A spiritual revolution

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Q: What would you do if you went to the Soviet Union?

Osho

Friends,

There is a group of Soviet comrades present here today. They have a few very beautiful and simple questions. First I am going to answer them. […]

…Their fourth question is:

What would you do if you went to the Soviet Union?

A revolution!

It has been too long since the Soviet Union has seen revolution. Of course, my revolution will be of spirituality. I want the Soviet Union to add something more to its dignity: meditation. Just economic equality is not enough – a spiritual equality is needed.

Just being a body is so poor. I want the Soviet Union to become richer – not only richer in objects but richer in consciousness, in enlightenment. I want the Soviet Union also to have awakened people like Gautam Buddha, or Lao Tzu, or Chuang Tzu.

I would like to introduce Zen to the Soviet Union. That is my revolution. […]

…I am not a leader, and I am not a priest, and I am not teaching any philosophy or any doctrine. I am simply helping them to enter inwards – how to turn your eyes inwards so you can see yourself. Once you have seen it, you are the buddha.

Then there is no birth, no death. You have gone beyond the circle of birth and death.

This is the only spirituality, the only religiousness that I would like to teach to my Soviet friends.

I have already in the Soviet Union at least three hundred sannyasins, underground. Because I was in America, the KGB was thinking that I was an American agent. They were harassing my people in the Soviet Union; they burned my books, they took away all the books, and my people were meeting underground, writing and typing my books by hand.

I would like, through my comrades here, to help my people. I am not against communism. I am a far bigger communist than you have ever known, because I am a spiritual communist!

Marx and Engels are out-of-date. The Soviet Union needs a new revolution, a spiritual revolution, and I think Gorbachev is making a great mistake in allowing the old priests back in the name of opening the doors of the Soviet Union.

Perhaps he does not understand these old priests – Catholic and Protestant, or old Russian Orthodox. They belonged to a certain society; they belonged to a feudal society. They cannot belong to a communist society.

Opening the doors of Russia is beautiful. Open the doors for science, open the doors for art, open the doors for meditation. But that does not mean that you have to open the doors to all kinds of diseases.

Christianity is a disease, and if you open the doors for the pope you are going against Karl Marx, you are going against communism. You don’t understand the implications: these are the people who are the real agents of capitalism. They are against any revolution.

You can see it in India. In India, for five thousand years, as far back as history can approach… India is far more ancient than five thousand years, but for five thousand years we have not known anything like revolution against the social structure. And India is one of the poorest countries, but the poor are given the opium continuously, that “You are poor because of your past evil acts. It has nothing to do with the capitalist people; they have money because they did good deeds in the past.”

Now do you want shankaracharyas from India to be imported to the Soviet Union? They will teach reincarnation, they will teach that “You are poor because of your past actions, it has nothing to do with the capitalists. And the capitalist is a capitalist because he has done good deeds in the past, it is a reward from God.”

Please tell Gorbachev from me: allow everything, but don’t allow Christianity again! Christianity will bring homosexuality, it will bring sodomy, it will bring bestiality, it will bring AIDS to the Soviet Union. Are you opening the door for all this?

Be careful, and very alert. It has taken seventy years to preserve a communist country against the whole world. Don’t take any risk. Opening the door is good, but be on guard that the Pope the Polack does not enter Russia, and that Christianity has no revival in Russia.

Communism can be at ease with Zen, because Zen has nothing to do with your social structure. Zen has nothing to do with your poverty or with your richness. Zen has nothing to do with the outside world. Zen is a science to explore the inner. Invite Zen masters, Zen mystics; that will be inviting health and wholeness.

A man who believes only in the body is half, and a man who believes only in the spirit is also half. I have called Gautam Buddha only half, because he denies the body, he renounces the body. I am not in absolute favor of Gautam Buddha – only fifty percent. And that is my situation with Karl Marx also: I am in agreement only with fifty percent. His acceptance of the body is good, but his denial of the spirit is wrong.

Buddha and Marx have to join hands – that is my revolution. Bring Buddha and Marx both together, hand in hand, dancing in the Soviet Union!

