“That’s marvelous,” said the father. “If your mother was here, we could have saved the suitcase.”

The second question:

Osho,
What is the use of esoteric teachings and spiritual knowledge? How can I find out if they are true or not?

Esoteric teachings are only for fools. Fools are very much interested in anything they cannot understand. The idea of a foolish mind is that anything it cannot understand must be very mysterious, must be very superior, must belong to higher planes.

A really religious person has nothing to do with esoteric nonsense – with theosophy, with anthroposophy, and with so many Lobsang Rampas and all kinds of nonsense that goes on being written. It must be fulfilling some people’s needs: just as a few people like detective novels, a few others are interested in esoteric knowledge.

There is nothing esoteric in existence. Existence is nude, naked; nothing is hidden.

Once Buddha was asked, “Have you said everything, or is there something esoteric which you have not said?”

Buddha showed his hand – an open hand – and he said, “I am like an open hand, not like a fist.”

And so is existence – like an open hand, not like a fist. It hides nothing; all is there, all around you. Existence is overflowing, and you are pondering over esoteric things – seven planes or seventeen, seven hells and seven heavens. And the more complicated is the system, the more appeal it has.

Theosophy is more or less sheer nonsense, but it attracted thousands of people around the world. It became a great world movement. People were talking of hidden masters, guides, astral, ethereal… And in Madam Blavatsky’s room letters used to drop from the ceiling – letters from hidden masters who live in the Himalayas. Later on it was found that a man used to hide there on the roof and he used to drop those letters. The man himself confessed in court: “My whole work was that whenever a session of the theosophists would be there and they would wait with closed eyes and pray for masters, hidden masters, to guide them, I had instructions from Madam Blavatsky what letter to drop. Those letters were written by Madam Blavatsky.” They were examined later on by experts and it was proved that they were written by Blavatsky herself. But she fooled people for years.