Do you drink alcohol?

Question: The final question: Osho, do you also drink alcohol? And there is nothing else truly worth drinking. For years I haven’t drunk water—that much I can assure you; for ten years at least I haven’t touched it. I drink soda and wine. Soda on the outside, wine on the inside. I believe in balance—a little of the outer, a little of the inner. There is a wine that has never been distilled; toward it no one has ever been able to gaze. There is an elixir like that. I drink this undistilled wine. I live on this unseen elixir! And I want to make you drunkards too. Bhakti means wine. Shandilya means a drunkard. The devotee’s temple is a tavern—intoxication, sweetness, mellowness. Drink the Divine; then no other wine will remain worth drinking.

Osho, please don’t talk about wine, for heaven’s sake. Can’t you find some other metaphor for devotion to God?

Islam says streams of wine flow in heaven. One should ask: what will you do with those streams? Here you teach people, “Do not drink; those who drink will go to hell; they will not reach paradise.” The arithmetic seems clear: those who do not drink here, who have renounced life’s colors, who are not householders—dispassionate, dreary souls—will go to heaven. But what will they do there with streams of wine—those who have never drunk? O preacher, you do not drink, nor can you make anyone drink— what is the point of your pure wine? These lines are significant. They mean that if you ever want to enter the life of God, do not enter in gloom. In this life, wherever, however, in whatever measure—even if fleeting—taste the joys that arise. In that taste, feel also the taste of God. It is a drop, true—but even the drop is of…

I had heard that wine is bitter and burns the breast, but the taste of your wine is something else.

I say unto you, enjoy life with the witnessing consciousness. But you want to drop the witness. You catch only 'enjoy'. Enjoy life but if you enjoy it without remaining the witness, you didn't enjoy it. Real enjoyment is only when you remain a witness. Drink wine but if consciousness is lost you didn't drink it. You have drunk real wine only if consciousness grows as you drink. There is no other wine than samadhi. As I see it, the attraction for alcohol will continue in man until the attraction for samadhi grows. People will go on drinking fake wine until real wine is available to them. False coins will pass until the real coin is available. Governments throughout the world try to stop the consumption of wine, but it doesn't happen. They have always been trying to do it. Religious people have been advising governments to enact prohibition. They…

Osho, why do you sometimes use wine as a symbol for the supreme experience of the Divine? Can’t a better symbol be found?

“Better” or “worse” is only a matter of how you look; otherwise, what symbol could be dearer than wine? Wine simply means this—ecstasy, blessed forgetfulness, absorption, total immersion. Among the Sufis, wine is a greatly honored symbol. Have you read the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam? Omar Khayyam is not a drunkard. He is a Sufi fakir, a supreme knower—like Saraha and Tilopa, a realized one of the highest order. Wine is a symbol. And there is no symbol more beautiful in relation to the Divine, because whoever drowns in That becomes forever intoxicated—God-intoxicated. A wine that never wears off once it rises; it speaks right from the head! A wine that does not merely bring unconsciousness—paradoxically, it brings wakefulness. The ego becomes unconscious, and the soul awakens. No, it won’t do otherwise. The symbol of wine must be brought in. However much one may speak of witnessing the Truth, it…

Osho, I had heard that wine is bitter and burns the chest; but the taste of your wine is something else.

The “flaw” that was in Hafiz and Khayyam, in Umar Khayyam… Umar Khayyam has been misunderstood. Great injustice has been done to him. One day in Bombay I passed a hotel: on its sign was written “Umar Khayyam.” Great injustice has been done to Umar Khayyam. When Fitzgerald translated Khayyam into English, a great error occurred. Fitzgerald could not understand Khayyam—he could not have, because to understand Khayyam you need the sufi’s ecstasy, the sufi’s samadhi. Umar Khayyam is a sufi saint—one of the rare realized ones, of the stature of Buddha, Ashtavakra, Krishna, Zarathustra! The wine he speaks of is God’s wine. The beauty he sings is God’s beauty. But Fitzgerald did not understand. A Western rationalist—he thought: wine means wine. He translated it so. Fitzgerald’s translation became very famous. The verse is beautiful; Fitzgerald is undoubtedly a great poet. But he did not understand. The sufi fragrance was…