From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 17. JESUS, THE ONLY FORGOTTEN SON OF GOD
The whole day you are hunting, and in the night you cannot sleep. In the day you can somehow
survive – you can go up a tree, you can hide in a cave – but in the night, when you are asleep, what
can you do? And the animals of those days are no longer here – only a few specimens like the
elephant, which is not that huge. There were animals ten times more huge than the elephant.
For example, the crocodile – there were crocodiles that were many times bigger, which are no longer
here. They did not need to chew you if they ate you, they simply swallowed you, they were such big
animals. You simply slipped down their throat – and gone! – there was no eating or anything.
With these animals, with all the darkness, the people who invented God must have done a service
in the beginning. They gave courage. They said, ”Don’t be afraid. All that you have to do is to be
prayerful, faithful.” Certainly they took a certain amount of commission, and I don’t think that it was
bad, because business is business. They were giving you so much, and if you gave a little bit to
those people, you should not be grumpy about it.
So a little bit was given to the priest and the priest gave you the confidence and an omnipotent God
– omniscient, omnipresent – and you began to start feeling at ease in the world. The priest gave
you the idea: ”God has created man in His own image, so don’t be afraid.... You are His special
creation. All these animals He has created for you, all these trees He has created for you.”
That’s the Mohammedan logic still. You cannot talk about vegetarian food because they say, ”Why
did God create the animals then? The Koran says that God created the animals to eat. When the
holy book says that the animals are created to be eaten, how can it be a sin or anything wrong?”
The priest made man, at least in his mind, stronger. Of course they exploited him, and slowly, slowly,
there were many more psychological needs.
And they had found a great treasure in the word ”god”: it fulfilled all kinds of things, all needs.
The greatest need of man is to be needed.
If you are not needed by anybody in the world you will commit suicide, you will not be able to live.
Strange – perhaps you have never thought about it, that you are seeking continuously to be needed.
That gives you preciousness, some value, some meaning. Perhaps a woman marries a man simply
to fulfill the need that she is needed. And the same may be the reason for the man... that he wants
to feel that some woman needs him.
The man has tried to force the woman not to earn money, not to do any work, not to be educated. The
psychological reason is – there are political, economical, and other reasons but the psychological
reason is – he wants her to be dependent on him so she is always in need of him, and he can feel
good that he is needed.
They will produce children and both will feel good that now these children need them... you have
some purpose to live for. You have to live for these children, you have to live for your wife, you have
to live for your husband: life is no longer meaningless.
From Ignorance to Innocence 235 Osho