According to Osho, being called one of the most famous religious leaders is not a compliment but a condemnation; he rejects that stupid company and refuses the role of leader. He is no institutional religionist, just a finger pointing to the moon, sharing experience to awaken thirst. Don’t follow him; walk yourself.
He doesn’t want to be a famous religious boss; he just points toward truth and wants you to discover it yourself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, a german newspaper called you the most famous religious leader after pope paul and khomeini. How do you feel in that company?
Veet Vivarto, I would rather be in hell than be in that stupid company -- Pope Paul the Polack and Khomeini the Khomeiniac! I have not done anything so sinful in my life to suffer that company. I have no karmas to be punished -- that will be a punishment. I have heard: One mahatma, a great saint, died -- must have been someone like Muktananda. One of his followers died the next day. When the follower reached heaven, the first thing that he was interested in was, "Where is our guru, our Muktananda? He must be enjoying -- he must have been given all the joys that only heaven can provide." And then suddenly he saw Muktananda underneath a beautiful tree... with whom, do you know? -- with Sophia Loren! Sophia Loren sitting in his lap, both naked, hugging each other! The follower fell at the feet of Muktananda.…
Question: The last question: Osho! Are religious leaders really fools? My sannyasin does not walk behind me; he walks with me. Between walking behind and walking with there is the difference of earth and sky. Behind me walks a follower; with me walk friends. This is a brotherhood, a friendship, a maitri. I am not your leader. A religious leader was sitting in a railway compartment and kept taking out two watches again and again to check the time. A fellow passenger asked, “Sir, why do you carry two watches?” The religious leader said, “One has no hour hand, and the other has no minute hand.” See the genius! Nasruddin’s bull wandered into the mosque. The imam cursed him up and down—said all kinds of things. “Aren’t you ashamed? You’re a Muslim and your bull enters the mosque!” Nasruddin replied, “Sir, he’s an animal—he strayed in.
Do you feel, Osho, that all leaders—whether political or religious—are caught in the same dilemma?
If someone were to ask Buddha, “Is there God?” Buddha would say, “There may be.” And if someone were to ask, “Is there no God?” he would say, “There may not be.” How can such a person assume leadership? Buddha is so perfectly in the middle. It is like this: in a room a glass is kept half-filled with water. One man comes out and says the glass is half empty; another says it is half full. These two can argue; two parties can form. A third man, utterly in the middle, having seen the whole, returns and says, “The glass is both half empty and half full.” He will say, “You are right, and you are right—and you are wrong, and you are wrong. It both is and is not half. It is half empty and also not; half full and also not.” Such a man makes such a…
He says, "I love jesus more than anyone." 4 4
He also says -- you have forgotten -- that I have fallen in the same hollow pit as other great masters and leaders. I am neither a great master nor a great leader. I am a simple, ordinary man. I don't want to be categorized with all those fools. Being simple and ordinary has one beauty: you cannot fall. To fall, one thing is absolutely necessary, that you should be high, great, on the top of the world. I do not belong to that category. I live a simple, human life, with all its weaknesses, frailties, mistakes. I cannot fall, there is nowhere to fall. If you want to fall, first go up a ladder. I have been walking my whole life on the plain ground. This is strange. First you make me a great master, a great leader, just to make me fall from there. I know enough logic....…
Godliness is like love -- no hands, no eyes, but only a tremendous overwhelming feeling of peace, bliss, eternity. And it is not only in you. The moment you feel it in yourself you suddenly become aware of it in everybody else. But people are blind, they are not looking at it. The flame is everywhere, but people are looking somewhere else. The difference between a meditator and a non-meditator is not much. The non-meditator never looks in, he always looks out; hence all the people who worship God in the temples, in the mosques, in the churches, are non-meditators. They are still looking outside. Their God is outside; it is a thing. A meditator looks in, and inside he finds not a thing but life itself, its very source, and that transforms his whole approach to everything.