I WONDER WHETHER AS YOUR DISCIPLE I CAN BE UTTERLY SELFISH, TO FIND MY WAY TO ENLIGHTENMENT WHATEVER I AM DOING, OR DO I HAVE TO FULFILL A CERTAIN FUNCTION FOR YOU TO SPREAD YOUR VISION?
It has to be understood very clearly that nobody has a duty to spread my vision, my message to the people.
I hate the very word `missionary'. These are the ugliest creatures on the earth.
I don't want to create missionaries.
You have to be utterly selfish, concentrated on only one aim: becoming enlightened.
Of course, as you become enlightened, your light will start reaching to others. My message will start vibrating through you, through your love, without any effort on your part.
It has never been said: "Be utterly selfish." All the religions of the world have been teaching, "Be altruistic," and they all have failed, because their very foundation was wrong.
You don't know what truth is, and you start spreading the message about truth. You are lying.
I have asked Christian missionaries, "What is your experience?" They don't have any experience. What they have is degrees from theological colleges. Somebody is a D.D., a doctor of divinity. Because he has written a thesis, he has become a doctor of divinity — and he knows nothing about divineness, he has never tasted anything that he can call divine. He has never had a single moment in his life when he has touched the beyond; he had no time — he was reading books and writing his doctoral thesis. He was concerned with words, not with experiences.
I lived in Jabalpur for at least twenty years, and Jabalpur has Asia's biggest Christian theological college. It prepares missionaries — that's its function.
The principal was very much interested in me. I asked him, "Be sincere: do you really feel that you have something more than the body and the mind? Have you experienced anything of the soul?"
He said, "I have read about it, and I trust that the people who have written about it are not lying."
I said, "It is possible they were also in the same position as you are, that they had read other people whom they believed could not lie — but you cannot be certain unless you experience. And what about your professors? And you are preparing three thousand missionaries per year; you are giving them degrees to go all over Asia to convert other people to Christianity. This whole game is hypocrisy. None of your teachers, none of your students has any taste of meditation; none of them has encountered God. And I think none of them is ready to be crucified like Jesus Christ."
I asked him, "Are you ready to be crucified like Jesus Christ?"
He said, "What kind of question are you asking? I have children, I have my wife, I have my old parents."
I said, "Jesus also had his old parents. And you are almost sixty; he was only thirty-three. Then why are you hanging a golden cross on a golden chain around your neck? Because as far as I understand, the neck has to be put on the cross — not that the cross is golden, hanging around your neck on a gold chain."
He said, "I was thinking that one day I would ask you to speak to my college students" — they had almost five thousand students — "but now, I have dropped that idea. You can disturb the whole thing."
And the same question, you are asking me.
I am not converting you. I am trying to explain to you how to transform yourself, how to become more luminous, how to become more alert, more conscious. And if that consciousness brings you experiences which are not available ordinarily, and those experiences have an intrinsic quality that they have to be shared, then share them. But don't try to impose any ideology on anyone.
You love me. Naturally the desire arises that others should also love me.
But the only right way is that you should come to a state that others start loving you.
I can be connected through you to others; not by your words, but by your life.
You are not to be a missionary.
You have to become a message yourself.
People should ask you, "What has happened to you? Why do we feel such a magnetic attraction towards you? Why do we feel that you are hiding some treasure from us? Why do we feel that you have moved far above our ordinary visions?"
Then share your experience; there is no need to convert anybody.
And when somebody comes on his own accord to be transformed, to learn the whole science of living in a new way, it is totally different. When you go to people to somehow convince their minds that your ideology is better than their ideology, it is possible that you may convince a few people with your ideology, but it is not conversion. They remain the same.
The Catholic, the Protestant, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Jew, the communist — what is the difference in their lifestyle? If you insult any of them, they are going to react in the same way.
I am reminded of a beautiful story.
Gautam Buddha is passing near a village which consists of high caste brahmins only. They are very much against Gautam Buddha, they have all gathered outside the village to condemn him, to abuse him. He stands there listening to their abuse, their allegations, their lies. Even Ananda — who has been with him all these years — feels angry. Because they were born into a royal family: they were warriors, their whole training was to fight. But because Gautam Buddha is present, he controls himself; otherwise he would have killed one or two people then and there.
Gautam Buddha said to them, "You see that the sun is going to set soon, and we have to reach the other village before the sun sets. If you have not finished all that you wanted to say to me, I will make a point that when I return I set aside enough time to listen to you again. And in two days, I will be returning along the same route — so it will be very kind of you if you can wait just two days."
One man from the crowd said, "You don't seem to be disturbed at all. And we are not just saying things to you — we are abusing you, insulting you."
Gautam Buddha said, "You have come a little late. If you had come ten years before, you would not have gone back alive. I am also a warrior. There would have been bloodshed here; not a single man in this crowd would have gone back alive. But you have come a little late.
"In the village just before this village, people came with sweets and fruits. And we said, `We eat only once a day, and we have taken our food, so it would be very kind if you would take these things back with you. We are grateful.' What do you think they did with those sweets and those fruits?"
Somebody said, "They must have distributed them amongst themselves; they must have eaten them."
Buddha said, "You are intelligent. Do the same: whatever you have brought, I don't accept; take it back. Because unless I accept your insult, you cannot insult me; it is a two-way affair. It is your mouth, you can say anything — but unless I accept it, you are just talking into the air. Just go home and say all these things to each other; enjoy. And I will be coming again after two days, so be ready."
They were shocked, and they could not believe — what kind of man is this? When they moved on, Ananda said to Buddha, "This is too much. There were moments when I was going to jump and hit the man! Just because of you, I tried to control my temptation."
Buddha said — and remember it — he said: "What those people were saying has not hurt me. What you are saying hurts me. You have been with me for so many years, and yet you are not aware enough to know what to take and what not to take? Can't you discriminate?"
I want you not to become missionaries, I want you to become messages.
And that is possible only if you are utterly selfish, so that before you start helping others, you have helped yourself; before you start enlightening other people, you are enlightened yourself.
That's what I mean by being selfish.
Whatever you want to spread must be your living experience.
OSHO