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| Teaching poor
people against birth control |
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Osho:
....
I have to criticize religions which
are obstructing human progress, in many ways.
Right now all the Christian priests, Hindu priests, Mohammedan priests all
around the world are doing one thing: teaching poor people against birth
control, because it is overpopulation that is going to give them numbers.
And it is overpopulation that is going to keep half of the earth poor,
starving -- and the poor and the starving are easily vulnerable to being
converted.
You just give them education, food, a house to live in and you have brought
gifts from God -- they will be Christians. Poverty should continue; otherwise
who is going to be in the churches, who is going to be converted?
I have to say categorically that
all conversion is criminal.
Nobody has the right to impose his own ideology on other people.
You have the right to express your ideology and leave it for people to think
about.
If you have provoked thinking, that's enough.
You have done a great job if you have triggered thinking.
A child was just asking, "Why
is God there? What is the need?"
The child must be very intelligent, he has asked a very significant question.
It is because of fear.
It is because of ignorance.
It is because inside, you are full of darkness.
Hence you are continuously afraid.
Outside, you know there is going to be death, sooner or later.
You know there is going to be old age, there is going to be sickness, all kinds
of diseases, and you are going to suffer all these things.
Humanity has to be somehow consoled: "Don't be worried, God is taking care
of you. He is the creator -- you may not be looking at him, but he is always
looking at you." Don't get afraid of the idea -- because once you are
alone in your room and you start feeling that he is looking from the roof....
And man is so imaginative, he can
manage it that behind those two eyes there is a head, and of course you will be
in a panic! You may have been talking about God but you don't know... if you
meet him, what are you going to say?
For the part of humanity that is not going to try and experience its own light,
society has to give substitutes. God is a substitute, a name -- just a
lollipop... nothing of much use, no nourishment, but sounds good:
"lollipop."
Because of the concept of God, man has been able to live -- not very joyously,
because his whole living is based on wrong principles. But still, somehow he
has been able to drag through his life.
Without God you sudddenly feel a cold wave around you, a dark night surrounding
you.
God was the great father -- protection, security, hope... all are gone.
This makes one mature -- if you can
get rid of God you are mature.
According to me, twenty-one years of age does not make you mature, adult.
Only one thing makes man mature, and that is getting rid of God -- because God
is a bundle of all kinds of fears, greeds, hopes. It is opium; it keeps you
drugged.
But while you are drugged your life is slipping by, and soon death will knock
on the door and then it will be too late.
To find the real answer to the
question you have to sit silently, alert, not falling asleep, and just going
inwards, slowly slowly.... First it will start becoming darker and darker and
darker, and then suddenly there is dawn, and the birds are singing and the sun
is rising and you are free.
Your wings are open for the first time.
Now you can claim the whole sky with all its stars.
A man without God is an authentic man.
A man with God is just a shadow, he has not entered into the world of reality
yet.
You have millions of priests and
none of them has the courage to say that he has encountered God.
Not even the representatives -- the pope, the shankaracharyas, Ayatollah
Khomeini -- not even these people are courageous enough to say that they have
encountered God.
They are as afraid as you are; there are doubts in their minds as there are
doubts in your mind, because doubts disappear only when you have experienced
something.
God is not a question of belief, it is an experience of inner light.
Then you can give it any name.
You can call it God, you can call it truth, you can call it love, you can call
it peace.
You can call it life -- it does not matter what word is used, but it should be
based on experience.
Once you have experienced your light, you know there is no need of any other
God.
The whole existence is godly.
OshO
Sermons in Stones
Chapter #11
Chapter title: I have to be offensive to wake you up!
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