their eyes! They were singing their bhajanas -- "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama." The Americans thought, "My God! We have been putting so much energy, science, money into reaching the moon -- how have these idiots managed?"


They asked the Indians. The Indians said, "It is not difficult. We just started standing upon each other's shoulders, and finally we reached."


India is a huge and vast country. Eight hundred million people... eighty hundred million people... no... You guess how many! They can reach the moon without any trouble, just standing upon each other. And small groups of Turks and Moguls defeated them!


This is not history; actually India has never been defeated by anybody. India simply allowed anybody to invade -- they welcomed them! The country was peaceful, there was enough food, enough space -- what did it matter if a few more people were absorbed? There was so much to be shared. These peaceful people, without any desire to be aggressive, remained slaves for two thousand years, for the simple reason that they were not interested in fighting.


Are you interested in meditation, in enlightenment? You have heard the word, but listening to the word "enlightenment," does anything stir in your heart?


Buddha thought, "Whom am I going to teach? In the first place teaching is difficult. In the second place to find a disciple is difficult." And he thought, "Even if I can manage to convey something of my experience, and I can also find some disciples who cannot only hear, but listen too...."
Listening means hearing without thinking.


The prerequisite for listening is that you put your mind aside, so you are just a pure space. It does not mean believing; you need not believe what you listen to. But unless you listen, how can you decide whether it is true or untrue? And a fundamental law of life is: if you listen without thinking, you will be able to see whether it is true or not. There will not be any need for you to think logically, to balance this way and that, to argue for and against.


Arguing does not help. Can a blind man argue whether light exists or not? And you have eyes -- have you ever argued whether light exists or not? Seeing is enough -- you know! In the same way, listening is enough. An immediate understanding arises.


For seven days Buddha pondered over the matter, and decided that it was useless. And the final day, when he decided not to speak, his thought was, "Many masters have existed, and what has happened? People go on living the same way, doing everything the same way." In fact, things go on becoming worse. If there had been no Mohammed, thousands of wars would have been avoided. If there had been no Jesus Christ, the world would be much more at ease and at peace -- because Christians have been killing, Mohammedans have been killing.


Buddha's insight was that first, to bring the experience down to the level of language evolved by blind people, some kind of braille-ish language is needed. Then to find disciples, then to teach them to hear rightly -- that is, to listen....


"And if a man is capable of all this," Buddha thought, "even without me, sooner or later he will become enlightened. It may take a little more time, but that does not matter in the eternity of time."


The story is beautiful.... In Buddhism it is said that gods came, after waiting seven days for Buddha to speak. In Buddhism there is no God, but there are gods. And gods are not creators of the world. They are just people like you who have earned so much virtue in their past life that they are given a holiday period in paradise. As they spend their virtue, they have to come back to the earth again, back into the misery, the suffering. Yes, they enjoyed the weekend in heaven.... Those people are called gods in Buddhism.


The gods became very much afraid, because they were waiting for Buddha to speak. If they can understand Buddha, then there will be no need for them to end the weekend. If they can understand him and become enlightened, then there is no need to come back into the world of suffering, misery, pain, anguish, anxiety -- gods are not superior to enlightened people in Buddhism.


So seven gods, representing all the other gods, came down on the seventh day when Buddha had decided not to speak, and persuaded him, "All your arguments are right, but there may be just a few people who are on the margin, just on the borderline, a little push and they may jump into a new existence. And we have waited for a man of enlightenment for thousands of years; now you have become enlightened and you are not going to speak! One enlightened man in thousands of years, and he is not going to speak, he is not going to be of any help to anybody."


I am telling this story to make it clear to you that ten percent of buddhas, enlightened people -- that is the meaning of buddha -- have remained silent.


They have achieved, they have known, they have arrived home, and the experience and the ecstasy is so tremendous -- who has time, or energy, or inclination to go back on the county roads to find disciples?


