Osho on Mother Theresa

All the quotations here are from the same topics in Osho on Abortion, except the third quotation (from Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing, Chapter 13) which is larger here.

The Last Testament, Vol. I, Chapter 27 (War Is Meaningless):

Osho preceded this by saying that a man turns to masturbation when he is denied love, and in response to the Interviewer’s question of whether he implied Hitler wouldn’t have attacked the Jews if he had a Jewish girlfriend, he said yes.

Osho: Everybody cannot be a Picasso and everybody need not go to Everest – and it would be silly! We have to respect people as they are, without any demands on them.

Interviewer: But you don’t either: you attacked Mother Teresa recently.

Osho: I attack Mother Teresa because she is doing so much harm to humanity.

Interviewer: In what way?

Osho: These are the people… Mother Teresa is only symbolic; I call her Mother Teresa the Terrible. These people – Teresa or Pope the Polack or Jesus Christ or Mahatma Gandhi – all these people in a very subtle way… I never suspect their intentions; their intentions may be good, but their actions are dangerous. These are the people who are keeping the world poor.

Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” Now this is something absolutely wrong. The poor are not the blessed, they are the cursed, the condemned. But he consoles them by saying that they are blessed.

Interviewer: But you are selectively using that verse. The full verse is: “Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Osho: Those who inherit the earth can never be poor, so he was using the word poor purely metaphorically.

Just wait a minute, just wait a minute. You are quoting wrongly, I was quoting rightly: “Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God,” – not earth.

Interviewer: There are two versions – the King James version says the earth.

Osho: There are not two versions!

Interviewer: The King James version says the earth.

Osho: It is the kingdom of God, basically, in Hebrew. The kingdom of the earth is already possessed by the rich, it is already inherited. Jesus can only promise something in the faraway future, after death. All the religions have been playing that game, of promising people things beyond death. There is no evidence of anything beyond death, whether the poor enter into paradise or the rich enter. It is more probable that the rich will enter.

There is no possibility for the poor in paradise, if there is no possibility for them here on earth! And these people… Teresa collecting orphans, what is she doing? Creating more poverty in the world. She is against abortion, she is against birth control, she is against the pill: these are sins, naturally. If these things are allowed, orphans will disappear – and with orphans disappearing, who is going to give the Nobel Prize to Mother Teresa?

I condemned her; she wrote a letter to me. In the letter she said, “I will pray to God to forgive you.” Now the sentence looks perfectly nice, but not to me. It is nasty.

I wrote back to her, “In the first place I don’t believe in any God, so who are you to pray to a God who does not exist? At least you should have asked me. Secondly, who are you to pray on my behalf? I have not given you the authority. And I have not committed any sin, that God should forgive me. If he meets me, he will have to ask forgiveness from me, because what he has done to the world is enough!”

All these Tamerlanes, Genghis Khans, Nadirshahs, Alexander the Greats, Ivan the Terribles, Adolf Hitlers,

Mussolinis, Joseph Stalins – who is responsible for all these people? Who is responsible for Ethiopia dying? Who is responsible for half the world being poor and on the verge of death? Who is responsible for nuclear weapons?
If God is the creator, and if he is omnipotent, omniscient, he knows everything – past, present, future – then he knows that there will be Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And even knowing that, he creates the world? He knows that there will be a nuclear war, and people are piling up nuclear weapons. Even the day he created the world, he knew that one day there would be a nuclear war, and millions of people would suffer tremendous torture and death. “And this is your God,” I told her.

She never replied. I again wrote to her, “Reply – because otherwise I am going to sue you in the court. Who can ask for my forgiveness from God, on my behalf, without my permission?”

These people are simply trying to increase their numbers. All those orphans become Catholics; all those poor people, aboriginals, become Christians. The hospitals, the schools, the food – these are all strategies. Islam had the strategy of the sword. Christians have the strategy – because the world has changed, ways have changed – they come with bread and butter in one hand and a Bible in the other. Mohammedans used to come with a sword in one hand and the Koran in the other hand. But it is the same – just to purchase you. They are using people’s poverty to make great numbers of Christians, because numbers have power. It is simply politics, nothing else; there is no religion in it. The pope before this Polack who is now the pope, was a homosexual – it was well known all over Italy.

