Commentaries on Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. Vol. 1 The Messiah Chapter 21: Leaves of a single tree

BELOVED OSHO,

OFTENTIMES HAVE I HEARD YOU SPEAK OF ONE WHO COMMITS A WRONG AS THOUGH HE WERE NOT ONE OF YOU BUT A STRANGER UNTO YOU AND AN INTRUDER UPON YOUR WORLD.

BUT I SAY THAT EVEN AS THE HOLY AND THE RIGHTEOUS CANNOT RISE BEYOND THE HIGHEST WHICH IS IN EACH ONE OF YOU,

SO THE WICKED AND THE WEAK CANNOT FALL LOWER THAN THE LOWEST WHICH IS IN YOU ALSO.

AND AS A SINGLE LEAF TURNS NOT YELLOW BUT WITH THE SILENT KNOWLEDGE OF THE WHOLE TREE,

SO THE WRONGDOER CANNOT DO WRONG WITHOUT THE HIDDEN WILL OF YOU ALL.

LIKE A PROCESSION YOU WALK TOGETHER TOWARDS YOUR GOD-SELF.

YOU ARE THE WAY AND THE WAYFARERS.

AND WHEN ONE OF YOU FALLS DOWN HE FALLS FOR THOSE BEHIND HIM, A CAUTION AGAINST THE STUMBLING STONE.

AY, AND HE FALLS FOR THOSE AHEAD OF HIM WHO, THOUGH FASTER AND SURER OF FOOT, YET REMOVED NOT THE STUMBLING STONE.

AND THIS ALSO, THOUGH THE WORD LIE HEAVY UPON YOUR HEARTS:

THE MURDERED IS NOT UNACCOUNTABLE FOR HIS OWN MURDER,

AND THE ROBBED IS NOT BLAMELESS IN BEING ROBBED.

THE RIGHTEOUS IS NOT INNOCENT OF THE DEEDS OF THE WICKED,

AND THE WHITE-HANDED IS NOT CLEAN IN THE DOINGS OF THE FELON.

YEA, THE GUILTY IS OFTENTIMES THE VICTIM OF THE INJURED.

AND STILL MORE OFTEN THE CONDEMNED IS THE BURDEN BEARER FOR THE GUILTLESS AND UNBLAMED.

YOU CANNOT SEPARATE THE JUST FROM THE UNJUST AND THE GOOD FROM THE WICKED;

FOR THEY STAND TOGETHER BEFORE THE FACE OF THE SUN EVEN AS THE BLACK THREAD AND THE WHITE ARE WOVEN TOGETHER.

AND WHEN THE BLACK THREAD BREAKS, THE WEAVER SHALL LOOK INTO THE WHOLE CLOTH, AND HE SHALL EXAMINE THE LOOM, ALSO.

The very idea of judging others is absolutely irreligious. But all the religions have committed the crime of judging others. All the religions have given you ideas about what is good, what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, what is virtue and what is sin. They have corrupted you because of these ideas -- because the same act may be good in one context and may be bad in another. By a single act, you cannot judge the whole life of a man.

And who are you to judge? Who has given you the authority to judge anybody as a saint or as a sinner?

You don't have the eyes to look into the beings of people, in their inner turmoil, in their unconscious longings. All that you can see is their act. But you cannot see their consciousness, and without knowing their consciousness your judgment is not only superficial but inhuman. Your very effort to judge is nothing but a desire to condemn or a desire to praise.

You condemn that which you yourself want to do, but you are afraid of the consequences; you are a coward. And you praise that which you want to become -- it is your desire, your longing, your lust for power, for prestige, for respectability. If you look at yourself, your judgments show much more about you than about the judged.

A man of true understanding is without judgment, because he has neither repressed any desire nor has he any lust for power and prestige and respectability. He is clean and pure. How can he judge?

Kahlil Gibran is saying a few very significant things here:

OFTENTIMES HAVE I HEARD YOU SPEAK OF ONE WHO COMMITS A WRONG AS THOUGH HE WERE NOT ONE OF YOU,

BUT A STRANGER UNTO YOU AND AN INTRUDER UPON YOUR WORLD.

