Osho,
Every day you make a step descending from the pedestal of being a master to becoming a friend to us, the ultimate friend. And yet my reverence for you is increasing every day. How can this happen? Please explain.

The relationship between the master and the disciple is in a subtle way a kind of slavery. To cover it, the disciple reveres the master, adores the master. The master tries to be a fatherly figure to the disciple, but deep down the master is nothing but a politician. By increasing his followers he is increasing his power. He manipulates people. All the disciplines, rules, regulations – they are meant for you as psychological chains.

The disciple has hatred deep down in him, for the simple reason that he has to bow down to the master, because the master knows and he does not know. He is angry, enraged, but what can he do? To know as much as the master knows, he represses his feelings and creates a phony personality, hypocrisy, humbleness.

You will have to understand one thing very clearly: in all cultures the love relationship between brother and sister is absolutely prohibited. There is no bigger sin than a love relationship between brother and sister. Why? You may not have looked into it. The reason is, if there were no prohibition of that kind, the first love would be bound to happen between brother and sister.

To prevent it, they have done two things. They have made it a great sin, so that you are afraid. Secondly, they have raised the relationship between brother and sister to great heights of purity, pure love, spiritual love. But the fact is, both are strategies to hide the simple fact that if there were no inhibition, the love between brother and sister would be bound to happen – they are together in the same home.

All the cultures want the son to respect the father. Why? – because psychologically every son disrespects the father. The reasons are clear. The father is trying to mold him in a certain way that is not natural to him. The father is making him according to his own image, just as God did – he made man in his own image. Every father is doing that.

But who wants to be made by somebody else in his own image? Everybody wants to be individual. That is a very deep longing and desire in every being – to be himself. And the father is not allowing him to be himself. And the son is helpless, because he is dependent for everything on the father; hence, he has to suppress himself, be obedient.

Every father wants the son to be obedient. God wanted Adam and Eve to be obedient. Their only sin was that they disobeyed the father. And the great God – who is compassion, who is love, who is forgiveness – could not forgive his own son, his own daughter? And they had not done anything so big that for thousands of years to come the dependents should also be punished.