Commentaries on Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. Vol. 1 The Messiah Chapter 23: Except Love, There Should be No Law

BELOVED OSHO,

THEN A LAWYER SAID,

BUT WHAT OF OUR LAWS, MASTER?

AND HE ANSWERED:

YOU DELIGHT IN LAYING DOWN LAWS,

YET YOU DELIGHT MORE IN BREAKING THEM.

LIKE CHILDREN PLAYING BY THE OCEAN WHO BUILD SAND-TOWERS WITH CONSTANCY AND THEN DESTROY THEM WITH LAUGHTER.

BUT WHILE YOU BUILD YOUR SAND-TOWERS THE OCEAN BRINGS MORE SAND TO THE SHORE. AND WHEN YOU DESTROY THEM THE OCEAN LAUGHS WITH YOU.

VERILY THE OCEAN LAUGHS ALWAYS WITH THE INNOCENT.

BUT WHAT OF THOSE TO WHOM LIFE IS NOT AN OCEAN, AND MAN-MADE LAWS ARE NOT SAND-TOWERS,

BUT TO WHOM LIFE IS A ROCK, AND THE LAW A CHISEL WITH WHICH THEY WOULD CARVE IT IN THEIR OWN LIKENESS?

WHAT OF THE CRIPPLE WHO HATES DANCERS?

WHAT OF THE OX WHO LOVES HIS YOKE AND DEEMS THE ELK AND THE DEER OF THE FOREST STRAY AND VAGRANT THINGS?

WHAT OF THE OLD SERPENT WHO CANNOT SHED HIS SKIN, AND CALLS ALL OTHERS NAKED AND SHAMELESS?

AND OF HIM WHO COMES EARLY TO THE WEDDING FEAST, AND WHEN OVER-FED AND TIRED, GOES HIS WAY SAYING THAT ALL FEASTS ARE VIOLATION AND ALL FEASTERS LAW-BREAKERS?

WHAT SHALL I SAY OF THESE SAVE THAT THEY TOO STAND IN THE SUNLIGHT, BUT WITH THEIR BACKS TO THE SUN?

THEY SEE ONLY THEIR SHADOWS, AND THEIR SHADOWS ARE THEIR LAWS.

AND WHAT IS THE SUN TO THEM BUT A CASTER OF SHADOWS?

AND WHAT IS IT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE LAWS BUT TO STOOP DOWN AND TRACE THEIR SHADOWS UPON THE EARTH?

BUT YOU WHO WALK FACING THE SUN, WHAT IMAGES DRAWN ON THE EARTH CAN HOLD YOU?

YOU WHO TRAVEL WITH THE WIND, WHAT WEATHERVANE SHALL DIRECT YOUR COURSE?

WHAT MAN'S LAW SHALL BIND YOU IF YOU BREAK YOUR YOKE BUT UPON NO MAN'S PRISON DOOR?

WHAT LAW SHALL YOU FEAR IF YOU DANCE BUT STUMBLE AGAINST NO MAN'S IRON CHAINS?

AND WHO IS HE THAT SHALL BRING YOU TO JUDGMENT IF YOU TEAR OFF YOUR GARMENT YET LEAVE IT IN NO MAN'S PATH?

PEOPLE OF ORPHALESE, YOU CAN MUFFLE THE DRUM, AND YOU CAN LOOSEN THE STRINGS OF THE LYRE, BUT WHO SHALL COMMAND THE SKYLARK NOT TO SING?

THEN A LAWYER SAID, BUT WHAT OF OUR LAWS, MASTER?

AND HE ANSWERED:

YOU DELIGHT IN LAYING DOWN LAWS,

YET YOU DELIGHT MORE IN BREAKING THEM, LIKE CHILDREN PLAYING BY THE OCEAN WHO BUILD SAND-TOWERS WITH CONSTANCY AND THEN DESTROY THEM WITH LAUGHTER.

It is an important statement. It has to be understood, with all its implications.

First, who are the people who delight in laying down laws?

Kahlil Gibran has completely forgotten about the quality of people who lay down the laws -- they are the weakest in humanity. Because they are weak they join together in a crowd, and all the laws they make are just to prevent the strong people and their mob. The weaker majority of humanity lays down the laws through its representatives to hide its weakness, and to be strong in its majority.

