AMI JHARAT BIGSAT KANWAL Osho Hindi Discourse Podcast Part-10
DATES AND PLACES : JAN 21-30 1979
Tenth Discourse from the series of 14 discourses – AMI JHARAT BIGSAT KANWAL by Osho. These discourses were given during MAR 11 -24 1979.
Ramanand Bharati, spiritual values are always a personal affair, not a collective one. Morality can be collective because it can be imposed from the outside, but spirituality is individual. A society can be moral, but it cannot be spiritual. How can a society be spiritual when it doesn’t have a soul? It only has behaviors and relationships. These can be moral or immoral, good or bad, virtuous or sinful. Spirituality transcends all this. It’s a state of consciousness where neither sin nor virtue exists, no chains of iron or gold. Where there is no mind, how can there be duality?
Indeed, such spirituality is fading in India. The lights of enlightened beings like Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Kabir, Dadu, and Dariya are becoming rare, very rare! There’s plenty of hypocrisy and pedantry in the name of religion, and it’s increasing. But true religion is missing because the fundamental bases for it have been lost.
Firstly, when a country is poor, when society is impoverished, all life and energy get entangled and exhausted in the struggle for daily bread. How can a poor person play the veena or flute? How can one who can’t secure a meal soar in spirituality? Spirituality is the ultimate luxury; it’s the ultimate indulgence! As the country became poorer, people’s ability to soar to such heights diminished.
In my view, the more prosperous we are, the more likely we are to see Buddhas arise. That’s why I’m not against prosperity; I’m for it. I want this country to be prosperous again. This ‘Golden Bird’ should shine once more. The nonsense about worshipping poverty should stop. Lakshmi-Narayan is fine; don’t replace them with Daridra-Narayan.
Buddha was born when the country was truly a ‘Golden Bird.’ The 24 Tirthankaras of Jainism, as well as Rama, Krishna, and Buddha, were princes. The great talents born in this country all came from royal palaces. It wasn’t by chance. Only those who have experienced can renounce. ‘Enjoy by renouncing!’ Only he who knows, lives, and experiences can let go. How can you ask someone who has never had wealth to give it up? How can someone who has never experienced the world renounce it?
Liberation comes from experience, detachment from experience. The experience of attachment leads to the temple of detachment. The deeper you dive into indulgence, the more intense your capacity for renunciation becomes.
These words may seem counterintuitive, but they’re not. The logic is straightforward. Whatever you indulge in reveals its futility. What you haven’t indulged in retains its allure, hidden in some corner of the mind, the desire lurking in the darkness, waiting for an opportunity to indulge. You haven’t known it’s meaningless. And until you know it’s meaningless, what use are the words of a thousand Buddhas? Buddha’s vision can’t become yours. My vision can’t become yours. Your vision is your own, and your experience is your own.
The world is a ladder to the Divine. And the potential for spirituality in India is diminishing because India is becoming poorer every day. And why? Because of our beliefs.
Firstly, we assume that people are poor or rich by fate. This is utterly foolish. No one is rich or poor by fate. Poverty and wealth are matters of social structure, intelligence, science, and technology. Do you think only the fortunate are born in America? If your scriptures are correct, then only the fortunate are born in America, and now only the unfortunate are born in India. If your scriptures are correct, then only sinners are born in India, those who have sinned before. And in America, those who have performed virtuous deeds are born.
Your scriptures are wrong, your math is wrong. America is not prosperous because virtuous people are being born there. America is prosperous because of science, technology, and the application of intelligence. America is becoming more prosperous every day. And you see, there’s a strong wave of spirituality in America! Such longing for meditation! Such eagerness for inner journeys! Thousands travel from the West to the East, hoping to find the keys to enlightenment. They don’t know the East has lost its keys. The East is very poor. And it’s difficult for these impoverished hands to hold the keys to the temple of the Divine.
So, the first thing is that India must become prosperous again. And for prosperity, we need to let go of ideas like Gandhianism. Without advanced technology, this country cannot become prosperous. Now its population is vast. During Buddha’s time, the entire country’s population was twenty million. Surely the country must have been prosperous—so much land for twenty million people. The land is still the same, but now there are six hundred million people! And I’m only talking about India now; we should also include Pakistan and Bangladesh because they were part of the twenty million during Buddha’s time. If you add those two, it’s eight hundred million. Where are twenty million people, and where are eight hundred million! Not an inch of land has increased. Yes, the land has decreased a lot. Decreased in the sense that in these two and a half thousand years, we have exploited the land so much, harvested so many crops, that the land has become barren day by day. We’ve taken everything from the land. Given nothing back. We don’t even think of giving back, just kept taking, kept taking. The land became impoverished, and with it, we became impoverished. And the more impoverished a society becomes, the more children it produces.
The world has strange accounts! Rich families have fewer children, poor families have more. Why? The rich often have to adopt children. There are reasons. The more comfort and rest there is in life, the more means of indulgence there are, the less the grip of sexual desire. For those who have no other means of indulgence, there’s only one entertainment—sexual desire, no other entertainment. Going to the movies costs money; radio, television, dance, music, all cost money. Sexual desire seems cost-free. So the poor man has only one entertainment—sexual desire. So the poor man keeps having children. The poorer the countries are, the poorer they become. The richer the countries are, the richer they become; because in rich countries, having children is a well-considered decision.
We need fewer children, more science—and the opposition in your mind to materialism must end. Because spirituality can only stand on the foundation of materialism. You build temples, adorn them with golden spires, but you have to fill the foundation with rough stones, not gold. Surely, the pinnacle of life’s temple should be spirituality, but the foundation must be materialism.
In my opinion, materialists and spiritualists shouldn’t be enemies, they should be friends. Yes, don’t just stop at materialism. Otherwise, it’s like filling the foundation and never building the temple. Don’t stop at materialism. Lay the foundation of materialism, then build the temple of spirituality on it. Materialism is like the wooden veena strung with strings. And spirituality is like the music that arises from the veena. There’s no opposition between the veena and the music. The veena is material, the music is immaterial. You can touch and hold the veena; you can’t touch or hold the music, only experience it. You can’t grasp it in your fist.
Responses