silence shared in words
presents
The Birth of a New Man
Since you have been speaking again this time,
many of us feel that you are taking us into another phase of your work.
Is this true?
Absolutely true.
I had
to give
a three year gap
and remain silent
for so many reasons.
One of the reasons relevant to your question is
that I had been speaking
on Jesus,
on Krishna,
on Buddha,
on Mahavira.
I was speaking on all other
traditions of religion:
Hassidism,
Zen,
Sufism.
I had spoken on almost all
important people
who had contributed
something to human consciousness:
Lao Tzu,
Chuang Tzu,
Lieh Tzu,
Bodhidharma,
Bokuju,
Socrates,
Pythagoras,
Zarathustra,
Kabir,
Shankara,
Dadu,
Milarepa,
Marpa,
Nagarjuna,
Vasubandhu.
I covered almost the whole world.
Wherever I found
a man who has contributed to human consciousness,
whether it was Greece
Heraclitus,
Diogenes,
Dionysius
or it was Tibet,
or it was China,
or it was
Arabia,
it did not matter to me.
I was speaking on these people
for a certain reason,
a simple device.
I had no people of my own.
I had
to throw my net far and wide.
When I spoke on Jesus,
Christians were happy,
immensely happy;
they started coming to me.
Even priests,
bishops,
became sannyasins.
And I was laughing all the time inside,
that what I was saying
was my own,
it had nothing to do with Jesus;
Jesus was just an excuse.
I used his words,
but put my meaning into them.
And those people were thinking,
"We have never understood Jesus rightly,
we were thinking something else."
In fact, they were right;
I was
changing the wine,
keeping the bottle.
And when I had
enough
people
who were capable of listening to me directly,
and I didn't have to drop
things which are ugly in Jesus,
ugly in Mahavira...because
in the beginning I was not
in the position to offend these people.
To offend these people in the beginning
would have been
a disaster:
you would not have been here,
I would not have been here.
So I used those devices,
and then I stopped speaking just to give a gap
so that those who are
only
interested in me
because I speak on Jesus will leave.
Those who think that I am
supporting
Hinduism by speaking on the Gita
will leave
because silence is not a discourse on the Gita.
This was a beautiful experience.
A
few people left,
just enough to be counted on your fingers.
But
more than half a million people
are now ready
to listen to me.
Now I don't care.
I can call Jesus just what he is: a crackpot.
I can call Mahavira just
exactly what he is:
a masochist.
Now I know
that you can understand me.
It was a preparatory period.
I was not thinking that I was going to catch
so many fish,
but truth has its own mysterious ways.
I have
with me,
with great love,
trust,
friendliness,
more than half a million sannyasins.
But that is not the whole number
who are
getting close to me.
There are at least two million people
who are
in great sympathy
with what I am saying,
but
they don't yet have
courage enough
to come out and declare,
"I have dropped the past
and I am ready for the present."
And there are at least one million people
who are just
fifty-fifty:
they read my books, they go to church too.
I know
that if they go on continuing to read my books
particularly now that I am creating the new Bible
and The Last Testament....
You have heard about the Old Testament and the New Testament;
I am creating The Last Testament.
If they go on reading what I am saying now,
things will be settled.
Either
they will burn my books
and take shelter in a church,
or
they will burn the Old Testament and the New Testament
and be my people.
Right now they are in a split.
But I don't see
how any intelligent person
can choose
if he understands me
anything
two thousand years old, three thousand years old,
five thousand years old,
unless he is a junk collector.
Yes,
it is totally a new phase,
because I have found my people
and now I can open my heart
totally.
Now
all the cards are open on the table!
I have nothing to hide from you,
because I know
your love will be able to understand it.
Copyright© OSHO International Foundation
www.OSHO.com/copyright
OSHO is a registered Trademark of OSHO International Foundation