Your laws are not out of love, out of sincerity, out of silence. Your laws are out of fear. And anything based in fear is ugly.

Even though there are laws to protect the weak, the stronger are far more clever, far more cunning. The laws are made by their representatives to protect the weak -- but in fact they are used to protect the cunning and the clever, the rich and the powerful, against the poor, against the weak.

It is a very complicated question. You make the laws and you are going to be the victim of your own laws, because you cannot prevent the strong people from taking over your laws and using them against you.

While Adolf Hitler was in Germany, he was a chosen, elected through democratic means as the chancellor of the country. But once he was the chancellor of the country he himself became the law. And the same laws were turned against the people who had elected him.

There exists no lawfulness in the world because the basic stone of the foundation is missing. Love does not exist -- how can law exist?

Napoleon Bonaparte is reported to have said, "I am the law. My word is the law." Might has always been right in the whole past of humanity, and we are not yet out of the dark ages. Might is still right.

Might should not be right; right is far superior to might. Might is animal, right is human.

But why do all these armies exist? Why are people asked not carry arms? And the police and the government and the army -- they can carry disastrous arms, murderous arms, to protect you. And remember: whoever has power, in the name of protection becomes your master. His power destroys your dignity, your humanity, your pride.

The world needs disarmament -- not only the Soviet Union or America; the whole world needs disarmament. If people have been disarmed, for whom are you carrying all these arms? For what purpose? -- just to make you more and more powerful, and to make the people more and more weakened. They cannot fight, they cannot even think of fighting -- they don't have any means. Rather than making people more loving, more understanding, more human towards each other, your so-called governments are simply using the rule of the jungle: whoever is powerful is right.

In the parables of Aesop there is a beautiful story -- all parables of Aesop are beautiful, but this parable is very relevant to the subject we are going to discuss.

A small lamb is drinking water in a stream, and a lion comes and feels a good chance for a breakfast. He tells the lamb, "You have some nerve -- I am here to drink water and you are polluting it, disturbing the dust."

But the lamb must have been immensely intelligent. He said, "Uncle, the current of the stream is going downward. You are standing upstream -- how can I corrupt the water for you? because the water will not flow upwards. It is simple logic."

Seeing that the lamb was intelligent, the lion said, "Your father has insulted me."

The lamb said, "When?"

And the lion said, "Just the other day."

The lamb said, "It must have been someone else, because my father has been dead for six months. How could you meet him the other day?"

Seeing that all his efforts to make a good breakfast of the lamb with an intellectual conviction that he had committed a crime against him... and the lamb said, "Anyway, even if my father has insulted you, I am innocent. You should not be angry at me."

The lion was puzzled -- what to do with this intelligent lamb? Finally he said, "You don't know how to talk with your elders. You are disrespectful to me. You go on speaking and answering everything that I say, and contradicting me. I cannot tolerate it."

The lamb said, "Why bother with all this? You want to kill me, kill me."

Might needs no argumentation -- although in the beginning, the weaker part of humanity felt that there was only one way to protect themselves, and that was to create law. Anybody who goes against law is to be punished, and everybody is equal in the eyes of the law. But they were absolutely unaware that if the strong, the cunning, the politically clever want power, they will manage it.

What is your so-called democracy, defined as the government of the people, for the people, by the people? Sometimes lies can also be expressed in beautiful words. No government in the world is by the people or for the people or of the people. This is the deception -- so that you can choose the stronger and the clever and the cunning, and once they are elected they have all the powers in their hands. And they use all those powers for their own benefit, not for the benefit of the people.

Who are the lawmakers? And why in the first place are laws needed; are governments, armies and the police needed; for what? -- to keep you enslaved forever, giving you good promises but never delivering the goods.

It is time that man should move his attention from laws -- they have not been helpful, they have been harmful and poisonous -- towards love.

Except love, there should be no law.

And if people's hearts are full of love there is no need of law at all.

THEN A LAWYER SAID: BUT WHAT OF OUR LAWS?

AND HE ANSWERED: YOU DELIGHT IN LAYING DOWN LAWS...

You delight because those laws make you powerful, yet you delight more in breaking them. A truth that cannot be denied is that most of the politicians come from the profession of law. And the greatest criminals in the world come from the profession of law. Knowing the law, they know all the loopholes. The innocent has no way to understand the legal jargon.