Further he goes on to say homosexuality is immoral. I’ll address it in a separate note here Osho on Homosexuality.

The Last Testament, Vol. II, Chapter 33 (To Be Enlightened Is To Know Myself):

Interviewer: I’ve heard you have little respect for people like the pope, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi and a host of others. Is there anyone that you can name?

Osho: No.

Interviewer: I just wanted to get it straight.

Osho: I don’t look up to anybody and I don’t want anybody else to look up to me.

Interviewer: So it’s one plain.

Osho: It is just one horizontal existence, no vertical hierarchy. And you said that, “You have very little respect.” That is wrong. I don’t have any respect, not even very little. I have very great disrespect, because these people are criminals. And their crimes are far bigger than the people you go on hanging or giving them electric chairs. These people are real criminals.

For example, Mother Teresa. You reward this woman with Nobel Prize. Universities go on giving her D.Litts. Countries go on pouring on… awards on her. And what she is doing? All she is doing is collecting orphans and converting them into Catholicism.

One of the men went to Mother Teresa’s one of the centers in Calcutta. The secretary asked, “What do you want?” He said, “I want to adopt one child.”

Seeing that he is a white man, must be a Christian, she said, “We have seven hundred orphans. You can choose any. But first fill this form.”

In that form he had to fill his religion, and he filled Protestant Christianity. And the girl said, “You just wait. I will have to ask Mother Teresa about it.”

And back came Mother Teresa herself and said, “We are sorry, we don’t have any orphans here. When we have, we will inform you. Just leave your address.”

Just a minute before, there were seven hundred, but because he is not a Catholic…

He wrote letters to the newspapers. According to his letter, I criticized Mother Teresa in a public meeting. She wrote a letter to me that, “The real reason is that the children who are brought up in a certain atmosphere — religious, psychological — they should be given to a family where they are not misfits. That’s why we had refused.”

I asked her that, “All these children have come from either Hindu, Mohammedan or other Indian religions. None of them has come from Catholic religion. On what grounds you are teaching them Catholicism? You should teach a Hindu child Hinduism and give it to a Hindu family if you are sincere and honest.”

And in her letter she has written also that, “For you I will pray to God that he forgives you.”

So I said, “About the second statement, you have to take your words back. Otherwise I will sue you in the court. I don’t believe in any God in the first place. And who are you to pray on my behalf? I have not given you my attorney authority. And what I have done that God has to forgive me?

“In fact, if he meets, he has to ask me to be forgiven, because it is he who has created this world ugly. It is he who has created Adolf Hitler, who killed ten million people, Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini. He has to give explanations why these people were created by him, if he is the creator.

“I have not done anything wrong. Just to question you, is it a crime? And your answer is just bogus.”

And these people go on teaching in a poor country like India against birth control methods, against the pill, against abortion, for the simple reason because if there is abortion, if there is birth control, if the pill is available freely to poor people, from where Mother Teresa is going to have more orphans? The supply of orphans is needed urgently for more Catholics.

That’s why I call this woman is a criminal. And anybody who is teaching around the world — and she is one of them — celibacy is teaching homosexuality or lesbianism, and the ultimate result is AIDS. And these are the people responsible for it.

Nobody can be celibate scientifically. And I am simply amazed. There are millions of scientists around the world, doctors around the world, and nobody says clearly that celibacy is impossible. Because it is part of your biology, and biology is not in the control of your mind. It is not that when you want to perspire you can, or you can decide that, “I take the vow that I will not perspire any more.” It is not within your mind. Your body has its own program, which is absolutely determined from your birth.

So all your celibate saints are simply hypocrites. There has been no celibate ever, and there cannot be any celibate in future. So the ultimate result of talking celibacy and teaching that it is something holy, sacred, causes homosexuality, sodomy, masturbation, nocturnal emissions and thousands of perversions.

Even Mahatma Gandhi at the age of seventy was suffering from nocturnal emissions. And you are teaching a young boy fourteen years of age that, “You have to be celibate” when he is full of sexual energy. Near about eighteen the boy comes to his peak of sexual energy. He can have from three to five love affairs in the night. But after forty-two even one is enough. And after fifty-two, once in a week.

Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing, Chapter 13 (Godliness: An Experience of Immediate Joy):

This talks about topics like:

1. Poverty is not being solved because they are interested in using it for religious growth.
2. Anti-Abortion being an example of that (also quoted in Osho on Abortion).
3. A Protestant family being denied adoption of the orphan they chose because they were Protestant while Mother Theresa raised them Catholic, despite the orphan being Hindu by birth.

The politician uses the same strategy. The politicians and the priests have always been in deep conspiracy. They have divided man: the politician rules the outside, and the priest rules the inside; the politician the exterior and the priest the interior. They are joined in a deep conspiracy against humanity. They may not even be aware of what they are doing – I don’t suspect their intentions, they may be absolutely unconscious.

Just the other day I received a letter from Mother Teresa. I have no intention of saying anything against her sincerity; whatsoever she wrote in the letter is sincere, but it is unconscious. She is not aware of what she is writing; it is mechanical, it is robot-like. She says, “I have just received a cutting of your speech. I feel very sorry for you that you could speak as you did. Reference: the Nobel Prize. For the adjectives you add to my name I forgive you with great love.”

She is feeling very sorry for me… I enjoyed the letter! She has not even understood the adjectives that I have used about her. But she is not aware, otherwise she would have felt sorry for herself.

The adjectives that I have used - she has sent the cutting also with the letter - the first is “deceiver”, then “charlatan” and “hypocrite”.

The deceiver is not only the person who deceives others, in a far more fundamental sense the deceiver is one who deceives himself. Deception begins there. If you want to deceive others, first you have to deceive yourself. But once you have deceived yourself you will never become aware of it unless you are shocked by somebody from the outside, shaken, hammered; you will not become aware that the deception has gone very deep on both sides. It is a double-edged sword.

She is a deceiver in this double-edged sense. First she has been deceiving herself, because meditation can certainly create a life of service, a life of compassion, but a life of service cannot create a life of meditation. Mother Teresa knows nothing of meditation: this is her fundamental deception. She has been serving poor people, orphans, widows, old people, and she has been serving them with good intentions, but the way to hell is full of good intentions! I am not saying that her intentions are bad, but the results don’t depend on your intentions.

You may sow the seeds of some tree with the intention of growing beautiful flowers, and only thorns may come out because the seeds were not those of flowers at all. You did it with good intentions, you worked hard, but the results will come out of the seeds, not out of your intentions.

She has been serving the poor, but the poor have been served for centuries and poverty has not disappeared from the world. Poverty is not going to disappear from the world by serving the poor; in fact, this whole society exists through serving the poor. The poor have to be served in some way so that they don’t feel absolutely rejected, otherwise they will take great revenge, they will go wild, they will become murderous. It is good to keep them consoled that this society is doing so much” for them, for their children for their old people, for their widows - this is a “good” society.

Hence the same people who exploit the poor donate to these missions. Mother Teresa’s mission is called Missionaries of Charity. From where does all this money come? She feeds seven thousand poor people every day - from where does this money come? Who donates this money?

In 1974 the Pope presented her with a Cadillac and immediately she sold the car. The car was purchased at a great price because it was from Mother Teresa, and the money went to the poor.

Everybody appreciated it but the question is: from where had the Cadillac car come in the first place? The Pope had not materialized it, he had not done any miracle! It must have come from somebody who had enough money to give a Cadillac - and the Pope has more money than anybody else in the world. From where does that money come? And then a little bit - not even one percent - goes to the poor, through these Missionaries of Charity.

These are the agencies. They serve the capitalists: they serve the rich, not the poor. On the surface they serve the poor, apparently they serve the poor, but fundamentally, basically, indirectly they serve the rich. They make the poor feel that “This is a good society, this is not a bad society. We are not to revolt against it.”

These missionaries, these servants of the people, function like buffers in a railway train or like springs in a car. When you move on a rough road the springs protect you from the roughness of the road.

The buffers between two bogies of a train protect the bogies from colliding with each other - they protect. These missionaries are buffers. These missionaries function like springs. Life remains a little smooth because of these springs, and the poor go on feeling that soon things will be better; they go on hoping.

These missionaries give hope to the poor. if these missionaries were not there, those poor would become so hopeless that out of that hopelessness there would be rebellion, revolution.

Now I have criticized her and said that the Nobel Prize should not have been given to her, and she feels offended by it. She says in her letter, “Reference: the Nobel Prize.”

