The second question

Question 2

OSHO, THE PRIEST INSIDE ME SEEMS TO HAVE A STRONG HOLD. ARE SANNYAS AND MEDITATION REALLY GOING TO CURE ME OF BEING A MISERABLE, STUPID BASTARD? OR SHOULD I JOIN THE HARE KRISHNA MOVEMENT? I COULD DO IT FOR THE PRICE OF A HAIRCUT. I NEED NOT EVEN CHANGE THE COLOR OF MY CLOTHES.

Dhyanakirti,

THE PRIEST ALWAYS HAS a strong hold, because the priest is the most ancient institution in the world. They say the most ancient profession in the world is that of the prostitute. I don't agree. The most ancient profession is that of the priest, because without the priest who will create the prostitute? How will the prostitute come into existence? It is through the priest.

The priest is the source of an kinds of ugly institutions. And if you have been a priest yourself, then of course it goes very deep in you. And joining the Hare Krishna movement is not going to help -- it will be jumping from the frying pan into the fire, it will lead you towards more stupidity.

The priest creates something in you which he calls "conscience." And by creating conscience he destroys your consciousness. Conscience is nothing but a state of hypnosis. By repeating certain things again and again, the priest creates a deep hypnotic state in you, and then you are under the spell.

And you are right to say: ARE SANNYAS AND MEDITATION REALLY GOING TO CURE ME OF BEING A MISERABLE, STUPID BASTARD?

If you have understood it, that it is stupidity, then cure is not difficult. Then sannyas will do. And if MY sannyas cannot do it, then drop all hope -- then it cannot be done at all.

A man standing beneath the Eiffel Tower looked up and saw another man jump from the top of the Tower and fall at a great velocity. On the way down, however, he seemed to hit a pocket of air which broke his fall and brought him gently to the ground. The spectator was impressed.

A man standing close by noticed the look of wonder spread over the spectator's face and told him to stay around and watch his friend do it again.

The spectator looked up and saw the same figure jump and fall at great speed, then come once again to a smooth landing on the ground nearby. He got up, walked over to the spectator casually and said, "Go on, have a go. There's nothing to it -- you only have to jump!"

"Okay," said the man. "I'll give it a try." So he climbed to the top of the Tower and jumped. He fell downwards at a tremendous speed and hit the pavement -- he was a real mess!

The man who had been standing close by turned to the sky-diver and said, "D'you know, Gabriel, for an archangel you are a real bastard!"

The priests and the angels and the archangels and the gods, and even your so-called God, they have all done tremendous harm to you. In the name of religion so much crime, so much calamity, so much misery has happened to man as has not happened from any other source -- even politicians are secondary.

And certainly every religion tries its best to force its ideology into the heart of the child. So the hold is certainly strong. But once you understand it, once you get unidentified with it, there is no trouble because it is something imposed on you. It is like a dress -- you can drop it any moment. But if you think your dress is not a dress but your skin, then it becomes difficult. That's where you get identified with it.

Dhyanakirti, don't get identified with your conscience. And that's the whole purpose of meditation: to make you aware that you are not your mind. The priest can only reach your mind, he cannot reach your being -- fortunately he cannot pollute your being, he can only pollute your mind. And meditation means creating a distance between your mind and yourself.

The moment you ARE aware that the mind is a separate thing, created by others -- the priests and the politicians and the parents and the teachers -- that it has nothing to do with you, you can slip out of it very easily.

A man lost his hat. He decided to go and steal one from the entry of a nearby church. When he arrived at the church, a sermon on the Ten Commandments was in progress.

At the end of the service, he approached the minister and said, "Thank you, Reverend. You have saved me from committing a crime. I came here with sin in my heart -- I wanted to steal a hat...."

"That's very good, my son!" said the minister. "But tell me, what did I say to make you change your mind?"

"Well," explained the man, "when you got to the part about 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,' I remembered where I left my hat!"

The conscience that the priest has created has not become your soul. It has just become your mask. It has given you a pseudo personality, it has made you a hypocrite.

An attractive, sexy young woman goes for a check-up to the Catholic doctor-cum-monk, who has devoted his whole life to serving the people as a physician. He looks her over, impressed, and as his breathing becomes heavier, he tells her to undress so that he can check her temperature rectally.

She bends over and says, "Hey, doc, this is not my rectum! "

"That's okay, my dear," says the Catholic doctor-cum-monk, "nor is this my thermometer!"

The priest has not really changed anything, he cannot; he has only imposed a certain layer of hypocrisy on you. So it is not difficult to get rid of it. It is just a layer of dirt; you can clean it any moment you decide to.

Sannyas is a bath. It is a shower, it will cleanse you, Dhyanakirti. And I have given you the name Dhyanakirti -- the glory of meditation. This is the glory of meditation: that it can help you to get rid of ALL imposed ideas, and it can give you back that which is really yours, your real center.

The Hare Krishna movement will be another imprisonment. Yes, when you move from one prison to another, for a little while it feels good, the change. The new prison has a different architecture, different decoration, different jailers, different guards -- everything is different so it feels good. But soon you will realize that it is again the same thing, because the slavery is the same.

You say: OR SHOULD I JOIN THE HARE KRISHNA MOVEMENT? I COULD DO IT FOR THE PRICE OF A HAIRCUT.

Don't think that just by cutting your hair anything changes.

"Ya ya," in German, means yes. But in the Polish language, a "yaya" is what hangs below a Pole's belly button if the Pole is a male.

Brudzewa from Warsaw stopped in a Berlin barbershop and asked for a shave.

"Ya ya," said the barber.

"Nie yaya," screamed the Pole. "My beard!"

So be aware. You can get into some difficulty. If you want to cut your hair, don't go to Germany. Otherwise the barber will say "Ya ya" -- and you seem to be a Polack!

Sannyas and meditation are enough, nothing more is needed. Sannyas changes your whole vision of reality. It helps you to drop all ritualistic religion, all serious religion. It helps you to become non-ritualistic, non-serious, it helps you to become playful, it helps you to take life as fun. It helps you to rejoice in existence, and through that rejoicing comes real renunciation.

In the past it has been said again and again by the priests that if you renounce you will attain to bliss. I tell you just the opposite: if you become blissful there is renunciation. And that renunciation has a beauty of its own -- because in your rejoicing, all that is non-essential starts dropping away -- because you can see it is non-essential. The very seeing is the transformation. If after seeing you have to do something for transformation, then your seeing was incomplete, was not entire, was not total, was not real.

Sannyas means seeing how you are caught in prisons, why you are caught in prisons. And the very seeing is enough, because nothing is really holding you in the prison except your own fears; the fear of the unknown, the fear of the unfamiliar, keeps you huddled together like sheep in the crowd. And there are many crowds: Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jewish -- different crowds. And people are clinging to each other; they are afraid of being lost in aloneness. Meditation teaches you aloneness.