Mulla Nasruddin had gone to a lawyer and said, "I want your help. These are the charges the opposite party is putting against me. What do you say?"

The lawyer said, "You need not worry. I promise you that nobody can save whoever committed these crimes you related to me, except a great legal expert -- and you have come to the right person."

Then Mulla started to leave the room. The legal expert said, "But what about my fee? because I always take half of the fee in advance and half when you are victorious."

Mulla Nasruddin said, "These are not the crimes committed by me, these are the crimes committed by the other party. I don't need your help." You go to any lawyer and he is ready to fight for you. Certainly both of the contesting parties cannot be right; they can both be wrong but they cannot both be right. As far as right is concerned, only one can be right.

But no lawyer says to his clients that "Your case is weak and you cannot win." He will lose his whole profession. Even to the murderer he says, "Don't be worried. If I am to defend you, you have not committed murder. Forget all about it, you must have dreamt it."

A strange profession: two lawyers have to be paid, the judge has to be paid -- out of the pockets of people who have no business in it.

If crime disappears from the world, lawyers will disappear, judges will disappear, courts will disappear. They show our ugliness and they show our unintelligence.

So on the one hand the same people create laws and the same people protect criminals. The same people break the laws they have made. It is almost a game, Kahlil Gibran says, like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter. They have created a beautiful profession. For their profession, crime is needed -- more crime and more money, more crime and more courts, more crime and more jails. Do you think these people would like the world to be crimeless? They will lose all their power, their profession, all their clients. They will be beggars. Right now they have become the masters.

And it is strange that the judgments always go in favor of the rich, in favor of the exploiters -- never in favor of the poor, the weak, the oppressed, the exploited. What you call law is in fact organized crime, hidden with sophisticated jargon.

If man is really interested to get rid of crime, every court should become a meditation center. Every jail should become helpful psychologically and physically to the people who have been forced there -- to give them dignity, to give them some craft, some art. And they all have talents dormant in them. Those talents should be brought out, so when they come out in the world they are not dependent on crime anymore. They have every capacity to earn, to deserve -- and moreover they have learned how to be silent, how to be peaceful, how to be meditative.

My own suggestion is that all the politicians at least should be sent into such places which you have been calling jails, imprisonment. I would not like to use those dirty words. They should be sent for their spiritual growth into meditative centers, into meditative communes. If we can transform the politicians -- who are powerful criminals -- then crime can disappear from the world without much effort.

Because it is not the weaker who commits the crime, it is the stronger who commits the crime. The weaker simply protects himself, makes laws. But he is unaware that he may be in the majority, but once you have chosen a member of the parliament for five years, he is your master. And you will go on like a Rotary Club, changing your masters every five years. What does it matter who is the master? Whoever is the master is going to be destructive of humanity in a thousand and one ways.

BUT WHILE YOU BUILD YOUR SAND-TOWERS, THE OCEAN BRINGS MORE SAND TO THE SHORE. AND WHEN YOU DESTROY THEM THE OCEAN LAUGHS WITH YOU.

He is speaking in a metaphorical, symbolic language -- saying that the whole existence laughs at the stupidity humanity continuously goes on living in: making sand castles and hoping that "This castle is not going to be destroyed."

How many laws have been created down the centuries? And every law has been broken. Then to protect the law, more laws are created. Now it has become so ridiculous that you have all kinds of laws... they were created in the beginning by the weak to protect themselves, and now they are in the hands of the strongest people, and they are being used against the weak, against the poor.

It is a very strange story that these lawgivers have reduced the whole humanity into a subhuman state. Because they have the guns, and they don't allow you even a paper knife. And power goes on shifting into other powerful hands and the vast majority of humanity goes on hoping and hoping that one day there will be no crime, no rape, no murder.

But crimes have increased, murders have increased, suicides have increased, rapes have increased -- and the law is so superficial it does not go to the roots of the problem.

Kahlil Gibran is saying the ocean, the earth, the moons, the stars, laugh -- what kind of man has arisen on the earth? You have become the laughingstock of the whole universe.

VERILY THE OCEAN LAUGHS ALWAYS WITH THE INNOCENT.

