According to Osho, Saint Peter sent the Jain nun back to India because Indians carry their ingrained habit of public urination everywhere, and even heaven identifies India by people “sprinkling the waters of life.” The anecdote is satire: without inner awareness, you export the same unconscious habits wherever you go. Geography can’t purify you; only consciousness can.
He sent her back because habits follow you, and without awareness you’ll make heaven messy just like earth.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, “Run along—this is heaven, not a urinal!”—saying that, why did Saint Peter send that Jain nun back to India? Do they think of India as a urinal?
Saint Maharaj! Where is the question of understanding here? India is a urinal. This is a well-known fact. An eternal fact. There’s nothing to understand. When Saint Peter looks down from above, what would he see in India? People standing everywhere—along the roadsides, against house walls—showering the waters of life. Some are watering tree trunks; some sit on the banks of rivers and streams with their sacred thread wrapped around their ear. The truth is, the residents of heaven recognize India precisely by this method, because there are no lines drawn on the earth, no map colors filled in—this is India, that is America, this is Japan. Wherever they see people peeing everywhere, they conclude: this is the sacred land of India, where even gods yearn to be born! The land of rishis and sages—ah, blessed! See how they go about sprinkling the waters of life! But in recent years,…
Osho, yesterday you told the story of Saint Peter and the three women. Please tell us what happened after that?
Saint Maharaj! Do use a little of your own intelligence. No story is ever told in full, because some trust must also be placed in your imagination—that you, too, can think a bit. You could have figured out for yourself what would happen next. The matter was so clear. My friend, what else could happen! What had to happen is exactly what happened. Saint Peter had barely dealt with those three women when three goddesses arrived. One had a white mouth-cloth tied over her face—she was a Jain nun. The second was a beautiful French model, and the third a Rajneesh sannyasin. Saint Peter first pointed toward the part below the French girl’s waist and asked, “What did you use this for?” Preening, the beauty replied, “I used it to revel with my eight wedded husbands and about a hundred and fifty lovers. I also used it to earn money…
Question: OSHO, WHY DO INDIANS THINK THEY ARE MORE SPIRITUAL THAN OTHERS? In a cannibal village in the heart of Africa, the wife of the chief head-hunter went to the local butcher's shop in search of a choice rib for her husband's dinner. Inspecting the goods, she asked the butcher, "What is that one?" The butcher replied, "That is an American -- seventy cents a pound." "Well, then what about that one?" asked the woman. The butcher replied, "That is an Italian -- ninety-five cents a pound. He is a little spicy." "And," asked the woman, "what about that one there in the corner?" "He is an Indian,'' replied the butcher. "two dollars a pound." The woman gasped, "Two dollars a pound? What makes him so expensive?" "Well, lady," the butcher replied, "have you ever tried cleaning an Indian?" But that has become spirituality. Do you know?
Beloved master, is the indian government really so lousy as you were saying the other day?
And in the East, the idea that there are millions of lives had also a tremendously significant message. It was to remind you that you have lived many many times in the same rotten way. You have been moving in a wheel, you have been going in circles. Are you not bored yet? Are you not fed up yet? Are you so stupid that you can't see the utter futility of it all? Living for so many lives, desiring the same things, succeeding and failing, and dying every time; have you not become aware that something ELSE is needed? This world won't do, you have to transcend it. This was the idea behind Patanjali, Mahavira, Krishna, Buddha, and their message. Reincarnation simply means: be BORED with the whole idea of desiring this and that. Be finished with it. Jump out of this wheel of life and death. But what really…
Osho: I laughed at everything you said the other day until you said that mahavira smelt. I felt personally offended. It hurt. If not even being born an american jew has helped me to drop my attachment to mahavira, if not even your outrageous statements about him have helped, what to do? Am I stuck with this conditioning forever? Perhaps a few more outrageous remarks from you would help. There is a part of me that goes on being identified with a jaina part of me that I don't even know (intellectually) anything about. I have tried all my life to hide my asceticism in hedonism, but I can see that
THAT ASCETICISM is in everyone, and your insight is right that you have been hiding it behind a facade of hedonism. Millions of people are doing that. A real hedonist is not a hedonist at all. I am a real hedonist, but I am not a hedonist at all! The person who thinks he is a hedonist and tries to live the life of a hedonist is simply trying to suppress the deep-rooted asceticism, the deep-rooted sado-masochistic tendencies which have been created in the whole of humanity for millions of years. Man has lived in such suffering that he had to start worshipping suffering, because there was no other consolation; there was no way to get rid of it. It was so much there that the only possible way was to cover it up, to give it a beautiful color, to paint it beautifully.. And the best way was to…