---
section: Library
booktitle: "Sermons in Stones"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "SERMON"
dategiven: "10 December 1986 pm"
place: " in"
chapternum: "Chapter #11"
chaptertitle: "I have to be offensive to wake you up!"
acode: "8612105"
shorttitle: "SERMON11"
audio: "Yes"
video: "Yes"
esttime: "136mins"
displaytitle: "Sermons in Stones: Chapter #11"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
YOU CAN'T REALLY MEAN IT WHEN YOU SAY YOU HAVE LOST ALL HOPES AND ILLUSIONS, BECAUSE YOU KNOW PERFECTLY WELL WHERE HUMANITY STANDS TODAY AND YOU KNOW HOW SLOW EVOLUTION IS. I OFTEN WONDERED IF YOU HAD NOT COME A BIT TOO SOON: HUMANITY WAS NOT READY TO UNDERSTAND YOUR LIBERATING MESSAGE, AND SIMPLY MISBEHAVED WITH YOU.
AND THIS WAS THE EXPLANATION THAT I FOUND WITHIN: YES, YOU HAD COME TOO SOON -- ALL GREAT MASTERS COME TOO SOON (POOR JESUS' MESSAGE HAS BEEN UNDERSTOOD BY ONLY A VERY FEW AFTER NINETEEN CENTURIES, SO YOU'LL HAVE TO BE PATIENT!) BUT THE SHOCK WAS NECESSARY -- THE SPIRITUAL EARTHQUAKE. YET SOME EGO-SKYSCRAPERS ARE SO TECHNICALLY PERFECT THAT THEY CAN RESIST PROBABLY EVEN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ENTIRE PLANET.
ANOTHER THING I ASK MYSELF IS WHY YOU ARE SO BRUTAL, SO VIOLENT, SO OFFENSIVE. I CAN UNDERSTAND THIS BEHAVIOR WITH DISCIPLES IN THE HOPE OF FRACTURING THEIR EGOS, BUT WITH POLITICIANS...? THEY JUST CAN'T BE ANYTHING ELSE THAN OFFENDED -- BUT THEY WON'T LEARN WHAT YOU WANT TO TEACH THEM (AT LEAST NOT IN THIS INCARNATION) AND YOU KNOW IT, SO WHAT IS THE SENSE? PLEASE EXPLAIN. COULDN'T YOU BE JUST AS OUTSPOKEN (THAT IS WHAT I SO LOVE IN YOU) YET LESS PROVOKING? IT WOULD HAVE SAVED YOU SO MUCH TROUBLE, I'M SURE, AND WOULD NOT HAVE CAUSED THIS RIDICULOUS ALLIANCE OF ALL GOVERNMENTS AGAINST YOU.</p>


I understand your love, and I understand your love for my work. But you do not understand the ways the masters use to work on the sleeping humanity.


Jesus was offensive -- deliberately, because there was no other way to wake up his contemporary humanity. His crucifixion has perhaps been understood by only one man up to now in the whole of history, and that man is not a Christian.


That man is George Gurdjieff. Because he is not a Christian he can stand aloof, with no prejudice at all. His insight into the crucifixion of Jesus is that it was planned by Jesus himself. On the one hand he was very offensive, very rude -- that provoked the blind masses. On the other hand he was mercilessly hammering on the priesthood -- and the priests in those days were very much more powerful than they are today. Today they are nothing but the Queen of England; it means nothing. The Queen of England or the queen of playing cards -- they are synonymous.


Jesus sacrificed his life because in those primitive days there was no way to spread a message unless it thrilled the very heart of the merciless humanity. The struggle was not with the heart, the struggle was with the stones -- or perhaps worse, because even stones are not as stony as a human being can be.


Everybody who has tried to understand Jesus has thought it: "Why was he offensive? He could have been a very respectable rabbi; people would have worshipped him, loved him. Instead of crucifying him they would have wanted to crown him."


But that was not the work Jesus was doing. The question was not the cross or the crown, the question was the awakened man or the sleepy, unconscious humanity. When you are deeply asleep you have to be shaken, your name has to be shouted, cold water has to be thrown into your eyes. But this is all done out of compassion.


I have been offensive and I will remain offensive. I will go on growing more and more offensive, for the simple reason that you are so deep in a coma that perhaps only a scream might reach you -- or might not reach you.


