The first question:

Osho,
In reference to your advising Indira Gandhi to impose a stricter emergency and suspend elections for fifteen years, Mid-Day carries the headline: “Stick to Your Religious Pursuits, Osho!” Do you have any response, Osho?

I teach the total man. One of the greatest problems that humanity is facing today is the fragmentary man. For centuries we have divided life into compartments. We have tried to make those compartments absolutely separate, so much so that one expert, one specialist knows nothing about anything else. He becomes very much informed, knowledgeable about one aspect of life at the cost of the whole. His vision becomes lopsided.

They define science as knowing more and more about less and less. The problem now is how to make all these experts understand each other, how to create bridges – because man is not compartmentalized, man is one organic unity. Life is not divided, but we look at it as if it is divided. That “as if” is a fiction.

A man is not only a father; he is also a husband, he is also a son, he is also an uncle, he is also a brother. He is so many things! You cannot define him by labeling him as father, as son, as brother. That will be absolutely unjustified and absurd. A man has a multi-dimensional being.

Religion, in fact, is not one-dimensional. Religion is a very comprehensive view of the whole of life.

I am not a politician, and I am sticking to my pursuit – but religion is multi-dimensional, religion has to be all-inclusive. A politician may not be able to make any statement about religion, because he is working in a one-dimensional pursuit. Politics is one-dimensional, science is one-dimensional, art is one-dimensional, philosophy is one-dimensional. That is where religion is totally different from all pursuits. It is not one of the pursuits, it is a vision that includes all. Hence a religious man has to be aware about the whole.

That is why sometimes I make statements about art, about science, about politics and about so many things. But up to now religious people have also thought that their pursuit is one-dimensional. After me they will have to redefine religion! I don't believe in that definition. And I would like to say that I am strictly sticking to my pursuit, but my pursuit is not one of the pursuits – it includes all.