It is part of my whole device to change the very structure of human consciousness.
The past has revered poverty, asceticism, masochistic attitudes. A man was respected if he was renouncing all that is pleasant, all that is comfortable. He was respected for torturing himself; the greater the torture, the greater the respect. The whole human past is masochistic, and all the religions have contributed to this insanity.
My effort is to change such a vast past and its influence. So it has been only a device. I have not been creating desires for materialistic things in people; they are there without anybody's creating them. Yes, they have been repressed so deeply that people have even forgotten that they had them.
I am not creating them; I simply want to remove the cover-up, the repression, and to make the person realize that he wants a Rolls Royce more than enlightenment.
This realization will be a basic step towards enlightenment, because it will make him aware of his own reality, his greed.
There was no need for ninety-three Rolls Royces. I could not use ninety-three Rolls Royces simultaneously — the same model, the same car. But I wanted to make it clear to you that you would be ready to drop all your desires for truth, for love, for spiritual growth to have a Rolls Royce.
I was knowingly creating a situation in which you would feel jealous.
The function of a master is very strange. He has to help you come to an understanding of your inner structure of consciousness: it is full of jealousy.
All the traditions and the whole past have done just the opposite. The so-called saint, in all the traditions, lives in such a way that you will never feel jealous of him. Note that point.
You will feel sympathetic towards him, respectful towards him; but respectfulness is not your reality, sympathy is not your nature. The saint is torturing himself, that is not his nature either. He is being unnatural to gain respect, to fulfill his ego. He is not interested in spiritual growth; he is interested in respectability, in being worshipped like a god. And he is ready to do anything for it.
He is living in an illusion, and he is creating a great illusion in people who come to him. He helps them to feel that they are religious, that they are spiritual, because they respect a saint, they worship a saint. They are not yet ready to do such ascetic disciplines for themselves, but they hope some day… this is their ideal. They are completely forgetting that they are jealous human beings. And the saint is helping them to forget their jealousy; he is helping them to repress it.
My work is bound to be totally different. I want to provoke your jealousy, because that is the only way to get rid of it. First you have to know that you have it; then you can drop it, because it is misery and hell. But you can repress it so deeply that the question of dropping it does not arise.
I have lived in abundance because to me there is no division between the material and the spiritual.
The teaching to live in poverty is dangerous: you will be materially poor, and you will be spiritually poor too, because there is no division. I teach you to live richly, in abundance, materially and spiritually — both. It is not a question of whether you should live materially in abundance, or spiritually. The basic question is whether you should live in abundance, in richness — which is natural and existential. It is your very basic urge to blossom in abundance, to know all the colors, to know all the songs, to know all the beauties of life.
But certainly I am bound to come in conflict with the old, because the whole human past has been praising poverty and making it equal to spirituality, which is absolute nonsense.
Spirituality is the greatest richness that can happen to a man, and it contains all other richnesses. It is not against any other richness; it is simply against all kinds of poverty. So what I have been trying is something so radical that it is bound to create antagonism all around the world from every corner.
People have lived with certain values for so long that although those values have given them only misery, they don't see the connection. Those values have not made them fulfilled, contented — but they don't see the connection.
I want my people to become symbolic… to make the whole world aware that their misery is caused by their wrong values, that they are poor because they have respected poverty — and their behavior is so insane. On the one hand they will respect poverty, and on the other hand they will say, "Serve the poor." Strange! If poverty is so spiritual then the most spiritual thing will be to make every rich man poor, to help the rich man to be poor, so he can become spiritual. Why help the poor? Do you want to destroy their spirituality?
But a deep unconsciousness, a great blindness exists, and I am fighting against a mountainous unconsciousness, darkness. Naturally they will be very much annoyed. They would have loved me, they would have worshipped me. And it was so easy for me to do what they wanted, but then I would have been continuing the old misery, the old disease, the old stupidity. I decided to be unrespectable, but not to help any nonsensical value system.
It is a very simple thing to see why ascetics — self-destructive people engaged in a kind of slow suicide — have been respected; it is because it is unnatural, because you cannot do it. They are doing something which you cannot do. If somebody is standing on their head on the road, there will be a crowd immediately, but you are walking on your legs — no crowd will be there!
What is that man doing that attracts the crowd? He is doing something that the crowd cannot do. He is proving mind over body, he is proving spirit over nature. Torturing his body he is proving that he is not the body, it does not affect him. By fasting, not sleeping, or standing for days he is proving that what you cannot do he can do; he is superior to you. You also can do what he is doing, you just have to be a little stupid, you just have to be a little suicidal, destructive. All that you need is a certain pleasure in pain and you can become a great spiritual saint.
