Old beliefs and powerful gatekeepers keep India stuck, so bold new truths struggle here but are heard more easily elsewhere.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, Gautam Buddha, too, spoke for years, yet today in India his followers are almost negligible. Will the impact of your discourses also be popular only abroad, and not in this country? Why is it that Indians have not been influenced by your talks so far?
This India has been living in superstitions for ages. It has long ceased to seek truth. I will call; I will give the voice—I am giving it; but only those will hear who are willing to listen. Do at least this much: keep the door open. At least you listen, Jagannath Mahto! Forget worrying about others. For you have other questions too. From them it is evident that you are not hearing either. Those other questions prove that this question you have asked concerns you yourself; you have merely taken the name of “Indians.” A heart, by the severity of pain, bloodied and torn, Roams this city—a wild, wandering one. Is he a poet, or a lover, A yogi, or a wayfaring gypsy? Keep the door open! A cloud rises from the chest, and from the eyes a shower falls; Not the spring cloud that rains for four brief hours;…
Osho, India is a land whose very life-breath is religion. One proof is that even the most insignificant gurus here do not keep their number of disciples below a hundred thousand. But it is surprising that a guru as radiant as the sun, like you, has so few Indian disciples. Kindly shed some light on this.
Ramanand Agnihotri! No country has religion as its life-breath! Not India, not China, not Japan, not Iran, not Pakistan—no country. Countries cannot be religion-breathed. Countries are political units; what could they possibly have to do with being religion-breathed! Do countries have any prana—any life-breath at all? If there is no life-breath, how will there be religion-breath? Individuals are religious, not countries. Not castes, not communities, not organizations—only individuals. That is the dignity of the individual. Did it never occur to you that first there must be life-breath? At the very least, there should be life—religious or irreligious—but life. Do countries have any life-breath? These are political fictions, political tricks. Just a while back, before 1947, Pakistan was India; now it is not. What will you say? Is Pakistan now religion-breathed or not? Before 1947 it was; now? Now it is not. Bangladesh earlier was religion-breathed because it was part of…
Osho, after the earth undergoes an austerity of thousands of years and conceives, somewhere a Buddha descends. And in this land, countless Buddhas have happened. This country discovered an immense wealth of inner knowing. Even so, when an awakened one like you is present today, why is it that the people of this country, the so‑called religious leaders, and those in power do not understand what you are saying? Hearing from your own lips how great your compassion for India is, it seems to me that even compassion itself must have felt compassion. But why does the heart of the Indians not melt? Pl
My sannyasins returning from Germany say, “At first we were very frightened. Wherever we walked, people stared: ‘There they go!’ The propaganda against you was so strong we were afraid what would happen.” But slowly the wind has changed. I said, “Don’t worry. Sitting in my room, I keep changing the winds. You need not worry.” Now people come near and ask, “What is the real story? Give us a book to read. Tell us the news. We want to come too.” New people have begun to come who perhaps would never have come. And do you know who organized the whole campaign? The German Protestant Church. They set it in motion—sent spies here, fabricated stories, got false statements issued. Why was the Protestant Church so bothered? Naturally there was a problem: hundreds of young men and women from Germany had taken sannyas here. And one who takes sannyas will…
Osho, while the names of the siddhas Saraha and Tilopa shine in distant Tibet, China, and Japan, they never became luminous in the very land of their birth—what could be the reason?
This country is afflicted with punditry. Our greatest misfortune is the heavy, centuries-old burden of scholasticism on the nation’s chest. So whenever a Saraha, a Tilopa, a Kabir, a Gorakh raises his voice, it gets lost in the din of the pundits. And there are many pundits—Saraha is a once-in-a-while rarity. The pundits are a vast brigade, and whatever a Saraha says will naturally run counter to them—it has to. The pundits have theories and nets of logic. When Saraha speaks, he speaks truth. What has truth to do with logic? What has truth to do with theories? When the sun of truth rises, the night of theories begins to break. When the sun of truth rises, the clouds of concepts scatter. Panic spreads. And the pundits have vested interests. Their livelihood depends on it; it is their very life. People like Saraha pull the ground out from under their…
Osho, on seeing your ashram I had the sense of another world. How meaningful is this in our country, India?
Poverty, wretchedness, India’s problems—all can disappear; only give India a right perspective to resolve them. Our problems are of our own making; therefore removing them is easy. Today there is such technological progress in the world that India has no need to remain poor. If we are poor, perhaps it is because we want to remain so; we are poor because our ways of thinking are foolish. We have the most beautiful land, the most beautiful sky. We are not short of talent either. But we have forgotten to honor talent. So whenever a talented person is born here, he too has to leave India. We have become adept at honoring the dull-witted. We have invented such criteria that only the dull-witted can qualify. Someone gets up at five in the morning—our respect! Someone does not smoke—our respect! Someone eats only greens—our respect! Someone wears khadi—our respect! Someone performs daily…