There, Kahlil Gibran seems to be slipping down again. First he says they laugh with the lawmakers and the lawbreakers, and now he says: Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent.

I say unto you, the ocean cries, weeps with the innocent, for the innocent. The laughter against the lawmakers and lawbreakers is a laughter of condemnation. But how can the earth, the ocean, the mountains laugh with the innocent? who is being continuously tortured, harassed, and there is no appeal for him.

At the most he can appeal to the empty sky. He had to create a God just to have a little consolation that he can appeal; that there are courts, but the ultimate court is far above, above the clouds in heaven.

And all the religions have been consoling people. Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed is the man who stands last in the queue because he will be received first in the kingdom of God." Mere consolations, to somehow tolerate and suffer in the hope that one day he will be the first and the first will be the last. One day the innocent will be declared pure and clean, and the so-called victorious will be defeated for eternity.

I have always wondered, continuously, how a man of Kahlil Gibran's calibre managed to remain in a third-class religion of the world, Christianity. And he never raised a question against Christianity.

BUT WHAT OF THOSE TO WHOM LIFE IS NOT AN OCEAN, AND MAN-MADE LAWS ARE NOT SAND-TOWERS,

BUT TO WHOM LIFE IS A ROCK AND THE LAW A CHISEL WITH WHICH THEY WOULD CARVE IT IN THEIR OWN LIKENESS?

Sometimes he seems to have lost his eyesight. He has forgotten that God created man in his own image. Every father has been doing the same since then, making an effort to create in his children his own image. He will be gone, but his image will remain.

But the moment you start trying to create your own image you are being violent, not loving. You are not allowing the other person to have his own original face; you are giving him a mask which looks like you.

I was staying in a family, sitting early in the morning in the garden. The only child of the family, nearabout eight or nine years old, had become very friendly with me. He was also sitting with me. I asked him, "What do you want to become in life?"

He said, "Most probably I will be in a madhouse."

I said, "You want to be in a madhouse?"

He said, "I don't want to be in a madhouse -- but my father wants me to become a doctor, my mother wants me to become an engineer, my uncle wants me to become a professor, the elders of my family... everybody has an image and they all want to impose their image on me. Nobody even asks me what I want to become. They are not concerned with me, they are concerned with their own ambitions. They want to create me exactly as a carbon copy of themselves -- everybody. Naturally, I am going to be in a madhouse -- a little bit of doctor, a little bit of engineer, a little bit of this and a little bit of that."

I said, "You are very intelligent -- nobody can put you in a madhouse. Tonight I am going to talk to your parents and your elders."

He said, "This has been going on from the very beginning. As soon as I became able to speak, anybody coming to the house -- a guest, a friend -- and they would say to my father: `His eyes look exactly like you.' And they would say, `His nose looks exactly like his mother,' and so on, so forth. And I started wondering whether I am a concoction of all these people -- nothing looks like me! My eyes look like my father, my nose looks like my mother, my color looks like my uncle -- have I got anything that is mine, or am I just a jigsaw puzzle? Somebody's nose, somebody's eyes, somebody's skin color, somebody's hair... they have been driving me mad since then."

This whole criminal act starts with God.

It is not a coincidence that you all call God, "father." All fathers are trying to do the same as he did. And because nobody is allowed to be himself, there is resistance, there is anger, there is violence, there is deep frustration in the heart. And all these combined create the criminal. If people are allowed and helped and loved as they are, if no demands are made on them, but only freedom is given to them to be themselves, crime can disappear from the earth. And with the crime, all the criminals -- the politicians, the judges, the lawyers -- are going to disappear. Naturally, such a vast investment is involved that they will not allow a man like me even to speak.

Because I can wake up the rebel in you. They have pushed it deep down into your unconscious -- I can bring it to your consciousness and help you to raise it to super-conscious levels. But then you won't look like your father. You will look just like yourself. And you will not have any frustration, any anger, any rage, any violence, because no violence has been done to you.

Remember a fundamental law of existence: whatever is being done to you, you return it back to the society. If you are criminal, the society has done something which is criminal.

We have lived for five years, five thousand sannyasins together. And we never needed any judge, any court. Nobody was fighting, because everybody was grateful to everybody else for giving him his own space, his own being. How can he be violent?