Perhaps you will look at me for the first time only when I am on the cross. Right now you take me for granted -- only the cross will destroy your state of taking me for granted. Perhaps only the cross can shake you enough so that you can wake up.


You have said I may be hard with my disciples because they are committed to a certain work of evolution -- it is not being done against them, they have come and they have joined me. The question is relevant: Why do I go on hammering on the politicians? Again, the questioner is innocent and ignorant. She does not understand the structure of human consciousness.


When I criticize the politician, it is not the politician outside you, it is the politician within you.


The outer politician is only a manifestation, a collective manifestation of your inner politicians. You are all searching -- in some way or other -- to have more, to possess more, to be powerful, to be dominant, to be special: V.V.I.P. ... a V.I.P. is no longer enough.


When I criticize the politicians I am criticizing the political structure of your mind.


Aristotle is right only on this point, according to me, when he calls man a political animal.


Your politician is still in a latent state. It has not been possible for it to have an opportunity to come into its true colors.


That's why power corrupts -- in fact, power has nothing to do with corruption. It appears that power corrupts because power gives you the opportunity to bring out all your fantasies, dreams, and change them into reality. You have the power to do it.


And Acton is right that absolute power corrupts absolutely.


I have to criticize the politicians because they are what you would like to be. Presidents, prime ministers, governors, ambassadors -- that's what you would like to be, but it is only a seed in you. And in the seed you cannot see all the flowers and all the colors. When I criticize the politicians I am criticizing you as if your politician had come into power.


And in a certain way... you may not be very powerful, but everybody has a certain power over certain people. The parents have power over their children, the husband has power over his wife -- at least he believes that. The real power is with the woman, she has all the keys. And husbands and wives are constantly fighting to prove who is higher, who is more intelligent, who is always right.


So everybody has his own small area, his own small territory where he is powerful. The teacher in the classroom is almost a king.


In India, physical punishment is against the constitution. Children cannot be tortured in any physical way. But that is only in the constitution, not in reality. All over India children are beaten.


When I entered my high school.... One man was very notorious for beating children -- he was our mathematics teacher. His subject was difficult and he had no compassion at all. He thought that by beating children you could raise their intelligence! By beating children you can destroy their intelligence, but you cannot raise it. Beating is destructive.


I had decided the very first day that in the very beginning I had to come to terms with this man. As he entered in the class, I did not stand up to greet him as every other student did. He looked very angry... a little surprised, too. For a moment there was silence and then he said, "It seems you don't know me."


I said, "It is true. I don't know you, but something more important is true."
He said, "What is that?"
I said, "You don't know yourself."


He said, "I don't want to go into philosophy -- don't change the subject! You have to tell me why you remained sitting."


I said, "Because I have not seen anything honorable in you. Now, I am helpless -- I cannot honor a person if I cannot find anything honorable in him. I cannot be a hypocrite."


He said, "You don't understand. I will bring you to your senses with just one good beating." And he took his cane out of his desk.


I said, "You can beat me, but just look outside the window."
He said, "What is there?"


I said, "Just look...." because outside the window, far away, was the police station.
He said, "What do you mean?"


I said, "You beat me first -- then accompany me to the police station, because physical punishment is a crime."


His cane slipped from his hand. He had never thought about it, that a student could report against him. He said, "But this will become a precedent for others; nobody will stand up...."


I said, "There is no need. In what way does our standing help you? Just so you can feel powerful? These poor boys are standing out of fear, not in love, in trust; not in real gratitude."


Something happened to that man. He threw away the cane.


And now because he was not beating them, for the first time he started encountering the beauties of small children. In violence, all those beauties shrink. In fact, the violence prevents their growth in all directions: in intelligence, in love, in friendliness, in sharing, in rejoicing.... The whole day long, from one class to another they are humiliated, insulted, beaten. Still you expect respect from them.


I made it clear to him: "I will give you respect -- and only on that day can you decide that something has happened in your life. All the respect that has been shown up to now was out of fear. Unless I feel love for you and gratitude for you, you will have to wait. And you will have to be patient. It rarely happens that people change so quickly."


But perhaps he was just on the verge, and only a slight push was needed. He turned a complete circle, one hundred and eighty degrees. He came to be one of the most lovable, respectable teachers in the whole school. He was not senior enough, but because of his tremendous change he was chosen to be the principal of the school the next year when the old principal retired, although it was not his turn.


