Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 1. THE FUTURE BELONGS TO KRISHNA
It is said of Jesus that he never laughed. It was perhaps his sad look and the picture of his physical
form on the cross that became the focal point of at traction for people, most of whom are themselves
unhappy and miserable. In a deep sense Mahavira and Buddha are against life too. They are in
favor of some other life in some other world; they support a kind of liberation from this life.
Every religion, up to now, has divided life into two parts, and while they accept one part they deny the
other, Krishna alone accepts the whole of life. Acceptance of life in its totality has attained full fruition
in Krishna. That is why India held him to be a perfect incarnation of God, while all other incarnations
were assessed as imperfect and incomplete. Even Rama is described as an incomplete incarnation
of God. But Krishna is the whole of God.
And there is a reason for saying so. The reason is that Krishna has accepted and absorbed
everything that life is.
Albert Schweitzer made a significant remark in criticism of the Indian religion. He said that the
religion of this country is life negative. This remark is correct to a large extent, if Krishna is left out.
But it is utterly wrong in the context of Krishna. If Schweitzer had tried to understand Krishna he
would never have said so.
But it was unfortunate that we did not allow Krishna to influence our life in a broad way. He remains
a lonely dancing island in the vast ocean of sorrow and misery that is our life. Or, we can say he
is a small oasis of joyous dancing and celebration in the huge desert of sadness and negativity, of
suppression and condemnation that we really are. Krishna could not influence the whole spectrum
of our life, and for this we are alone to blame. Krishna is not in the least responsible for it. We were
not that worthy, that deserving, to have him, to imbibe him, to absorb him.
Up to now, man’s mind has thought of and looked at life in fragments – and thought dialectically.
The religious man denies the body and accepts the soul. And what is worse, he creates a conflict, a
dichotomy between the body and spirit. He denies this world, he accepts the other world, and thus
creates a state of hostility between the two. Naturally our life is going to be sad and miserable if we
deny the body, because all our life’s juice – its health and vitality, its sensitivities and beauty, all its
music – has its source in the body. So a religion that denies and denounces the body is bound to be
anemic and ill, it has to be lackluster. Such a religion is going to be as pale and lifeless as a dry leaf
fallen from a tree. And the people who follow such a religion, who allow themselves to be influenced
and conditioned by it, will be as anemic and prone to death as these leaves are.
Krishna alone accepts the body in its totality. And he accepts it not in any selected dimension but
in all its dimensions. Apart from Krishna, Zarathustra is another. About him it is said he was born
laughing. Every child enters this world crying. Only one child in all of history laughed at the time
of his birth, and that was Zarathustra. And this is an index – an index of the fact that a happy and
laughing humanity is yet to be born. And only a joyful and laughing humanity can accept Krishna.
Krishna has a great future. After Freud the world of religion is not going to be the same as it was
before him. Freud stands as a watershed between the religions of the past and the religion of the
future. With Freud a great revolution has taken place and man’s consciousness has achieved a
breakthrough. We shall never be the same again after Freud. A new peak of consciousness has
been touched and a new understanding, an altogether new perspective, a new vision of life has
come into being. And it is essential to understand it rightly.
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 3 Osho