Osho,
Since you have become available to us in this earthly, everyday way, I have been amazed at the amount of fear I feel with you so close. It makes me want to hide from you. I love you so much, and I don’t understand this fear. Can you explain?

Love is always followed by the shadow of fear. The reason is, love is almost a death. Your old self, your old personality dies, and you are born again. Love is a death and a resurrection. Love is a cross. Jesus dies on it, and Christ is born on it.

That’s why followers, disciples have always wanted their masters to be prophets, messiahs, gods, far away from themselves – for many reasons. This was one of the most significant reasons: that you could adore your master but you could not love him. And what is adoration without love? It is absolutely meaningless.

Adoration without love is a body without a heart beating in it. It is a corpse.

Your prophets, your messiahs, your reincarnations of God, they also wanted to keep you as far away from themselves as possible because they had to hide their own secrets from you. For example, scientifically nobody can be celibate, and they were all pretending to be celibate. They were fulfilling your desire that they should be superhuman – and nobody is superhuman. A distance was needed so you would never come to know their reality.

Mahavira sits on a high, very high – pedestal. You cannot reach him. Of course you will never know whether he perspires or not. To keep the story going that tirthankaras – the prophets of Jainas – do not perspire, it is certainly necessary to keep a certain distance.

When I am sitting here, I don’t know whether you perspire or not. But when I came to your disco I was really surprised. The smoke of the cigarettes…I never feel it here. And, my God, the way you perspire! I was thinking that my disciples had stopped perspiring!

Of course, I myself rarely perspire, because moving from one air-conditioned place to another air-conditioned place in an air-conditioned limousine, there is no chance for me to perspire. But once in a while the electricity fails, the compressor in the car stops functioning – then I know certainly that I am not a prophet. I perspire just like you, and I am fortunate that I perspire just like every human being, because I don’t want to be made of plastic. My skin is as real as yours. If Mahavira did not perspire, the only possibility is that he had a plastic body without any pores.

Perspiration is absolutely natural. It helps you to keep your temperature always the same. When it is hot, your perspiration glands of which there are seven million, all over your body, start releasing small drops of water. The heat evaporates that water; it becomes engaged in evaporating the water and leaves you alone. It keeps your temperature the same; otherwise, without perspiration your temperature would be the same as the temperature outside. Soon you would burst – any moment.