Osho : Nobody can save anybody else – and it is good that nobody can save anybody else. Otherwise even your liberation would be a kind of enforcement. It would be as if you have been forced to enter into heaven – two persons following you with naked swords and forcing you to enter into heaven. What kind of heaven would it be? – it would be hell.
Hell is when something is forced upon you; what it is does not matter. Heaven is when you ask for something and you grow in it. Whatsoever it is, it is salvation. Just being a descendant of Mohammed makes no change, no difference. Just by being born a Christian you are not saved. Just by being born in this land, in India, you are not saved.
The Indians have the idea that this land is the Holy Land: just being born in India and you are saved. They have the idea that if you go and die in Varanasi, you will go directly to heaven – just by dying in Varanasi!
Kabir lived his whole life in Varanasi, and when he was on his death-bed he suddenly jumped out of bed and told his disciples, ”We have to rush out of Varanasi!” Those disciples said, ”But why? And you are so ill, and you are on the death-bed, and the physicians have said that it is only for a few hours that you will be alive, that you cannot be alive even for one day.”
He said, ”That one day has to be used. Rush and run as far away from Varanasi as possible!” But they said, ”Where? And why? People come to Varanasi to die.” People go and live in Varanasi in their old age, just to die there, because that is the holiest spot on the earth, the city of Shiva, the ancient-most city, the holiest of the holy. There you die? – that’s enough, your sins are no longer counted. Your very death in Varanasi is a purification – you are saved, you go immediately, direct, to heaven.
Kabir said, ”I will go to Maghar” – a small village near Kashi. And they said, ”Out of all places, Maghar?” – because there is a tradition that says that if you die in Maghar you will be born a donkey. ”Out of all places, Maghar? Have you gone mad? You must be mad! You are dying, you have lost all your senses!”
They tried to hold him in Kashi but he wouldn’t listen. He left Kashi and went to Maghar and died there. And when they asked, ”But why Maghar?” he said, ”If I die in Maghar and go to heaven then it is something. If I die in Varanasi and go to heaven it is pointless. That heaven is not of worth. If I die in Maghar, where it is said that people dying in Maghar are born as donkeys, AND go to heaven, then it is something of my own, authentically my own. I depend only on myself.”
And dying, he said to his disciples, ”Depend on yourself. Don’t think that just because you follow Kabir, you will go to heaven. Heaven is not so cheap.”