Violence, illegality, criminality, are all only symptoms of a very deep cause, and the cause is that nobody has been allowed to fulfill his own destiny. How can you be happy, how can you be blissful, how can you be loving? It is impossible -- it is against all sensibility.

AND OF THE CRIPPLE WHO HATES DANCERS...

How can law help a cripple who hates dancers? This is a very pregnant statement. The whole American government became angry with us because they were crippled and we were dancing. They could not forgive us. They were blind and we were enjoying all the colors of the rainbow and the light of the sun and the moon -- how can they forgive you?

Medical science has made it an established fact, which is being hidden by every government from the people... they are against drugs, they are against marijuana, but marijuana is harmless. It simply makes you more relaxed, more joyful -- and it has no hangover. But marijuana is illegal and alcohol is legal. And who are these lawgivers? Alcohol destroys you, may bring you an early death -- it is not so with marijuana. But to have marijuana is to commit a crime, and you can drink as much alcohol as you want.

It seems that because marijuana gives people a relaxedness, a joyousness, the crippled who cannot dance will not allow anybody else to dance either. The miserable who cannot be happy will not allow anybody to be happy.

Alcohol does not make you happy -- it simply makes you forget your miseries. But tomorrow the miseries will be there not less than before, but more than before -- and with a headache and a hangover. This is legal, the law favors it. But marijuana is illegal.

Only one man of understanding in this century, Aldous Huxley, had the courage to say that marijuana should be legalized all over the world, and alcohol should be prohibited. He was the man who said that marijuana is certainly somehow connected with the ancient Vedic days, when they used something they called somras. It was a drug; it was found only in the Himalayas. The effects that they describe are very close to marijuana.

Aldous Huxley was a courageous man, to declare that we have all the scientific technology to take out anything from any drug that is harmful, and make drugs not only harmless but nourishing to your health, to your mental stability, and perhaps may give you a glimpse of the beyond. He named these ultimate findings of science after the somras.

The oldest book in the world, RIG VEDA, mentions that before praying, seers would take somras, and then it was easy for them to dance, to sing, to be joyous. Aldous Huxley said that one day, when humanity comes to its senses, we will create a synthetic drug which has no bad effects at all, which passes through the body within twenty-four hours and does not remain in the body. He called it soma in the memory of those first pioneers who were calling it somras, the juice of the som. The word som means the moon. The moment they had drunk the somras, the earth became as beautiful for them as the fullmoon night -- hence the name somras.

But nobody listened to him. Humanity lags behind in listening, and by the time it starts listening it is too late.

I started saying in 1950 that birth control should be propagated, and anybody who opposes it should be thought a criminal. I was stoned, because I was speaking against religion, because children come from God. At that time, India had a population of four hundred million people. If they had listened to me, they would not have been in such a mess. Now their population is more than double -- almost nine hundred million people.

But the politician is concerned only with his power. He is not concerned that by the end of this century, fifty million people will die of starvation in this country. Every street, every house will be surrounded by rotting corpses. In fact it will be better to die rather than to live amongst fifty million dead people -- nobody will be able to take them to the graveyard or to the funeral pyre.

And when fifty million people die around you, can you smile? can you dance? can you celebrate?

What of the cripple who hates dancers, of the retarded people who hate the genius, who have crucified Jesus Christ, who have killed Al Hillaj Mansoor, who were the people in Athens who poisoned Socrates -- all that is contained in this simple sentence, that the crippled cannot tolerate somebody else dancing.

Athens was at its peak of civilization and culture -- still, far below the genius of Socrates. They could not tolerate him; they could not fly that high. It was offensive. The only way they found was, "destroy this man, because he reminds us again and again that we are crippled."

What law is there, Almustafa is asking, that the dancers can be protected from the crippled ones?

What was the anger of Adolf Hitler to destroy one million Jews in Germany? -- because they were rich, intelligent, and he was in difficulty even to find any kind of employment. And finally, because there was a shortage of soldiers for the first war, he entered, he was taken into the army.

