The first question:

Osho,
Is it possible for a politician to be a religious man or for a religious man to be a politician?

It is absolutely impossible for a political man to be religious, because the ways of politics and religion are diametrically opposite. You have to understand that it is not a question of adding something to your personality – religion is not an addition. If you are political, you can be a painter, you can be a poet, you can be a musician – those are additions.

Politics and music are not diametrically opposite; on the contrary, music may help you to be a better politician. It will be relaxing, it will help you to get unburdened of the whole day and the anxieties that a politician has to go through. But religion is not an addition; it is a diametrically opposite dimension. So first you have to understand the political man, exactly what it means.

The political man is a sick man, psychologically sick, spiritually sick. Physically he may be perfectly okay. Usually politicians are physically okay; their whole burden falls on their psyche. You can see that. Once a politician loses his power he starts losing his physical health. Strange, when he was in power, he was so burdened with many anxieties and tensions, but he was physically perfect.

The moment power has gone, all the anxieties have also gone; now, they will be somebody else’s business. His psyche is unburdened, and in that unburdening all his sickness falls on his body. The politician suffers, as far as his physiology is concerned, only when he loses power; otherwise politicians tend to live long, and are physically well. Strange, but the reason is that their whole sickness is taken by their psyche, and when the psyche takes on the whole sickness, then the body can live unburdened. But if the psyche releases all its sickness, where is it going to go? Lower than the psychic is your physical existence – all sickness falls onto the body. Politicians out of power die very soon. Politicians in power live very long. It is a known fact, but the cause is not well known.

So the first thing to be understood is that the political man is psychologically sick, and psychological sickness tends to become spiritual sickness when it becomes too much, when the psyche cannot hold it any more. Now, be careful: if the politician is in power, then his psychic sickness is bound to spread to his spiritual being, because he is holding his psychic sickness so it does not fall downward. It is his power, he thinks it is his treasure; he won’t allow it to fall down.