When I Started Serving Cooked Food…

Does this mean that you don’t really mean your criticism of possible saints like Muktananda, Nityananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Swami Prabhupada of Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, and Nobel prize winner Mother Teresa of Calcutta? Are you non-serious when you criticize them or are you earnest in your criticism?
It does somewhat upset me when you talk against Mother Teresa every other day.

Ajai Krishn Lakhanpal,
It is a long story. The moment I became capable of seeing I started talking about truth as it is – naked. But nobody was ready even to listen to it. I was puzzled: I had found the original face, I had seen it, I wanted to share with those who were searching for it, but they were not ready to listen to it.

For a few years I struggled hard, but then I saw that they were not wrong, I was wrong. They could not digest truth raw and naked; when you have been eating cooked food for many many lives you cannot digest raw food. I was wrong, they were not wrong.

Then I started cooking things! Then I started saying things which they could digest. I became less and less concerned about truth and more and more concerned about the people who were to digest it; I had to see how much they could digest. And I had to prepare the food in such a way that it was sweet, not bitter, that it tasted good, it looked good. Whether it was nutritious or not, that was secondary. Who bothers whether Deeksha’s cakes are nutritious or not? Whether the ice cream is going to make you healthy or ill? Who bothers about these things? It tastes good. It may destroy you finally…

And I was amazed – when I started serving cooked food people became very much interested and excited. That was a device: that’s how I have been able to hook you all! Otherwise I was sitting on the riverbank day in, day out – not a single fish! Once I started serving cooked food – cooked according to your desires, not according to your needs…. I didn’t need to think at all about the truth in the beginning days, I forgot all about it. I stopped going to the river – the fish started coming to me on their own, walking long distances.

So don’t be too bothered about what I have said in my earlier works. I have said many things which I don’t mean! What I am saying today is closer to truth than what I said yesterday, and every day it will become closer and closer to the truth. Before I am gone I will again have told you the naked truth.

I had to take such a long route because there was no other way; I had to be very indirect. The moment I became enlightened I started telling people that there is no God – and they were shocked! Then I cooked it. I said, “There is God, but God is not a person, only a presence.” This is cooked food. I am simply saying there is no God. But now it tastes sweet – no person, only a presence.

But what else can you do? If people are foolish you have to be careful with them. So I have certainly said, Ajai Krishn Lakhanpal, that no saint is against any other saint – but that is absolutely wrong.

Now what is he saying?
It is cooked food.

Buddha was as much against Mahavira as anybody can be, Mahavira was as much against Gosala as anybody can be. Krishna was against the Vedas, Buddha was against the Vedas, Mahavira was against the Vedas. Mahavira was against Krishna…. Do you think Jesus Christ was supporting the Old Testament? Of course, he was serving cooked food, but the Jews are very clever people: they found it out! He was saying: “It has been told to you before an eye for an eye. If somebody hits you with a brick you have to answer him with a rock, it has been told before. But I say to you that if somebody slaps you on the right cheek, give him the left too.”

Now what is he saying? It is cooked food. He is saying that the old prophets, the old so-called prophets, were wrong. The Jewish God and the Christian God are totally opposite. The Jewish God says: I am a very jealous God. And Jesus says: God is love. Now love and jealousy never meet, there is no possibility. Jews immediately found out: “This man is destroying our past. Before he succeeds it is better to destroy him.” They killed him; he was only thirty-three when he was killed. Jews found him out far more quickly than anybody else has ever been.

Lao Tzu lived long, Buddha lived long, Mahavira lived long. They went on saying things, but in such a way that you could not find them out – it was impossible for you to find them out.

I wanted to say the naked truth from the very beginning, but to whom to say it? I had to drop that. For a few years I tried my hardest, but all the doors remained closed; nobody was even ready to listen. Then I changed the whole strategy, I became a little more diplomatic. Then whatsoever I wanted to say I started saying through Mahavira, through Buddha, through Zarathustra, through Lao Tzu, through Jesus…. I continued to say things but I was using other people’s names. And Christians became very much interested when I said the same things in the name of Jesus! Whatsoever I said in the name of Jesus is simply my own; it has nothing to do with Jesus at all. And if I meet Jesus there is going to be a great argument. They all must be waiting for me – let this guy come! – because I have been telling things in the name of Buddha which he never meant… but Buddhists became very happy.

Fools are fools! The earth is so full of them.

Osho, Philosophia Ultima, Ch 15, Q 2 (excerpt)