I have looked at the whole history and found not one single man revolting against this suicidal attitude towards life, this anti-life attitude. Perhaps they were afraid that nobody was going to listen to them, afraid that they would lose their respectability.
I decided in the very beginning days of my life that there is one thing I have to be aware of, and that is not to be bothered about respectability. Then things are very simple. Then I can do what is natural and what is healthy. And then I can manage a bridge between matter and spirit, between this world and that world.
And to me, to live in abundance is the only spiritual thing in the world.
Just look at existence and its abundance. What is the need of so many flowers in the world? Just roses would have been enough, but existence is abundant: millions and millions of flowers, millions of birds, millions of animals — everything in abundance. Nature is not ascetic; it is everywhere dancing — in the ocean, in the trees. It is everywhere singing — in the wind passing through the pine trees, in the birds…
What is the need of millions of solar systems, each solar system having millions of stars? There seems to be no need, except that abundance is the very nature of existence, that richness is the very core, that existence does not believe in poverty. Look at nature, look at existence, and you will see that what man has done is against it.
My effort is to bring man back to his natural self.
I will be condemned, I will be criticized. Every religion, every tradition, every morality, every ethical code is going to condemn me. That does not surprise me! I expect it, because what I am saying and doing is changing the very course of human consciousness.
I don't think that by torturing yourself you can meditate more easily; on the contrary, if your body is pleasantly at ease you can meditate more easily. I don't think that when you are fasting you can meditate. You can only think of food and nothing else; you will dream of food and nothing else. But if you are well fed, well nourished, you don't think of food — there is no need. The body is completely satisfied, it does not create any disturbance.
To live pleasurably, to live joyously is not against meditation. It is really the basic need of meditation. I know many kinds of ascetics but I have never seen any intelligence in them, I have never seen any creativity in them. I have never seen in their eyes a light of the beyond, or in their gestures some message that cannot be said through words. They don't have anything. They are simply starving — and starving because it fulfills the ego, because the more they starve, the more they torture themselves, more and more people come to worship them.
Now this is to me just an insane chapter in the history of man; it has to be closed. It is time that we start a new chapter — natural, existential, life-affirmative — and create a bridge between the body and the soul… not a wall but a bridge.
There is no need for any conflict and war. Fighting with yourself, you are not going to get anything; you will be simply destroying yourself slowly. All your so-called saints are mostly mentally sick, and they have made the whole of humanity sick.
Your question is significant.
I have been asked again and again, "Spiritual people are respected everywhere, why are you opposed everywhere?"
I said, "Only one thing is certain: either they are not spiritual, or I am not spiritual. We both cannot be spiritual, that is certain. And as far as I am concerned, I say that they are sick, not spiritual, and they are worshipped by a sick society."
It is a vicious circle: the society creates the sick saint, the sick saint creates the sick society — and it goes on and on. I have no part in this sickness, the so-called spirituality. I am just a contented, fulfilled human being. What more do you want? And what more can spirituality be?
We want people to be fulfilled and contented, and this journey towards contentment, fulfillment, enlightenment should start with the body. You cannot begin from anywhere else. You can begin only from the beginning. You cannot ignore the roots and just go on praising the flowers. Your flowers will die, and you will have to replace them with plastic flowers if the roots are not taken care of. Is there any conflict between the roots and the blossoms? It is the same juice — and you have to begin with the roots, because flowers will come only in the end.
But with humanity we have been almost mad. We have never bothered about the roots, and we have talked only about flowers. We talk about people being nonviolent, being compassionate, being loving — so much that you can love your enemy, so much that you can even love your neighbor. We talk about flowers, but nobody is interested in the roots.
I will teach you to love yourself. And if you can love yourself, if you can rejoice in being yourself, naturally your love will go on spreading. It will become an aura around you; you will love your friends, and in a certain way you will love your enemies too — because just the way the friend defines you, your enemy also defines you.
All the religions stand upon one single word, and that is how you should be. That word is `should' — that word is not `is'. The `is' is condemned, and the `should' is praised; and the `should' is opposed to your `is'.
The religions have been talking about flowers; I am working with the roots. And I am against plastic flowers. Real flowers have many differences; plastic flowers are permanent — plastic love will be permanent. The real flower is not permanent, it is changing moment to moment. Today it is there dancing in the wind and in the sun and in the rain. Tomorrow you will not be able to find it — it has disappeared just as mysteriously as it had appeared.
