Because when you start on an ego trip, the ultimate fight is against God – the final. The final has to be with God because one day or other the problem is going to arise: who is superior, God or you? Friedrich Nietzsche has said, “I cannot believe in God because if I believe in God, I will always remain inferior.” Always…then there is no possibility to become superior. So Nietzsche says, “Better to drop the very idea of God.” Nietzsche says, “How can there be two superior beings, I and God?” This wicked king must have been a Nietzschean.

The pundits shook with fear – because they knew if they said God is superior they would be killed immediately, murdered, butchered. Being wise by profession they asked for time, and then through old habit they clung to their position and their lives. But they were worthy men who would not displease God. They were therefore deep in grief, when the oldest pundit reassured them, “Leave it to me, tomorrow I shall speak with the king.”

The next day when the court was gathered, the old man quietly arrived; his hands humbly joined together, his forehead smeared with white ashes. He bowed down low and pronounced these words: “O Lord, undoubtedly you are the greater” – the king twirled his mustaches which he wore long and tossed high his head – “You are the greater, King, for you can banish us from your kingdom while God cannot; for truly all is his kingdom and there is nowhere to go outside him.”

There is no way to go outside God. That’s your uniqueness – that is everybody’s uniqueness. There is no way to be something else other than part of God. That’s your uniqueness and that is everybody else’s uniqueness. Respect yourself and respect others also. The moment you start proving yourself superior, you are disrespectful to yourself because the very effort shows that you have accepted the idea that you are not unique – hence the effort to prove – and you are disrespectful to others also.

Respect yourself, respect others also, because deep down we are not separate. We are one whole. We are members of each other. We are not like islands; we are the vast continent of God.

The second question:

Osho,
Patanjali says that through ignorance one accumulates ignorance, one accumulates karma; and previously we have heard you say that until one attains to a certain crystallization, one is not responsible for one’s actions – rather, the divine is the doer, the one responsible. Would you please clear these seeming contradictions?

They appear contradictions to you. Rather than clearing the contradictions, I would like to clear you. I would like to clean you so completely that you are not there; then you won’t see any contradictions.