Nine percent of buddhas have spoken, but they have not criticized Jesus, God, heaven, hell, or anything, for the simple reason that they were aware of the fact that it is very difficult to attract people to your vision, and if you start hitting them.... A Christian comes and you speak against Jesus -- rather than changing the man's enquiry into a deep intimacy, you create an enemy.


Only one percent of enlightened people have tried that. And I am the one percent -- because I am not interested in any bullshit. I am not interested in increasing my numbers, I am not a politician. I don't care a bit about more and more people becoming sannyasins.


There are six hundred million Catholics. So what? -- just labels. I don't want to put a label on you. And I want to say that the ninety-nine percent of enlightened people in the past -- whether they have spoken, remained silent, or were bogus themselves -- have failed.


A new humanity has to emerge. It has to begin with a new kind of enlightened man; there is no other way. The new enlightened man heralds the beginning of a new history, a New Man, a new hope, a new future.


I will criticize everything that hinders, that prevents you from knowing your self-nature. I will hit you hard. If you escape, that is your problem. If you are strong enough, and you go on being with me, soon it will be possible to drop all the crap -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan... crap is crap; it is very sticky.


And forgive me, because I have to bring you to that purity in which you were born -- in that beautiful, utter nudity, when you were just yourself; nobody had manipulated you, you were innocent.


All the cultures and religions have used your innocence, have treated it as ignorance. It was not ignorance; it was not knowledge either. To be ignorant you have to be a little knowledgeable -- of course, in a wrong way, upside down. The innocent person is totally different from the knowledgeable and the ignorant. The child is innocent, not ignorant.


I want to offer you back your innocence. But much garbage has to be moved out of the way. You are carrying all kinds of rubbish around with you; you have become identified with it -- that's why I have to use hammers!


I will expose the bogus enlightened people. I will criticize those who remained silent -- they were not people of compassion. Even if nobody listens to you, it does not mean that you can excuse yourself. If the sun rises and no flower blooms, do you think the sun will stop rising? "What is the point? No bird sings, no flower blossoms" -- no, the sun will go on rising.


To me, to experience the ultimate automatically brings a tremendous urge to share it. If you reject it, that is your problem. Passing by a rosebush with beautiful fragrance, if you close your nostrils, hold your nose with your hand, what can the rose do? But it does not mean that roses should stop blossoming. A rose blossoms out of its own realization. If somebody is thrilled by its fragrance, good. If nobody even comes around it there is no harm, the rose has done its work.


I cannot forgive those people who remained silent. Even if they were not articulate, they should have tried at least. If they could attain to the ultimate they were people of great intelligence, they could devise methods and ways. Listening to me, you know I go on devising methods for meditation.


In fact, there is no method for meditation. All the methods that I use are for a different purpose: to prepare you for meditation. Those methods are not meditation themselves, they simply prepare you, they bring you to the very bank of the river and leave you there. Now it is up to you to jump and have the joy of the running water and the coolness and the swim, or to remain stuck on the bank like a lamppost. That is up to you.


But I cannot forgive those people who remained silent. They were selfish, utterly selfish, more selfish than those people who go on accumulating power, money, and all kinds of things of the world. They are nothing, because what they are accumulating is junk. But the man who has known enlightenment and keeps it to himself, he cannot be forgiven. I am going to condemn those people.


And the people who have spoken -- the nine percent -- I have to show you how many of them are only using borrowed knowledge. I don't think Jesus is enlightened, he is simply quoting the Old Testament. Here and there he tries to improve on it, but it is not his own experience. He is trying to prove to his people that he is the only begotten son of God.


Just the other day I was talking about Barabbas to you. When I put Jesus Christ and Barabbas side by side, I think Barabbas looks... he was a son of a bitch, but he looks as if he is the only begotten son of God: three times he returned from death. Jesus does not look enlightened.