This man Nobel was one of the greatest criminals possible in the world. the First World War was fought with his weapons; he was the greatest manufacturer of weapons. He accumulated so much money out of the First World War. Millions of people died; he was the manufacturer of death. He earned so much money that now the Nobel Prize is being distributed only from the interest on Nobel’s money. One Nobel Prize now brings twenty lakh rupees with it, and each year dozens of Nobel Prizes are being given. How much money did this man leave? And from where did that money come? You cannot find any money which is more full of blood than the money that one gets from a Nobel Prize.

And now this Nobel Prize money has gone to the Missionaries of Charity. It comes from war, it comes from blood, it comes from murder and death! And now it serves a few hundred orphans, feeds seven thousand people - kills millions and feeds seven thousand people, raises a few orphans and makes millions of orphans! This is a strange world! What kind of arithmetic is this? First make millions of orphans and then choose a few hundred and give them to the Missionaries of Charity!

Mother Teresa could not refuse the Nobel Prize. The same desire to be admired, the same desire to be respectable in the world - and the Nobel Prize brings you the greatest respect. She accepted the prize.

Jean-Paul Sartre seems to be a far more religious man, although he is godless. He does not believe in God, he does not believe in the soul, he does not believe in the beyond, but I say to you he is far more religious than Mother Teresa because he refused that prize, he refused that money, he refused that respectability, for the simple reason that it comes from a wrong source - one thing. Secondly, he said, “I cannot accept any respectability from this insane society. To accept any respectability from this insane society means respecting the insanity of humanity.” This man seems to be far more religious, far more spiritual, far more authentic than Mother Teresa.

That’s why I have called the people like Mother Teresa “deceivers”. They are not deceivers knowingly, certainly, not intentionally, but that does not matter; the outcome, the end result is very clear. Their purpose is to function in this society like a lubricant so that the wheels of the society, the wheels of exploitation, oppression can go on moving smoothly. These people are lubricants! They are deceiving others and they are deceiving themselves.

And I call them “charlatans” because a really religious person, a man like Jesus… Can you conceive of Jesus getting the Nobel Prize? Impossible! Can you conceive of Socrates getting the Nobel Prize or Al-Hillaj Mansur getting the Nobel Prize? If Jesus cannot get the Nobel Prize and Socrates cannot get the Nobel Prize - and these are the true religious people, the awakened ones - then who is Mother Teresa?

The really religious person is rebellious; the society condemns him. Jesus is condemned as a criminal and Mother Teresa is respected as a saint. There is something to be pondered over: if Mother Teresa is right then Jesus is a criminal, and if Jesus is right then Mother Teresa is just a charlatan and nothing else. Charlatans are always praised by the society because they are helpful - helpful to this society, to this status quo.

Whatsoever adjectives I have used I have used very knowingly. I never use a single word without consideration. And I have used the word “hypocrites”. These people are hypocrites because their basic life style is split: on the surface one thing, inside something else.

She writes: “The Protestant family was refused the child not because they are Protestant but because at that time we did not have a child that we could give them.” Now, the Nobel Prize is given to her for helping thousands of orphans and there are thousands of orphans in the homes she runs. Suddenly she ran out of orphans? And in India can you ever run out of orphans? Indians go on creating as many orphans as you want, in fact more than you want!

And the Protestant family which has been refused was not refused immediately. If there was no orphan available, if all the orphans had been disposed of, then what is Mother Teresa doing with seven hundred nuns? What is their work? Seven hundred nuns… then whom are they mothering?

Not a single orphan - strange! - and that too in Calcutta! You can find orphans anywhere on the road - you find children in the dustbins. They could have just looked outside the place and they would have found many children. You can just go outside the ashram and you can get orphans.

They will come themselves, you need not find them!

Suddenly they ran out of orphans… And if the family had been refused immediately it would have been a totally different matter. But the family was not refused immediately; they were told, “Yes, you can get an orphan. Fill in the form.” So the form was filled in. Till they came to the point where they had to state their religion, up to that moment, there were orphans, but when they filled in the form and wrote “We belong to the Protestant Church,” immediately they ran out of orphans!

And this reason was not given to the Protestant family itself. Now, this is hypocrisy! This is deception!

