“You were born just as a human being — then how did you become a Mohammedan or a Hindu or a Christian?

“One of the most important novelists of America has asked me a question: ‘Osho, what do you think about the Jewish and Arab conflict in the Middle East? What is the solution, and what are the implications for the future?’

“I had to write to him saying, ‘Before I can specifically answer your question, I would like to give you my bird’s-eye view of the whole human situation, because what is happening in Israel between Jews and Arabs is nothing new. It is happening all over the world, in different names — between Hindus and Mohammedans, between Christians and Jews…

“‘Just the names are different, but the same violence, the same murder, the same suffering.

“‘And people are clinging to their suffering….’

“So I told him a few significant points.

First: as long as there is a God, man cannot be at peace. It is God who is dividing man. He is the ultimate enemy of humanity; otherwise what is the difference between a Hindu and a Mohammedan and a Christian and a Jew? — just their idea of God. And that idea is nothing but an idea, just an empty hypothesis.

“There is no God anywhere; there is no evidence anywhere, there is no proof. And if somebody says he has seen God, he is simply a madman. He is deluded; he has been hallucinating and he needs psychiatric treatment. If we had treated our saints through psychiatry, humanity would have been in a peaceful state.

“Now God is your greatest chain. Are you ready to throw it away?

Your holy scriptures are dividing you, because every scripture demands that it be the only holy scripture. That necessarily creates conflict….

“These are the problems that have been dominating humanity for centuries. In particular in Israel the problem has become a very burning issue, because the whole of the Middle East is Mohammedan. But Mohammedanism is only fourteen hundred years old, Christianity is two thousand years old. So before Mohammed was born, Jews had already entered the Arabic world, and they had their own settlements. Then Christians came and they started making their own settlements…..

George Bernard Shaw is not wrong: this world seems to be dominated by lunatics of all kinds.

“If peace is your message… and certainly he [Mohammed] believed that peace was his message, but it had to follow his conditions: if the whole world becomes Mohammedan there will be peace. But how is it possible? He has named his religion… Mohammedanism is not the name given by him to his religion; the name that he has given is Islam, and Islam simply means peace. A strange kind of peace! — the prophet of peace fought his whole life, murdered and butchered.

“And he left the ultimate problem behind him — the story is really hilarious — when he died. Many prophets, many saviors, many avataras, many tirthankaras, many buddhas have died before, but he found his own style. He died not in an ordinary way. In fact, he never died. He simply went to heaven alive — and not alone, but sitting on his horse! And just as he was going towards heaven, sitting on his horse, just to take a little rest he descended on that rock. He could not find anywhere else to rest.

“So now that rock has become the contention of three religions. Judaism claims it as theirs. Jews are ready to kill and die for it; millions of Jews have died for it. Christians have been sending crusades, having religious wars continually, to take possession of the Rock of the Dome. And the whole area is an ocean of Mohammedans, who claim that this is their holy rock because Mohammed stayed there to take some rest before he left finally, with his horse, towards heaven.

For these fourteen hundred years it has been war almost every day. And at the end of the first world war Britain and America, both Christian countries, played the most ugly game against the Jews….

“Jews are one of the races which have suffered most. Of course, they have their part and their contribution in their suffering. They have suffered most because they were the first to claim, “We are the chosen people of God, and it is our basic right to rule over the world. Other human beings are inferior human beings.”

“Because this idea irritated everybody, without exception, Jews have been continually murdered, butchered. Adolf Hitler alone killed six million Jews, and it goes on….

But the ultimate meanness has been committed by America and England — and even Jews could not understand the strategy.

“After the second world war, the American and British forces were in control of Jerusalem, where the rock is, and the small country of Israel which had never before been in existence. For many centuries Mohammedans had lived there; it was part of the country of Palestine. But after the second world war, Jerusalem and Palestine were under the control of American and British forces, and America played the ugliest politics that you can conceive. It created, under an armed force, a new nation for the Jews. It called the new nation Israel, for the Jews.