Do you have any idea what is wrong? Because what is wrong in one culture is right in another; what is wrong in one century becomes right in another century. What is right today may not be right tomorrow and what is right this moment may not remain right the next moment. Life is such a flux -- a continuous flow, changing directions, finding a path of which it has no knowledge and moving towards the ocean without any map, any guide.

So is, just like a river, the river of your life.

It happened: The emperor of China made Lao Tzu his supreme court chief justice. Lao Tzu tried to persuade him, but in vain: "You will repent if you make me the chief judge of your supreme court, because my ways of understanding and seeing are totally different from yours."

But the emperor was very insistent, because he had heard so much about the wisdom of this man. He said, "I have decided. And you cannot refuse it."

The first case on the first day when Lao Tzu was in the seat of the chief justice, was about a man who was found red-handed, stealing from the house of the richest man in the capital. In fact there was no case -- he was caught red-handed. There were eyewitnesses, and he himself confessed that "Whatever they are saying is true."

Lao Tzu gave his famous judgment -- so unique and so full of understanding that it has never been given by anyone before or after. The judgment was that the thief had to go to jail for six months -- and with him, the rich man also had to go to jail for six months! The whole court, the whole bench of judges could not believe what he was saying. They were thinking his judgment would show his wisdom; it shows that he is mad! What wrong has the rich man done?

The rich man said, "I cannot believe my ears. My money is being stolen and I am being punished? The same punishment as you are giving to the thief?"

Lao Tzu said, "You are the first criminal -- the thief comes number two. It is just my compassion that I am giving you only six months; you should be given a longer time in jail than the thief. You have gathered all the money of the capital, you have made thousands of people hungry, starving, dying -- and they are the people who produce. You are the greatest exploiter. The money belongs to them; he was not stealing, he was simply taking the money to where it belongs. You have been the thief, the greatest thief in the capital. So feel grateful that I am not sending you for six years."

His reasoning was so absolutely correct: If people go on gathering money on one side, then who is creating the thieves? And if somebody out of hunger, starvation, disease, old age, finds no other way to survive, and if he becomes a thief, who is responsible for it?

The whole court was silent. The rich man said, "Perhaps you are right, but before you send me to jail I want to see the emperor." And to the emperor he said, "You have put as a chief judge of your supreme court, a madman. And remember: if I am a thief you are a greater thief; and if today I am going to jail, just wait for your moment. We shall meet in the jail. You have exploited the whole country, and if you want to save your skin, remove this man immediately and cancel his judgment."

The emperor said, "It is my fault. That man was trying hard to persuade me. He told me, `Don't put me in the seat of the chief justice because my ways of seeing and understanding are totally different from your ways of seeing and understanding. You live in utter darkness and blindness; you don't see simple facts, that the thief is not the criminal but a victim. He needs all the sympathy possible; but on the contrary, he gets punishment. And the rich man needs nobody's sympathy, but nobody will ever think that he has to be punished. Your whole gang makes all the laws, which are favorable to you and unfavorable to the poor whose blood you all have been sucking."'

Lao Tzu was relieved from his duties, and the emperor said, "You were right. Please forgive me. Our ways of thinking are totally different." Lao Tzu said, "Have you ever thought about it? You are saying our ways of thinking are totally different... if you had ever thought about it they would not have been different. They are different because I try to see the root cause -- why there is so much evil, why there is so much wrong. And you are only interested in collecting more and more power, more and more riches. Greed is unthinking, ambition is blind. And it is good that you have come to some understanding on the first day because in my eyes, you are a criminal and sooner or later I was going to send you to jail. It is better that you have relieved me of the trouble of sending you to jail. But remember that you are the cause of all the crimes and you are never punished for it, and the poor victims are punished."

What is wrong? Who is going to define it?

To the Jainas, violence is wrong. Any act which destroys life is crime, it is a sin. But to the Hindus, to the Mohammedans, to the Christians, violence is a way of life.

How many lives have you destroyed just for your food? And without ever thinking twice, "What am I doing?" And even the greatest amongst you are so blind and so tethered with the past that I sometimes wonder whether humanity will ever come out of this darkness or not.

