The second question

Question 2

OSHO,

I AM TOO POSSESSIVE IN NATURE. HOW TO GET AWAY FROM THIS INDIAN MALE CHAUVINISTIC MIND? OSHO, PLEASE HELP ME.

Yogeshwar Bharti,

YES YOU ARE RIGHT. The Indian mind is basically very possessive, very materialistic, although it pretends to be spiritual. That pretension is a cover-up. This is one of the strategies of the unconscious mind: if you feel inferior inside you try on the outside to be very superior. You have to hide your inferiority with pretentions, with superiority. If you feel poor inside you start accumulating money to show to the world and to show to yourself that you are not poor. "Look how much I have got!" Proving to the world that you are rich you are trying in an indirect way to prove to yourself that you are not poor; but deep down the poverty cannot be dispelled by all your riches. You can have the whole world, you can conquer the whole world, still you will remain a beggar. And this happens in many dimensions.

To India it has happened: for centuries the country has been pretending to be spiritual. It is not spiritual at all, that's why it is pretending to be spiritual. It is just the opposite of it.

If you look into the Indian scriptures, if you go back to the Vedas, you will be surprised: the Vedas are very materialistic. It is very rare to come across a statement in the Vedas which can be called spiritual. The RISHIS, the seers of the Vedas -- the so-called seers -- are asking for money, power, from God; asking for things, wordly things! Praying to God, "Give us more wealth, more health. Give us a long life. Give more milk to our cows. Give more crops to our fields, more fruit to our trees." And not only that: "Destroy our enemies. Destroy their crops. Destroy their cows, their horses. Don't rain on the fields of the enemies. Give us everything and don't give them anything."

And you call these scriptures spiritual? They are utterly materialistic! Not only the Vedas but all the puranas are very materialistic. Not only the so-called seers but the Indian idea of gods is very materialistic.

Indra is the suprememost god in heaven. And what does he go on doing? All that is condemned here: eating, drinking and merrying, that's all he goes on doing there. He has beautiful APSARAS -- beautiful women -- wine, delicious food. And he is very jealous, so much so that whenever somebody starts attaining heights of meditation he becomes afraid that he may become the next Indra. "He may take possession of my kingdom." And he sends his beautiful girls, his APSARAS, to tempt, to destroy this meditator. They allure him with all kinds of temptations.

Now what kind of god is Indra? Utterly materialistic! Utterly possessive, monopolistic!

And still India goes on pretending to be spiritual, and anybody can see the pretension. Deep down something else is hidden -- a wound, but it is covered with flowers.

My own experience is -- because I have come to know almost all kinds of people, from all over the world they have come to me -- that the Indians are the most materialistic people in the world. And they will remain materialist till they understand what they have been doing: they have become hypocrites.

"Today we will have a nice walk," said Seth Chandulal to his kids. "We will go down to the fair and watch people eat ice cream!"

"Hey, boss, I have been here twenty-five years and I have never asked for a raise before," said Popatlal to Chandulal.

"That's why you have been here twenty-five years!" replied Chandulal.

Chandulal took his dog to the veterinarian and asked him to cut his tail off completely.

"Why in the world would you want me to do that?" asked the vet.

"Well," Seth Chandulal said, "my mother-in-law is coming to visit us, and I don't want anything in the house to suggest that she is welcome!"

The Indian mind is materialist, the Indian culture is materialist. Yes, there have been a few people who rebelled against it -- a Mahavira, a Buddha -- just a few people. And because they rebelled, the Indian culture has not tolerated them. Buddhism was completely destroyed from India: it was against the Indian materialist mind.

Buddha has introduced a totally new vision of life -- it WAS spiritual. But he was against the Vedas and he was against the whole idea of Hindu gods. And the Hindus of course said, "He is destroying our culture, our religion, our spirituality." In a way they were right -- he was destroying -- because what you think is culture, spirituality, religion, is not so, is not the case. It is only your hypocrisy; it is something false. And unless you see the false as the false you cannot know the real. And Buddha tried hard to make you understand that reality is just the opposite -- opposite to your beliefs about yourself. Hence the Hindus have never been able to forgive him; they destroyed his whole heritage. He was uprooted from India.

And you can see it in every way. Their whole idea of spirituality is repressive. When they come to this commune their eyes are focused on the women, and they throw the whole blame on me. They become angry because the commune reflects their faces, the commune becomes a mirror to them. They become aware of what they are. And nobody wants to know one's nudity. They are enraged. Seeing their real faces they become angry at the mirror; they want to destroy the mirror. They are against me because I am mirroring them.

When they come here they only look at the women, and of course their lust, their repressed lust, their repressed sexuality starts surfacing. And they become so afraid, they have to repress it again. And they become angry at me because I was the cause. They think I caused what was happening inside them. I am simply reflecting what is already there.

They can't see my sannyasins in the true light, because it is impossible for a repressive person to see anything in true light. If they see one woman and man hugging each other they immediately feel, "This is sexuality!" They cannot see any tenderness; they cannot see any loving quality. If they were unrepressed they would be able to see the love that is overflowing here. They project their own ideas.

And this is not only so with the ordinary Indians, but the so-called Indian gurus are the same.

A prudent guru did not want to waste too much time in cultivating people who were without sufficient prestige and collateral. He was introduced, it is said, to an American widow who was reputed to be very wealthy. Having learned a thing or two about how things are done in the West, he asked an enquiry agency to check her out.