“It had not been in existence for many centuries. Once it had been a land for the Jews, in the days of Moses, then it was lost to Mohammedans for centuries. Christians had been trying to recover it but they could not, neither were the Jews successful — they could not be! Only six percent of the land belonged to the Jews and ninety-four percent of the land belonged to the Mohammedans. How can you make Israel a sovereign nation? But under pressure of arms they managed to create a new land. It was great strategy, and perhaps nobody else has pointed it out….

“I find myself standing alone in many situations; sometimes I think I should not unnecessarily bother about things when nobody is even thinking about them.

My understanding is that America and Britain conspired to create the Jewish state so that now Jews will be in trouble for eternity.

“This is a very sophisticated diplomacy. And the Jews were happy; they thought that America and England were helping them, that they were favorable to them, that they were giving them the homeland for which they had been hankering for centuries.

“And America had killed two birds with one stone. In America, Jews are among the richest people, so they have great power over the American congress. They have a lobby of their own, and because politicians depend on contributions from rich people for their elections, they cannot avoid the Jews. They cannot ignore them; their presence is too important — they have cash money. So this was a good chance to have their money contributed to American politicians.

“The American politicians managed to create the state of Israel for the Jews, but the state was forcibly imposed on the Mohammedans. Now, they cannot tolerate it — Mohammedans are very fascist, and this insult they cannot tolerate — so there is continuous war.

“Israel has to purchase war materials from America, and American Jews continuously have to send millions of dollars for the survival of Israel.

In this way, America has destroyed more Jews than Adolf Hitler — and has created not just a single-blow slaughter, but a continuous situation that will go on and on for centuries till not a single Jew is alive in Israel….

“I am the one-person majority who wants to say to the world that this is cunning politics.

“America and England are not favorable to the Jews, and the proof for it is that the Vatican pope has not accepted Israel as a sovereign nation; they have not given their recognition.

So on the one hand Christianity gives no recognition to the nation; on the other hand they created the nation in a place where they are surrounded from all sides by Mohammedans, and they will be killed and crushed.

“Just for crucifying one man, Jesus, for two thousand years millions of innocent Jews have been crucified — just as Jesus was innocent but killed by his contemporaries. Now these people, after two thousand years, have nothing to do with those people who crucified Jesus. But they are being tortured in Russia, they are being tortured in Germany; they have been tortured everywhere, wherever they have been. And now Israel is the ultimate strategy: they will keep being tortured for eternity until Israel disappears again.

“So I have given my answer to Tom Robbins, because he is going to write a book and he wants my opinion. I know he must be surprised, because nobody has ever said this, that Israel is a strategy of Christian politics to destroy Jews — not directly, but by creating a situation so that Mohammedans can do the job and Christians can keep their mask that they have been so helpful, even to the enemies. They have followed Jesus’ philosophy:

“Love your enemies. They have been pouring money and help in the form of outdated arms — armaments which are of no use, which have to be thrown out, either into the ocean, or in Israel.

And at the same time American Jews go on helping American politicians because they are helping Israel. So the American politicians exploit their money, they exploit their support….

“God is your chain, religions are your chains; the idea of sin, the idea of virtue are your chains.

“Freedom consists in a single thing, and that is your awareness. Act out of awareness and you will be acting out of freedom — and without interfering in somebody else’s freedom.

“Freedom knows how to respect others’ freedom.

You don’t have to do anything to attain freedom. It is already there within you. Just drop the chains.

“And those chains are such that you have started loving them; you have become accustomed to them. It will be a little painful to depart from your miseries, a little painful to depart from your old sufferings, familiar friends, and enter into a new area of freedom, awareness. But except that, there is no hope for humanity.

“All that is needed is just a little intelligence. You have been deprived even of that.”

END

Excerpted and abridged from:

Osho, The Greatest Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, Talk # 15 – Man is Born to Celebrate