Osho,
Teachers like Raman Maharshi, Meher Baba, George Gurdjieff, and J. Krishnamurti taught controversial ideas, but it seems people get more offended by you. How does your technique differ from other masters?

“We will take each of the masters named in the question separately.

“Raman Maharashi is a mystic of the highest quality, but a master of the lowest quality. And you have to understand that to be a mystic is one thing; to be a master is totally different.

“Out of a thousand mystics, perhaps one is a master. Nine hundred and ninety–nine decide to remain silent – seeing the difficulty, that whatever they have realized is impossible to convey in any possible way to others; seeing that not only is it difficult to convey, it is bound to be misunderstood too.

“Naturally, one who has arrived to the ultimate peak of consciousness will most probably decide not to bother with the world anymore. He has suffered for hundreds of lives living with these miserable people, living with all kinds of misunderstandings, groping in the dark and finding nothing. And these blind people who have never seen the light all believe they know what light is.

“From ancient days, a philosopher has been defined as a man who is blind, in a house that is completely dark, searching for a black cat which is not there. And the search goes on

“After a long, long, tedious journey, someone has come to the sunlit peak of relaxation, for the first time is at ease with existence, and decides not to get involved with all kinds of blind people, prejudiced people, deaf people who are going to misunderstand you, who are going to misinterpret you, who are going to crucify you, who are going to poison you, who are going to do every nonsense that is possible against you. Why bother?

“You cannot blame those nine hundred and ninety–nine mystics who decide to remain silent. It is not their responsibility, it is not their commitment. They owe nothing to the world; why should they get unnecessarily into the mess, into the madhouse the world is?

Raman Maharshi remained in his cave in the mountains of Arunachal his whole life, unconcerned with the world. He simply tired of it. Naturally, nobody is against him.

“He never says anything against any superstition, against any belief that is based on lies. He never criticizes any religion, any politics. He is not a revolutionary. He is not interested in transforming human beings, creating a better society.

“He is not even a little bit interested to share his experience. He is just like a well – if you are thirsty, you will have to find the way, you will have to find a bucket, you will have to find a rope, you will have to reach the water. The water is not interested in you or in your thirst.

“Naturally there is nobody who will criticize Raman Maharshi. He lived silently, peacefully – not against any vested interest, not in any way proposing a new man, a new humanity. He is fulfilled and contented; he is finished with the world.

“Meher Baba is not finished with the world in the same sense as Raman Maharshi. But he is interested only in your spiritual growth – as if spiritual growth is something separate from the whole structure of society, religion, education, past, all the traditions, conventions.

“So he remains interested in your spiritual growth, but spiritual growth is a complex phenomenon – it is connected with many other things. Unless your conditionings are changed, unless your belief systems are changed, unless your mind is unburdened of the past – there are so many things to be cleaned – only then can the still small voice of your being be heard.

“Meher Baba takes spiritual growth out of context. Naturally nobody is against it. In fact, all the vested interests are tremendously respectful of such people, because they are continuously giving – without any intention on their part – opium to the people. They are giving the idea – which is false – that your spiritual growth is possible without going through a deep psychological revolution.

“Secondly, Meher Baba remained silent his whole life; he never spoke. All that is written in the name of Meher Baba is written by his secretary. Now, there is no way to know whether the secretary is writing from his own mind.

“He had come to see me, and I looked directly into his eyes when I asked, ‘Are you certain that whatever you have written is not from your mind? Can you give me any evidence that these messages have been telepathically given to you by Meher Baba?’

“He felt a little embarrassed and he said, “I cannot say it with absolute certainty, but this is how I felt – that these were messages given by Meher Baba.”

“But your feeling…. Have you ever tried in some way to get the consent of Meher Baba, his signature? He was not speaking, that is true, but he used to give his autograph. You could have taken your book…. He was not speaking, but he could hear. You could have asked him: `I have written this book in your name, and my feeling is that this is your message. Just give it your signature so that I can tell the world that Meher Baba agrees with me.’ This would have been a simple method.” 

“Meher Baba used to have a small board with the whole alphabet on it just for small messages and things. You would ask for his blessings, and he would put his finger on the letters, “b-l-e-s-s-i-n-g” – blessings are given.

“If he could give blessings on the board, he could have said yes or no on the same board, but he was never asked. In fact, the secretary may have been afraid he might say no.