An enlightened person cannot claim such egoistic things -- that he is the only begotten son of God, that he is the messenger, the latest messenger, that his word is law, that those who follow him, their paradise is guaranteed and those who are not going to follow him.... At the day of judgment, the last judgment, he will sort out people. His people will go to paradise and the remaining ones will fall into the abysmal darkness of hell.


Sometimes I have been wondering: on the last judgment day, how many people will be there? The whole history... billions, trillions and trillions. Perhaps mathematics hasn't a number for them.


Mathematics was born in India. Only in Indian mathematics are there numbers which can manage even the last judgment day. No other language has words for such large numbers. The largest number in Indian mathematics is mahashankh. Shankh means that which can be measured, counted. Mahashank means not countable.


Mahashankh people will be there on the last judgment day. And remember, half of them will be women... chattering, fighting. It is going to be a very difficult day, because a man may have been a husband to millions of women, a woman may have been a wife to millions of men -- so many lives! There is going to be so much shouting and fighting -- I don't think God will be able to manage judgment. And Jesus Christ says he will sort out his people. Forget it, boy, it is impossible!


And Jesus was not a great mathematician either. He must have used his fingers to count, because he was an uneducated man. Uneducated people count on their fingers. That's why in every language ten digits are the basic digits, because there are ten fingers; mathematics was born out of counting on the fingers. There are only that many real numbers; other numbers are just additions and repetitions of those ten, again and again.


I don't see any statement of Jesus which proves enlightenment. He talks about prayer, but not about meditation -- and without meditation there is no way towards enlightenment. Prayer is a childish thing. You don't know God. To whom are you praying? You don't know the language that God understands. In what language are you praying?


I don't think that God could understand all the languages. Three hundred languages exist just on this earth, and there are fifty thousand planets where life exists, so there will be millions of languages. God must have gone crazy by now -- listening to all these prayers, and consulting the dictionaries....


And how can pray when you don't know God? It is mad! Your God is a belief. Jesus has given you a system of beliefs, he has given you a faith.


An enlightened man gives you a science, not a faith. Belief or faith means you simply have to accept something without knowing it. A man of integrity will simply reject it. He will say, "Unless I know it, how can I trust?" All the religions ask you to believe, and you have never enquired what belief means.


Belief means preventing you from enquiry into truth. You already believe there is a God -- then there is no need to enquire. Science has progressed because it is not based on beliefs. All religions are retarded. There has been no progress in any religion -- cannot be, you have cut the very roots.


Faith is not needed, but an enquiring mind. But no religion supports enquiry; they are afraid of it. If they have the truth, why should they be afraid of enquiry? They don't have the truth. They have invented a God. They may say, "God created man in his own image" -- the reality is just the opposite: man has been creating God in his own image. That's why there are so may gods around the world.


A Hindu God cannot have a Jewish nose, that is inconceivable. A Mohammedan God cannot be conceived by the Jainas. A Mohammedan God says, "Convert people to Mohammedanism by the strength of the sword." Mohammedanism is not argumentative, it knows nothing of logic or rationality; it believes in the sword. Its argument is the sword.


Now, somebody puts a sword on your neck, and says, "Either be converted to Mohammedanism or be ready to die" -- because Mohammedanism believes even if you kill a person because he was resisting conversion to Mohammedanism, you will both be rewarded.


You will be rewarded because you tried your hardest -- certainly you did! And the other will also be rewarded because if he had been left to live without being converted to Mohammedanism, he might have committed many sins and would have suffered in hell. Now he is dead, and the dead don't commit sins. You have released that man from the opportunity to fall into hell. And if you die fighting, you will reach paradise.


Jainism cannot conceive of such a God, such a religion. Their religion says that even if you kill an ant, you will suffer in hell. Now, I don't see that anybody can can be anywhere else than in hell. Whatsoever you do, you will be killing millions of live things every day! Your whole body system continuously goes on changing: dead cells are thrown out of the body, new cells go on coming in. According to Jainism, just to live is to commit a sin.