And he wept in front of me, holding my hands, and said, "The whole credit for making me the principal goes to you. Not only have you changed my relationship with the students, strangely, once I started changing, the change has affected every relationship. I have loved my wife for the first time, I have loved my own children for the first time. Now I am teaching not just to earn money, I love it. I enjoy it.


"When someone commits a mistake it does not make me angry. And now I can see that before I was angry twenty-four hours a day, so any slight excuse was enough. I was fighting with my father, with my mother, with my wife, with my brothers... I was carrying all that mountainous burden and these small children were simply victims. You were right: it was because I could not show my domination towards anybody else -- I am just an ordinary school teacher -- but I could show my domination and my power and my greatness and my superiority, and deep down fulfill a certain ego. Since the day I dropped the idea of being violent with the students, slowly slowly my eyes have become clean and clear, and I can see that to err is human."


I said to him... and he has remembered it; the last time I saw him in 1970, he reminded me. He said, "To err is human and to forgive is divine -- that is the old proverb."


I said, "That proverb is dangerous because it makes forgiving so far away. Gods forgive, and you are not a god. To err is human. To forgive is more human, it is not divine -- just more human."


In fact, the moment you have achieved your own humanity, you have achieved your divinity. They are not two things. Your humanity at its climax is the beginning of your divineness, of your godliness.


My criticism of the politicians, first, is the criticism of the hidden politician inside you -- as a husband, as a wife, as a mother, as a father. You are expecting obedience, you are thinking that your child is not only born out of you but has to be just a carbon copy of you.


Children are born of you, but they don't belong to you. They belong to the future, of which you know nothing. You are the sunset, your children are the sunrise -- and the gap of the whole night is there.


Secondly, I don't see men as islands, separate from each other. And I don't see their activities as separate from each other either. They are all part of a network.


If I want a revolution in human consciousness I will have to hammer on the heads of politicians as hard as possible, because politicians are the ones who are always standing and they have the power to prevent any kind of revolution, any kind of change. They want a society with a status quo, because any revolution is going to throw them from their power positions.


A conscious humanity cannot tolerate idiot politicians guiding it.


I have had to criticize the so-called leaders of religion, high priests, popes, shankaracharyas, because they are making every effort that man's mind remains retarded. Only a retarded mind can be exploited.


And you ask me not to be offensive, not to be violent.


Your idea must be that if I am not offensive, if I am not outrageous in my statements, if I don't criticize those who are in power -- politically or economically -- then my message will spread more easily.
You are wrong.


The whole of the world's media is interested in something sensational. They are not interested in the softer values of life. It is said that a good man has no life -- as far as reporting about the good man is concerned, he has no life. At the most you can say he is a good man, but life? Where will you find it in a good man?


It is a very ancient part of wisdom that you cannot write a novel or a drama around the life of a good man, and even if you write it you will have to print it yourself. And it is not going to be a best seller, it will be a no-seller! It will have its uniqueness... but you will be in constant trouble -- what to write? A good man is just good man, tastes good. It is the bad man who has a life. He is colorful, he is not monotonous. You can enter into his life and you will find surprises upon surprises; a great story is possible.


If I speak softly, very lovingly, it will be impossible to reach within just few years to every nook and corner of the world.


I have my own method, and I know how to turn the tide at any moment.
It is just a question of turning the switch.


First let me create a good number of enemies -- which I am successfully doing! -- and you will see for yourself: these same enemies will turn into friends. I just have to go on creating enemies for a few days more. Once I have touched your heart -- right or wrong, it does not matter -- then it is a very simple phenomenon to change anything.


Those who are behaving as enemies have already become emotionally attached to me. Just the other day I received a message from Oregon that Oregon is missing me very much... because who has ever heard the name of Oregon? But for five years Oregon was international news.


I was a tourist in America and my visa had expired long before, so I was illegally there -- kept by the government! The illegality goes to the government, because I was asking them: "Either you extend my visa or you say no. If you say no I am going to court -- on what grounds can you deny me?"


So they were in a puzzle: they could not say no, because once they have said no their power would be gone. Now the power would be in the hands of a court where they would be a party, and they would have to prove why they had been harassing me for two years continuously. And they could not say yes because the president wanted me and my commune to be destroyed. The attorney general of America wanted my commune to be completely destroyed. America's richest man, Rockefeller, wanted me to leave America. The archbishop of America was certainly after the president continuously.