Now, who will be against this man? Who has not spoken, who is not against anything, anybody. His whole business is to help you spiritually – and that too only in silence; you can sit with him in silence.

“Now, there are very few people in the world who can understand silence. A master first needs to teach you how to be silent, and unless he is satisfied that now you are capable of listening in silence, listening to that which is not being said vocally, verbally, but only telepathically.

“Meher Baba had never prepared anybody for telepathic transference of ideas. And to me it seems to be absurd. What is the need? – because even in telepathy you will have to use the same language. If I want to say something to you – whether I say it aloud so that you can hear or I say it silently so that you can hear only telepathically, it makes no difference. Unless I am trying to give messages which are secret, unless there is a certain conspiracy.

“But around Meher Baba, nothing has happened. The man himself was of great importance, but he remained silent for the same reason as Raman Maharshi.

“He did not abandon the world completely. He was still thinking that some way could be found to approach seekers. He moved around the world in search of seekers, but I don’t think he found any. He found only worshippers who sang devotional songs to him, because they had their desires.

And in the East it is believed that if the person who is enlightened blesses you, any desire is bound to be fulfilled.

“Existence can never say no to the enlightened consciousness. For the enlightened man, existence is always `yes’; there is a deep synchronicity.

“So the people who gathered around Meher Baba were not seekers, they were people who wanted position, power, money, prestige. All the wrong kinds of people. And because he was engaging people in wishful dreaming and not saying anything, he was not against the vested interests. Why should any government be against him? Why should any religion be against him?

“The third man on your list is George Gurdjieff. He is the most unique master the world has ever seen, but his uniqueness created a distance between him and the normal humanity. All his methods were valid methods, but the journey was long and he made it even longer by the way he propounded it.

“In fact, that was one of his devices to find the real seekers. Are you ready to go to the very end of the world, or are you just a curiosity monger? You will go a little way to know what this man is all about, waste his time, and then you will be back in the world. He would choose only those who are ready even to die if that is the only way to find the truth.

“Naturally he was surrounded by only a very small group of people.

“And he was also not interested in any social revolution. His whole interest was to crystallize a few individuals who were courageous enough, to give them their original face, to help them to know the ultimate ecstasy that existence makes available. But it is only for the chosen few. Not that somebody chooses them – but because only very few people are courageous enough to risk everything to find themselves, they become the chosen few by their own courage and their own daring.

“And Gurdjieff was not interested at all in the fast asleep humanity. Raman Maharshi was not interested. Gurdjieff was not only not interested, he had all the condemnation possible for those who have been sleeping for lives together. He is the only man in the whole of history who said, “These sleeping people don’t have souls, and unless a man becomes enlightened he cannot have a soul. A soul is a reward: you don’t come with a soul at birth, you achieve it by your effort.”

“Naturally, no government was offended, no church was offended. If a man has collected two dozen people, the pope is not worried, the shankaracharya is not worried – he is not a competitor. And he worked personally with each individual – naturally he could not work with millions of people.

“So these people were just in the margin; their names can appear only in the footnotes. They don’t belong to the vast humanity – just on the fringes. Having small groups, they were not a danger to anybody.

“And the fourth man, J. Krishnamurti, could have been a danger, could have been crucified – he had a far higher intelligence than any Jesus Christ, and far more intellectual genius than any Socrates – but because of a certain obsession, he became very much against organization. He was against all organizations.

“Naturally you would think that if he was against all organizations then all organizations would have been annoyed by him. But this was not the case, because he never created any organization of his own.

“A single individual for ninety years continuously went around the world. Who cares? Seven hundred million Catholics are going to bother about a single individual who is talking against organizations? And who is listening to him?

“In India he used to speak in New Delhi, Bombay and Adyar Madras. This is not India. Nine hundred million people don’t live in these three cities. And how many people in Bombay were listening to him? Never more than three thousand. And these three thousand were almost always the same people who had been listening to him for forty years, fifty years. He was saying the same thing all through his life, and the same people were listening.

“In fact, nobody was listening.

“He became a sort of entertainment, and that’s what he said to one of my friends who went to see him just before his death: “The thing that hurts me most is that I became just an entertainment for a few people and nothing more. A few people enjoyed my logic, and that was all.”

“And now that he is dead, ninety years’ effort has simply disappeared into the air.”

END

To continue reading and see all available formats of this talk:
Osho, Sermons in Stones, Talk #1 – I Belong To My Own Category