I am against the dead ruling the living

Just burning the law books will not help; or even if you pour the whole sea upon your judges, it is not going to wash away all the crimes that we have committed in the name of religion, in the name of nation, in the name of riches. Any excuse seems to be enough. People can fight so easily — it seems they are just looking all around to find some excuse. […]

People are burning to fight, as if in their heart there is only hate, violence; they have never tasted any love, any friendship.

So it is not going to help, just burning the scriptures, because those scriptures are not outside you. You can burn the Manusmriti — the basis of all Hindu ideology about social system, social structure; you can burn the holy Koran, upon which millions of Mohammedans depend; you can burn The Holy Bible… almost half of humanity believes in it.

So burning the books is not going to help. Those books have entered into your blood, they have entered into your hearts; and unless you are ready to destroy the self which contains them all — Hindu or Mohammedan or Christian, it does not matter — unless you are ready to burn your false self, there is not going to be any real revolution in the world. […]

So the real thing is not to burn the scriptures.

The real thing is to burn the self which carries inside you the scriptures, the tradition, the past and all kinds of rotten things and superstitions. The dead people seem to be very cunning: they go on dominating the living people. What right has anybody to dominate the children of the future?

I have been asked again and again, “What about the future? What will happen to sannyasins, their children, when you are gone? You should write the discipline, the code, the morals; you should give them the ideals.”

But I will be dead — and I am against the dead ruling the living. The living should find their own life, their own discipline, their own morals. And they will be living in a different time, in a different age, in a different atmosphere. Nobody should look backwards, and nobody should try to control even those who are not born.

Just live your life with as much joy and celebration, as a gift of God. Dance with the trees in the sun, in the rain, in the wind. Neither do the trees have any scriptures, nor do the animals have any scriptures; neither do the stars have any scriptures, nor do they have any saints. Except man, nobody is obsessed with the dead. This obsession I call one of the greatest mistakes which has been committed over thousands of years. It is time it should be stopped completely.

For each new generation, leave the space open to search, to find the truth, because finding the truth is less blissful than searching for it. The pilgrimage is the real thing, not the reaching to the temple.”

Osho, The Messiah, Vol 2, Ch 2

Photo by Anna Popović on Unsplash

A quote published in The Book: An Introduction to the Teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
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