Carlo Silvestro, (Svatantra Sarjano)

Panorama, Milan, Italy

Osho,
Our magazine is a weekly magazine in Italy with a reputation of an opinion maker – like Newsweek in America. Since it is the first time any Italian journalist has this opportunity to speak with you, we will have a lot of questions and we hope that we have an answer for all of them for our readers.
The first question is: you say that you are not a prophet, you are not a messiah, you are not a god, you are not a saint. So we want to know: who are you?

Is it necessary for anyone to be a messiah, to be a prophet, to be a son of God? Cannot one just be a human being? I am simply a human being as everybody else is, with a very little difference: I am awake and others are asleep.

It may look like a great difference to the person who is asleep, but to the awakened there is no difference at all. Just a little shaking, shocking, and the asleep one will be awake and they both can laugh at the whole stupid game of master and disciple, of messiah, of the savior and the saved. Except laughter there will be nothing, because they will know that they are both exactly the same. And because these names – prophet, messiah, incarnation of God – have been used in the past to exploit people, to create bondage for their spirits, for their psyches, these names have divided people into different religions and the ultimate result was thousands of wars. Five thousand wars in three thousand years…crusades in the name of God, people killing thousands of other people, burning people alive in the name of God, and with the authority that they are the representative of the messiah or the prophet or the successor.

I don’t want to be in this company of criminals. I want simply to be an ordinary human being – that’s what I am.

Do you think that you have a big power?

I don’t have any power. I have love – big love – but love knows no power. Power is desired by those who are incapable of love. Only the loveless become politicians, power hungry. They think that if they have power over people perhaps their desire for love will be fulfilled. It is never fulfilled. No politician dies contented. It is impossible – he has gone wrong from the very beginning. The path of power leads farther away from yourself, and from love. The path of love brings you closer, home to yourself