Osho,
Are you infallible?
I am infallibly fallible! First, I am not a perfectionist because to me
perfectionism is the root cause of all neurosis. Unless humanity gets rid of
the idea of perfection it is never going to be sane. The very idea of
perfection has driven the whole of mankind to a state of madness. To think
in terms of perfection means you are thinking in terms of ideology, goals,
values, shoulds, should-nots. You have a certain pattern to fulfill and if
you fall from the pattern you will feel immensely guilty, a sinner. And the
pattern is bound to be such that you cannot achieve it. If you can achieve
it then it will not be of much value to the ego.

So the intrinsic quality of the perfectionist ideal is that it should be
unattainable; only then is it worth attaining. You see the contradiction?
And that contradiction creates a schizophrenia: you are trying to do the
impossible, which you know perfectly well is not going to happen ? it cannot
happen in the very nature of things. If it can happen then it is not much of
a perfection; then anybody can do it. Then there is not much ego nourishment
in it: your ego cannot chew on it, cannot grow on it. The ego needs the
impossible and the impossible, by its very nature, is not going to happen.
So only two alternatives are left: one is, you start feeling guilty. If you
are innocent, simple, intelligent, you will start feeling guilty ? and guilt
is a state of sickness.

I am not here to create any guilt in you. My whole effort is to help you to
get rid of all guilt. The moment you are free of guilt, rejoicing bursts
forth. And guilt is rooted in the idea of perfection.

The second alternative is: if you are cunning then you will become a
hypocrite, you will start pretending that you have achieved it. You will
deceive others and you will even try to deceive yourself. You will start
living in illusions, hallucinations, and that is very unholy, very
irreligious, very unwholesome. To pretend, to live a life of pretensions is
far worse than the life of a guilty man. The guilty man at least is simple,
but the pretender, the hypocrite, the saint, the so-called sage, the
mahatma, is a crook. He is basically inhuman ? inhuman to himself because he
is repressing; that's the only way to pretend. Whatsoever he finds in
himself which goes against perfection has to be repressed. He will be
boiling within, he will be full of anger and rage. His anger and rage will
come out in thousands of ways; in subtle ways, indirect ways, it will
surface.



Even people like Jesus ? nice, good ? are full of anger, rage. And they are
against such innocent things, you cannot believe.


Jesus comes followed by his followers, that bunch of fools they call
apostles. He is hungry, that whole bunch is hungry. They come to a fig tree,
and the fig tree is not in season. It is not its fault, but Jesus gets so
angry that he condemns the fig tree, he curses the fig tree. Now, how is
this possible? On the one hand he says, "Love thy enemy as thyself." On the
other hand he cannot even forgive a fig tree which has no fruits because it
is not the season.

This dichotomy, this schizophrenia has prevailed over humanity for thousands
of years.

He says, "God is love," but still God manages a hell. If God is love, the
first thing to be destroyed should be hell; hell should be immediately
burned, removed. The very idea of hell is of a very jealous God. But Jesus
was born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew; he was not a Christian, he had
never heard the word "Christian." And the Jewish idea of God is not a very
beautiful idea.

The Talmud says ? the declaration is made in God's own words ? "I am a
jealous God, very jealous. I am not nice! I am not your uncle!" This God is
bound to create hell. In fact, to live even in heaven with such a God who is
not your uncle, who is not nice, who is jealous, will be hell. What kind of
paradise will you attain by living with him? There will be a despotic,
dictatorial atmosphere ? no freedom, no love.



Jealousy and love cannot exist together.


So even the so-called good people have been causes of human misery. It hurts
because we have never pondered over these things. We have never tried to
excavate our past, and all the root causes of our misery are in our past.
And, remember perfectly well, your past is more dominated by Jesus,
Mahavira, Confucius, Krishna, Rama, Buddha, than by Alexander the Great,
Julius Caesar, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Nadir Shah. History books talk about
these people, but they are not part of your unconscious. They may be part of
history, but they don't make up your personality; your personality is made
by so-called good people. Certainly, they had a few good qualities in them,
but side by side there was a duality, and the duality arose from the idea of
perfection.

