OSHO - THE MAN OF TRUTH: A MAJORITY OF ONE

Thirty years have been passed when Osho, the Man of Truth of the calibre of Socrates or Gautama the Buddha was persecuted and poisoned by American politicians and Christian priests for speaking the truth and propagating the individual freedom. When once again all laws of the land were by-passed or ignored and injustice prevailed over the Department of Law and Justice in America. All human values were disregarded and human rights infringed at the instance of U.S. Govt. itself. Strangest of strange things was that Socrates was poisoned by the un-civilized and barbarian crowed whereas, after twenty five centuries the so-called most civilized and educated America has acted in the same barbarous and inhuman way. Osho was poisoned by giving Thallium poison. This shows that behind the facade of democracy, human rights, justice and individual freedom, there actually prevailed dictatorship, injustice and slavery of man over America.

The purpose of this chapter is to remind the people of the world as to what had happened in America thirty years before and they should not forget that such things also happen in so-called advanced and civilized countries.

In a much planned manner the American politicians and Christian priests did whatever they could do to destroy Osho Commune there and to kill Osho. They exerted pressure on police and judiciary to accomplish their motives. Strangely enough the majority of general public and so called intelligentsia remained mere spectators. Therefore, they are as responsible for the incidence as the priests and politicians there. However the public media played a very significant role in raising their voice against Osho's persecution for which the friends and lovers of Osho will always remain indebted.

Now after about thirty years, the minds of people of the world in general and that of America in particular seem to have erased the memory of what they did to Osho in the year 1984-85 and what was Osho's response to the same. Forgotten in the same way as they have forgotten the crimes committed against Jesus Christ in Judea and Socrates in Greece. This is the greatest tragedy. Men have become habitual of seeing such things and insensitive in hearts to feel the same. That is the reason why such crimes are repeated again and again. It seems that man has developed so far as his outer mundane life is concerned, but his inner being and values that make him a human being have not developed since the poisoning of Socrates i.e. for the last twenty five centuries.

It is strange and unbelievable that Osho was persecuted, poisoned and deported from America, but now the self-styled leaders of His lovers and friends who have become the missionaries of His ideas are being welcomed and adored in the same country. What has happened? Have the American Politicians and Christian priests there changed their attitude towards Osho? Have they regretted for what they have done and accepted that which Osho has said? No. They have not changed and will not change so long as they have their vested interests in their religion.

What has changed is Osho sannyasins' attitude towards His vision. They i.e. Swami Arun, Ma Neelam, Swami Satya Vedant, Ma Dhram Jyoti and many others seems to have compromised with the American politicians and Christian priests. They have compromised with the teachings of Osho by being selective. They neither speak against what treatment Osho was met there nor spread Osho's response to the same, fearing that they may be treated in the same way and may be banned in entering in the countries where Osho's entry was banned. They do not want to lose prestige and hurt their ego by saying truth as it is – saying the same way as Osho has said about the prejudices of masses.





THEY CAN KILL ME BUT THEY CANNOT KILL MY TRUTH; AND MY TRUTH IS MORE IMPORTANT TO ME THAN MY LIFE BECAUSE LIFE IS GOING TO END ANY WAY

"I am a little bit crazy because I am speaking against my own profession, but I can't help it. I could have become a world teacher with millions of followers if I had not been crazy enough to start telling you the truth. The truth is, all the vested interests are against you: your individuality, your nature, your potentiality. They have their ideas, their expectations, and they want you to fulfill their ideals. They want you to become just puppets in their hands. And the more you behave like a puppet, the more respectable you will be."

"One of my professors, S.S. Roy, who is still alive, loved me so much that he used to tell me, "i am always worried about you. I know whatsoever you do, you do with sincerity, but in this world sincerity does not pay. Authenticity is not respected. Rebellion is crushed. And the people who are in power are powerful enough to crush any individual, because the whole society – the courts, the law, the government, everything – is in their hands. You are powerless."

"I told him, "I know that they have a certain power but please don't say that I am powerless. I also have a certain power, not of the same category but of a higher category. They can kill me but they cannot kill my truth. And my truth is more important to me than my life, because my life is going to end anyway. If it ends in the service of truth then it will have a certain eternity about it, because truth cannot be killed. You can crucify a Jesus, but how can you crucify this man's truth? If he had any truth, that truth is going to live. You can poison Socrates...."

"I told Professor S.S. Roy, "I love you just like my father, and I know how much you love me and how much you respect me, which is very unexpected – that a professor, well respected all over the country, should be respecting a student – but I cannot accept your advice. You are giving it with all good wishes – I am grateful for that. But let me be crucified, let me be poisoned, let every power be against me; yet I say to you that my experience makes me much more powerful than all those people. Their power is just temporary: the power that truth gives you is eternal."

"He said to me, "I understand, still I cannot help being concerned about you. I have nightmares about you – that somebody will shoot you, somebody will crucify you, somebody will poison you." And all these efforts have been made; he was perfectly right. Whenever an attempt on my life was made, I had always informed him, "One of your nightmares has come true. But I have survived it, so don't be worried. Your other nightmares also I will survive."