Real love is like a real flower.
But all religions teach you plastic love. And then they destroy the very possibility of ever coming to know a real flower. The real flower will have fragrance; the plastic flower has nothing to contribute to your life. It only looks like a flower, it is not a flower. The plastic flower is easy. You do not need to water it, you do not need to take care of the roots. Real flowers need some creativity on your part. Every real value needs creativity.
And just look at your saints: none of them are creative. All their qualities are just hilarious — somebody can lie down in a grave for seven days, and then you dig him up and he is still alive; and he becomes a great saint. But I don't see that there is any contribution, any creativity in it. He may lie for seven hundred years in a grave; that does not matter. How can he become a saint by lying in a grave for seven days, by learning a certain technique of holding the breath in?
My whole effort is to make a fresh beginning. It is bound to create condemnation of me from all over the world. But it doesn't matter — who cares!
I care only for those who are ready to change the very course of human consciousness. I will offend others, I will annoy others, I will irritate others, I will create jealousy in others. These are part of my devices. I am really exposing them. If they have any intelligence they will understand it.
Ninety-three Rolls Royces… but I have not looked back at them, at what happened. They were not mine, and I am as happy without them as I was with them. I never went to see those Rolls Royces in the garage. The director of my garage, Avesh, is here. I went on saying to him, "One day I am coming," but that day never came. I have never seen those cars together. It was he who would bring a car for a one-hour drive, it was his choice. And I have not looked back.
Those cars fulfilled their purpose. They created jealousy in the whole of America, in all the super-rich people. If they were intelligent enough, then rather than being my enemies they would have come to me to find a way to get rid of their jealousy, because it is their problem. Jealousy is a fire that burns you, and burns you badly. You are in the hands of somebody else.
I was just a tourist there, and I made the whole of America disturbed. They had enough money; they could have purchased more Rolls Royces if they wanted. But they had no guts for that either. They were condemning me, saying that I am a materialist. And you will be surprised; one bishop who was continuously condemning me as a materialist, wrote me a letter, privately, saying, "It would be very compassionate of you if you could donate a Rolls Royce to my church. It won't make any difference to you — ninety-three or ninety-two — but it will make much difference to us." And every Sunday he was condemning me. His condemnation was not about my materialism; his condemnation was to hide his jealousy.
The politicians, the rich, could have managed it for themselves — why were they worried? But the worry was that a tourist, who has not even a valid visa, has defeated all the super-rich; it hurts! If they were intelligent enough, they could have understood that there must be a purpose behind these Rolls Royces. It cannot be just the one-hour ride. For that, one Rolls Royce would have been enough.
Everything that I have done in my life has a purpose. It is a device to bring out something in you of which you are not aware.
If you are intelligent you would like to get rid of it because it is a poison which is killing you. A jealous mind is incapable of love; a jealous mind is incapable of rejoicing… and not only incapable of rejoicing, he is incapable of seeing anybody else rejoice. This kind of people fill the whole earth. And your so-called saints have not been a help to them. Your so-called saints have exploited them.
It is hilarious! Your saints are exploiting you by being poor, torturing themselves; they are helping you not to feel jealous, not to feel hurt. They are protecting your ego. And it is not one-sided. That's why I say it is hilarious. The game is strange: they are helping you to remain in your misery, in your insanity, and you are helping them to remain in their suicidal, torturous life — a mutual conspiracy of the whole of humanity to remain in hell.
The commune in America was also a device. It did its work. It made people aware that to be joyous, to be loving is possible on this earth; you do not have to wait for heaven. And I can't see, I can't understand… a person who has never been dancing and singing here, when he enters heaven and a harp is provided for him — what is he going to do with the harp? He will be at a loss! He will ask, what is it, and what am I supposed to do with it?
Only my people will be immediately able to do something, whichever instrument is provided. It is not only a question of rejoicing… all other things too. If here for your whole life you learn only torture, what are you going to do in heaven? That self-torture has become a second nature to you.
No, I say to you the whole human past has been ugly, insane; it has created a kind of spirituality which is another name for schizophrenia. I have to fight against it, whatsoever the cost.
Somebody has to raise his hand and say to the people, "You have been misled. Your misery is a proof; no other proof is needed."
OSHO There was no need for ninety-three Rolls Royces. I could not use ninety-three Rolls Royces simultaneously — the same model, the same car. But I wanted to make it clear to you that you would be ready to drop all your desires for truth, for love, for spiritual growth to have a Rolls Royce.
I was knowingly creating a situation in which you would feel jealous. osho