To breathe is to commit a sin, because your breath exhaled is hot, and in the air there are millions of small living cells moving around you. That much heat is enough to kill them. Even to breathe is enough to send you to hell. You are not killing anybody knowingly.


The Jaina prophet, Mahavira, slept in the night only on one side. He would not change sides, because if you change sides you will be killing more small living beings. Just remaining exactly in one posture the whole night.... I cannot conceive of him being enlightened. Just think, even in the night you cannot relax. Just keeping one posture the whole night, can you relax? Such an unrelaxed man cannot be called enlightened.
I am going to tell you the truth.
If it hurts, that is your problem.


And I am not asking anything from you -- that's why I don't care whether it hurts you or not. I am not the only begotten son of God, so I don't depend on you. I don't claim to be the messenger of God, I don't claim to be a prophet; all these people are unknowingly becoming dependent on you. They are becoming slaves to you. If all the Jews leave Moses, his prophethood is gone. Who is going to call him a prophet? If all the Christians drop Jesus completely, who is going to make him the only begotten son of God?


I don't depend on anybody, I am simply myself. For that I don't need anybody's consent, belief, faith. I don't need anybody to nourish my ego. And anybody who is trying to be nourished by others, particularly for his ego, is not enlightened.


The enlightened man has no ego at all. He is simply without any "I". I have to use the word, but there is no corresponding reality in me. The word "I" is just a linguistic device -- it has no reality.


Whether you listen to me or not makes no difference. I am not saying believe in me, because what I know you can know; there is no need for any belief. All beliefs are anti-religious, anti-spiritual. All belief systems have to be dropped, only then can man be at peace. These belief systems are keeping you fighting each other, destroying each other. They don't give you even a chance to discover yourself.


Getting rid of all belief systems is liberation. For that liberation I am criticizing people like Jesus or Mohammed or Mahavira, and I am criticizing their strategies to exploit you: heaven and hell. Through heaven they create fear in you, and greed. Through hell the same thing, fear and greed. Fear and greed are poisons, but they are saying, "Those who believe and believe totally...."


They are asking something impossible. That's why you are all tense, because you cannot manage it. How can you believe, and believe totally, something you know nothing about? They are not even saying to you, "Believe only hypothetically." They are asking you, "Believe totally." How can you believe? Deep down you know you don't know. Deep down you are repressing your disbelief.


All believers are underground unbelievers. Underground, all Christians are continuously suffering, because by their belief they have created a division, a split in their being. The belief says Jesus is born out of a virgin girl! And they believe it, out of the greed for heaven -- for enjoying the beauties of heaven for eternity -- and the fear of falling into the depths of hell. And the Christian hell is the worst -- avoid it! If you want to fall into hell, fall into any other, because every other hell has a time limit; the Christian hell is for eternity.


These religions are living on your fear and greed. I have to destroy your fear and your greed, because they are preventing you from seeing your reality, seeing your eternal being, your immortality. I have to go on hitting on the head of your so-called God, because if God is there then man can never be liberated. God is another name of eternal imprisonment.


If God can create, just out of his whim -- because there seems to be no excuse for creating the world.... Why did he create the world? And just four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ was born? What was he doing before that? For eternity, going backwards, he has not done anything. What prompted him to create the world four thousand and four years before Jesus was born?


No explanation is given by Christian theologians, because there is no explanation. If they give any explanation, that means God can be forced to do something. If they say that God created the world because he loved to create, where was this love to create for the whole eternity? And suddenly one day...? There must be some reason. No Christian theologian in two thousand years has been able to say what prompted God to create the world -- and this world.


And if God is whimsical -- that is the only possibility; he is whimsical, eccentric, a little off the track; in short, just a nut -- if he created this world, why did he create heaven and hell? If he enjoyed creating, he could have created you without all that which can lead you to hell. If he can create this whole immense world, can't he create a man without sex, without anger, without jealousy, without greed, without fear, without death? He seems to be a very cruel type of God, very unkind.