When he opened the report it said: "She has a million dollars in the bank, but will probably not have it for long, as it is reported that an Indian phony is trying to get his hands on it."

It is not surprising that all the so-called Indian gurus have reached America. Wherever money is you will find the Indian also. Muktananda, Satchitananda, Yogi Bhajan, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, are all in America for the simple reason that the money is there. And they go on talking against the money -- that's the most beautiful thing about it! They are not authentic.

I am not against money at all. What I am against is hypocrisy. They TALK against money and they go on accumulating money.

Remember, to me there is no problem. I am not against materialism either. In fact, my whole effort is to create a synthesis between materialism and spiritualism. There is no need to divide them, because man is both body and soul. If man can be both body and soul, then religion should be both materialist and spiritual.

But the Indian cannot accept the materialist point of view; he is afraid of it. He is afraid if it is accepted, then all his repressed lust, greed, is bound to surface. And he goes on finding cunning ways to avoid seeing his true face.

An Indian guru ran into a buxom blonde he had met casually at a bar a few nights before.

"Great seeing you again," he said, "It just happens there is a groovy party happening tonight and I would like you to come. I won't take no for an answer.

"Where is it at?" asked the pretty doll.

"At my ashram, baby, and it is gonna be a gas. Lots of music, dancing and love. And it could last all weekend."

"Sounds good," said the girl eagerly. "Who is gonna be there?"

"Ah," said the guru, "just you and me!"

If you watch, if you observe what the Indian gurus are doing in the West, you will be surprised. And they go on talking about spirituality, and the gullible are always there. And the West is more innocent because the West is honestly materialist. To be honestly materialist has an integrity in it, an innocence. The East is dishonestly materialist.

Yogeshwar, you say: I AM TOO POSSESSIVE IN NATURE.

That is part of being an Indian. Unless you drop the whole nonsense called "Indian" you will not be able to be free of your possessiveness.

Jainas talk about spirituality, renunciation, but if you look in their scriptures you will be surprised. They praise Mahavira because he renounced big marble palaces, a great kingdom, immeasurable wealth, a great army, etcetera, etcetera. And they go on magnifying it, making it bigger and bigger. As time has passed, their idea of Mahavira's kingdom has become very very huge.

In fact, he was the son of a king of a very small kingdom -- very small -- because in his time India was divided into two thousand kingdoms. It was not bigger than a district; it was a very small kingdom. It can't have had so many thousands of elephants in the army; it can't have had that big an army either. It was a very poor kingdom. If Mahavira had not been born nobody would have ever heard of it; no mention would have ever been made about it. Nobody would have ever known Mahavira's father's name. It was so small.

But how do you measure renunciation? -- through wealth. If a poor man renounces, nobody respects him because they will ask, "What you have renounced? In the first place you have to have, then you can renounce."

That's why all the twenty-four TEERTHANKARAS, all the twenty-four great Masters of the Jainas, are sons of kings. Not a single person comes from a poor family. What does it show? It shows pure materialism, nothing else!

All the AVATARAS of the Hindus are sons of kings -- as if the whole country is dead! Not a single AVATARA, not a single incarnation of God in a poor family or even in a middle class family! No TEERTHANKARA, no enlightened Jaina Master, from an ordinary family; they all come from royal families.

You can see the point. The point is that the respect is for money. Even in renunciation, the respect is for money. If you have money, then you are respected. Your renunciation will also be respected. If you don't have money you can be as great a meditator as Mahavira, nobody is going to respect you. They will ask, "How much have you renounced?" And if you cannot show them a big bank balance that you have renounced you are not of any worth.

Yogeshwar, drop this idea of being an Indian.

You ask me: "HOW TO GET AWAY FROM THIS INDIAN MALE CHAUVINISTIC MIND?

Just by understanding it one gets away, one gets beyond. We are taught to cling to such ideas -- Indians, Russians, Americans, Hindus, Christians, Mohammedans -- we have been taught to cling to these ideas.

I am teaching you just to be human beings. The whole earth is one and people everywhere are the same. They differ only in superficial things -- in non-essential things, in the language of the DESIDERATA. As far as the essential is concerned they are not different at all. Maybe their color is different, maybe the color of their hair is different, their skin is different, their height is different, but these are non-essential things.

The human being is essentially the same everywhere, so why carry these ideas of being Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian? Drop all these ideas. Just being religious is enough, just being human is enough. Just being is enough -- loving, meditative, alert, aware. And all these poisons will disappear of their own accord.

Go deeper into meditation, because all these things are part of the mind, and meditation means going into no-mind. Just become aware of your mind, whatsoever it is -- Indian male chauvinistic or Russian communistic or Catholic or Protestant. Just become aware. Awareness is neither communist nor socialist nor fascist nor capitalist. Awareness is just awareness. Whatsoever is in the mind, leave it there as an object and be aware. And you shift your identity from the content to the consciousness.

Remember that "I am only awareness," that "I am not my mind." The more this penetrates in you, this vision that "I am not my mind, I am pure awareness, SATCHITANANDA. I am truth, I am consciousness, I am bliss. I am not the contents of the mind..." Contents have been put in by others; contents mean conditionings.

As you become aware you become unconditioned; there is no other way. Awareness is the master key: it opens all the DOORS of the divine. It opens the doors of all the temples of all the mysteries.