Even a man like Ramakrishna kills fish to eat. Even a man like Jesus is a meat eater. And on the one hand they go on talking about love, about God, and about great things... they don't have even the right to talk about love, because they don't have any reverence for life.

Christians don't see anything wrong in drinking alcohol. Even Jesus himself was drinking alcohol. Hindus... for centuries all their so-called saints have been using drugs -- marijuana, hashish -- and they were worshipped, and nobody ever thought that a man who is a drug addict cannot be a saint. Yes, you can use drugs as medicine -- that is a totally different matter. But not as addiction.

And this is the case about everything. What is wrong? And what is right? And who is going to decide?

So the first thing, of immense concern to me, is how to decide for yourself. Don't be bothered about others -- their problem is their problem. Don't judge them; it is none of your business. But for yourself, what is the criterion?

No religion has given you the criterion and yet I am asked again and again not to criticize any religion. They have given you ideas to judge others, fixed ideas, and life is never fixed. But they have never told you how they have come upon the conclusion that something is wrong and something is right. Just their forefathers have given them the ideas.

All traditions are blind. And any traditional person is sick, because he has not yet been able to find his own understanding.

But I give you the criterion -- I don't say what is right and what is wrong, I give you the criterion so whatever the situation, whatever the context, you will be always able to judge in that particular context and situation what is right and what is wrong.

And such a simple thing has been missed for thousands of years. Perhaps it is very simple and obvious; that's why it has been missed. All these so-called great thinkers and philosophers and theologians are stargazers. They don't see that which is close; their eyes are fixed far away on an imaginary God, a paradise beyond death.

I don't care at all about your gods, and I don't care at all what happens to you after your death. My concern is what happens to you right now, to your consciousness. Because that will always be with you, beyond death, wherever you are. Your consciousness will carry that light which divides the wrong from the right.

Anything that makes you more alert, more conscious, more peaceful, more silent, more celebrating, more festive, is good.

Anything that makes you unconscious, miserable, jealous, angry, destructive, is wrong.

I am not giving you a list of objects which are right and which are wrong. I am simply giving you a clarity to judge in each moment of life, without any consultation of ten commandments, of SRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA, without asking the dead.

Why not ask the living source of being in you?

You are the only holy scripture in the world.

And unless you are clear about this simple and obvious thing... you try. Each moment brings the opportunity. And you will see that your criterion is always helpful, and without any dictation from the dead. It is your own understanding that simply goes on shifting.

Don't listen to anybody except your own consciousness.

When you are angry, you lose consciousness, you become unconscious. Anger covers you like a black cloud. You can commit murder, you can destroy life. But when you are loving, bells of joy start ringing in your heart. You start feeling your consciousness rising. And if in love also you lose consciousness, become unconscious, then remember: you are calling lust, love. And this kind of love is not the right thing, because it is not going to help you to grow, to expand, to attain the fulfillment of your potential.

Anything that helps you to attain the fulfillment of your potential is good. It is not only a blessing to you, it is a blessing to the whole existence. No man is an island. We are all a vast, infinite continent, joined together in the roots. Maybe our branches are separate, but our roots are one.

Realizing one's potential is the only morality there is.

Losing one's potential and falling into darkness and retardedness is the only sin, the only evil.

Kahlil Gibran is right when he says:

OFTENTIMES HAVE I HEARD YOU SPEAK OF ONE WHO COMMITS A WRONG AS THOUGH HE WERE NOT ONE OF YOU,

BUT A STRANGER UNTO YOU AND AN INTRUDER UPON YOUR WORLD.

BUT I SAY THAT EVEN AS THE HOLY AND THE RIGHTEOUS CANNOT RISE BEYOND THE HIGHEST WHICH IS IN EACH ONE OF YOU,

SO THE WICKED AND THE WEAK CANNOT FALL LOWER THAN THE LOWEST WHICH IS IN YOU ALSO.

In this existence, nobody is a stranger.

The sinner and the saint are not two separate worlds.