(From Personality to Individuality # 15)

PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS MISTREATED THEIR MEN OF HIGHEST FLOWERING

"Greece lost its golden age not because of mythological scholarship or poetic imagination; it lost its golden age the day it decided to poison Socrates. It killed its own highest expression of spirit.

"In the death of Socrates starts the decline of a tremendously beautiful and great civilization" which has given to the world people like Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Epicurus, Plotinus and many more. The whole Western civilization owes its origins to the Greek genius."

"To understand why it has become poor – not only outwardly but inwardly too – you will have to understand that when a civilization kills a man like Socrates, Socrates is not killed, that very civilization is killed."

"Socrates' death has to be understood because without understanding it, Greece and its intelligence cannot come back to the heights it has already known."

"Democracy was born in Greece but unfortunately we have not been able, up to now, to tolerate or forgive the giants amongst us. Their very presence becomes a deep wound in our being. Rather than becoming a challenge, a great invitation for a pilgrimage to the heights of consciousness, it becomes a wound. And it is very difficult to live with that wound. Something has to be done, and the easiest way is to destroy the man who makes you feel small."

"The height of Socrates or Diogenes simply makes the ordinary man so inferior. But there are two ways to face this situation; one has never been used. The unused way is that the presence of Socrates or Pythagoras should become a deep certainty that "what can happen to another man can also happen to me. In their heights are my heights, hidden inside. In their freedom are the seeds of my freedom. In their sky, the stars have become clear – just a little effort is needed and my dark night can also be full of stars." Their presence should become a guarantee of human potential, of human growth, of possibilities which ordinarily look too far away."

"But if Socrates can touch those stars, in his hands our hands are also hidden, because no two human beings are essentially different. All differences are non-essential; the intrinsic man is one and the same. But this path has not been chosen – because it was difficult, because it would have to be proved by traveling to the same heights on the same lonely path, to attain to the same light and the same consciousness."

"Man chooses the easier. He does not bother whether the easier is truer or not. The easier is to remove the man like Socrates. His removal will take away the wound that his presence creates. Then you can be happy in your ordinariness, then you can rejoice in your retardedness, then there is no one who can hurt your ego."

"Socrates was not killed because he had committed any crime. His only crime can be that he attained what is hidden in you. He made reality what is only potential in you; he transformed the seed into a glorious flower, dancing in the wind and the sun. You cannot, the masses cannot forgive such a man. It hurts our ego very deeply."

"And the masses are powerful as a crowd. Men like Socrates are alone; they are a majority of one. The crowd could not prove anything against Socrates. Still, he was poisoned and killed. Even in his death he was great, and the people who killed him, even in their life proved to be very ugly, mean and small. But it creates a situation in which no other man will try to become a Socrates, because if to be Socrates means to be poisoned by the crowd, then why bother? Keep quiet. Don't annoy and irritate the ordinary and the mundane."

"Once this settles in the mind of people, great people start disappearing. Slowly, slowly a country like Greece, which has brought humanity many flowers, became poor on both counts. The outer poverty is not so important, because it can be destroyed easily, but the inner poverty is very difficult. It is not easy to create Socrates or Heraclitus or Pythagoras. We have destroyed the atmosphere in which such roses blossom. By destroying these flowers we have destroyed the possibility of other flowers who could have blossomed. What is the point, if this kind of treatment is going to happen?"

(Om Shantih Shantih Shantih # 13)



IT HAS NOT ONLY HAPPENED IN GREECE, IT HAS HAPPENED ALWAYS ALMOST ALL OVER THE WORLD

"It has not only happened in Greece, it has happened almost all over the world. Judea has not been able to create another man of the quality of Jesus, nor has Arabia been able to create another man of the quality of Al-Hillaj Mansoor.... Something similar, in different ways in different countries, has created a spiritual poverty."

"In India we have not crucified Gautam Buddha but we have been more sophisticated in destroying him, far more clever – and it is bound to be so because India is a far more ancient land than Greece. At least for ten thousand years India has been in existence."

"Gautam Buddha and Socrates were contemporaries, but before Socrates there is emptiness in Greece. There were sophists, but sophists are not seekers of truth. There is not a single figure who can be compared to Socrates. Greece reaches its youth with Socrates – and dies young with Socrates. Much more was possible."

"Gautam Buddha was not the first in the line but the last. Socrates was the first in the line. Gautam Buddha was not new to India – Krishna and Adinatha and Naminatha and Rama and Parasurama and Yagnavalka... and the story goes back at least ten thousand years. A far more sophisticated country, naturally. It has killed Gautam Buddha not by poisoning him, but by far more subtle means."

"The Hindu scriptures say – and you can see it – that in India Gautam Buddha's influence has completely disappeared. The whole of Asia became influenced by Gautam Buddha – faraway countries like Korea and Taiwan and China and Mongolia and Japan and Sri Lanka and Burma. The whole of Asia except India became Buddhist. What happened to India?"

