Was the inspiration that arose within Meher Baba from the Divine?

Beloved Osho, meher baba speaks about two different kinds of enlightened masters. One he calls "man becoming god," the other he calls "god becoming man." gautam buddha belongs to the first -- slowly, through many lives, he has flowered into the state of buddhahood. Meher baba asserts that he belongs to the second, "god becoming man." I have not really understood what he means. Can you say something about this?

I have been to many courts unnecessarily because whenever I would say anything about Rama, somebody's heart would start having attacks; their religious feelings would be hurt. Their religious feelings are not hurt by the act of Rama. Their religious feelings are hurt but in a wrong situation; I am simply saying what is written in their scriptures. I cannot believe that Rama is an incarnation of God. And the same is the case with other incarnations. Their life proves that they have nothing to do with God. Gautam Buddha, or Mahavira, or Bodhidharma, or Nagarjuna -- these are evolving consciousnesses. They don't believe there is a God. Their experience is that you have to create a god within you, you have to become a womb, and you have the potential to become a god. And looking at Gautam Buddha -- just the way he sits, just the way he…

Osho, you said that it is ego, isn’t it, when someone takes oneself to be an avatar?

Yes, that is the ultimate, extreme form of ego. Otherwise, there is no reason for it. The moment a person attains perfect samadhi, he will not even know “I am,” let alone that I am separate from you. He will not even know that he is separate from you. But things are like this. Claims are very strange. Rama Tirtha went to America—a sadhu from Punjab. He became very renowned; his writings became very renowned; his lectures were quite remarkable, and he spoke on Vedanta there with great passion. He returned to India and stayed in Kashi. There, a pandit remarked, “He keeps harping on Vedanta, and he can’t even speak two words of Sanskrit!” He certainly did not know Sanskrit; he had been educated in Persian. At just this remark he became so enraged...! For fifteen years no one had seen anger in Rama Tirtha. People believed he had…

Osho, Aurobindo had a vision of Krishna. He also came into contact with Yogi Lele. And as for the Pondicherry experiment, won’t it be future generations who decide about it? What is your view of Alice Bailey, who says she receives messages? Who gives these messages? How? Do you too have any connection with such a master or guru?

Such talk has one great advantage: as long as I have not died, you cannot defeat me; after I die, whom will you defeat? While Aurobindo lived, the argument stood. How could you prove it wrong? And when he died, whom could you go and argue with? The wonder is not that he died. For twenty-four hours after his death the woman called “Mother” in that ashram refused to admit that he could die. She insisted he had gone into deep samadhi. For three days they tried to preserve the body, in the hope—because there is an old belief here—that a yogi’s body does not disintegrate after death. But after three days, when the body began to stink, there was great difficulty; they had to bury it quickly. For if the news spread—given that this country prides itself on discernment and does not call just anyone a yogi—they would say,…

Osho, yesterday you said that when anger is watched consciously, it dissolves. But why is it that when sexual desire arises, even in awareness its intensity persists? Why is it so?

There is no entanglement in the breath. If you try to practice on anger… Anger is not happening every moment; it happens sometimes. And when it happens, it happens with such intensity that you are already going deep into it; so much is at stake in those moments that you may think, “We will look into awareness later; first let’s settle this now.” Lust is very deep, because existence has made it so deep; life depends on it. If lust were so easy that you decided and were freed, perhaps you would not even have been born—because many before you would have become free, and the possibility of your being would have been almost nil. But your parents, and their parents, did not become free; therefore you are. You too will not get free so easily, because your children are also to be—they are waiting: “Do not run away midway.”…

Beloved Osho, many contemporaries and enlightened ones -- raman maharshi, meher baba, george gurdjieff and j. Krishnamurti -- have worked with people, but people get more offended by you than by anybody else. Osho, where does your technique differ from that of other enlightened ones?

The question is very fundamental. It arises in many people's minds, and it needs a very deep insight into the workings of different masters. We will take each of the masters named in the question separately. Raman Maharshi is a mystic of the highest quality, but a master of the lowest quality. And you have to understand that to be a mystic is one thing; to be a master is totally different. Out of a thousand mystics, perhaps one is a master. Nine hundred and ninety-nine decide to remain silent -- seeing the difficulty, that whatever they have realized is impossible to convey in any possible way to others; seeing that not only is it difficult to convey, it is bound to be misunderstood too. Naturally, one who has arrived to the ultimate peak of consciousness will most probably decide not to bother with the world anymore. He has suffered…