From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 27. BAPTISM: WADING FOR GODOT
Now, what is Mother Teresa running around for in her old age? There should be a time of retirement
even for saints. These poor saints never get retired; they become senile but still nobody retires them.
Nobody tells them, ”Now you retire, you have done enough. Now let others do some good works;
otherwise you will be the only monopolist in heaven. Share with other saints also. Now you retire,
and we will do the good things you were doing.” But no, saints never retire.
Sinners retire but saints never retire.
Strange.... It’s because the saint never gets tired, for the simple reason that his ego goes on
becoming stronger and stronger. And he is collecting virtue; his treasure in the other world is
increasing more and more. He is coming closer to God every day, so certainly he needs orphans,
he needs accidents, he needs poor people.
On the one hand the pope says, ”The idea of class struggle is a sin. The poor have to remain poor;
they should not make any effort to change the structure of the society. This is the only society that
has been given to them by God. Who are you to think that you can improve upon it?
”If the class structure is there it is a great opportunity, not a tragedy. If you are poor it is a great
opportunity: Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of God. If you want the kingdom of
God then don’t make any effort to change the society, to create a revolution, to create some kind of
structure where there is not so much distance between the rich and the poor.”
I know it will be difficult for the sleeping man to create a society where there is no class at all.
A classless society can only be an enlightened society.
Before that, a classless society is not possible.
Marx is as much asleep as you are.
Communists are as much asleep as the capitalists.
So in Russia, what happened? Sixty years, more than sixty years have passed. They changed the
old structure; now there is nobody who is rich and nobody who is poor. That division they destroyed,
but a new division has come in: between the bureaucracy – one who is in the government – and one
who is just an ordinary citizen. Now all the power is in the hands of the bureaucracy; much more so
than it had ever been in the hands of rich people.
Rich people had power because they had money; through money they could purchase anything. But
in Russia, the bureaucracy has every power over every individual: to let you live or to finish you off,
to keep you in the country or send you to Siberia to die in that eternal world of ice. They have power
over your life and death. Such power was never in the hands of the people who had money.
Yes, they had certain powers. They could have a better house than you, they could have more
luxuries, more comforts than you, but they did not have the right over your life and death. If they
killed you, then in the court they were treated in the same way as everyone else. Perhaps they may
have managed a little bit by bribing the court, the judge, but that was very indirect, very difficult. In
Russia it is blatantly naked: direct power is in the hands of the bureaucracy.
From Ignorance to Innocence 398 Osho