Osho – if you have heard of any sad and serious people becoming enlightened, then either they were not sad and serious or you have heard wrong. Serious and sad people become something else, they don’t become enlightened. They become popes, Mother Teresas, Mahatma Gandhis, Morarji Desais, SHANKARACHARYAS, Ayatollah Khomaniacs, IMAMS, priests. The churches, the synagogues, the temples, the mosques, the GURUDWARAS — they are full of these people; they are serious people. They gather around an enlightened person and they start destroying all that he has brought into the springtime. They start creating a dead tradition — and the tradition has to be serious, the tradition cannot be non-serious.
The enlightened person is always joyous, but the tradition, the convention cannot be joyous. The whole structure of a tradition is basically political; it is there to dominate, it is there to oppress, it is there to exploit. And you cannot exploit people playfully, you have to be very serious. You have to make them so sad, so afraid of life itself, you have to create so much trembling in their being, that out of that fear they fall into your hands; they become
objects of your manipulation.
A man like me cannot exploit you, because this whole place is more like a tavern than a temple. It is more playful than serious. We are engaged in a beautiful game! The moment you think of it as a game, all seriousness disappears, things become lighter. You can walk in a dancing way; there is no weight on you.
But the priests cannot do it; their whole prestige depends on their seriousness. The more serious they are, the more somber-looking, the more “holier-than-thou” they can pretend to be… And they will do everything — they will fast… naturally, when a person fasts he becomes serious, he cannot laugh. When you are hungry, starving, you cannot laugh — and you cannot allow anybody else to laugh either. It is not a laughing matter! You are starving, sacrificing, crucifying yourself, and people are laughing! It cannot be pardoned, it cannot be forgiven.
Naturally, when you go to a fasting person you become serious — you have to be serious. That is simple manners. Now, a person who is distorting his body in every possible way, who is torturing his body in every possible way — how can you laugh? The very scene is sad; you feel burdened. It is very difficult to be with these so-called saints. That’s why people just go to pay their respects and escape immediately, because to sit with them means they will make you burdened, they will create guilt in you.
For example, if they are fasting and you are well-fed, guilt is bound to be created. If they are standing on their heads and you are simply standing on your feet, you are doing something wrong. Naturally, you will feel, “I am not yet a perfect man — this man who is standing on his head is perfect.” You see the sheer stupidity of it all? If God wanted you to stand on your head he would have managed it!
If God had wanted homosexuality in the world he would have created Adam and Bruce — it is so simple! Why bring in Eve? Unnecessary trouble! But these stupid people go on doing the unnatural, and their very unnatural approach to life naturally makes them serious. They are going against the current, they are exhausted, tired, bored, but their only joy is that they can also bore you.
Moishe cannot decide about his son’s future. So he goes to the rabbi and asks his advice.
The rabbi says, “That’s very easy. We put the Talmud, the Torah and some money on the table, and let him choose. If he takes the Talmud he will become a rabbi. If he takes the Torah he will become a lawyer. If he takes the money he will become a shopkeeper.”
Moishe agrees and they call his son. The son looks at all the things on the table and then takes them all.
Moishe is perplexed. “What will happen now?” he asks the rabbi.
“He will become a Catholic priest,” replied the rabbi.
These sad people become Catholic priests, Hindu SHANKARACHARYAS, Mohammedan IMAM, and what-not. These serious people lose their humanity; they become parrots. But it pays. You need not have much intelligence to be a parrot, you need not have much courage to be a parrot; if you just have a little bit of memory and you can recite the Vedas, the Gita, the Koran, you will be respected and honored. You are not doing anything creative, you are not adding anything to the beauty of the world, you are not contributing to the earth and its joys, on the contrary, you are destroying. But people have been conditioned for thousands of years, and they go on doing things according to their conditioning. Parrots are worshipped.
A farmer owns a parrot who always screams, “Heil Hitler!”
One day the farmer gets fed up with the parrot and locks it in the hen-house. The cock
walks over to the parrot and asks, “Tell me, why did the farmer lock you in here?” The parrot
remains silent.
“I’ll give you four of my hens if you tell me,” continues the cock, but the parrot remains
silent.
“Listen, if you tell me why he locked you in here, I’ll give you ten of my hens.”
The parrot turns around and screams, “Can’t you leave me alone? I’m a political prisoner!”
These sad people, they either become priests or politicians or they become great pedagogues, professors, philosophers, theologians. But they never become enlightened; that much is absolutely certain — that cannot happen in the very nature of things. To become enlightened one needs the lightness of a flower, the lightness of a feather, the multi-dimensional colors of a rainbow. One needs the joy of the birds in the morning, one needs the freedom of the clouds. One needs only one thing: a heart full of ecstasy — not the ecstasy of something ultimate, not the ecstasy of something in paradise, but ecstasy here and now, ecstasy this very moment, when your eyes are full of this very moment, when there is nothing else, no past, no future, when this moment pervades you so totally, so intensely, so passionately that nothing is left behind. Only these few people have become enlightened. Hence, I say, if you live in joyous ordinariness you are enlightened. There is no need for any spiritual nonsense, for any esoteric nonsense.
The toilet seat in the Rabinowitz home was chipped. On his day off, Sidney promised to paint it. He had some nice bright green enamel in the garage and applied a fresh shiny coat. Ethel went in with a magazine, sat down to meditate and read. When she tried to get up she found she was stuck! She yelled for Sid. He tugged and tugged but could not pry her loose. Ethel, in desperation, cried, “So what are you standing there for! Call me a doctor! If plaster gets stuck, he at least knows how to remove it without tearing off the skin!”
Sidney dashed to the telephone and pleaded with the doctor to come right over. This was a real emergency! The doctor explained that he had an office full of patients and that he could not possibly get there for at least two hours. Sid had a bright idea. He would unscrew the hinges and she could lie on the bed on her stomach and wait for the doctor. The two hours seemed like four but the doctor finally arrived.
Sidney directed him into the bedroom and pointing to his wife said, “Doc, ain’t that something? What d’ya think of that?”
The doctor looked thoughtfully and declared, “Very nice… but why such a cheap frame?”
Life has to be taken hilariously! Life is so full of laughter, it is so ridiculous, it is so funny that unless your juices have gone completely dry you cannot be serious. I have looked around at life in every possible way and it is always funny, whatever way you look at it! It gets funnier and funnier! It is such a beautiful gift of the beyond.
Prem Jyoti, I am against all seriousness. My whole approach is that of humor, and the greatest religious quality is a sense of humor — not truth, not God, not virtue, but a sense of humor. If we can fill the whole earth with laughter, with dancing and singing — people singing and swinging! — if we can make the earth a carnival of joy, a festival of lights, we will have brought for the first time a true sense of religiousness to the earth.
Source – Osho Book “The Goose is Out”