The real saint is one who has chosen to become so conscious that a third -- a witness, a watcher -- arises in him which can watch the sinner, which can watch the saint, and which knows that the saint and the sinner are two sides of the same coin. A few people have chosen one side, a few people have chosen another side -- but remember, the other side is always present. Any sinner can become a saint within moments, and any saint can fall and become a sinner also within moments. There is no qualitative difference between them; both of them are repressing half of their being. The saint is repressing the sinner....

I have been always very much surprised that all religious scriptures written by so-called saints go on condemning the sinner. Why are they so much concerned with the sinner? They should sing the song of their fulfillment, they should make the world aware of the beauty that they have attained, they should radiate the light and the fragrance.

But no, their whole concern is to go on condemning the sinner -- in such detail that one wonders what they have repressed in themselves. They are at least trying to enjoy it by speaking about it.

I have heard about a woman who had come for confession to a Catholic priest. And she said, "Father, forgive me -- I have again been raped. And pray to God for me."

The priest said, "But it looks very strange -- this is third time! Every Sunday you come to confess that you have been raped. It is a strange coincidence."

She said, "The reality is, I have been raped only once."

"But then," the priest said, "for that you have been forgiven and I have prayed to God. Why bother me again and again?"

She said, "Just to talk about it gives me such pleasure, just the very memory of it and the joy... although I was resisting superficially, deep down I was enjoying the act so much. And for three weeks nobody has raped me, so what am I supposed to do? And you are preventing me from even the enjoyment of talking about it."

My feeling, my understanding is that the so-called saints are condemning in such detail all the sins man is capable of, that it seems they are enjoying talking about it, writing about it, preaching about it.

On the other hand, the sinner is always hoping one day he will become a saint, one day he will drop this ugly life of being a sinner. He is always dreaming of becoming a saint, because that is the part he has repressed. And your saints are always dreaming of all kinds of sins that they have missed, that they have repressed.

The sin and the virtue are not different things. So don't judge a man as a saint just because whatever your scripture says is a sin, he has dropped. Nothing is dropped, everything goes on collecting in the unconscious and sooner or later explodes, with vengeance.

I teach you not to bother about sinners and not to bother about saints; they belong to the same category. I want you to become a watcher.

And if you can watch your sinner side, your saint side, your darkness, your light -- without any judgment -- the miracle happens. And this is the only miracle that transforms a man into a religious being. The saint and sinner both disappear. Choose one, and the other remains -- because they are together, they are not separate. They are inseparable. So don't choose.

I say unto you: Become a choiceless awareness. Then you have gone beyond both, beyond the duality of good and bad, of God and evil. And this transcendence brings you all the flowers that you have not even dreamt about, the music that no instrument can create, and the poetry that cannot be contained in words.

BUT I SAY THAT EVEN AS THE HOLY AND THE RIGHTEOUS CANNOT RISE BEYOND THE HIGHEST WHICH IS IN EACH ONE OF YOU,

SO THE WICKED AND THE WEAK CANNOT FALL LOWER THAN THE LOWEST WHICH IS IN YOU ALSO.

AND AS A SINGLE LEAF TURNS NOT YELLOW BUT WITH THE SILENT KNOWLEDGE OF THE WHOLE TREE,

SO THE WRONGDOER CANNOT DO WRONG WITHOUT THE HIDDEN WILL OF YOU ALL.

This is a very profound insight, that a single leaf cannot become yellow without the knowledge of the whole tree. You cannot condemn the single leaf -- the whole tree knows it, allows it. If a single man becomes wicked, it is not without the innermost being of you all participating in his wickedness.

We are all leaves of a single tree. Don't condemn because you are green and one leaf has turned yellow. Perhaps that single leaf is simply dropping from the tree to allow space for a new guest to arrive, a new leaf, fresh and young. Perhaps you are a clinger and you will take a little more time to turn yellow. But before you turn yellow you will condemn that leaf that she betrayed the tree. But the whole tree is involved in every action of the smallest leaf.

This is a great insight, that if there is a murderer we are all responsible for it, and unless the whole humanity takes the responsibility of murderers and thieves and rapists, we are not going to change anything. We have condemned them for centuries, and what we have done to them is so ridiculous....

If a person is caught trying to commit suicide, then for centuries his punishment was death. Strange... great wisdom! What he was doing himself, you are doing to him as a punishment.

