Stop believing poverty is your fate from past lives—value this life now and act to change things.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, from your powerful discourse yesterday it was clearly felt that you are awakening India to its limitless potential. It is India’s supreme good fortune to have a guide like you, and yet why does it not accept what you say? Why does it not move on the path of all-round development? Why instead does it scorn and ignore you? Osho, I request you to say something.
I heard of a circus man whose act was to lie on a bed of nails. Sharp spikes that would leave your hand bleeding if you touched them—he would lie on them. There is an art to it; there are points on your back where there is no sensation. If you don’t believe it, ask someone—your wife will enjoy it—to prick your back with a needle. Wherever you feel pain, say “Ram! Ram!” and wherever you feel nothing, have her mark it. There are many points where you won’t feel the prick—no sensitivity. The art is to align those points; the spikes must touch only those spots. One day, on a day off, he was laying out his bed of nails at home. His wife was shocked: “What are you doing? It’s a holiday!” He said, “It is—but how will I sleep? I’m habituated. Unless I lie on this spiked…
Beloved Osho, despite forty years of independence, why is this country not prosperous, when in the same period Russia, China, Japan, and others have become world powers? Can your vision of life make India prosperous? Can you bring a paradise like Rajneeshpuram to the whole of India?
Now we must give power to those who have the capacity for creation, who can open a new life-vision and new dimensions. And there is no shortage of such people. When a scientist is born in India he has to work in the West, because in India, first, there are no means for experimentation, no laboratories. At most he can become a professor; nothing truly creative will be possible for him. If India is to be built, we must emphasize creativity. In a commune of five thousand there were scientists, surgeons, doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, nuclear physicists. And I can bring them all to India. Among my sannyasins there are no tribals. This is not a Christian missionary affair of orphans and tribals. Among my sannyasins are the most outstandingly gifted people in the world. I can bring them all to India—a full one million sannyasins—and put them to work in…
Beloved Osho, buddha's religion spread all over asia except india, and still buddha's way of life has been accepted by india -- to become more and more poor. Is there any way that india can accept your life-affirmative attitude and become rich, even without accepting your religiousness which is spreading all over the world?
Just see: if you don't accept that luxury is man's birthright, you cannot create wealth. For what? If the rich man cannot enter into the kingdom of God, would you like to become a rich man? This life is small, very small. Compared to the eternity of time it is just a second, or even less. Just be a little patient and you will enter into the kingdom of God with all its beauties and luxuries. They are waiting for you. But if you try to go against God here, if you stop the population explosion on the earth, if you try to convert all the energy that is going into war and death towards life, you are going against the politician, you are going against the priest. And these two, the politician and the priest, are the inventors of God. God is a lie. God is the greatest lie.…
Osho, India has been a prosperous country!
No. Only a certain class in India was prosperous. India as a whole was never prosperous; only some strata were. From that affluent class came the religious people. From that affluent class the talk of religion also spread. India was never prosperous. As a society it was never prosperous. But yes, India was contented in its poverty. Therefore, rebellion against poverty never arose. Do not take this to mean that India was prosperous. India would still have been content in its poverty if the contact with the West had not come. The poor in India had no anxiety about it. But contact with the West created restlessness, and it planted in the poor the idea that being poor is the result of the social order. Poverty is not a necessity. But the affluent in India had convinced the poor that poverty is the fruit of your own sins, that being…
Osho, in one discourse you said that India is declining in its spiritual values. Please tell us whether any ray of hope is visible ahead?
Love! Do not be in opposition to the naturalness of life; do not deny life. Embrace life, with a great yes. For through that embrace one day you will be able to embrace God too. God is hidden here—in these trees, in these people, in these hills, in these mountains. Learn to love this existence. Your so-called religion teaches you to hate existence—teaches you to hate the nature outside and the nature within you. Love nature, for nature is God’s veil. Love nature, and you will be able to lift the veil. There is certainly a ray of hope. The ray of hope is never destroyed. However dark the new-moon night becomes, the morning will come. Morning is bound to come. However long the night of new moon, and however deeply this country has sunk into wrong notions, still there are some who are thinking, reflecting, meditating. It is precisely…