They wanted me to leave the country but for that they needed to say no to extending my visa. And they were afraid to say no because once it went to court then it could take twenty years... from one court to another court....


These people were trying hard that the newspapers, radio, television, cable television should not report me, for one thing. Every pressure was put on all kinds of media: "Either report negatively or don't report at all." And in the world of the news media freedom of expression exists only in the ideas, in the great human rights and human values of the constitution; but basically it does not exist. And this is simply because to have a big daily newspaper you have to be either a political organization, a religious organization or a rich man to invest money.


And all the newspapers survive on the advertisements given by the government. The moment they don't listen to the government the advertisements stop -- and no newspaper can exist without government advertisements. The situation is such that freedom is just an empty word.


Coming in contact with the news media people, I was surprised: these people were beautiful, they tried to do their best. And later on they informed me -- "We are sorry. The bosses are editing things out, adding things, changing the whole flavor. And we are poor people; we cannot risk our jobs." When their news reports came out on television, it was totally the opposite of what was felt in the direct encounter with the person.


I inquired of a few journalists: "What happens? You write, you listen... I have seen tears in journalists' eyes. I have seen them dancing with sannyasins. What happens to you when you report to your newspaper, your radio, the television?"


They said, "We are ashamed. Our work is to give the reports and then it goes to the editorial department. Then -- particularly because of you -- it goes to the boss for a second check. Unless they have destroyed it to utter negativity they are not satisfied."


It is because once it becomes negative, people enjoy it. People are living in negative minds, so whenever a negative report is given they fall in rapport with it. They say inside themselves, "Right! We knew it already."


One journalist told me, "If we write exactly what we feel, the whole staff thinks we have become hypnotized. If we don't put something against you.... And it does not matter whether it is right or wrong; something against you is a protection: They will not say, 'You are hypnotized.'"


Perhaps Satyananda is here. He came as a journalist from STERN magazine in Germany. He was one of their topmost journalists, but he wanted to feel it -- the meditations, the groups, silent sittings with me, discourses... he remained there for a few weeks. He wanted an inside story, not just a story from an outsider. He collected so much material and he was so happy when he went... before leaving he became a sannyasin, too. But as he reached the STERN office they started laughing. They said, "He is completely hypnotized! Look at his red clothes, mala... he is not the man we sent."


When they saw his report they simply said, "Not a single word from this report can be published. You have been brainwashed, you don't know what you are writing. You are under hypnosis, you are being used as a medium; you don't know what you are doing."


He said, "What nonsense are you talking? I have not been hypnotized."


But what can he do? The report belongs to STERN, not to the writer. The writer is paid for it.


He went on struggling, negotiating -- "This much you can cut... this much you can cut...." And finally only one sixth remained. They distorted his whole beautiful article.


But he was disillusioned completely -- this freedom of expression, all these democratic values are just words. He resigned his position on the grounds that they had been printing things which were not true, and because they had inserted whatever they wanted into his article.


He told them, "I cannot serve here like a slave anymore. You have not purchased my mind."


He wrote a book, which became a best seller in Germany. He came back to live in India, and then he was in America with me. And soon -- once I settle somewhere -- he will be coming.


So the problem for me is that if I simply talk about meditations, about ecstasies, spiritual experiences, then the message cannot reach those who are in immense need of it, and I will feel guilty. I should make every effort that the message reaches.


To provoke people, you have to be offensive. To create a new ground for a new humanity, you have to destroy much of the past -- and you cannot be other than hard. If I simply talk about abstract concepts which are not any danger to the existing society, to the vested interests, I will be respected -- the same people who are enemies will start talking about me as a great saint -- but I will not be of any help to those who are really thirsty.
So I am not worried about all of humanity.


My concern is that I must reach each door and knock at least once. If somebody can understand, he should not miss. If somebody cannot understand, there is no harm -- he was not going to understand anyway.


So everything that is being done is well planned and deliberate. It is not accidental.


I can understand your love, but you have to grow into a little more clarity about the function of the master.


