Is being Jewish necessary for enlightenment or does it simply help?

Beloved master, to become enlightened, do you need to be jewish or does it just help?

My effort here, Amitabh, is just the opposite. I want you to learn as much from Buddha, as much from Lao Tzu, as much from Krishna, as much from Chuang Tzu as possible. I would like you to absorb all the great experiences that have happened in the past, so that a higher synthesis becomes possible. In that higher synthesis laughter is going to be one of the most essential qualities. With truth, courage and virtue, laughter also has its own place. In that sense Jews are beautiful people. They have the greatest sense of laughter in the whole world. They are on the one extreme; on the other extreme are the British people. So many letters I have received, angry: "Beloved Master, you don't understand the British." Who cares to understand? And why should I understand the British, for what? Is nothing else left to understand? I have been…

Question: OSHO, HOW NOT TO BE A JEW? Gyan Deva, IT IS REALLY DIFFICULT not to be a Jew because to be a Jew is not only to be part of a certain culture, religion, tradition -- there are Jews everywhere, in Hindus, in Mohammedans, in Christians -- to be a Jew is more a psychology than a religion. Calculativeness is Jewishness, always to be calculating about life, always thinking in terms of business, in terms of money, in terms of profit. That's what I call Jewishness. All Jews are not Jews and all non-Jews are not non-Jews either. Jewishness is a far wider phenomenon. Hindus are confined to the Hindus, Mohammedans ar confined to the Mohammedans -- Jews are spilled all over. It is something psychological, far more psychological than cultural. It is easy not to be a Hindu; you have just to get rid of your concepts.

Osho: has anyone ever become enlightened while listening to a joke? Maybe there is hope for me yet!

Listen to these jokes and give it a try. Who knows? Enlightenment is always unpredictable -- it may happen today. But don't expect it. These are the problems with enlightenment: if you expect, you miss. Such strange conditions are attached to enlightenment: if you expect you miss, if you desire you miss. So don't expect that it is going to happen; just sit relaxed and listen to the joke. It may happen, it may not. The marriage between the elderly farmer and his young wife was not working out too well, so the farmer consulted his doctor for advice. "The next time you are down in the field plowing and feel a yearning for your wife," said the doctor, "don't wait until lunchtime or the end of the day, but quit what you are doing and go to the house!" "I tried that," said the farmer, "but by the time…

Beloved Osho, when I see you my heart explodes, when you dance I feel so joyous, when you speak I enjoy it immensely. So often these days, with all the blessings you shower upon us, I feel so overcome. Who needs to be enlightened, with such an exquisite, outrageous master like you around? I'm enjoying life more than ever before, and I don't care about enlightenment. Am I being irresponsible or dependent on you by not wanting enlightenment? Or should I just keep enjoying your beauty, your grace, and the immensity of your love?

Only those twelve fools, who Christians think are apostles -- they will be there. And none of them is capable of dancing. Somebody is a fisherman, somebody is a woodcutter -- all uneducated, illiterate. And of course, Jesus moved with this gay company his whole life. Somehow he seems to be the founder of the gay people. What the hell was he doing with these twelve stupid boys! No, I cannot believe that this man is enlightened. No enlightened person has said that he can save another person, because in saving somebody, you are making him dependent on you. And if I can save somebody, I can throw him back into his miserable world. It was my work.... It happened... I was sitting on the bank in Allahabad, where the Ganges is really beautiful and vast like an ocean. I saw a man jump. I thought he was enjoying a…

Beloved Osho, if the idea of enlightenment is the last joke the mind plays on itself, who has the last laugh?

The more miserable you are, the more you will find things to laugh at. It is not incidental that Jews have the best jokes in the world because they have suffered the most. Since that unfortunate moment when Moses took them out of Egypt until today, they have been suffering and suffering -- in different nations, among different races, in different ways. They have suffered so much that they had to invent something so that they could forget suffering at least for a moment. They have created the best jokes. I was amazed by the fact that in India we don't have any jokes. All the jokes that people in India use are borrowed; none is of Indian origin, they are all from other countries. Not a single joke have I been able to find which is authentically Indian -- because India has had a very peaceful, silent past. Just…