This man of no qualifications, of no superior human values, was gathering a great hatred for all those who had money, who had education, who had culture. Forty percent of Nobel prizes go to the Jews, and Jews are a small minority in the world. It was difficult for the crippled Adolf Hitler to tolerate these people. Once he managed to reach power, his first thing was that "Germany has been falling down, losing wars because of the Jews." Such an irrelevant, meaningless, absurd statement -- but he went on repeating it and people started believing it.

It is almost as if he had said "Germany's fall is because of bicycles -- destroy all bicycles and you will be the ruler of the whole world." But in the name of Nordic German Aryan superiority... of which he does not look like a representative; he looks just like a carbon copy of Charlie Chaplin -- a little more stupid.

But just buttress the ego of the ignorant, and the German Nordic people became convinced, that "This man is right. In the world only one race can be the chosen race, and Jews have been telling us for centuries that they are the chosen people of God. If Nordic Aryans want to be the chosen people in the world, and the rulers of the whole world, the enemy is nobody else but the Jews. They have to be completely erased. No trace should exist in the world that there has ever been a certain race, of Jews."

And he convinced people, and six million Jews were killed. Of course their money was not burned, their houses were not burned. Their factories were not burned; they were all taken over by the Germans, and Germans became very happy: "This is a good and a great benefit. Adolf Hitler has made many Germans rich."

You can go on killing the Jews and robbing all their monies, but you cannot rob anybody's genius and you cannot rob anybody of his spirit. Adolf Hitler remained a retarded, pygmy human being -- an ugly pig.

How should the crippled be prevented from destroying the dancers?

How should the dumb be prevented from destroying the singers?

There is only one way: Even if a man is crippled, he has hidden in him some talent; help him to bring his talent and express it. A crippled person can paint, a crippled person can meditate, a crippled person can write poetries, a crippled person can be the best singer in the world. Rather than focusing on destroying the dancers, give the cripple education, facilities, so he does not feel in any way inferior to anybody.

WHAT OF THE OX WHO LOVES HIS YOKE AND DEEMS THE ELK AND DEER OF THE FOREST STRAY AND VAGRANT THINGS?

What of the ox who loves his yoke... because the yoke, the slavery... although at a very great cost, because no ox is born as a ox. Just see the ox and the bull, and you will know the difference. The bull is a glory, a magnificent phenomenon of strength and power. But he is being castrated. This is something not to forget... because many bulls are not needed.

One bull is enough to make thousands of cows pregnant, he has so much power. You cannot yoke a bull to your vehicle. He is so powerful that with you and your vehicle he may jump into a ditch. If he sees a beautiful lady cow coming on the way he may forget all about the business, throw away the yoke -- first things first!

No bull is of any pragmatic use -- except that he can produce more bulls. But before they become bulls or become aware of their strength, they have to be castrated. They have to be made impotent. Then the same glorious bull is just a poor ox, and goes on and on carrying a bullock cart. Of course he has more security: always enough food, a shelter in rain, in heat. Naturally he thinks that the elk and the deer, the wild animals who have a beauty....

The ox is a crime against poor animals who cannot speak, cannot go to a lawyer and ask, "On what authority are we being made impotent?" But to console himself, he thinks that the deer and the elk and all other wild animals are unnecessarily running here and there, vagabonds: "I am a useful being because I am pulling a cart." And the yoke, the slavery has become his safety.

Bullock carts should disappear from the world. When you have buses and railway trains and cars, what is the need to destroy millions of beautiful bulls? Don't be worried where they will get their food, how they will live. All the wild animals live, get their food, and are immensely happy. The bulls will also be in the forests, in the mountains, amongst their sisters and brothers.

A bullock cart is ugly. It shows man's violence against a silent animal who cannot protest. But somehow he manages to console himself. And this is the same with all people who are consoling themselves in some way or other. In this metaphoric language, Kahlil Gibran is saying to people that you start loving your slavery because it gives you security, safety -- although you lose all your dignity, freedom, glory.

WHAT OF THE OLD SERPENT WHO CANNOT SHED HIS SKIN?

Serpents every year shed their old skin, and they simply slip out of it with a fresh, young skin. Just like the trees -- they drop their dead leaves and soon they are again green with foliage and flowers. But the old serpent becomes so weak in his old age, he cannot get out of his rotten skin. But even he finds consolation:

WHAT OF THE OLD SERPENT WHO CANNOT SHED HIS SKIN, AND CALLS ALL OTHERS NAKED AND SHAMELESS?

