He said, “The woman gave it to me free when I purchased the car – she offered it to me as a present. I don’t believe in Jesus Christ or anything, but I could not refuse a piece of art.”

I said to him, “Today you take everything from half of the house to the other half – my part has to be empty.”

And he was very happy to take everything. Already his house was so full you could not walk – you could not find your way. He took everything. He had so many kinds of furniture that he had piled sofa upon sofa; they were not used, because you cannot sit on a sofa that is touching the roof. And I asked, “Why?”

He said, “You don’t understand – the price! And someday I may get married” – he was not married – “and I may have children and they may need all these things. You don’t be worried, everything will be of some use sometime.”

Even on the road, if he could find anything lying there which had been thrown by somebody, he would pick it up. One day he was walking with me from the garden to the house and he found a bicycle handle, and he picked it up. I said, “But what will you do with a bicycle handle?”

He said, “You don’t understand. I will show you.”

I went with him. In his bathroom he had almost a bicycle – just a few things were missing. And he said, “All these things I have picked up from the road. And I go on joining them and putting them together. Now a few things are missing. The chain is not there, the seat is not there, but I will get them. Somebody is going to throw them away someday. Life is long, and what is the harm? It looks perfectly good in the bathroom.”

Greed simply means you are feeling a deep emptiness and you want to fill it with anything possible – it doesn’t matter what it is. And once you understand it, then you have nothing to do with greed. You have something to do with your coming into communion with the whole, so the inner emptiness disappears. And with it, all greed disappears. That does not mean that you start living naked; that simply means you do not live just to collect things. Whenever you need something you can have it.

But there are mad people all over the world, and they are collecting…. Somebody is collecting money although he never uses it – that is strange. In the commune we had made a sticker for cars: Moses Earns, Jesus Saves, Osho Spends.

A thing has to be a utility; if it is not a utility then there is no need for it. But this thing can take any direction: people are eating; they are not feeling hungry and still they go on swallowing. They know that this is going to create suffering, they will be sick, but they cannot prevent themselves. This eating is also a filling-up process.

So there can be many directions and many ways to fill emptiness, although it is never full – it remains empty, and you remain miserable because it is never enough. More is needed, and the “more” and the demand for more is unending.