The first question:

Osho,
Like all other Indian saints, why do you not like to be the saint of the masses?

I am not an Indian – neither am I an American or a Chinese. I don’t believe in countries and I don’t believe in any political divisions. Because of political divisions, humanity has suffered enough – no more of that nonsense! I have to live somewhere, so I live here, but I don’t belong to India. I am not a nationalist, because all nationalism is in some way or other a form of fascism.

If you think you are an Indian or a German or a Japanese, you are a fascist – and you are a danger to humanity, to peace, to love, to progress. You are not a religious person. A nationalist is never a religious person, cannot be. And a nationalist is a neurotic. The whole of human history is enough proof of it.

I am not an Indian – the first thing. And the second thing: I am not a saint either.

You ask me: “Like all other Indian saints, why do you not like to be the saint of the masses?” First, I am not an Indian, and second, I am not a saint. The very claim that one is a saint is a condemnation of everybody else. In that very claim, others are condemned. If I am a saint then you are a sinner – you have to be sinners, otherwise how can I exist? To create one saint, you will need millions of sinners. It is very costly and uneconomical.

I would like a world where the sinners and the saints have disappeared – they are two aspects of the same coin. Lao Tzu says in the Tao Te Ching: “When the world was really natural and religious, there was not a saint and not a sinner.” When the saints entered in the world, sin entered. When you say somebody is a saint, you have started divisions: the good and the bad, that which has to be done and that which has to be avoided. You don’t accept life in its totality; you become a chooser.

And I teach choiceless awareness. I don’t teach any choosing on your part, because whatsoever you choose is going to be a wrong choice – because you will be there as a chooser. Accept the total and don’t go on labeling things – this is good and that is bad.

The division between the sinner and the saint is again an egoistic division. It is very oppressive. It condemns. It is very hateful. A saint looks at you with holier-than-thou eyes: “I am the chosen one, and I am going to heaven and you all are going to hell.” No, that is not my outlook at all.