From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 19. RELIGION IS REBELLION
He came running to me, ”I am a fool, but what to do? I just could not resist putting this Doctor Barat
right in his place. For three months I have been suffering and he knew the cure, and he went on
giving me this tablet and that, and then he started the injections. Finally he started saying,’You may
need surgery – and just a glass of water! And he did not suggest that at all.”
I said, ”I cannot help you. Now the water won’t work; you have broken the promise – the miracle will
not happen again. Now you go to Doctor Barat and take his medicine, or do whatsoever you want.”
But he went around, even though still in pain, saying, ”I have seen a miracle.”
These people are there – sometimes very educated people, but deep down they are as gullible
as any uneducated person. Once I am not there, you have to remember it, that all my miracles
were simply jokes and nothing else; that I have been enjoying every opportunity. If there was an
opportunity to manage a miracle, I have not missed it. But there was no miracle at all. If you
know just a little bit of human psychology you can do great things which are not prescribed in the
psychology literature and textbooks – because they are not concerned with that.
But if you know a little bit of human psychology, just a little bit – not much is needed.... And man
is ready, he wants the miracle to happen. He wants to see the miracle happen; he is ready for
the messiah. He is hankering, desiring deep down to find someone who is higher than him, more
powerful than him; then he can follow him.
But I have been cutting all the roots. You ask me, ”Is there any possibility of your religion not being
reduced to a cult?” Yes, there is a possibility, only one possibility – and that is that sannyasins go on
becoming enlightened, so there is always a chain of enlightened people around.
Buddha’s religion was not reduced to a cult for five hundred years. For five hundred years the
chain continued; there was always somebody who was enlightened, so in some way the Buddha
consciousness was present. It remained alive. But after five hundred years the gap came, and then
for six hundred years Buddhism was just a cult.
Then came Bodhidharma.
Bodhidharma created a new dimension, Zen, which is still alive fourteen hundred years later. This
is the longest time any religion has been alive. Bodhidharma has got the trophy, because in Zen,
continuously in these fourteen hundred years, there has not been a single day when there was not
somebody alive and enlightened – no break, no gap. Hence it is possible – difficult, but possible.
All that you have to remember is: no God, no priesthood, no holy scripture, no miracles, no
superman. For the first time in the whole of history I am saying that an ordinary man can be
enlightened. In fact only an ordinary man can be enlightened. Ordinariness for the first time is
given this much respect. So don’t try to make me someone extraordinary.
I am trying in every way so that you cannot make me.... I go on doing everything that will prove that
this was not a superman or a messiah or a tirthankara. I will not fit with any image. You cannot
manage to make me extraordinary. Beware of the human tendency: one wants one’s Master to be
extraordinary. But this is what leads ultimately to the death of religion.
From Ignorance to Innocence 274 Osho