Osho tells two funny moon stories where aliens make babies right away and then tease humans for taking nine months but still acting in a hurry.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, I am immensely interested in going to the moon. This longing has always haunted me as long as I can remember. Can you tell me one or two jokes about the moon?
Gandharva, perhaps that's why you have come to me -- my name means the moon. You are moonstruck; that means you are a lunatic! "Lunatic" simply means struck by the moon... and this is a gathering of mad people. You have come to the moon! Your long-cherished desire is fulfilled... the goose is out! But I have two jokes for you: Shortly after his spaceship landed on the moon, the astronaut debarked and began exploring the strange new terrain. He had walked for only fifteen minutes when he came upon a lovely young moon girl who was busily stirring an empty pot with a stick. "Hi," he said, introducing himself, "I'm an astronaut here to discover things about the moon." The moon girl stopped stirring long enough to throw him quite a pleasant smile. "How nice it is that you are formed just like our moon men," she observed. Throwing…
Osho, I am a russian. Will you tell me at least two jokes about the russians?
Darshan, A RUSSIAN GUY comes running into a friend's hut and cries, "The Americans have gone to the moon!" "Really?" says his friend ecstatically. "All of them?" Three people sit on a bench in the Red Square in Moscow. After a while one of them sighs heavily. A few moments later the second one sighs just as heavily. The third one quickly glances around with a very worried look and whispers: "Sssh! Don't talk about politics in public!" And the last question
Beloved Osho, could you speak to us on laughter, its meditative powers, its chemistry on the brain, its power of transformation and healing... Its relation to silence, the gap, clarity, vision... Its contagiousness, its relation to different emotions... On homo ridens -- the essential human condition, on how to recognize true, authentic laughter from hysterical, exhibitionist, or hypocritical laughter, on how to be a channel of pure joy?
As mind disappears and leaves behind a silence, a space of meditation, your vision about everything that you do is completely different. If you are a painter you will paint something not with the mind, but with the clarity that your painting will give health, insight, peace, silence, to anyone who will just look at it. In this sense we are more primitive than people like Mozart or Beethoven. Our music is very poor, because our music is simply clumsy; it does not create any spiritual peace, it does not give any meditative silence; more often it is sexual. It functions on your sex center. It makes you closer to the animal rather than closer to the buddha. Classical music takes you very high, beyond your reach; perhaps you would not have been able to reach alone. Just listening to that music and you have gone for a new journey,…
Osho, I have heard that you sometimes make up questions to fit your jokes. Is this so? Please be truthful!
IT IS VERY DIFFICULT for me to be truthful. I don't believe in anything, not even in truth! I am not a serious person at all! I believe in playfulness. So... how does it matter whose question it is? And do you think when you write a question it is better than when I write a question? And do you think, Nandan, that when you are writing a question you are really writing or am I writing through you? If I have to tell a joke tomorrow I can say something today and many questions will come tomorrow! There is really no need for me to write them -- I can create questions in you; there is no difficulty. Otherwise, how do these many many questions come? But you seem to be serious. And I am serious only about jokes! I am not serious about anything else. That's why you…
What is the secret of a joke?
The sudden unexpected turn, that is the secret of a joke -- the revelation. You are expecting something and it doesn't happen; what happens is so totally absurd and yet has a logic of its own... it is ridiculous and yet not illogical. That's what suddenly becomes a laughter in you. You see the ridiculousness of it, and also the logic of it. It is unexpected -- if it is expected, then it doesn't bring laughter to you. If you know the joke then it doesn't bring laughter to you, because now you know, everything is expected. Two insects were living in a cemetery. One said to the other: "Want to make love in dead Ernest tonight?" Now, poor dead Ernest...! An Englishman on his first trip to America went to one of those stand-up comic nightclubs for the first time. After he had had a couple of drinks, the…