"Buddhism simply disappeared from India as if Buddha had never been born here. The Hindu priest is more cunning than the masses who crucified Jesus and the masses who decided to poison Socrates. The Hindu priest is far more ancient, far more cunning, far more clever; he knows that if you kill somebody, then there will remain sympathizers. Then there is a possibility that a religion may become consolidated just because the founder was killed."

"Christianity is not founded by Jesus but by the cross; hence I have always called it Crossianity. It has nothing to do with Jesus. If Jews had been a little more sophisticated, as Hindus were, they would have tolerated Jesus. He was not doing any harm. Even if he was saying that he is the only begotten son of God, what is the harm? Let him believe it. All that he needs is some psychiatric help. But crucifixion is not psychiatric help."

"Hindu priests have written that God created the world – he created heaven and hell – and he appointed the Devil to rule over hell, but millions of years passed and nobody entered hell because nobody was committing any sin. The Devil became tired. He reached God and he said, "I resign! What kind of job? Millions of years I am waiting... not a single soul has ever reached. You can appoint somebody else."

God said, "Don't be worried. Go back. I will make arrangements so that people start entering into hell. I will be born as Gautam Buddha in India and I will corrupt people's minds and they will start going astray from the authentic Hindu religion. Then don't blame me. Hell will be overcrowded and you will have to control it."

"Since then, the Devil is perfectly happy, his empire has been growing. All the Buddhists that have disappeared from India are in hell. And this was a strategy: Gautam Buddha was condemned by the Hindus exactly in the same terms, but in a very cunning way."

"Socrates was condemned by saying that he was corrupting the youth – and the same was the case about Gautam Buddha, but it was enough just to spread the idea: "He is a god so you can worship him. But remember, don't get influenced by him, don't follow him."

"He is certainly a god – Hindus accept him as one of the reincarnations of God, but his reincarnation is to "corrupt people so that the Devil is satisfied." Do you see the sophisticated way? They don't deny Gautam Buddha's godhood, but they deny his philosophy, his religion. They say it is all corruption, to make people go astray from virtue."

"It is a strange fact that Hindus have succeeded in destroying Gautam Buddha far more successfully than the Jews with Jesus, or the people who killed Socrates. They have all failed. A time came just three hundred years after Gautam Buddha's death..."

"Three hundred years afterwards, Alexander the Great from Greece came to India. His teacher was Aristotle, one of the disciples of Plato who was a disciple of Socrates. And he was surprised that Buddhism had almost disappeared. Buddhists were either killed or converted or forced to leave the country."

"Even in Bodhgaya – where Gautam Buddha became enlightened, and his followers have made a memorial temple – the priest is a brahmin because there was no Buddhist to be found, even to be the priest in the temple."

"I have been to the temple. I asked the priest, the present priest whose family had been there generation after generation. His family have become the owners of the land and the temple where Gautam Buddha meditated, became enlightened, where he used to walk. Every place is occupied by the brahmins, and it has been so for eighteen centuries. You could not even fight the case. And they are AGAINST Gautam Buddha. They don't believe in his philosophy, but they worship Gautam Buddha because he is a Hindu god who helps the Devil to populate Hell. He is a god, but his philosophy is absolutely wrong and his religion is a corruption. Nobody in the world has killed a great philosophy like Gautam Buddha's with such subtle and sophisticated means."

"It has happened all over the world that man has settled into a kind of mediocre, retarded state of mind. Now Gautam Buddhas don't arise, now Socrates is no longer heard. But because of these people's disappearance from the earth, we have become so poor, we have forgotten completely our innermost being. And this situation has helped the priests – which is the most corrupted, cunning profession in the world; it exploits people."

(Om Shantih Shantih Shantih # 13)



A LETTER OF A PRISONER IN AMERICA ABOUT OSHO'S PERSECUTION BY AMERICA

Just the other day I received four letters from four different American prisons. All the four prisoners are asking for sannyas. One American prisoner has been reading my books. Since I was in that prison for one day, the authorities became interested, the prisoners became interested, so they must have ordered my books. The prisoner has been reading those books.

Although he is an American, he writes that "Osho, reading your books, listening to you on the television, and when you were in the prison for one day, I was also here" – he has been there for almost five years. "It was a blissful experience for me and I will never forget the day we were together in the same cell; it has been the most important day of my life. And I have been carrying something in me which I want to express to you.

"You have not committed any sin – of that I was absolutely certain the moment I saw you – but to be innocent seems to be a greater crime than any other. And because you were talked about on the radio, on the television, your books were read all over the country, there came a moment when you were more important a figure than the president of America. That's what triggered the whole process of destroying your commune, imprisoning you – just to humiliate you."

I was surprised that a prisoner would have such a deep insight. He is saying that "people like you are bound to be condemned, because even the greatest, most powerful people look like pygmies before your consciousness and your height. It is your fault," he is saying to me. "If you were not so successful, you would have been ignored. If your commune was not so successful, nobody would have bothered about you."

"The enlightened man has no friends, no enemies, but only a pure love, unaddressed. He is ready to pour into anybody's heart who is available."

(Satyam Shivam Sundram # 10)



Note: Osho International Foundation has the copyrights of all above quotations of Osho.


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