If a murderer is given a death sentence, your whole society is murderous, your law is murderous. What is the difference? That man destroyed a life and you are destroying another life -- do you think by destroying this murderer you are going to bring life back to the murdered one? No, instead of one man murdered now there are two men murdered -- great justice, great love.

If a man has murdered someone, somewhere deep in us is hidden the same desire -- and that has become the law in the court. We have made the law; our law is as murderous as any murderer. This is not justice, this is simply revenge. You are taking revenge in the name of justice. Because that man did not obey, he should not be left alive. But are you certain that if this murderer is not killed by the law, he may not turn into a great poet, or a musician or a painter? Or even a mystic?

You are taking away the opportunity for his growth, and without ever thinking why he murdered in the first place. Nobody bothers about the causes, everybody looks only at the symptoms. Perhaps that man has suffered so much at the hands of the society that you have reduced him into an animal. And once he is an animal he is going to behave like an animal. But remember -- he is a victim and you are the cause.

That's why laws go on growing, new laws are being made, new courts, new judges, more police, more armies -- and you have not been able to reduce the number of crimes. They are growing simultaneously; there must be some deep relationship between the two. The growth of your legal systems and the growth of the criminals is equal. It is a strange coincidence.

If you were right, then so many police, so many great armies, so many courts, so many parliaments, so many legal experts... and you have not been able to prevent anything. It is a blame on your very being, it is a condemnation of your intelligence. Something is very profoundly wrong with the whole system.

A murderer, a thief should be treated with dignity. He is a human being. And if he has committed a murder he is psychologically sick. You don't punish the sick people, you send them to a psychiatric hospital where they can be taken care of.

There is no need for any jail. All jails should be converted into beautiful psychiatric nursing homes, where people who have lost their humanity because of the ugly behavior of the society -- exploitation and oppression and all kinds of repression -- should be given back their dignity and honor, should be treated mentally and physically, should be trained and educated, should be made productive and creative, should be given the opportunity that they have missed before. Then only I will say there exists a system of justice, there exists a system of law.

But what exists is just the opposite. And I am saying it from my own experience.

Just this morning I was informed that in all the newspapers it is reported that one sannyasin, with his girlfriend, has been found with drugs. Now the police commissioner has to justify his action against me -- so bogus sannyasins will be created, and they will be carrying drugs into the campus. Just two, three instances, propaganda in the newspapers, and then they become capable of saying that the police commissioner's notice for me to leave Poona in thirty minutes was right.

And the police commissioner seems to be perfectly a coward. He could not convince my attorneys of his strange and absurd order that I should leave Poona in thirty minutes.... This is my country and he is my servant just as he is the servant of all. It is strange that servants are behaving like masters and issuing ridiculous orders, meaningless. Still, he was not ready to withdraw it because it was going against his ego, although he had no evidence to issue it. If he had any justice in mind he should have apologized and withdrawn it.

He would not cancel it. It took the whole day for my attorneys, and the outcome was that he has only suspended the order -- that means he can open the case at any moment. Now he will create situations which can support that his original order was right. He will send people here into the ashram with drugs which are prohibited, and then they will be caught. And if you prevent them at the gate they will start fighting you, attacking you.

And he has rented a house just by the side of the ashram, so within a minute, guns from his people can be brought into the ashram. That is his whole desire.

But I want to warn you -- and to say to him and to the government that such kind of meanness is not justice and we are not going to tolerate it.

Today again a notice has been received by one of the trustees of the ashram. Two things were very striking in the notice: one, he has not given me the notice -- cowards are, after all cowards. He must have understood that he has committed a mistake. To come in conflict with me is to come in conflict with fire -- you will be burned and consumed... because this is not an ordinary place, this is a temple of God. Here are the people who are seekers, who have not come to fight with anyone. So neither has he issued the notice on my name... because he knows that I will start hitting him as hard as I can.

Now he is hiding behind his subordinate. The order is from a police inspector. Has he forgotten his authority? Just a few days before, he had issued the order against me. Now the order comes neither in my name nor from him, but from his subordinate, an ordinary police inspector.

