What Do You Call Freedom?

It can be taken away. Only that which has grown within you cannot be taken away from you; hence, Almustafa says:

In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though it’s links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.

It happened in Uruguay: The president had been reading my books, listening to my tapes, and he was very happy to welcome me to become a permanent resident in Uruguay. All the forms were ready. He had given me a one year’s permanent residency card, so that all the bureaucratic procedure was fulfilled, and nobody could say that I had been favoured. And he said, “Then I would like to give you three years’ permanent residency, which will turn automatically into your citizenship.”

Uruguay is a small country, but very beautiful. I asked him, “Why are you interested in me? – because all the governments are passing orders that I should not enter their country. Not only that, my airplane cannot land at their airports.

He said, “They don’t understand you.”

The day the president was going to sign the forms, the American ambassador was continually watching, and the American government dogs of the CIA and FBI were following me everywhere. Their plane was either ahead of me or behind me. When they saw that he was going to sign for a permanent residency, which would turn automatically into citizenship, they immediately informed Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan phoned the president of Uruguay, and said, “My message is not big, it is small: either force Osho to be deported within thirty-six hours from your country, or I will cancel all the loans for the future that we have agreed on” – which amounted to billions of dollars – “and I will demand back all the dollars that we have given to you as loans in the past. If you cannot pay, then their interest rate will be doubled. You are perfectly free to choose.”

I have never seen such a soft-hearted person. With tears in his eyes, he said, “Osho, I am utterly helpless. For the first time, your coming to Uruguay has made us aware that we are not free. Our country is economically a slave. Our sovereignty, our freedom is just fake. These are the alternatives given to me.

“I asked Ronald Reagan, ‘What is the need to deport Osho? I can simply ask him to leave – because for deportation, when he has a one year permanent residency, he would have to commit a heinous crime like murder, then only can he be deported.’ But Ronald Reagan insisted, ‘I have said what I wanted to say – he has to be deported.'”

The president’s secretary came running to me and said, “It is better that your jet plane leaves from a small airport, not from the international port, because there the American ambassador is present to see whether you are being deported or not.”

It was an absolutely illegal demand, a criminal demand – a man who had not left his room… all those days I was there.

I said, “On what grounds can you deport me?”

He said, “There is no question of demand, no question of any law. It seems that for you, law does not exist.”

The president arranged my flight, just because he was feeling so guilty. He was going to give me citizenship, and now he is deporting me for no reason at all. But those American government dogs, seeing that my jet plane had moved from the international airport… where could it go? They immediately came to the small airport and forced the president to send all the necessary papers for deportation. I was delayed for two hours. The papers had to come, they had to be filled in to show that I am deported; my passport had to be stamped that I am deported.

My passport is really a historical thing. I have told my people to preserve it. The twenty-first century is coming, and exactly twenty-one countries have deported me, without any reason.

My attorney came running. He said, “This is absolutely illegal, we can fight it in the court.”

I said, “I will not fight with a man who had tears in his eyes and felt so wounded, so humiliated: ‘… because we cannot pay the debts, and we cannot afford the rejection of future loans.'”

Political empires have disappeared from the world not because of your freedom struggles, but because imperialists have found an easier way of keeping you enslaved, while giving you a superficial idea that you are a flowering, independent, free country.

All these people use very beautiful words – they are “helping.” First, the poor countries used to be called, just three years ago, “undeveloped” countries, but that word, “undeveloped”, hurts the ego. Now they are called, “developing countries.” Just the word has changed, but the “developing countries” hides the wound.

They are all economically enslaved.

A man’s life is small.

Don’t waste it in any other kind of freedom.

Be decisive about it: You have to be free in your soul, because that is the only freedom there is.

Osho, The Messiah Vol. 2, Ch 1