A man was telling his friend about his recent trip to Europe and said, "You know, I went to Europe with my friend Seymour - you know Seymour, the cripple, the one with the crutches under each arm? Well, first we went to London where we visited the Tower of London. I climbed to the very top of it but poor Seymour, the cripple, the one with the crutches under each arm, he could not make it.

"Then we went to Paris, France, where again I climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower - but poor Seymour, the cripple, the one with the crutches under each arm, could not make it.

"But then we went to Rome and ended up with a private audience with the Pope. The Pope walked into the room, took one look at Seymour, the cripple, the one with the crutches under each arm, and walked over to him and placed a kiss on the right cheek of Seymour. As if by magic, Seymour threw his right crutch away.

"Then the Pope came over to Seymour's left cheek and gave him a kiss - and again as if by magic, he threw his left crutch down."

"What happened next?" his friend asked.

"Well, Seymour is a cripple, you know - he fell down right on his ass."

-Rajneesh

It always happens: the tradition is created by the same priests who kill, who destroy the truth when it is there walking on the earth. The same kind of priests gather together to make the temple, the church, the tradition, the scripture - and again they will be against whenever truth will walk on the earth.

Remember it - that truth has no tradition. Truth is a revolution. Truth is never conformist, it is always rebellion.

And when you come to a Master you have come to a rebellion. You have come to fire! Be ready to be burned, because only when you are burned will you be born. Like a phoenix, you will be reborn, you will have a resurrection, a rebirth. "Die," Mohammed says, "before you die, so that you can be reborn."

-Rajneesh

...traditional religion is not created by enlightened people. It is created by priests, as ignorant as everybody else.

Jesus was killed by the priests, and then again priests gathered around Jesus' words; they created another tradition: Christianity.

-Rajneesh

Truth happens rarely, because very few people gather that much courage for it to happen. And what the masses say is almost always wrong; beware of it. If the masses believe that a certain man is a saint, beware. Every possibility is that he is a pretender. Because the masses believe in him is enough of a proof that he must be wrong. What is the logic behind it? The logic is that he is fulfilling the desires of the masses, and no man of truth can ever fulfill the desires of the masses.

The man of truth has another devotion: his devotion is towards truth. He has to fulfill truth, not the ideas of the masses - and the ideas of the masses are ideas of blind people about light, ideas about music of those who are deaf, ideas about love of those who have never loved, ideas about God of those who have no notion of what God is. If these people are following somebody, one thing is certain: that man must be fulfilling their idea of saintlihood.

-Rajneesh

Once it happened: A very beautiful man, Mahatma Bhagwandeen, came to the town where I used to live. He was making a small place for orphans, an orphanage. He wanted to collect some money, so he went to collect. The whole day the old man went from one shop to another shop, from one house to another house. He was a very simple man. All that he collected was not more than twelve rupees; he collected the whole day.

When he came back, very tired, I asked, "Where have you been the whole day?" He said, "I have been collecting, but it seems impossible - in one day only twelve rupees. How long will it take for me?" I said, "You wait. This is not the way to collect. " He said, "Then how should it be done?" I said, "You simply wait."

The next day I gave his picture to be published in the newspapers, saying that a great saint had come. Phone calls started coming: "We want to come for darshan." I said, "It is very difficult. The saint rarely gives darshan, but I will see." And many people came, but I didn't allow them to see him.

In two, three days, it was the talk of the town: "A great saint has come, and he is not seeing anybody."

Then I asked a few of my friends, "You go with him," so twenty or twenty-five persons followed him, there was a procession in the town. And wherever he went, the same places, and just three or four days before, the person had given him only four annas; now he gave him five hundred rupees. The same man - but now he was a great saint, followed by twenty-five followers, with pictures in the newspaper, and a very rare man because he never gave audience to people. That day he collected near about eight thousand rupees. There is a lot of difference between twelve rupees and eight thousand rupees.

People's minds live through words. You live through words. Somebody says, "Watch! This man is a thief," and immediately you are totally different towards the man, you are no longer the same. Just a minute before you were so loving, kind, helpful; now you are withdrawn. Just a small word has distorted the whole thing. He may not be a thief. He may not be a saint.

But you live through words, you don't see reality as it is. If a painting is hanging somewhere, you may not see it. You may pass through the room every day and you may not see, and one day somebody says, "This is a Picasso," and then just you see how your eyes are shining and you are standing there in front of the painting, mystified! "Picasso? A million dollar painting?" And it may be nothing.

It may be just some madman who has painted it, but the idea that it is Picasso's painting is enough - and it starts looking beautiful, it starts looking like something miraculous. That's how you are living.

You don't reflect reality. Your mind continuously distorts it. Whatsoever you have been told and taught and conditioned for, your mind functions in the service of it.

-Rajneesh