Osho, When you were talking about the way that different Buddhist masters have been adding their own flavor to Buddha’s teaching, I started wondering whether there will be anybody adding a new flavor to your pot. It looks almost impossible to add a new spice to something which already contains all the spices which can be found on this earth.
“It seems almost impossible, but one can never predict about the future. The future remains open. What seems inconceivable today, may become conceivable tomorrow.
“We can never come to a point where the future closes. That’s the whole meaning of existence being eternal.
“It may be very difficult because I am not confined to any particular path, to any particular philosophical viewpoint. I am vast enough to contain contradictions, and whatever has happened on the earth as far as the evolution of consciousness is concerned, I have made it part of my own vision of life.
“So if you look backwards, everything else will seem a little poorer, even the greatest giants will seem limited. But you are looking to the past, you are not looking to the future – which is absolutely unpredictable.
“Things will go on happening, new things will go on being added. And I am not a pond which is closed; I am more like a river, which goes on flowing, inviting every other river to join.
“Whatever I have been giving you will remain uncontaminated, but it will be enriched more and more by the future evolution of man, because it is an open phenomenon.
I am not the last prophet, messiah or savior of a certain tradition.
“I am the beginning, not the end, of a totally new approach to life and its problems, inviting everything conceivable, inconceivable, to be my guest.
“So you are right. It seems very difficult, but existence is so vast and the possibilities so infinite that you can never say that the full stop has come. It never comes, not even a semicolon comes. Life knows no full stop, no semicolons; it simply goes on and on, and it will continue to add spices of which we are not even aware. And it is good.
“It means that I am giving you something living, which will go on growing – even beyond us it will have its own growth. I am not giving you something dead, as was the convention of the old.
“Mohammed says, “I am the last messenger of God. Now there will be no other messenger. And the Koran is the last message. After the Koran there will be no other holy book.”
“He is not aware that he cannot stop existence with his own death. Many prophets have come and gone.
“They have added to the beauty of existence, but nobody should be so arrogant as to say, “I am the last.”
“The same is the situation with Mahavira. He is the last tirthankara of the Jainas. Now there is not going to be any other tirthankara, nothing can be added to his teachings, nothing can be taken away from his teachings.
“But these people were not aware that they are making their vision into a dead thing with their own hands.
“That’s why Christians are so afraid in case science should discover anything which goes against the Bible, Mohammedans are so afraid in case anybody should say anything that goes beyond the Koran. But these are the enemies of progress, enemies of life.
“I am not. I am just a friend, a humble beginning, a living reality with every day new excitement, new ecstasies, new spaces; and capable to absorb them all, not afraid of any progress. If anything is wrong, I am always ready to drop it, always to be on the side of truth.
“There are two kinds of people: those who want the truth to be always on their side – these are the egoists, arrogant. And there is another type of person who always wants to be on the side of truth, whatever the cost; if he has to lose everything, he is ready, but he cannot stop being on the side of truth. These are the humble ones, these are the true holy people of the earth – and there have been very few.”
To continue reading and see all available formats of this talk:
Osho, The Transmission of the Lamp