And again he is asking ridiculous things: That we have to inform every day how many foreigners are here, that we have to inform how many foreigners can be accommodated in the ashram. If it is being asked in every temple of the country, in every mosque of the country, in every gurudwara of the country, in every ashram of the country, then it seems to be reasonable. But just to ask me or my people -- it is ridiculous. This discrimination cannot be tolerated.

I have told the trustees to tell him that our attorneys are coming and we will discuss with him all the ridiculous demands that he is making. And if we cannot come to a settlement then we are going to sue him in the high court, in the supreme court. And if he is just a puppet in the hands of New Delhi then there is a court above the supreme court -- the people of this country. I will go to every village of this country -- not only to throw him out, but to throw out the whole bureaucracy and the utterly blind and deaf government.

Now, this is how your society provokes people. I have never been in any way interested in politics; neither am I interested now. But don't provoke a lion while he is meditating! I can throw all these dummies, from Poona to Delhi, out of their power -- alone; I don't need anybody else's support. And I don't want the power for myself. I will simply expose -- this whole system is nonsense created by the British imperialists, which still goes on existing and crushing people's dignity. What kind of nonsense is this, that every day the ashram has to report the names of one thousand foreigners who are allowed in the ashram? Is this an ashram, or does he think it is a government prison?

I would be very happy -- if he has guts he should come here and discuss with me, before my people. I don't know the law, but I know something higher. Laws are just man-made, but they go on changing. I know something which is eternal and not man-made.

And as I understand, he worships during office time. I have to discuss with him about worship also, and I have to see what kind of religiousness he has -- this is not religiousness that he is showing. This is ugly and brutal, primitive, uncultured. This man needs to be immediately demoted, suspended and sent to Nagaland, where he will at least look educated.

I again warn them -- just don't disturb me or my people. Because if you disturb my people in any way I am going to disturb your whole government. Has Mahatma Gandhi ever been asked how many foreigners are staying with him in his ashram? Not even by the British government. What kind of freedom have we got? It seems Mahatma Gandhi lived under the British government in a more free way than we are living under our own government.

The people we have chosen, we can throw them at any moment. And I have fire enough to burn all these dummies and dodos, because I don't see a single man in this government who has any calibre, any character.

What is the purpose of keeping the police people with guns loaded, by the side of the ashram? What urgency has arisen? We have lived here for seven years without any fight, without any firearms -- and we are still without any firearms. But we don't need firearms, we have the fire of our souls.

I have never cursed anybody -- I am keeping it, accumulating its power. The day I decide to curse, then it is not going to be an ordinary curse, it will be nuclear!

LIKE A PROCESSION YOU WALK TOGETHER TOWARDS YOUR GOD-SELF.

Don't judge who is right, who is wrong. Walk in a procession together towards your innermost temple of God.

YOU ARE THE WAY AND THE WAYFARERS.

A little addition and his sentence will become more profound: You are the way... you are the wayfarers and you are the goal and you are the source. In fact you are the whole world, a miniature world. If asleep, then suffering unnecessarily in nightmares; if awake, then filled with immense blessings and ecstasies that only very few people in the world have known.

But I have a tremendous trust in you, that each of you can touch the highest peak of consciousness -- in spite of all these police commissioners and their gang. I consider them criminals.

In America I remained silent in the court for the simple reason that I was only a tourist there. A tourist has no rights. Any moment the country can say, "You have to leave." He cannot even ask the reason. It should not be so, but it is so.

But in this country I don't even need legal experts and attorneys and all that nonsense -- I am going to face them myself, from the police commissioner to the prime minister, in the supreme court. They should be very careful of what kind of steps they are trying. None of them has the guts or the intelligence. I have been, for twenty years continuously, moving in this country. I know the leaders on this country -- just holy cow dung. You cannot do even a brain operation of these people, because you will find nothing but cow dung.

You will be surprised to know that one of Mahatma Gandhi's very intimate followers and ashramite... and a cultured man, educated; he was a professor in a university. He dropped his service to remain close to Mahatma Gandhi and he was worshipped like a god. And his only quality was that for six months continuously he remained eating cow dung and drinking the urine of the cows. That was his food for six months, and that made him so purified.... He defeated Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, Shanker Rao Dev, all the great followers of Mahatma Gandhi. Within six months he was at the top, because nobody could dare to do what he had done.