And you cannot suggest to the master what he should do and what he should not do! With good intentions... but you are doing a stupid thing.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
IF THE EXPERIENCE OF GOD IS A SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE, THEN WHAT ARE PRIESTS AND POPES FOR? IF THE EXPERIENCE OF GOD IS AN OBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE, THEN WHY DON'T THEY PRODUCE HIM?</p>


God is neither subjective nor objective.
God simply does not exist.
Your question is that if God is an objective experience, then scientists should be able to produce it. If man can go to the moon, it is conceivable that scientists would be able to put on their table the experience of God or the presence of God. That's what Karl Marx used to say: "Unless God is proved in a scientific lab I am not going to accept it."


One communist friend used to stay with me once in a while. He wrote this passage to me.... I said, "Marx's statement is self-contradictory.


First you say, 'If God is an object...' Your statement begins with if. It is not your experience. If you have the experience then there is no possibility of ifs and buts. It is purely an intellectual question. If God is an object, then certainly scientists will be able to produce it. They have not been able to produce it; hence Karl Marx says there is no God."


That's why I say that even our so-called great thinkers go on committing very small mistakes, but their impact can be tremendous. Karl Marx is saying that scientists have not been able to bring God into the lab, dissect him, find out what is inside him, turn him inside out, just to have a look all around. Because this has not happened, he says God does not exist.


I told my communist friend, "Marx was eligible only to say that God does not exist as an object. It is simple logic. You have given the objective to the scientist and the scientist has not been able to produce it, so only one thing has become certain: that God is not an object. Not that there is no God -- because you yourself say that there is another side, the subjective side. What about it? And Marx remains silent about the other side, which has simply been dropped!"
God is an experience.


It is not right to say "the experience of God." That creates difficulty, it makes God an object. There are three things: God the object, you the experiencer, and the experience between you two, as a bridge. God is not a subjective experience, God is just the experience of the inner.


There is no God as a person. God is your subjectivity -- it is another name for your inner being.
It is you, asleep.
You can be awake.


Then too you will not be able to see God, because God is not a person at all.


God is our inability to experience the inner reality and give it an expression. When we try to express it, trouble arises. Any name is good.


Mohammedans have one thousand names for God. Hindus have vishnu sahasranam -- one thousand names for God. And I say to you, the reason God can have one thousand names is because he does not exist. If you exist, then one name or maybe two -- at the most three.... But one thousand is just meaningless.


It is almost impossible to find any name among Mohammedan names which is not the name of God. Arabic is not a very great language; its scope is very small. It is the language of nomads wandering in the desert -- very primitive. Even to find one thousand names in it is a little bit of a difficult job. All the Mohammedan names that you come across are names for God.


Something has to be said -- the experience is valid; it has been validated by thousands of mystics around the world. There is something more than you know, than you feel, within you. Your consciousness, your existence..."God" is only a symbol. You can use it, but it has fallen into wrong company. Being with Mohammedans and Hindus and Christians, it has lost its beauty and grandeur. It has become too ordinary, too mundane.


And its associations are not good -- because in the name of God, thousands of people have been killed. In the name of God, conflict continues around the world; thousands of undercurrents of fighting, efforts to convert people to your fold -- because numbers are very decisive as far as politics is concerned.


You have to understand the politics of numbers. Why do Mohammedans go on insisting that they will continue to marry at least four women? Although they cannot rationally support their idea, the question of reason does not arise. They say their holy book says, the holy KORAN says you can have four wives, or even more -- Mohammed himself had nine wives. So it is not a question of argument or discussion. You are interfering in their religion -- it is a question of religion.


Marrying nine women and depriving eight men -- for their whole lives they will not get any women. Naturally, you are creating the institution of prostitution -- what are those eight persons going to do?


Religions have created prostitution, they are the sources.


Just forty years ago, the Nizam of Hyderabad died. When he died he had five hundred wives! This is superficial reasoning, that their religion is being interfered with.


The real thing is if you allow a man to marry many women, many children are possible; your population will increase. It cannot happen vice-versa. You can have one woman with five husbands and still she will produce just one child. Nature is not going to bother that she has five husbands so just be a little kind and give her five children, numbered according to the husbands. So it is pointless to have one wife with many husbands.


To have one husband and many wives is political -- it has nothing to do with religion.


Now, if I say it is political, it is not religious....


Because what has religion to do with numbers? Religion is basically individual. You alone can be religious, there is no need for anyone else to be with you for you to be religious. It is not a social phenomenon. Its whole growth is individual, purely individual.


