Have there been significant changes in your views about India, America, religion, and sex over the years?

Osho, after what you have experienced over the last thirty-two years, living in India and abroad, have there been any significant changes in your views about India, America, religion, sex, India’s problems and their solutions?

Much has changed. Because I am not a stagnant, rotting pond; I am a flowing Ganga. Every moment I am moving forward. The famous Greek thinker Heraclitus has said: you cannot step into the same river twice. Sooner or later, somewhere under some constellation in eternity, I am bound to meet Heraclitus. Then I would like to tell him: you cannot step into the same river even once. For the river is flowing. When you touch the river’s upper layer, the lower layer is already moving; and by the time you reach the lower, the upper has gone. The seed is the same—but it has become a tree, laden with leaves, with flowers in bloom. In my life I have never evolved in opposition to anything. What I have said, I have only refined. Therefore, certainly, I will not say now what I said thirty years ago. Thirty years ago…

You can see my people. I have got one million people to prove this. They have dropped repression but they have not gone to overindulgence. On the other hand, by dropping repression their energy is freed; they have become immensely creative, and they have become meditative. Sannyasins who have been with me for ten, twelve, fifteen years have almost lost all interest in sex. They are no more interested in it because the same energy can give them so much joy, that sex seems to be just a wastage. And the second day is a hangover -- dull, dissipated, weak, while the same energy can reach to higher peaks of meditation and can give you spaces that you have never known, heights that you have never flown, light, clarity that has never been your experience.

Osho, you say you don’t speak for the crowd, that you won’t speak merely to please them. But people are saying that whenever someone speaks against Gandhi or against the Congress, people like it, and that’s why such large crowds gather.

For all of India—more so for Gujarat, of course, but certainly for the whole of India. There isn’t much distance between us and him yet; the generation that lived close to him is still alive. And for India’s future, decisions will have to be taken in some relation to Gandhi—whether in support or in opposition. Gandhi will remain significant for the next hundred years in India—that’s my understanding—whether for or against is another matter. Therefore Gandhi should be thought about very clearly. That was one reason. Second, it seems to me that not only in India but outside India too, reflection on Gandhi has begun—sometimes it even seems that people outside India are thinking more. In this country, reflection has almost stopped. So Gandhi is just a beginning. I would say we should also try to reawaken reflection on Mahavira and the Buddha. But there is a great distance between…

Beloved master, as one grows old, one's ideas slowly change. Are your ideas about sex to superconsciousness the same? Your comment please.

Perhaps you are not aware that there are two kinds of growth. Most people grow old; a few people simply grow up. I belong to the second category. I don't grow old, I simply grow up. The body will grow old, but the body has nothing to do with my ideas. My consciousness grows up. I have more profound ideas about sex and superconsciousness than I had before. There has been evolution about everything in me, but whatever I have said before has deepened, has become more solid. Now I have more arguments for it -- that's what growing up means. Nothing has changed, only everything has become more clear, more solid, more conclusive. I have been thinking to speak -- because I have never read my books -- on each book again, so that you can see that I have not contradicted a single thing in those books. Although…

Osho, how are you? I am just the same. And you too are the same. That which changes is not our real face, not our soul. That which does not change—neither in life nor in death—that is our reality. We ask people, “How are you?” We should not ask. For in asking we have already conceded change—change itself, childhood, youth, old age, life, death.

There is something within you which you yourself also know. It was the same in childhood, and even before you were born it was the same. Much water has flowed in the Ganges, but you stand on the bank and remain the same. Even if tomorrow you are not visible, you will still be the same. Forms will be new, shapes will be new; perhaps you will not even recognize yourself. Names will be new, introductions new, attire new; still I say—you will be the same. You have always been the same, and you will always remain the same. This eternal, everlasting—call it God if you wish, or call it your very being. Many waves come and go upon it, but the ocean remains the same. Change is false. But we have taken change to be true and made a world out of it. If only we could understand that…