Now, if you operate on this man's brain, what are you going to find?

I have known intimately many presidents of the ruling party, and I don't think any one of them had any high qualities of intelligence. And now even an ordinary police commissioner thinks himself powerful enough to serve a notice on me that I should leave his district in thirty minutes. It is good that Buddha and Mahavira and Bodhidharma, Tilopa and all the great people, have stopped before these retarded people became powerful in this country. Can you find a more controversial person than Gautam Buddha? This police commissioner would have served him an immediate notice to leave Poona because he was controversial.

Any man who has any insight and clarity is bound to be controversial. And any culture and any society that tries to destroy the controversial man is trying to destroy its own flowers.

LIKE A PROCESSION YOU WALK TOGETHER TOWARDS YOUR GOD-SELF.

You are the way and the wayfarers, you are the goal and you are the source, because after all the pilgrimage you will come to yourself -- of course with new eyes, new insights, new consciousness. You will start the journey in darkness and you will come home at the time of early morning when the sun is rising and the birds have started singing, welcoming you.

AND WHEN ONE OF YOU FALLS DOWN HE FALLS FOR THOSE BEHIND HIM, A CAUTION AGAINST THE STUMBLING STONE.

Don't condemn, don't judge.

AY, AND HE FALLS FOR THOSE AHEAD OF HIM, WHO THOUGH FASTER AND SURER OF FOOT, YET REMOVED NOT THE STUMBLING STONE.

We are a connected whole -- the past, the present, the future. We are one organic unity, and those who have been trying to divide man against man, either for religion or for politics or for any other cause, are the criminals. They should be treated lovingly, carefully -- they are psychologically sick.

AND THIS ALSO, THOUGH THE WORD LIE HEAVY UPON YOUR HEARTS:

THE MURDERED IS NOT UNACCOUNTABLE FOR HIS OWN MURDER,

AND THE ROBBED IS NOT BLAMELESS IN BEING ROBBED.

Who are you blaming? because the same you are doing in your own way -- perhaps some unfortunate fellow has been caught and you have not been caught. But there is not much difference. You are carrying a murderer within you and you are carrying the whole humanity, with all its weaknesses and also with all its possibilities of rising higher towards the stars.

So help, don't judge. If somebody falls, give him a hand, because in his fall you have also fallen.

And when somebody rises, celebrate, because in his rising high you have also risen high.

THE RIGHTEOUS IS NOT INNOCENT OF THE DEEDS OF THE WICKED,

AND THE WHITE-HANDED IS NOT CLEAN IN THE DOINGS OF THE FELON.

YEA, THE GUILTY IS OFTENTIMES THE VICTIM OF THE INJURED.

AND STILL MORE OFTEN THE CONDEMNED IS THE BURDEN BEARER FOR THE GUILTLESS AND UNBLAMED.

I have been into many jails in India, as an outsider, to talk to the prisoners, to make them understand simple methods of meditation. And I was surprised, that they are more innocent than your politicians. They are more innocent than the officers of the jail. They are simple people. Perhaps because of their simplicity they committed something, unaware of the consequences. Or perhaps they never committed anything, they are innocent, but they were poor and could not get a better defense against the government who was charging them with invented crimes.

Because now it is my personal experience -- I had seen the jail from the outside; I am happy that now I have seen the jail from the inside. In the six jails in America I did not come across any inmate of the jail -- and each jail had six hundred, seven hundred, one thousand people -- who looked criminal. And all the other people -- the staff of the jail, the police, the judges -- their faces were not faces you can call innocent. They were cunning.

You will be surprised to know that they knew that I am a vegetarian and as I entered any jail I informed them that I am a vegetarian, but they would not say anything. At the mealtime they would come and inform me that "We don't have any vegetarian food."

I suggested to them, "You can give me fruits." And the same reply, that "We don't have any fruits." And that was such a lie that the other inmates of the jail who heard this... because all the cells were together. When the jailer went, they said, "He is lying absolutely. We have vegetables, we have milk, we have fruits, nuts, which can be used." And the inmates started bringing fruits for me, which were given to them but not to me. They started bringing milk which was given to them, but not to me.