If you cannot find Gautam Buddha and Karl Marx – because both are dead – I can bring my ten thousand buddhas you see all around! These people are living a whole life – of the body and of the soul in absolute synchronicity. I can bring all my ten thousand buddhas to reach to every nook and corner of the Soviet Union.

And these are not the only people with me; there are two million people around the earth. If you have a real opening, I can even bring two million people to the Soviet Union, to bring a new revolution, a fresh revolution which will make the Soviet citizen a complete citizen, body and soul together.

We have to live outside and we have to live inside, in deep balance, in harmony. […]

…If your meditation starts blossoming you will not have any other birth in the body. You will simply disappear, like incense disappearing into the blue sky, or fragrance of roses disappearing into the blue sky. You will become part of the cosmos.

And as far as I am concerned, unless you are a meditator you cannot be truly a communist. Because as far as the body is concerned, no two persons are exactly equal. In their talents, in their intelligence, in their body, physical strength – no two persons are equal as far as the body is concerned. You can give equal opportunity for growth, but the growth will bring unequal persons. Somebody will become a scientist and somebody will become a shoemaker; somebody will become a great novelist like Tolstoy, or Turgenev, or Chekhov, or Dostoevsky, or Gorky, and somebody may become just a flutist.

Everybody needs equal opportunity to grow unequal! But as far as spirituality is concerned, everybody can be equally a buddha. That is true communism – deeper, higher, more authentic. And if we can create a situation, an education for people to understand their inner being, they will come out of it with great compassion, with love for every being. They will have a tremendous reverence for life. They cannot exploit. In fact, spiritual communism should be first; only then can the economic communism follow it as a shadow.

Just tell Comrade Gorbachev: I am ready to come any moment. Just gather courage, because I am not in absolute agreement… Marx is now old-fashioned, and I don’t know any communist who ever reads Das Kapital. It gathers dust just like the Holy Bible. I have never come across any communist in India who has read Das Kapital. It is complicated, it is old, it is out-of-date. In its own time it was a great phenomenon, but time goes on changing. Now neither Engels nor Lenin nor Stalin are relevant. They were very relevant in their own time.

Now Gorbachev can open the door because for seventy years Lenin kept it closed, Stalin kept it closed, to protect communism. Now communism is strong enough to open the doors. But be careful – don’t open the doors to old diseases. They are just lurking by the side, and very anxious to enter in.

Mohammedan priests, because you have so many Mohammedan countries in the Soviet Union, are ready to go in. And that is a third-rate religion. Christians are very anxious, and Christianity is also not worthy to be called a religion. It is just an old cult.

I suggest there is only religiousness, which has come as a crossbreed between Buddha and Lao Tzu. And the crossbreed is always better than both the parents. That crossbreed is Zen. Its Sanskrit name is dhyan; its Pali name, which Buddha used, is zhan. When it reached China with Bodhidharma it became ch’an. When it reached Japan with Rinzai it became Zen. Now I am bringing it back to the land of Buddha – the circle is going to be complete.

It went out of India because of the brahmin priests. You will be surprised to know that for two thousand years India has had no Buddhists. At the time of Buddha almost the whole country was impressed by the man. But what happened? The moment Buddha died – he was against the caste system, he was against the rituals of the brahmins, he was against exploitation by the priesthood – the moment he died, the whole priesthood started killing Buddhists, burning them alive, destroying their scriptures. Those who could save themselves rushed all over Asia, to Tibet, to Ladakh, to Nepal, to Thailand, to China, to Korea, to Taiwan, to Japan, to Sri Lanka – the whole of Asia became Buddhist except India.

This is a strange phenomenon. Buddha was born here; here he used to teach meditation, and this country simply rejected him.

Beware! Don’t allow any priests of any religion in the Soviet Union if you want to save communism. Otherwise, these priests will prove just like a cancer. They will destroy the whole of communism and they will bring all the old rotten ideologies back into people’s minds. Beware of so-called religions.

This is my message to the Soviet people. I love them. I would love to bring meditation into their life, because meditation brings grace, peace, silence, blissfulness… a freedom which nobody can take away from you.

Osho, Communism & Zen Fire, Zen Wind, Ch 1, Q 4

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