I have to criticize religions which are obstructing human progress, in many ways. Right now all the Christian priests, Hindu priests, Mohammedan priests all around the world are doing one thing: teaching poor people against birth control, because it is overpopulation that is going to give them numbers. And it is overpopulation that is going to keep half of the earth poor, starving -- and the poor and the starving are easily vulnerable to being converted. You just give them education, food, a house to live in and you have brought gifts from God -- they will be Christians.


Poverty should continue; otherwise who is going to be in the churches, who is going to be converted?


I have to say categorically that all conversion is criminal.


Nobody has the right to impose his own ideology on other people. You have the right to express your ideology and leave it for people to think about. If you have provoked thinking, that's enough. You have done a great job if you have triggered thinking.


A child was just asking, "Why is God there? What is the need?"


The child must be very intelligent, he has asked a very significant question.
It is because of fear.
It is because of ignorance.
It is because inside, you are full of darkness.


Hence you are continuously afraid. Outside, you know there is going to be death, sooner or later. You know there is going to be old age, there is going to be sickness, all kinds of diseases, and you are going to suffer all these things. Humanity has to be somehow consoled: "Don't be worried, God is taking care of you. He is the creator -- you may not be looking at him, but he is always looking at you."


Don't get afraid of the idea -- because once you are alone in your room and you start feeling that he is looking from the roof.... And man is so imaginative, he can manage it that behind those two eyes there is a head, and of course you will be in a panic! You may have been talking about God but you don't know... if you meet him, what are you going to say?


For the part of humanity that is not going to try and experience its own light, society has to give substitutes. God is a substitute, a name -- just a lollipop... nothing of much use, no nourishment, but sounds good: "lollipop."


Because of the concept of God, man has been able to live -- not very joyously, because his whole living is based on wrong principles. But still, somehow he has been able to drag through his life.


Without God you sudddenly feel a cold wave around you, a dark night surrounding you. God was the great father -- protection, security, hope... all are gone.


This makes one mature -- if you can get rid of God you are mature. According to me, twenty-one years of age does not make you mature, adult. Only one thing makes man mature, and that is getting rid of God -- because God is a bundle of all kinds of fears, greeds, hopes. It is opium; it keeps you drugged. But while you are drugged your life is slipping by, and soon death will knock on the door and then it will be too late.


To find the real answer to the question you have to sit silently, alert, not falling asleep, and just going inwards, slowly slowly.... First it will start becoming darker and darker and darker, and then suddenly there is dawn, and the birds are singing and the sun is rising and you are free.
Your wings are open for the first time.
Now you can claim the whole sky with all its stars.


A man without God is an authentic man. A man with God is just a shadow, he has not entered into the world of reality yet. You have millions of priests and none of them has the courage to say that he has encountered God. Not even the representatives -- the pope, the shankaracharyas, Ayatollah Khomeini -- not even these people are courageous enough to say that they have encountered God. They are as afraid as you are; there are doubts in their minds as there are doubts in your mind, because doubts disappear only when you have experienced something.


God is not a question of belief, it is an experience of inner light. Then you can give it any name. You can call it God, you can call it truth, you can call it love, you can call it peace. You can call it life -- it does not matter what word is used, but it should be based on experience.


Once you have experienced your light, you know there is no need of any other God. The whole existence is godly.
<p class="question">BELOVED OSHO,
I GUESS I HAVE TWO QUESTIONS. WHY DO WE ALL WANT TO BE THERAPISTS (MYSELF INCLUDED)? IS GOSSIPING AMONGST YOUR SANNYASINS HARMFUL TO YOUR WORK, OR AM I TOO SERIOUS?</p>


First, you are too serious.
Gossiping amongst sannyasins is like gospels amongst the Christians. If I have to choose between gossips and gospels, my preference is for gossips. They are juicier, more alive.


Gospels look sad, dead, heavy. If you have to listen you can manage to listen, but it is not a dance of your heart.


So I am in support of my sannyasins completely. Gossip as aesthetically as possible, as religiously as possible! And gossip something beautiful, something ecstatic.


Your gossiping should not be mundane and ordinary: that somebody has escaped with somebody's wife... this kind of gossiping is third-rate; it is nobody's business. In the first place, no woman is anybody's wife; every woman is a woman. Husband and wife... these are social institutions, and to live in an institution either you have to be mad or you will become mad!


