Bob Fleming

Davis Enterprises, Davis, California, United States

Osho,
I suppose I am from probably the smallest newspaper ever to interview you. We have very intelligent readers, though.
Most of what people in my town have heard of you and Rajneeshpuram has been on television and in the newspapers. None of them has been here that I know of, and I know the two days that I’ve been here have been so different than I expected. When I called my editor to say I had an interview, she wanted to know where I was going to be because she was afraid you guys wouldn’t let me come back!
Davis is a very ordinary middle class kind of town, and it seems like people need a structure or framework to understand you. You say you are not a philosophy or religion…. Can you state in ordinary American middle class terms what you stand for?

It is very difficult for me – almost impossible – because I never adjust to speak with you or anybody. I speak, you have to adjust with me to listen. It does not matter whether your readers are middle class, higher class, or lower class, I will say the same thing. If they are middle, they will have to raise their heads up a little to understand, for the simple reason that whatever I am saying, I have brought to its simplest form. To make it more simple is just not possible.

I am not a philosopher, because the philosopher thinks about the truth. His approach is rational, reason is his instrument, and here just the opposite is the case. I am an irrational man. And the people who have gathered around me – around the world – the appeal to them is my irrationality, because reason has failed so utterly. For three thousand years in the West, ten thousand years in the East, philosophers have been struggling to find the truth, and not a single philosopher has been able to find it.

The way of philosophy does not go with truth at all, it is just rational gymnastics. So one philosopher can argue against another philosopher, and they go on arguing for centuries, but they have not come to agreement on a single point. Philosophy is the worst wastage of human intelligence that is possible. When I say I am not a philosopher, I simply mean that my approach toward reality is not through the head, it is through the heart.

I also say that I do not preach a religion, because religion is something like love – you cannot teach it. There is no way to teach love, and if you teach love and somebody becomes trained under your teachings, he may go to Hollywood and become an actor, but he will never become a lover. Your very teaching, your very discipline will be the barrier. So I say I don’t teach religion: religion is something that passes heart to heart, not head to head. The moment religion passes head to head, it becomes theology, it is no more religion.