The Chosen Few

It is a very difficult question.

In the beginning, God used to do it! But there are many hypotheses about what happened to God: some say he died a natural death, some say he committed suicide, some say he got into an accident. Some say he was murdered by man — because without murdering him, man could not really be free.

I will not go into what happened to God.

One thing is certain: he is missing.

In the beginning, he had chosen the Jews to be the chosen few — “God’s own people.” But since then, he has had no opportunity. Although Jews have been praying continuously in every synagogue all over the world, “Now it is time for you to choose somebody else; we have suffered enough!”

And it is true. If God had not chosen them they would have lived just like everybody else. But because he chose them, he made everybody else their enemies – great jealousy and competition.

I remember that once, India’s first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was asked, “Who are you going to choose as your successor?”

He said, “I am not going to choose anyone, because whoever I choose would have to face immense difficulties. Everybody else who is ambitious and wants to become the prime minister would all be together against one single person, and there would be no possibility for that person I have chosen to succeed me. So I will keep my mouth shut.”

And you are asking who is choosing here?

Here, it is a very different process. Here, the moment you become a sannyasin you have chosen yourself.

Every sannyasin belongs to the chosen few, and nobody is doing the choosing – it is you who are doing it; hence there is a freedom. If you feel difficulties, you can drop out of it. Nobody prevents you from becoming a sannyasin, nobody prevents you from dropping sannyas. Your freedom is intact.

So remember: here, nobody is choosing. Everybody is choosing by becoming a sannyasin. So no need to kill me; I have learned from the lesson of God – I will never choose anybody, because it is dangerous! And to choose anybody is to put him in difficulty.

Now Jews have suffered so much in four thousand years for the single reason that they were the chosen few. All over the earth, nobody else has suffered so much. It gave them a superiority complex, a feeling that they are holier than thou — and naturally nobody likes people who think themselves holier than thou.

So in every country, in every place, they have been put down and given evidence that they are not holier or higher.

Just in Germany alone Adolf Hitler killed six million Jews. The responsibility lies with God, because the reason these Jews were coming into conflict with Adolf Hitler was that he was saying that the nordic Germans were the highest race. Jews have to be completely eradicated from the earth because as long as the Jews remain, you cannot proclaim that nordic Germans are the highest. Jews are an old race, with a four-thousand-year history, and they have proved in every way that they are more intelligent. No Jew is a beggar; they are all rich, they know how to produce wealth. They are all cultured and well educated. Forty percent of Nobel prizes go to Jews, and the other sixty percent to the rest of the world – it is simply unimaginable.

It was difficult for Adolf Hitler in the presence of Jews, because they had all the intelligence, all the riches, everything that proved that they were somehow more intelligent than others.

To make the nordic Germans a superior race, Jews had to be completely eradicated from the earth.

The fault lies with God; he should not have chosen the poor Jews. And even if he had chosen them, he should have whispered in the ear of Moses and told him, “Please don’t tell anybody. Just keep it in your mind that you are the chosen few – but it should not leak out, it is a secret.”

But there is no joy if it is a secret. The joy is when you proclaim it.

Here I am not proclaiming anybody as chosen, but I am giving you an opportunity. If you want to be chosen, there will be difficulties. My sannyasins everywhere are going through all the difficulties.

One has to pay for everything. You want to be the chosen few for free? – it is not possible. You will have to pay for it.

Osho, Beyond Enlightenment, Ch 27, Q 4