Jainas say that Mahavira never perspired. How can a perfect man perspire? I
can perspire ? I am not a perfect man! And perspiration in summer is so
beautiful that I would rather choose perspiration than perfection! Because a
man who does not perspire simply has a plastic body, synthetic,
non-breathing, non-porous. The whole body breathes, that's why you perspire;
perspiration is a natural process of keeping your body temperature
constantly the same. Now, Mahavira must be burning inside like hell! How
will he manage to keep his body temperature constant? Without perspiration
it cannot be done, it is impossible.

Jainas say that when a snake wounded Mahavira's feet, not blood but milk
flowed out of the feet. Now, milk is possible only if Mahavira's feet were
not feet but breasts, and a man who has breasts on his feet should be put in
a circus! This is their idea of perfection: a perfect man cannot have a
dirty thing like blood, a bloody thing like blood, he is full of milk and
honey. But just imagine: a man full of milk and honey will stink! Milk will
turn into curd and the honey will attract all kinds of mosquitoes and flies;
he will be completely covered with flies! I don't like this kind of
perfection.

Mahavira is so perfect that he does not urinate, does not defecate; these
things are for imperfect human beings. You cannot imagine Mahavira sitting
on a toilet seat, impossible! But then where does all his shit disappear to?
Then he must be the shittiest man in the world.

I have read in the medical journals about a man ? the longest case of
constipation: eighteen months. These medical people are not aware of
Mahavira. This is nothing; forty years! This is the longest period that any
man has been able to control his bowels. This is real yoga! The greatest
case of constipation in the whole history of man...and I don't think anybody
is going to defeat him.

These stupid ideas have been perpetuated just to make humanity suffer. If
you have these ideas in your mind then you will feel guilty about
everything. Pissing, you are guilty ? what are you doing? Sitting on a
toilet, and you are falling into hell! If blood comes out of your body, a
deep humiliation.

Jesus walks on water, tries to revive a dead friend, but cannot himself
survive on the cross; tries to cure blind people, deaf people, but cannot
make a single stupid man enlightened, cannot help a single fool to come out
of his foolishness, cannot save a single human being by hitting him hard on
the head and saying, "See, the goose is out!"

I am very fallible because I am not a neurotic, I am not psychotic, I am not
a perfectionist. And I love my imperfections...I love this world because it
is imperfect. It is imperfect, and that's why it is growing; if it was
perfect it would have been dead. Growth is possible only if there is
imperfection.



Perfection means a full stop, perfection means ultimate death; then there is
no way to go beyond it.


I would like you to remember again and again, I am imperfect, the whole
universe is imperfect, and to love this imperfection, to rejoice in this
imperfection is my whole message.

The psychiatrist leaned back and placed the tips of his fingers together
while he soothed the deeply-troubled man who stood before him. "Calm
yourself, my good fellow," he gently urged. "I have helped a great many
others with fixations far more serious than yours. Now, let me see if I
understand the problem correctly. You indicate that in moments of great
emotional stress you believe that you are a dog, a fox terrier. Is that not
so?"
"Yes, sir," mumbled the patient. "A small fox terrier with black and brown
spots. Oh, please tell me you can help me, doctor. If this keeps up much
longer, I don't know what I'll do...."
The doctor gestured toward the couch. "Now, now," he soothed, "the first
thing to do is lie down here, and we'll see if we can't get to the root of
your delusion."
"Oh, I couldn't do that, doctor," said the patient. "I'm not allowed up on
the furniture."

Once you get an idea deep-rooted in you, it starts becoming a reality.
Perfectionism is a neurotic idea. Infallibility is good for stupid Polack
popes but not for intelligent people. An intelligent person will understand
that life is an adventure, a constant exploration through trial and error.
That's its very joy, its very juice!