This is ugly! The reason given to the family itself was that because these children… because the children were there, so how could she say, “We don’t have any orphans”? They are always on exhibition!

She has invited me also: “You can come any time and you are welcome to visit our place and see our orphans and our work.” They are constantly on exhibition!

In fact, those Protestants had already chosen the orphan, the child that they wanted to adopt, so she could not say to those people, “It is because there are no more orphans. We are sorry.” She said to them, “These orphans are being raised according to the Roman Catholic Church and it will be bad for their psychological growth because it will be such a disruption. Now, giving them to you will make them a little disturbed and it will not be good for them. That’s why we cannot give the child to you, because you are Protestant.”

Exactly that was the reason given to them. And they are not stupid people. The husband is a professor in a European university - he was shocked, the wife was shocked. They had come from so far away just to adopt a child, and they were refused because they are Protestants. Had they written Catholic” they would have been given the child immediately.

And one thing to be understood: these children are basically Hindu. If Mother Teresa is so concerned about their psychological welfare then they should be brought up according to the Hindu religion, but they are brought up according to the Catholic Church. And then to give them to Protestants, who are not different at all from Catholics… What is the difference between a Catholic and a Protestant?

Just a few stupid things! Otherwise both believe in Jesus, both believe the Bible, so what is really the problem? Protestant or Catholic - just different brands of cigarettes! The same tobacco is used, the same paper is used, it may even be the same manufacturer. Just different names!

There is no difference between Protestants and Catholics but there is certainly a great difference between a Hindu and a Christian. Hindu children are being brought up according to the Catholic religion and their psychology is not disturbed? Now their psychology will be disturbed! And if this is true then Mother Teresa should never try to convert any person to the Catholic religion. And that’s their whole work: conversion.

Just a few days ago there was a bill in the Indian Parliament Freedom of Religion. The purpose of the bill was that nobody should be allowed to convert anybody to another religion: unless somebody chooses it out of his own free will no conversion should be allowed. And Mother Teresa was the first one to oppose it. In her whole life she has never opposed anything; this was the first time, and maybe the last. She opposed it. She wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, and there was a heated controversy between her and the Prime Minister: “The bill should not be passed because it goes against our whole work. We are determined to save people, and people can be saved only if they become Roman Catholics.” They created so much uproar all over the country - and the politicians are always concerned about votes, they cannot lose the Christian votes - so the bill was dropped, simply dropped.

If this is true that a child’s psychology will be disturbed, then what about a grown-up person? When you convert a man of forty or fifty from Hindu to Catholic or from Mohammedan to Catholic or vice versa, from Catholic to Hindu or from Catholic to Mohammedan, what happens to him? If even a small child’s psychology is disturbed then what happens to a person who has lived fifty years in a certain pattern, with a certain life style, with a certain ideology? He has an inbuilt programme now, he has a whole programme. Converting that person to another religion must be a disaster, it must be a crime, but for that she is ready. She is very enthusiastic about converting people.

If people were not converted then who would have been the Christians in the world? Christianity is not a very old religion. There are only two old religions, Hinduism and Judaism, and both of these old religions are non-converting, remember. Neither the Hindus nor the Jews are interested in conversion. Their idea of religion is that it comes from birth; there is no possibility of conversion.

These are the most ancient religions and they are against conversion, it is in their interest, because anybody who is converted will be converted from their fold. This is religious politics! If Jews and Hindus were to allow conversion that would simply mean that Jews would be lost, Hindus would be lost. If nobody is allowed to convert then Jews will be Jews, Hindus will be Hindus; the world will belong only to two religions.

Now, all the new religions - Jainism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism - are all converting religions. They have to be, otherwise from where are they going to get members? From where?

Jews have to be converted, Hindus have to be converted. So conversion goes against the Jews and the Hindus, against their politics, but it is favourable to Buddhists, to Jainas, to Christians, to Mohammedans. Their methods of conversion differ, but as far as conversion is concerned they all agree. These four religions are in absolute agreement that a man should be allowed to be converted, otherwise they cannot even exist.

The Jews were against Jesus because he was saying things which were not according to their tradition. The Hindus were against Mahavira and Buddha and Nanak because they were saying things which were going against the tradition. The Jews crucified Jesus because he was born a Jew and was trying to create a new cult. The Hindus were against Buddha because he was born a Hindu and started trying to create a new religion.

