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Part IX : World Tour - Osho visits Crete
On 16 February 1986, Osho flies to Greece. He stays in a cliff-top
villa in Aghia Nikolaos (St Nicholas) on the island of Crete.
On 19 February Osho begins discourses and press interviews under
a large tree in the enclosed garden of the villa; sannyasins play
music and dance with him.
And now you are in Crete—by chance or deliberately?
I am just a visitor…and by chance, just because I have a
few beautiful sannyasins here like Amrito, who pulled me here
and I could not deny them. In fact, I am incapable of saying no
to anybody, so people can take me anywhere they want. socrat09
When I was in Greece it was only for a four-week tourist visa…and
I had not gone out of the house. The house was on a small island;
it belonged to the best film producer in Greece, he was my host.
It was just on a hilltop, a direct drop to the ocean—a very
beautiful place, a beautiful garden, and I had never gone out
of the gate. fire01
You live in your own world, separated from "common people."
How can you know the way of life outside your own place?
Who says I live in my own world? My own world consists of my own
people. Their number is not small, and they have all kinds of
talents, all kinds of educations, different personalities. One
million sannyasins—that is my world. All those million sannyasins
are increasing; there must be at least three million who are sympathizers,
who are ready to become part of my world.
I am not living in a cave, and anybody who wants to enter into
my world needs no passport, no visa.
I am ready to take the whole world into my world; that's my very
effort. That's why I know the human mind, its functions, its different
strategies of keeping people asleep.
One day I was asleep and part of the whole world. Today I am awake.
I have known the sleeping mind within myself; I know the awakening
within myself. I am certainly richer than you. You know only one
dimension of your being; you are ignoring the other dimension.
And I am not a recluse living in a cave or a monastery; I am moving
in the world.
But basically my people are my world, because my people have shown
courage and I feel responsible for them. socrat16
Isn't it a responsibility for you when hundreds of sannyasins
will be coming to Crete now?
It is my joy….
It is not a responsibility, it is absolute blissfulness for me
to be with my people.
And here, I can call them because here we are not going to have
a commune, so we don't care what the government thinks, what the
bishop thinks. And they are already thinking stupid things. Just
the other day I saw that the bishop of Crete called a meeting
of other priests, because he has been informed that two thousand
sannyasins are going to be here, and he is afraid for the traditional.
And here, I can call them because here we are not going to have
a commune, so we don't care what the government thinks, what the
bishop thinks. And they are already thinking stupid things. Just
the other day I saw that the bishop of Crete called a meeting
of other priests, because he has been informed that two thousand
sannyasins are going to be here, and he is afraid for the traditional
values. He is afraid that my sannyasins will not fit with their
society, with their church.
Certainly I have the most misfit people around the whole world,
who don't fit anywhere—but they fit with me absolutely!
And I don't see the point. I have such nice people, such beautiful
people, such loving people; you cannot find anywhere else such
people together. But the society is afraid….
If some government is not going to give me unconditionally a
place where twenty to forty thousand sannyasins can gather at
a time, then I am not going to stay anywhere. Then it means no
country belongs to me. I am country-less, homeless. And I will
remain a wanderer, moving around the world, meeting my people
wherever they are.
It is not a responsibility, it is an immense joy to me. socrat04
How do you feel to be here in Greece, the land of Socrates?
Socrates is one of the persons I love the most. And coming here
I feel tremendously joyous, because it is the same air Socrates
must have breathed, the same land he must have walked, the same
people with whom he must have talked, communicated with.
To me, without Socrates Greece is nothing. With Socrates, it is
everything….
I feel immensely happy to be here.
I have loved Socrates much more than anyone else—for his
humbleness, for his scientific enquiry, for not creating a religion,
not creating a theology, not creating a following, not becoming
a prophet…which he was capable of, far more capable than
Jesus or Moses or Mohammed. These people were all illiterate.
Socrates was far more sophisticated, as cultured as you can
imagine….
What Socrates was doing twenty-five centuries ago, I am doing
now.
Twenty-five centuries have gone by without any change as far as
humanity is concerned. Three times they have tried to kill me…three
attempts on my life. In every possible way the same people whom
I am trying to make free, trying to take their chains away, are
ready to kill me. Humanity has not changed. It will still do the
same.
But what Socrates was not capable of doing, I am capable of
doing.
He remained in the very small area of Athens, not even the whole
of Greece. Athens was a city-state, and he remained an Athenian
for his whole life.
I belong to the whole world.
In a small place you may not get people of courage, but in the
whole world you are bound to come across thousands of people who
have the capacity to become a Socrates. So I am in a better position.
And you are the evidence for it. All around the world now we
have three to four million people whose hearts are with me. This
is a great revolution. And their number is going to increase as
I will be coming to every nook and corner of the world….
And my effort is that the future religion should be nothing
but a science. Just as there are other sciences—they are
the sciences of the objective world—there should be one
more science, of the inner, subjective world. There is no space
or scope for any religion at all. The scientific spirit is capable
of revealing the truth of the object and it is capable of revealing
the truth of the subject, of your interior.
I am immensely happy to be here because of Socrates, but immensely
sad too because of the people of Greece who poisoned the man.
socrat01
How would you like to introduce yourself to the Greek people?
My God! Can't you recognize me? I am the same person you have
poisoned twenty-five centuries ago. You have forgotten me, but
I have not forgotten you. And just being here for two days, I
was thinking that in twenty-five centuries Greece would have evolved
towards some better qualities, towards more humanity, towards
more truth. But I am feeling sad, because in just two days there
have been articles in the Greek newspapers telling absolute lies
about me, making allegations which have no foundation in reality,
absurdities….
The bishop is printing a pamphlet against me to distribute.
This Sunday morning he is going to speak against me. He knows
nothing about me.
There has been a protest march yesterday. Phone calls are coming
that stones will be thrown at my meetings. That gives me a feeling
that certainly I am in Greece, but things have changed for the
worse. socrat05
Just when I came to your beautiful island I was informed that
Kazantzakis, one of the greatest artists of the contemporary world,
was expelled, excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox church. The
reason for his expulsion was the creation of Zorba the Buddha.
He named it Zorba The Greek. Unconsciously he was creating the
base of a new man; I call that new man Zorba the Buddha. It cannot
be Greek, it cannot be Italian, it cannot be German, it cannot
be Hindu, it cannot be Mohammedan…. socrat23
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