And then he creates the priests who preach to you, "Be celibate." Some great conspiracy is going on. God creates you as a sexual being, and his priest -- who is infallible, the pope -- teaches you to remain celibate. Have you ever asked, "Is the pope against God?" He must be, because God creates love in you, God creates anger in you, and the pope says you have to drop all this. To whom are you going to listen? To God? Or to this Polack pope? And this is the situation of all religions.


I am telling you, listen to nature and just be natural. Sex is beautiful because it is natural. And a tremendous transformation happens when you accept your naturalness. When you accept everything that you are, there is a transformation, because a new thing has arisen in you: acceptance -- which all the priests of all the religions have been destroying.


They destroy your acceptance of yourself, they create guilt in you. That is something of an ultimate crime -- to create guilt. And the easiest way is to teach you to go against your own nature.
You cannot go against nature.
Who will go against it?
You are nature.


So all these monasteries of Hindus and Mohammedans and Buddhists are full of hypocrites; there is not a single man worthy of any respect. And these religions have created all kinds of perversions in the world. When you suppress your sex, it starts flowing in unnatural ways. You cannot stop nature, it will find some other way. If you keep men and women apart you will be responsible for creating homosexuality.


When I was a lecturer in the university, the first thing I did.... In India the girls and the boys cannot sit together in the class. The girls sit on one side, the boys sit on the other side, and a space is left between them. The first day I entered the university I said, "Get mixed up."


They were very much puzzled, nervous. They said, "But we have been told to remain separate."


I said, "This is my class, and nature has not told you to be separate. Nature has managed in every way to bring you closer. I am not against nature -- just get mixed up.


"And you know, when a girl is not pinched by a boy, how much she suffers. I don't want any suffering here. You can sit mixed up, you can hold hands. I want you to be relaxed, because then you can hear me better; otherwise I am wasting my time here. You are throwing your letters to the girls and girls are throwing letters to you -- I cannot tolerate this nonsense."


Of course, the vice-chancellor was very disturbed when he came to know. He called me and asked, "What are you doing?"


I said, "I want you just to remember your own student days."
He said, "But what has that to do with it?"


I said, "It has everything to do with it. Were you not hankering to be closer to the girls? Tell me the truth!"
He said, "You just go and do whatever you want."


It is absolutely natural that boys will write letters and follow girls, and girls will try to escape. This is just a natural game. The girl does not want to escape! You just stop chasing her and she will start chasing you.


That is continuously happening in my commune. No man is chasing women, the women are chasing men, because the number of men is less, and the number of women is more. And it is perfectly natural -- the girl escaping from the boy is simply becoming more attractive to him, becoming a challenge to him.


You will never be interested in a woman who is chasing you, if you are a man, because she is not a challenge. Man loves challenge; it is a hide-and-seek game. But it is natural, and whatever is natural is virtue; whatever is unnatural is criminal.


And I can say all these things to you because I don't claim any extraordinariness about myself. I am a simple, ordinary, natural human being. Perhaps this is the first time any enlightened man has had the courage to say that he is just ordinary, simple, natural.


If you understand me, what I am saying.... I am saying, with me begins a new era in enlightenment.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
THERE ARE MANY QUESTIONS I WANT TO ASK YOU, AND I FEEL THE ANSWERS WITHIN ME TOO. BUT THE ANSWERS THAT I FEEL DO NOT HELP ME. WHY IS IT SO?</p>


Because they are not answers! Are you stupid or something? If they don't help you, and the question remains, you have some nerve to call them answers. Forget those answers, they are not.


The moment you find the answer to your question, the question dissolves, the problem disappears. This is the criterion to judge whether it was an answer or not.


But the man who has asked the question must be very egoistic. He says, "I have many questions that I want to ask; I have my own answers but they don't help." They will never help. Please ask your questions.


And you cannot have many questions either. That is an exaggeration. These are the ways of the ego: "I have many questions, and I also have all the answers."