Christianity has existed for only two thousand years but they have the greatest number in the world.

From where have these people come? All from conversion. But their methods of conversion are different.

The best methods are used by the Buddhists. They don’t coerce you economically, politically, physiologically - they don’t bribe you, they don’t in any way force you or become violent, they don’t threaten that they will kill you or throw you into hell - they simply explain to you their vision.

Buddhists have converted people in a most religious way.

The same cannot be said about the Christians and the Mohammedans: they have been constantly warring - great crusades, jihads. Millions of people have died because of th Christians and Mohammedans. In the past they believed in the sword: whosoever is powerful is right, so whosoever wins the fight also wins the fight for truth.

Buddhists only argue, they don’t fight. They don’t try to convert you through muscular power - they are Intelligent people - they simply propose their philosophy. If it appeals to you, good, if it does not appeal to you, there is no question of coercion.

But in the past Christians and Mohammedans have fought and they have converted people to their religions with violence. Mohammedans have lagged behind because they have not been able yet to learn new technologies. Now, Christians are far more up to date because they belong to the Western world which is far more up to date about everything. They have dropped the old idea of forcing you with the sword; that has become out of date. Now they serve you - they give you bread and butter and services and education and hospitals and schools and universities. They bribe you!

Now from military power they have shifted to economic power, but conversion continues - and there are ample proofs.

Christians have not been able to convert a single rich Hindu. How can you convert a rich Hindu?

You cannot bribe him. You can only convert poor beggars because they can be bribed very easily, they can be purchased very easily.

If Mother Teresa is really honest and believes that converting a person disturbs his psychic structure, then she should be against conversion unless a person chooses it by himself.

For example, you have come to me, I have not gone to you. I don’t even go outside the door.

Just three days ago I went to see Vimalkirti - after years. Just in passing I saw your boutique for the first time, otherwise I had no idea… I told Vivek, “This has changed completely! The whole scene is different!” It was out of courtesy to Vimalkirti that I became acquainted with the new face of the ashram, the new boutique; everything seemed to be absolutely new.

I have not gone to anybody, you have come to me. And I am not converting you to any religion either.

I am not creating any ideology here, I am not giving you any catechism, any doctrine. I am simply helping you to be silent. Now, silence is neither Christian or Hindu nor Mohammedan; silence is silence. I am teaching you loving. Now, love is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan. I am teaching you to be aware. Now, awareness is simply awareness; it belongs to nobody. And I call this true religiousness.

To me Mother Teresa and people like her are hypocrites: saying one thing but doing something else behind a beautiful facade. It is the whole game of politics - the politics of numbers.

And she says, “For the adjectives you add to my name I forgive you with great love.” First of all, love need not forgive because in the first place it is not angered. To forgive somebody first you have to be angry; that is a prerequisite.

I don’t forgive Mother Teresa at all, because I am not angry at all. Why should I forgive her? She must have been angry. This is why I want you to start meditating on these things.

It is said that Buddha never forgave anybody for the simple reason that he was never angry. How can you forgive without anger? It is impossible. She must have been angry. This is what I call unconsciousness: she is not aware of what she is writing,… she is not aware of what I am going to do with her letter!

She says, I forgive you with great love” - as if there is small love and great love, and things like that.

Love is simply love; It cannot be great, it cannot be small. Do you think love is a quantitative thing?

• one kilo of love, two kilos of love.

How many kilos of love makes it great? Or are tons needed?

Love is not a quantity at all, it is a quality. And quality is immeasurable: it is neither small nor great.

Whenever somebody says to you, “I love you very greatly,” beware! Love is just love; it cannot be less than that, it cannot be more than that. There is no question of less and more.

And what crime have I committed that she is forgiving me for? Just old Catholic stupidity - they go on forgiving! I have not confessed any sin, so why should she forgive me?

I stick to all the adjectives, and I will add a few more: that she is stupid, mediocre, idiotic! And if anybody needs to be forgiven it is she, not I, because she is committing a great sin. She is saying in this letter, “I am fighting through adoption the sin of abortion.” Abortion is not a sin; in this overpopulated world abortion is a virtue. And if abortion is a sin then the Polack Pope and Mother Teresa and company are responsible for it because they are against contraceptives, they are against birth control methods, they are against the pill. These are the people who are the cause of all the abortions, they are responsible. To me they are great criminals!