I don't want you to be perfect. I want you to be just as perfectly imperfect
as possible. Rejoice in your imperfections! Rejoice in your very
ordinariness! Beware of so-called "His Holinesses" ? they are all "His
Phoninesses." If you like such big words like "His Holiness" then make a
title such as "His Very Ordinariness" ? HVO, not HH! I preach ordinariness.
I make no claims for any miracles; I am a simple man. And I would like you
also to be very simple so that you can get rid of these two polarities: that
of guilt and that of hypocrisy. Exactly in the middle is sanity.

St. Peter challenged the Archangel Gabriel to a game of golf. St. Peter's
first drive resulted in a hole-in-one. Gabriel's first drive produced the
same result. The same thing happened at the next shot.
St. Peter looked at Gabriel thoughtfully and then said, "What do you say we
cut out the miracles and play some golf?"



I am not infallible, and I would never like to be infallible either, because
that is suicidal.


I would like to commit as many mistakes as possible and I would like to go
on committing mistakes to the very end of my last breath, because that means
life. If you are capable of committing mistakes even at the very last breath
you have conquered death.

A Zen Master was dying...and I have a deep love for the Zen approach for the
simple reason that they also rejoice in ordinariness. That's the beauty of
Zen: no religion has been able to rise to such heights of ordinariness.

The Master was very old, nearabout eighty. He gathered his disciples and
said, "Now this is my last day. I don't think I will be able to see the
sunset, and the sun is setting on the horizon. I have called you all to
suggest to me some new way to die."
They were a little puzzled. They said, "What do you mean by 'new way'?"
He said, "People have died in bed, people have died in the bathroom, people
have died this way and that. All those things have been done before, and I
always like to do things in a new way, in my own way. Can you suggest
something? Have you ever heard of somebody dying in a standing posture?"
There was silence. One man said, "Yes, I have heard about a Zen Master who
died standing."
He said, "Then that is dropped! Have you heard of anybody dying standing
upside-down, on his head, doing a sirshasan, a headstand?"
Everybody said, "We have not heard of such a thing. We have not even
imagined such a thing, that anybody would die standing on his head!"
So he said, "That will do!" The old man stood on his head, and it is said
that there were all the visible signs that he was dead. But there was a
difficulty: the difficulty was that the Zen disciples were in a very
puzzling situation; what to do with this old man now? They had never heard
of any ritual for somebody dying standing on his head. What had to be done?
They knew perfectly well what had to be done when somebody died in bed, but
what to do with this man? And he was standing there dead, on his head!

Somebody suggested: "We should run.... His old sister lives very close by;
she is a nun. She may be able to do something or suggest something. And she
is even crazier than this old man!"
So they ran. The sister came and shouted at her brother and said, "Look,
your whole life you have been a trouble! At least die peacefully, don't make
much fuss about it! And why are you driving these poor disciples crazy? Get
up and lie down on the bed!"
The old man laughed, got up and lay down on the bed, and he said, "Who has
brought this crazy sister of mine here? She won't even let me die in an
improper way!"
But he said, "Okay, you be happy. This is your last desire, and I have never
followed any advice of yours. At least this much I can do before I depart."
But the woman did not stand there to see him depart. She said, "You just lie
down there, I am going. And die on the bed in a proper way! No more
trouble."
And she left, and the old man died in the bed in a proper way.

This is how life should be lived.

I am not a saint, I am not a sage. All those hocus-pocus words don't mean
anything to me. I am certainly a little bit crazy, and it is because of my
craziness that you can rely on me! Never rely on saints, never rely on sages
? they will drive you nuts!

It was teatime in the pad, and the air hung heavy in thick blue folds as the
beat bunch and their tourist friends lit up. Suddenly, a loud voice in the
hall demanded that they open the door in the name of legality. The smokers
frantically gathered their still-smoking weeds and stuffed them in the
cuckoo clock. The police entered, searched diligently, found nothing and
left. The bunch breathed a sigh of relief and made for the cuckoo clock just
as the clock's hands announced 3 a.m. The little door popped open, the bird
poked his head out and said, "Hey, man, what time is it?"

Osho, The Goose Is Out, Number 5


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