Willem Sheer

Pers Unie, The Hague, Netherlands

Osho,
I have been reading your books for some years and have seen some of your videos. I was here last winter at the winter festival. A week ago at the office I had a telephone call asking if I would like an interview with you, so here I am. I have approximately one hundred thousand questions and have selected about twenty of them.

Good, let’s start.

I’ve been trained in a climate of critical journalism and am taught never to believe anyone at his word. Are you capable of communicating your message to suspicious journalists – or is trust needed to understand what you really mean?

No, no faith, no belief, no trust is needed. And what you have been taught as a journalist, to be critical, skeptical, is exactly my message. Be critical, be skeptical. Go on saying “no” until you can find the “yes” which you cannot deny.

My people are not people who have gathered here because of a certain faith or belief. They are inquirers, seekers with open minds, and they are being taught only one thing: never accept anything unless you can experience it. Critical journalism is just third rate, because it is only the mind, the reason. But the mind and reason can be very easily defeated, just a little sharper intelligence is needed and your criticism will be gone.

But the criticism I am teaching to my people is something far deeper and far wider. I am teaching them not to argue about truth, because there is no way through argument to reach the truth. Whenever two arguments fight, all that is proved is who was more capable of arguing. Truth is never proved that way, truth has to be experienced. So deny every belief and deny it absolutely. Not even a lingering shadow of belief should be within you.

So your sannyasins also should be skeptical about what you say?

They are.

And when you say, “Do this and that and this will be the result,” then they enter it with a skeptical, critical mind?