#lbotca

Two types of people are needed to run a temple: a learned person and a very stupid one. And this is how all temples are run—two types of people: the learned who have become the priests, and the stupid who follow them. This is how every temple is run. If stupid people disappear from the earth there will be no temples. If learned people disappear from the temples there will be no temples. A duality is needed for a temple to exist. That’s why you cannot find God in a temple—because you cannot find him in a duality. These temples are inventions of the clever people to exploit the stupid. All temples are inventions—clever people exploiting… they have become the priests.

All the priests of all the religions are exploiting you because you are not enlightened, because you are not conscious. They have been sucking your blood all over the earth for thousands of years for the simple reason that you are asleep. And they go on giving you ideas, concepts which keep you asleep.

The way, the path, is very simple and can be made even more simple. But simplicity is against the priests, they want it to be complex—so complex that they are needed to interpret it; so complex that without a mediator it is impossible to grow in your understanding. The reason why religion looks so complex is because religion became a business, and priests found that unless it is complex enough, it will not be attractive enough either. It has to be complex, it has to be challenging, it has to be far away, and then the priest becomes an absolute necessity. And they have been exploiting in every possible way.

The priests are against, have always been against, real spirituality. This has to be understood. Jesus was crucified by the rabbis—the priests. Buddha was opposed by the brahmins—the priests. Attempts on the life of Mahavira were made by the priests. Strange… it seems whenever they find a man who is genuinely spiritual, they want to kill him. There must be some reason behind it. The reason is that if real spirituality spreads, religion will disappear. Religions are substitute spirituality, saccharin. And if you can get real sugar, who bothers about saccharin? And the latest findings say saccharin creates cancer! The priest is pretending to be your spiritual leader, just pretending. He knows nothing of silence, he knows nothing of reality. He is still talking like primitive people five thousand years ago to a God who does not exist. He is preaching to you from books which are complete rubbish. Just look in the Bible, anywhere—you need not try to find rubbish, it will find you. And it is not only the Bible, the same is true about the Koran, about the Vedas. But priests are imposing the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, on people. And on every child when he is innocent, when he is a clean slate, parents start writing Catholicism, communism, or anything they want. The priest starts programming the child. By the time he can think on his own, he has lost his thinking intelligence. The program, the conditioning has created a big wall between himself and his being. Now he will remain always outside the home, somewhere on the porch, thinking, ‘This is my palace.’ America is dominated too much by Christian priests, Jewish rabbis. And if a few young people escape from the rabbis and the Christian priests, then they get caught by people like Esalen, EST, Muktananda, Satchidananda. These people—Satchidananda, Muktananda, Hari Bhajan—they are in the same profession as the Christian priest. And in a way they are more dangerous, because they bring you new words, a new language, and you start thinking, perhaps you have found the way. EST and Esalen-type movements exploit the youth.

Nobody else has used jokes in a spiritual way; hence sometimes people are shocked. When they come for the first time to listen to me, naturally they are shocked because they want to hear something very serious—as if they are not serious enough already! They want to hear something esoteric, something nonsensical, something which makes no sense to them; then they think there must be great meaning in it. When something is incomprehensible to them they think this is great philosophy! Whenever they come across something written in stupid jargon, esoteric, occult, spiritual, they become very much interested. They think they are going to find some treasure in it. The treasure is not hidden in big words, the treasure is hidden in you. And it is to be discovered, not through big words, it is to be discovered through wordlessness, it is to be discovered through silence. And haven’t you felt after deep laughter that a sudden silence comes to you in the wake of it?—the silence after a storm. For a moment it is as if the mind stops functioning… you are utterly relaxed, in a deep rest. Those are the moments when you start feeling the presence of God. Those are the first glimpses that God is. There is no other proof.

Look at Jesus, he was not a humble person at all. He was not an egoist, but not humble either. That created the problem, that led him to the cross. He was not humble at all. And now many psychologists say that he was neurotic, and they have a point. Many psychologists say that he was an egomaniac; they have a point. If psychologists study Buddha and Mahavira they will conclude the same things—but they have not studied them. They should have been studied very minutely. So they say he was an egomaniac. Why? You can find reasons—because he was not humble. He used to say, ‘I am God,’ or ‘I am the son of God. I and my father in heaven are one.’ To the egoist mind this will appear like ego. And nobody can say that this man is humble who claims that he and God are one, or who claims that he is the son of God. It looks like a claim to us; to Jesus this was a simple fact. And he was not claiming that you are not the son of God: claiming that he is the son of God, he claimed for you all. It is Christianity which claimed the wrong thing; Christianity started to claim that he is the only son of God. That is absurd, that is egomania. But Jesus was saying a simple fact: if the whole creation is out of God, the whole creation is the son, God is the father. He was saying a simple fact with no ego in it, but this disturbed people. They thought a sage must be humble. He used to say, ‘I am the king of the Jews.’ This has been said many times, but to people who were more wise than Jews. Jews were offended that this man who was just a beggar on the street, no more—just a vagabond, just an old hippie—that this man claimed, ‘I am the king of the Jews.’ But he was not claiming anything, he was in a state of mind where there is no ego. Kingship comes into being, but that is not ego. And that kingship doesn’t belong to any worldly affairs, it is not a claim to rule anybody. That kingship is just felt as an inner nature.