This concerns my people. In your dance, in your song, in your love, all the crippled people are enraged, because they cannot dance. But they have power to stop you from dancing. And I say unto you: It is better to die than to stop your dancing just out of the fear that you may be killed. Because what is a life which knows no song, no dance, no love? These are the people who are calling nakedness obscenity. Just put one thousand people naked and you will be surprised how ugly they look. In their clothes they are hiding their ugliness.

But when they see somebody naked and beautiful it is impossible for them to tolerate the person, because he reminds them of their own ugliness. Howsoever hidden in the clothes, it does not matter -- they know. Others may be deceived, but how can you deceive yourself? Nakedness becomes obscenity -- and all the animals are naked and all the birds are naked.

But I am not telling you to go in the streets naked. That time has not come yet. Just wait a little... let me have my people all around the world. Then our protests will be naked. They are asking us to drop firearms -- we are going to drop even the clothes! And if they feel ashamed they are not feeling ashamed of your nakedness; they are feeling ashamed of themselves and their bodies, what they have done with themselves. Hiding behind the clothes they have not taken any care of their bodies.

Right now -- because you are amongst those crippled people -- don't dance in the streets, because those crippled people are too many and we are very few. It is only because of those ugly people that I am telling you not to be naked in the street -- because you provoke their anger, their jealousy, their poverty. They don't have such a beautiful body.

But I promise you that the day is not far away when we will have enough people. Then we can fill all the streets of all the cities of the world with naked dancers, with thousands of singers and show them: "What you have missed, we have found. Don't be angry -- join us! And we will put your body right, and your mind right."

But it is a little too early. So right now, just behave the way the blind and the deaf and the crippled want you to behave. It is not our "norm" -- it is just a temporary adjustment with an insane world. Once we have enough people, we will show these insane people that "Unless you come naked on the streets, you are obscene. What are you afraid of? In your house you can use clothes, but not outside!"

AND OF HIM WHO COMES EARLY TO THE WEDDING FEAST AND WHEN OVER-FED AND TIRED, GOES HIS WAY SAYING THAT ALL FEASTS ARE VIOLATIONS, ALL FEASTERS ARE LAWBREAKERS.

This, on the superficial level, seems to be not of any importance, but it has a depth that you will have to discover. I know that all the political leaders, all the bureaucrats, are drinkers, smokers. Even when there was prohibition, in the very cabinet of Morarji Desai there were people who were drinking alcohol. And I don't think there was anything wrong in it. If Morarji Desai is free to drink his own urine... alcohol is purely vegetarian. In fact he is abnormal. He thinks every disease can be cured just by drinking your urine -- no medical colleges are needed, no doctors, no medicines.

I had a discussion with him, and I said, "Just tell me how you can cure a man who is suffering from cancer by having him drink his own urine? Or a man who is suffering from tuberculosis... the urine takes all the poisons of the body out and you are taking them back in! If you want to prohibit, prohibit everybody from drinking his own urine. You can say, `I am an exception, I am the prime minister of India -- only prime ministers are allowed.' And I know about your cabinet members, personally. They are all drinking alcohol. What is the point of imposing your ideas on people?"

Mahatma Gandhi is the father of four children, and after giving birth to four children he started teaching celibacy. At least give the same opportunity to everybody. And what happened to his celibacy in the end? -- because it was nothing but repression. At the late age of seventy he started sleeping with a naked girl. And his disciples wanted the fact not to be known to the public, because he would lose all his saintliness, mahatmahood -- at the age of seventy he is sleeping naked with a girl!

But they could not hide it for a simple reason: because a few years before, Gandhi's own private secretary, Pyarelal, had fallen in love with a woman. He was a young man, intelligent man, and a very beautiful writer. Gandhi prevented him, and gave him an ultimatum: "Either remain celibate or leave the ashram. Or if you want to get married, I have no objection -- get married, but remain celibate."

Strange kind of logic: fast, but keep all kinds of beautiful dishes around you. In that way, to fast becomes even more difficult because you cannot think of anything else but the beautiful dishes around you, and the aroma arising to you continuously reminds you that you are hungry.