Institutions are not places to live, but they say that marriage is a "divine institution." It is nothing divine; it is simple, mundane business. It is a convenience; it is making a lifelong contract. Otherwise, a few people prefer temporary contracts, a few people prefer lifelong contracts -- these are preferences.


And nobody possesses anybody. So if somebody's wife has escaped -- great! Great for the man because he is free, and great for the woman because for a few days at least the man will not want to kill her! It is freeing and beautiful for the other man also, because somebody else's wife is always beautiful....


It is a strange thing. I have been looking into the chemistry of it.


As one relationship changes -- particularly if it is a marriage, which is the center of our civilization and must be a very rotten center, because the civilization is rotten....


You can be serious but your seriousness shows a sickness of the soul. The healthy soul is smiling, is ready to burst into laughter.


So please don't be worried about sannyasins gossiping. In no scripture of any religion has gossiping been condemned as sin.


But your instinct to condemn it comes from religions. They have been condemning everything that is pleasant to human beings; no pleasure has to be left uncondemned. This is the most ancient strategy: catching hold of people and getting them into particular religions, sects, theologies -- and before you can be caught in a church you have to be miserable. Only miserable people go to religious institutions, only miserable people read holy scriptures.


If you are rejoicing in the gifts of existence, it is enough to feel grateful -- and gratefulness is religiousness.


Secondly, you must be a new sannyasin. It will take a little time to live with my people -- who are basically misfits. They cannot adjust with the society. They are so sensitive they cannot tolerate a futile, meaningless life; hence they have fallen out of the folds and they are trying to live alone, contacting existence directly.


And existence is hilarious! If you just have eyes to see the hilarious points you will be surprised: in life there is no place to be serious. Everybody is slipping on banana peels -- you just need an insight to see.


I have heard that Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychotherapy, was following a lady elephant into the forest. Finally he introduced himself: "I am Sigmund Freud. You must have heard my name; I am the founder of psychoanalysis."


The elephant could hardly hear what he was saying. She said, "But what do you want from me?"


He said, "I have a strange problem which I cannot tell to anybody -- and my whole philosophy is not to repress, but I have been repressing it."


The elephant said, "Don't be sad, just tell me -- what is the problem?"


He said, "I feel so ashamed. I have solved all other problems, but this problem simply goes on persisting in my head. The problem is that I want to make love to an elephant."


The lady elephant said, "Love? Are you mad? Because no elephant ever wants to make love to a human being. They are not interested at all. Beautiful women go on passing -- they don't whistle, they don't sing a film song; they simply don't care. This is strange -- and you are a great psychoanalyst and you could not solve this problem?"


He said, "I have tried hard but without a lady elephant, what can I do? I have been watching many ladies, and you look very loving, kind and very beautiful."


The lady elephant said, "Okay. It is absolutely crazy... have you brought some ladder or... because how are you going to make love to me?"


He said, "Yes, I have brought a ladder. Before I had this ladder, I used to carry a couch for the patients to lie down on during psychoanalysis. For a few days, I have been carrying this ladder, because who knows where you can meet the lady of your heart? And today, the day has come."


So he climbed the ladder, and while he was making love, his disciple Carl Gustav Jung was sitting on a tree just above them. He had heard the gossip that Sigmund Freud had been seen with a ladder, going towards the forest.


He had said, "What will he do with the ladder? Because a ladder does not fit with a psychoanalyst... a couch is okay." So he had come ahead and was sitting on top of the tree and when Sigmund Freud started making love, it was so hilarious and Carl Gustav Jung himself became so excited that the branch that he was holding started moving and a coconut fell and hit the lady elephant's head.
She said, "Ah!"


Sigmund Freud, who was deeply involved in making love, looked up and said, "Darling, am I hurting you?


The elephant said, "I don't know where you are -- so are you finished or not? And who is this fellow in the tree?"


Sigmund Freud said, "He is my disciple, and he got so excited seeing such a beautiful scene that he started shaking the tree, doing his own thing."


One just needs a little alertness to see and find out: Life is really a great cosmic laughter.


Those who become silent and happy join in the laughter.
Laughter is my message.


I do not ask you to do prayer. I ask you to find moments, situations, in which you can laugh wholeheartedly.


Your laughter will open a thousand and one roses within you.
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>