‘Osho, the word esoteric has been used in a very sacred sense. Would you please tell us what inspires you to use it in a ridiculous and humorous sense?’

You’ve been chasing bliss for your whole life—and there’s the rub: bliss is a butterfly, a bird that can’t be caught; you can only wait until one day you find that it has landed on your shoulder. It happens only when you are in a state of no-desire, with not even the desire for bliss. That is one of the greatest dilemmas. It is a natural desire to be blissful, it is instinctive. It is not only man who is seeking bliss, all beings are in search of it, but the problem is that the search, the very search, is a hindrance. It takes you away from the moment, and bliss can only be found here and now. All seeking and searching takes you away from the present. It creates future. Future is not part of time, future is a projection of our desires. Only present exists; past is memory, future is desire. They are not part of time, they are part of mind. Only the present is time, because only the present is real. There are people who are searching for money and there are people who are searching for God; they are not different people, not at all. They are the same kind of people, although down the ages they have been thought to be very different, almost opposite to each other. One is condemned as worldly and the other is praised as spiritual, but the truth is that both are of the same category. It is not a question of what you are seeking; the object of your search makes no difference—you are seeking, that is more important. You can seek God, you can seek money, you can seek power, you can seek bliss, but because you are seeking you will remain miserable. Modern man is seeking too desperately because money has been achieved. Now money is no longer a relevant goal and the mind feels empty. Now the mind is desperately looking for new objects. Unless the mind finds new desires and new objects, it cannot exist. It exists through desiring, so it goes on creating new objects for you to desire and to rush and to run after. You are running after shadows; you will not find them. You are running after the horizon which exists nowhere; it only appears to. The distance between you and the horizon will always remain the same because it is just an illusion. The future is an illusion like the horizon. You have been searching for bliss too seriously and that has made your whole life a long long anguish, anxiety, tension. My message to you is: drop seeking. There is nothing to be sought, there is nothing worth desiring. Let the future disappear from your being and then it is there! Then you can call it bliss, you can call it love, you can call it truth, you can call it God, or nirvana or whatsoever you wish to call it. I have felt it more and more with the people who come from Esalen: they are searching for bliss too seriously and getting into unnecessary trouble. Hearing, reading that bliss can be found here and now, they try to be here and now. Now that is absurd! You cannot try to be here and now—trying is always then and there. You cannot try and be here and now. It cannot be made a program: it is an understanding, a simple understanding, that there is nowhere to go. The Zen people say: Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. That has to become your sutra. You have done so many therapies, so many groups, and they are all efforts to find something, to change yourself, to become more integrated, more centered, more rooted, this and that—just new names for old rubbish. This is the whole old spirituality taking on new names, new labels, because the old labels have become out of date; they are no more ‘in currency.’ So people don’t talk about God—it looks a little odd. To talk about God looks embarrassing. People talk about being centered, rooted, integrated. This is the same old game. And the problem becomes more subtle and more complex, when intellectually you understand that, ‘Yes, bliss can be found only here and now, so now I will try to be here and now.’ You are putting legs on a snake. You will destroy the poor snake completely: the snake needs no legs. To be here and now needs no effort: it is a simple understanding—a nonintellectual, existential understanding. It does not need any great logical mind to grasp it, it is a very simple phenomenon. Looking at the futility of desire, one simply recoils from desiring. Not that one starts trying to be in the present: seeing the futility of desire, the desire disappears and suddenly you are in the present. It is a happening. My suggestion for you is that something more like Vipassana or Zazen is going to help you. You have done enough of encounter and gestalt therapy—enough is enough! But this has been the problem with Esalen people: they come full of jargon, modern jargon, psychological, absolutely up to date. They don’t talk about occultism and esoteric, theological things—they bring fresh bullshit! Up to now very few of them have really proved of much worth. The greater lot has proved to be very ordinary—for the simple reason that they think they understand. The greatest barrier in understanding is to think that one understands. Sannyas means dropping all knowledge and becoming a child again. And the second word, ‘Jacob,’ means: may God protect you. Don’t seek bliss, don’t be seriously after it—I am afraid you may be still seriously after it, that’s why ‘Jacob’ is good: may God protect you! Only God can protect Esalen people—there is no other hope!