The last question

Question 5

OSHO, I BET YOU ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE ME SERIOUSLY AGAIN. I MAY NOT REALLY WANT IT EITHER, BUT STILL ABOUT THOSE DOGS BARKING AT FULL MOON?

Uttama,

Those dogs must have been in their past lives either politicians or poets. Politicians love to bark at any excuse. The moon is just an excuse. Dogs love to bark; even in the dark night when there is no moon they bark. They were politicians in their past lives; they have become so accustomed to barking that they cannot forget it; it is a hangover. Or they may have been poets who praised the moon too much in their past lives and are now taking revenge -- with a vengeance.

And Prem Pantha has asked, "Osho, what about police dogs?" They are perfect Polacks! That's why they have stubbed noses -- because they chase parked cars! Beware of dogs, and particularly Polacks -- they are more dangerous dogs. To chase a car while it is moving is one thing -- you can enjoy it. Just for the sake of running it is good exercise, but to chase a parked car is certainly far out! The police dogs must be not ordinary politicians but great politicians -- prime ministers, presidents, kings, queens, emperors, Alexanders, Napoleons, Hitlers, Stalins of the past lives.

No question is to be taken seriously. Uttama, I never take any question seriously, but each question has a certain meaning: it shows something about you. Howsoever ridiculous it is, howsoever absurd it is, it shows something about you. It shows something about your unconscious. Just because it has arisen in your mind it shows some quality of your mind. It shows your curiosity -- and curiosity is not a great virtue.

Watch out! If you are here just being curious you will miss the real point. You have to be here for deep enquiry, not for curiosity. You have to be passionately here -- it is a question of life and death. What is happening here is not anything ordinary; it is going to decide your whole future, your eternity.

So don't ask just out of curiosity. Ask because there is something that is really a quest for you. Unless it is a quest, don't make a question out of it. Only a quest can be allowed to become a question because then it has a certain essentiality about it.

I will answer any kind of question; I will try to make something essential out of it. If I condemn the dogs for barking I am really condemning you for barking. You also have a dog inside you and sometimes you like to bark. Of course you bark like a human being, not like a dog, but when you bark something of the dog comes up in you.

You have been all the animals in the past, all kinds of animals in the past. That's the beauty of the theory of many, many millions of lives: that means you contain the whole universe -- the dogs, the lions, the horses, the donkeys. You contain all of them within you, and you can bring anybody to the surface. You can behave like a dog, and you do many times. You can behave like a donkey like an ass, and you do that many times! Watch all these animals within you -- they constitute your mind. And unless you get beyond them, unless you transcend them, you will not be truly a human being.

A human being is born only when all the animals, even the shadows of the animals within him disappear. And to be human is the beginning of being divine.

These are the three planes: the animal, the human, the divine. Ninety-nine point nine percent of people live on the animal level; only point one percent of people get to the second, the human, and only a few people out of millions reach the third. And that is the goal of being a sannyasin.