The third question:

Question 3

OSHO, WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE ATTRACTED TOWARDS YOU FROM ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD?

Niranjan,

DON'T know! I am also surprised; it should not be so.   The government is against me, the society is against me, all the religions are against me, and still people go on coming. All kinds of barriers are created, still people go on coming.

Something mysterious is happening, something which cannot be explained. Something is transpiring which is elusive. That's why those who come as observers or spectators or journalists cannot catch hold of it. So they collect rumors in the town from people who never come here, and they go on reporting. Almost all over the world, in almost all the languages, there are rumors and rumors. This is very strange! The people have not experienced what is happening here, they have not been participants, and yet they think they have understood.

There are things which can be understood only when you participate. You cannot know what love is if you see two lovers hugging each other. If you watch from the outside, scientifically, you will know that two persons are hugging. But where is love? What is love? The meeting of the bones and the meeting of the flesh is not love. Two persons kissing... you cannot explain it through chemistry, that would be destroying the whole truth of it. Chemistry cannot explain it.

People come here: unless they are participants -- and not only participants in order to report, because then they are not participants at all.... Then deep down they are outside. They are taking notes, invisible notes about what they are going to report. They are not drunk with the wine that is available here.

This is a place for drunkards. This is a place for people who are crazy for God. This is a place of love. You can see people dancing and you will shrug your shoulders: "So what? How can dance be meditation?" -- because you see only the gestures, you don't see the dancer disappearing within. And you CANNOT see. When the dancer disappears and only the dance remains, it is meditation. If the dancer is there then it is only dance, not meditation. When the singer disappears and only the song remains, it is meditation. When the musician is not found and only music remains, then it is meditation. But how are you going to find it from the outside? It is impossible.

Niranjan, you will have to become a participant. The only way to know what wine can do to you is to drink it.

Many years ago in a rural district a farmer was helping at his wife's delivery by holding the kerosene lamp. When the doctor had produced not one, but three fine babies, the farmer ran away.

"Come back with that lamp," said the doctor. "I think there is another."

"I will not!" answered the farmer. "I think it is the light that is attracting them!"

So I don't know what is happening! Maybe it is because of the light that people go on coming from every corner of the world. And the lamp that I am holding is not such that I can hide it; I cannot even escape. It cannot be put out -- it is something that is beyond me, it is something that surpasses me. I am as much surprised by it as you are. I am as much intrigued by it as you are, so I cannot give you an exact answer as to why people are attracted. You will have to feel it yourself.