In this overpopulated world where people are hungry and starving to be against the pill is just unforgivable! The pill is one of the most significant contributions of modern science to humanity - it can make the earth a paradise. But certainly in that paradise there will be no orphans, and then what will happen to Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity? And in that paradise who will listen to the Polack Pope? People will be so happy, who will bother about these people? And who will think about a paradise after death? If paradise is herenow then there is no need to invent, project, dream, fantasize a paradise beyond.

The paradise beyond has been fantasized about because we lave lived in hell on the earth. And this hell is very helpful to the priests, to the so-called religious, to the saints, to the popes, to all kinds of ayatollahs and shankarcharyas - all kinds of hocus-pocus people. They are all against the pill. If they have something against the pill, then make it a powder! If just the pill is the problem, then grind it! Find some other way. These are the people who are the reason for orphans, abortions - and then they serve them. It is rally a beautiful job they are doing!

I have heard about two brothers; they used to do a business. Their business was: one brother would enter a village in the night and put coal-tar on people’s windows, doors, and in the morning he would leave. In the morning would come the other brother, shouting in the streets of the village, “I clean coal-tar! If somebody wants their windows to be cleaned, I am here!” And of course he had great work - the whole town needed him! By the time he had finished, the other brother would have destroyed another village’s windows, doors, then this other brother would arrive. They were doing a lot of work and earning enough money!

This is what these people are doing. Be against the pill, be against contraceptives, be against sterilization, be against all birth control techniques, and then naturally there will be abortions, then there will be orphans and beggars. Then serve them and earn great virtue, because without service you will never reach heaven. These poor people are needed as stepping-stones for you to go to heaven.

I would like to destroy poverty, I don’t want to serve poor people. Enough is enough! For ten thousand years fools have been serving poor people; it has not changed anything. But now we have enough technology to destroy poverty completely.

So if anybody has to be forgiven it is these people. It is the Pope, Mother Teresa, etcetera, who have to be forgiven. They are criminals, but their crime is such that you will need great intelligence to understand it.

And see the egoistic “holier than thou” attitude. “I forgive you,” she says. “I feel sorry for you,” she says. And she asks, “May God’s blessings be with you and fill your heart with his love.” Just bullshit!

I don’t believe in any God as a person, so there is no God as a person who can bless me or anybody else. God is only a realization, God is not somebody to be encountered. It is your own purified consciousness. and why should God bless me? I can bless all your gods! Why should I ask for anybody’s blessing? I am blissful - there is no need! And I don’t believe that there is any God. I have looked in every nook and corner and he does not exist! It is only in ignorant people’s minds that God has existence. I am not an atheist, remember, but I am not a theist either.

God is not a person to me but a presence, and the presence is felt when you reach to the climax of your meditativeness. You suddenly feel a godliness overflowing the whole existence. There is no God, but there is godliness.

I love the statement of H. G. Wells about Gautam the Buddha. He has said that Gautam the Buddha is the most godless person yet the most godly too. You can say the same thing about me: I am the most godless person you can find, but I know godliness.

Godliness is like a fragrance, an experience of immense joy, of utter freedom. You cannot pray to godliness, you cannot make an image of godliness, you cannot say, “May God’s blessings be with you” - and that too with a condition: “May God’s blessings be with you during 1981.” Such misers!

And what about 1982? Great courage! Great sharing! Such generosity!

”… and fill your heart with his love.” My heart is full with love! There is no space for anybody else’s love in it. And why should my heart be filled with anybody else’s love? A borrowed love is not love at all. The heart has its own fragrance.

But this type of nonsense is thought to be very religious. She is writing with this desire that I will see how religious she is, and all that I can see is simply that she is an ordinary, foolish person, just the same as you can find anywhere among the mediocre people.

I have been calling her Mother Teresa, but I think I should stop calling her Mother Teresa because I am not very gentlemanly but I have to respond adequately. She calls me Dear Mr Rajneesh, so from now onwards I will call her Dear Miss Teresa - just to be gentlemanly, mannerly!

The ego can come in from the back door. Alfred, don’t try to throw it out.