Osho,
George Gurdjieff is reported to have said, “Reporters and smart alecks who attempt to attack me think that to start some kind of mass movement and attract large numbers of foolish followers is a simple matter.”
Beloved Osho, how about the followers of people like Billy Graham? Can you talk about blind followers, and real, authentic seekers?

To seek the truth, to long for the real, needs tremendous intelligence. Not only intelligence, but a great courage to risk all that is false, all that is superstitious, all that is mere belief – all that has been given to you by others but is not your own experience. The courage to be alone against the vast humanity – their religions, their political ideologies – certainly needs a tremendous love which is ready to sacrifice life itself but will not accept anything that is not one’s own authentic experience.

Truth is never borrowed; nobody else can give it to you. It is not something that can be transferred from one generation to another generation, one person to another person. Truth is your inner being – and the crowd has no approach to your inner being; except you, nobody can go there. This is simply the law of existence, that only the individual can rise to the heights of consciousness and awareness. The more you belong to the crowd, the deeper you fall into darkness.

But there must be some reason why so many people, millions of them, always remain part of crowds – Christians, Jews, Hindus, different kinds of crowds, Germans, Indians, Japanese, Chinese – crowd within crowd. They make smaller crowds, because the big crowd becomes too far away a thing. They make small families, small communities, small sects, cults. And not being satisfied with that, they start making Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, but they always need a crowd to belong to.

There must be some deep psychology behind it. Belonging to a crowd, whatsoever the nature of the crowd – religious, political, social, but belonging to a crowd – the very desire is to escape from oneself, is to avoid oneself. Is to keep looking at others so that you don’t become aware of your own being.

The fear is of oneself.

But why should people fear being themselves? There must have been a deep wound somewhere which prevents them from being alone.

According to me…I don’t know whether Gurdjieff is thinking in the same direction or not, but according to me the fear of being alone comes because every man, every woman, has to live in the womb of the mother for nine months in absolute darkness and aloneness. And to us, those are nine months, but to the baby in the mother’s womb it is eternity because the baby has no idea of time. But it is not unconscious, it is not in a coma; those nine months of aloneness have left a wound in every being. He is afraid to be alone again. Get married, have children, join clubs, become members of churches – any stupid circus will do, but don’t be alone!