But the ego is just like a balloon: if you go on filling it with air, there comes a moment when it bursts. Today, that moment has come.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
I AM HAPPY TO BE FREE FROM ANY GOD, AND TO BE LIVING MORE AND MORE ON MY OWN AUTHORITY. BUT NOW I CANNOT IMAGINE WHAT ENLIGHTENMENT IS ALL ABOUT. ISN'T IT JUST ANOTHER GOD?</p>


It seems to be the same stupid man. How do you know that there is no God -- because I have said it? But when did I say it to you, "Believe in me"?


You must be enjoying great egoism: "I am free of God." You are not free even of your ego, how can you be free of God? How do you manage to know that there is no God? One can know this only after enlightenment, because then the whole existence is crystal-clear, open; life is there, but there is no God anywhere.


Because you started with a belief -- hearing me say again and again that there is no God -- you felt good, because if there is no God then you are free to do anything. When I am saying there is no God, I am not freeing you from responsibility. In fact, when there is no God you become totally responsible for every act. If there is a God you can commit a sin and then just go and confess to the priest, and you are forgiven. But if there is no God, nobody can forgive you; you will have to undo what you have done. Your responsibility is tremendous. You cannot pray for any help -- no help will be coming.


The religions have kept man in this idiotic situation because on the one hand they say, "Don't do this" -- and they know perfectly well you will do it, it is natural. Then they give you the medicine for it: you can confess. Or you can go to a holy river and take a dip in it and all your sins will be washed away. Or chant a mantra every day, do transcendental meditation -- which is neither transcendental nor meditation -- and you will always be clean, forgiven.


God is looking after you, he is holding your hand in his hand. All this has kept you crippled; you have not been able to walk on your own feet. And you have not been able to see what you are doing, why you are doing it. Is it right? Is it confirmed by your consciousness, your awareness?


A man of awareness never repents, because a man of awareness does only things that can done with full consciousness. But Jesus goes on telling Christians, "Repent! Repent! The day of judgment is coming soon." He does not teach people a life of non-repentance -- and that's what I teach you.


Be alert, be conscious. Don't go against nature. Don't try to swim against the current, go with the river. Be in a let-go. Accept anything that arises naturally in you. And you will not need any repentance, any prayer, any God.


You say you are freed from God and you are enjoying it. You are enjoying only a licentiousness; it is not freedom. Freedom is responsibility.


A slave need not be responsible, his master is responsible. In fact, I say to all the religions of the world, "You need not be worried. When you face God tell him, 'It is you who created us in this way, with these instincts. We are not responsible. Why should we repent, and why should we pray? You should repent for this creation, and you should ask forgiveness from us. This is a day of judgment!'"


But you don't know that there is no God. You are not freed from God, you just have another belief. And I go on saying to you: Don't believe in me!
I am not creating a faith.
I am giving you a science.


Enquire, search -- and find. If you had found that there is no God, then your question would not be there: "What about enlightenment?" That would have happened before. You could not have asked, "Is not enlightenment another God?" because you would have known yourself that enlightenment is not a god, but it is absolute godliness. And remember the difference: God is a person, godliness is a quality.


Godliness is the fragrance of the man who has attained enlightenment.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY THAT JESUS WAS NOT A HEALER, YET MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IS THAT YOU ARE. CAN YOU COMMENT? ALSO, IS THIS A RELIGIOUS MATTER?</p>


You must be kidding! Me, a healer? I am suffering from so many sicknesses myself -- and I touch myself so many times in the day! The diabetes remains, my asthma remains. Just because of your holy scriptures that I have been reading for forty years continuously... they have destroyed my eyes. And I have found nothing in them -- sheer garbage, to be burned.
Godliness is a totally different thing.
You cannot worship it, you cannot pray to it.


It is not the beginning of your religion, it is the very end, the flowering. It is a quality of the man of enlightenment.
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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