And I said, "But this is yours, and you need it. I can manage. Ten, twelve days is not something that one is going to die from. It takes ninety days to kill a person without food, so don't be worried."

But tears in their eyes, of great love... "No, you will have to accept, because we can eat anything. The non-vegetarian meals are available to us."

And whenever I passed through the corridor to enter in a jail or to come out of a jail, they were all standing behind the bars shouting, "Osho! Victory is going to be yours! We don't know you much but we have seen you on the television -- your eyes are enough to convince us." They were showing the victory sign of two fingers from every cell. And they were saying again and again, that "We are so happy. We will remember for our whole life that we have spent at least one night with you."

They were writing letters to me which were coming from one cell to another cell and reaching to me: "Osho, we love you. When you go back -- and they cannot keep you inside more than a week -- don't forget us." And they had cuttings from newspapers of my photos and they were sending those photos -- "Please sign it as a proof and evidence that we have been with you at least one night, or one day, or a few hours." Thousands of photos I have signed, to the names of people I don't know.

They were so loving, so helpful, so human. I have not seen that humanity in the judges' eyes, in the government attorneys.

It is a strange world, where the innocent can suffer because the cunning can always manage to get out, where the poor has to suffer because he cannot afford to find the right defense for himself. It is not a question of whether you have committed the crime or not. The question is whose attorney is more efficient, more clever, more cunning to use the law.

Law cannot decide the truth.

But that's what is happening. We are living in a barbarous world, with all kinds of discriminations.

Is this a temple of God, or a police station? that we should inquire who is a foreigner.

To us, nobody is a foreigner.

The whole humanity is ours, and the whole earth is ours.

The day is not far away when there will be no boundaries of nations or religions. And if I have to sacrifice myself and my people for the birth of a new earth and a new humanity, I will be perfectly happy to do so. Because a life that is not capable of sacrificing itself for truth, for beauty, is not life at all; the man is already dead.

YOU CANNOT SEPARATE THE JUST FROM THE UNJUST, AND THE GOOD FROM THE WICKED,

FOR THEY STAND TOGETHER BEFORE THE FACE OF THE SUN, EVEN AS THE BLACK THREAD AND THE WHITE ARE WOVEN TOGETHER.

Don't judge, don't discriminate.

Existence knows what is needed, just as the weaver knows that black threads are needed with white threads to create beautiful patterns.

AND WHEN THE BLACK THREAD BREAKS, THE WEAVER SHALL LOOK INTO THE WHOLE CLOTH, AND HE SHALL EXAMINE THE LOOM ALSO.

That's what I am trying to do. If there is a single man who is unconscious, and behaving in his unconsciousness, I don't have any condemnation for him. Perhaps he is the weakest part of our society, perhaps the disease is spread all over the society. Because he is the weakest link, the disease has expressed itself from him, but he is not the disease.

I cannot conceive of why people should be thieves if there were no exploitation, why people should be rapists if there were no marriage forced by law or by society, why there should be prostitutes, if people were allowed to live together only for the time while they are in love.

But the prostitutes are tortured by the police, by the government, harassed in every possible way -- and they are just poor victims of a society where the husband does not love the wife, where the wife does not love the husband but still, because of the law, they have to remain together. And love is a necessary nourishment.

You have heard only of women prostitutes in this country, but in England or America just within twenty years' time, male prostitutes have become available. We are really evolving to great heights! Perhaps soon we will again be on the trees, just like our forefathers were.

This is not evolution.

Our whole structure is corrupted.

People go on telling to me that "If you simply concentrate with your disciples on meditation, and don't say anything against or about the society, the religion, the past, the tradition, the law... then there will be no enemy to you."

Of course there will be no enemy to me, because I will not be touching anybody's vested interest and I will not be bringing the revolution that is burning in my being.

I want you all to be aflame.

Before I go and leave the body, I want millions of bodies aflame with the same fire, all around the world.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.

Kahlil-Gibrans-Prophet

THE MESSIAH, VOL 1

Chapter-21

Leaves of a single tree