Ashram

What is the difference between waiting for godot and waiting for god?

It is as if the sun has risen in the morning and you are sitting in your room with closed doors and windows, in darkness. Open the doors, you become available to the sun. The sun was already available -- just the meeting happens. You cannot wait for God. All waiting is for Godot. Godot means the one who never comes, who CANNOT come, whose arrival is impossible. And the only impossible thing is that which has already happened -- how can it happen again? You are alive, and you are waiting for life, Now, this is ridiculous. The real man of religion does not think in terms of God. He thinks in terms of life or, even better, of living -- because life can again become an abstract idea. Living, moment-to-moment living. In that very living, one knows what God is, because one knows who one is. Your idea…

Osho, why are you so opposed to politics?

I am not against politics. Politics is only a symptom. I am against the inferiority complex in man; that inner sense of smallness. And politics is a symptom of that very disease. The more a person suffers from an inferiority complex, the more he hankers after position. The more he is filled with inferiority, the more he hankers after wealth. Understand this. An inferiority complex means: inside you feel, “I am nothing, a nobody, a two-bit fellow.” But this rankles. “I—and two-bit!” The mind cannot swallow it. “I will show the world that I am somebody. I’ll become a prime minister, a president. I’ll amass the world’s wealth and prove to the world that I am somebody.” Politics is the device to fill that inner sense of two-bit-ness, meaninglessness, emptiness. Politics means ambition—whether for money or for office, it makes no difference. Sometimes it is even the ambition for renunciation;…

Osho, some people compare your ashram with Jonestown. Could something like the collective suicide that happened in the Guyanese jungle happen here? Could you ask your sannyasins to make some such symbolic sacrifice for you or for your beliefs?

Sannyas is suicide—in the true sense, true suicide. Because only after that does true life begin. Here there is nothing left for suicide to claim. Here there is no possibility of it. Here there is stillness. Here there is peace. From that peace, songs of joy are arising. And it is not that the sannyasins are singing; the sannyasin is simply allowing God to sing from within. You also asked whether I could ask my sannyasins to make some such sacrifice symbolically for me or for my beliefs. First, I have no beliefs. I do not teach beliefs. I teach freedom from beliefs. I teach how to be rid of knowledge. I do not give you knowledge; I take knowledge away from you. I want to give you emptiness. Another name for emptiness is meditation. As long as there is knowledge, there is no meditation. When all knowledge drops, meditation…

Question: First question: Osho, on this land of India I directly see the radiance of Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira, Kabir, Nanak, and such great souls shining through you. Will India remain foremost in spirituality, or will foreign seekers take the lead? For foreign scientists, engineers, doctors, thinkers, seers are rushing to Poona as if the whole world’s treasure is this ashram. The truth, nonviolence, compassion, love, the feeling of surrender that these foreigners have learned and absorbed in your presence—through meditation and discourses—clearly shows in the ashram’s activities. Will the land of India then be deprived of your wealth? Will hypocrites like Satya Sai Baba, by producing watches and dropping ash, not reduce India itself to ash? Or will such great beings continue to incarnate on Indian soil in the future? Please be gracious and explain.