Deva Bhaskar

Correo Brasiliense, Brasilia, Brazil

Osho,
I’m so grateful for this moment.
Brazil’s a very poor country. Seventy percent of the people are living in misery. There is no food, no housing, no education. But they have three hopes: to win the lottery, to be saved by God, or to make a political revolution.
There is a very popular expression in Brazil which says, “God is Brazilian.” Do you think so?

God must be Brazilian – but it is very unfortunate, because only poor people, suffering people, need a God. God is just opium. You can take the opium and forget your suffering, your misery, your poverty. So the more a country is poor, the more it will be addicted to God. It is always the same proportion. The more happy, contented, comfortable the country is, who bothers about God? For what?

Even in the ordinary life of a man, he remembers God only when he is in misery, suffering, trouble, sick, bankrupt. When everything is going great, nobody remembers God; there is no need. God is the need of the suffering, downtrodden. So if you say seventy percent of Brazilians are without food, without houses, then God must be a Brazilian.

God is the property of the poor, the hope of those who are living a hopeless life. And they will continue to live in poverty until they get rid of this God. So tell the Brazilians, “God is a Brazilian, so it is our duty to finish him.”

Once God is finished from the world, man need not suffer. For the simple reason that then we will start functioning intelligently. There is no need for poverty, there is no need for misery, there is no need for so much sickness, there is no need for man to live only seventy years; these are just because we have not tried intelligence in living. Wherever we have tried it we have reached immense heights.

Only as far as man is concerned are we dependent on God. It is only three hundred years since science came into being. It revolted against the world and all kinds of superstitions. And within three hundred years, science has given man so much, that in thirty thousand years religions have not been able to provide. And this, too, science has contributed against the priests, against the politicians. If politicians and priests are not there, man can take a quantum leap.