It was Pyarelal -- and as far as I understand, out of sheer revenge -- who made the secret open to the whole world. He wrote a biography of Mahatma Gandhi and devoted almost one hundred pages to his unnatural idea of celibacy. And ultimately, before his death, Mahatma Gandhi started sleeping with a girl!

Even now, Gandhians don't talk about it. Films are made on Gandhi but that part is not there. And people like Vinoba Bhave, Kaka Kalelkar, his very close disciples, were writing letters to Pyarelal which he has published: "Do whatever you want but keep it a secret." These are the people who are in search of truth.

WHAT SHALL I SAY OF THESE SAVE THAT THEY TOO STAND IN THE SUNLIGHT, BUT WITH THEIR BACKS TO THE SUN?

All these people who are condemning others, judging others, just to feel superior, are doing nothing but one thing: standing not facing the sun, but keeping their backs to the sun. They don't want to see. They are perfectly content with their blindness. Their blindness is very long, old, it has become their philosophy, their religion, their lifestyle. They cannot change it -- and the change is very simple: just a one hundred and eighty-degree turn and there will be no darkness but only light.

But even if you force these people, they will keep their eyes closed. They are facing only their shadows; they see only their shadows and their shadows are their laws. This was the question -- "Tell us about the laws."

Almustafa is saying very correctly:

THEY SEE ONLY THEIR SHADOWS, AND THEIR SHADOWS ARE THEIR LAWS.

Their laws are made in their blindness, in their darkness, in their unconsciousness.

AND WHAT IS THE SUN TO THEM BUT A CASTER OF SHADOWS?

The sun is not a light to them, but only a caster of shadows. If you keep your back to the sun, naturally this will be your conclusion too.

AND WHAT IS IT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE LAWS BUT TO STOOP DOWN AND TRACE THEIR SHADOWS UPON THE EARTH?

They don't have any light, just their own shadow. So what remains?

WHAT IS IT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE LAWS BUT TO STOOP DOWN AND TRACE THEIR SHADOWS UPON THE EARTH?

And those tracings upon the earth of their own shadows, they want to impose on everyone else.

BUT YOU WHO WALK FACING THE SUN, WHAT IMAGES DRAWN ON THE EARTH CAN HOLD YOU?

A beautiful statement: But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn drawn on the earth can hold you? The sun is your law, that's what I am saying: Love is your only law. Don't act against love. Follow wherever your love leads you, and you will remain always innocent.

YOU WHO TRAVEL WITH THE WIND, WHAT WEATHERVANE SHALL DIRECT YOUR COURSE?

You simply have to live a life of let-go. The winds will take you lovingly wherever your destiny lies.

WHAT MAN'S LAW SHALL BIND YOU IF YOU BREAK YOUR YOKE BUT UPON NO MAN'S PRISON DOOR?

It is just in your hands to remain a slave or to become a free man. Free you were born -- slavery is the gift of all those who pretend to love you. Perhaps they are not even aware that they are making you slaves.

Break all chains, throw all yokes, and follow your own nature.

Wherever it leads is paradise.

It is not a question of asking where paradise is. I am saying, if you simply follow your nature, wherever you reach you will find paradise.

WHAT MAN'S LAW SHALL BIND YOU IF YOU BREAK YOUR YOKE BUT UPON NO MAN'S PRISON DOOR?

WHAT LAW SHALL YOU FEAR IF YOU DANCE BUT STUMBLE AGAINST NO MAN'S IRON CHAINS?

This is especially for you:

Dance, but don't stumble on somebody else's chains. If he has decided to remain in chains, that is his problem.

AND WHO IS THAT SHALL BRING YOU TO JUDGMENT IF YOU TEAR OFF YOUR GARMENT YET LEAVE IT IN NO MAN'S PATH?

Who has the authority to prevent you from throwing your clothes, your conditionings, and becoming an individual in your own right? But don't throw your clothes and garments in anybody's path.

PEOPLE OF ORPHALESE, YOU CAN MUFFLE THE DRUM AND YOU CAN LOOSEN THE STRINGS OF THE LYRE, BUT WHO SHALL COMMAND THE SKYLARK NOT TO SING?

The police commissioner of Poona!

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho!

Kahlil-Gibrans-Prophet

THE MESSIAH, VOL 1

Chapter-23

Except Love, There Should be No Law