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A sannyasin asks about the way in which people misunderstand what Osho is
teaching, particularly in reference to sex.
It has always been so. People live in such an unconscious state that it is almost
impossible for them to understand anything. Misunderstanding comes natural to
them. The mind functions as a distorting mechanism. They cannot see what is.
They project something onto it, and they never become aware that they go on
seeing their own projection.
So what I say is not necessarily what is heard. People will listen with their own
minds. And my words have to go through their thoughts. By the time it reaches
their being, it is almost unrecognisable.
People have no right vision, no right listening, no right understanding. But that is
understandable. They cannot have it. If it were otherwise it would be miraculous.
So they have always done that. When Socrates or Jesus or Buddha is there, they
do the same again and again and again. They misunderstand, and upon their
misunderstanding, organizations arise, churches are built, dogmas and creeds are
settled, theologies throb. They are all based, not on Jesus, but on the
misunderstanding of people who thought that they understood Jesus.
So this strange thing happens — that Christianity is based on the
misunderstanding of Christ, not on Christ. Buddhism is based on the
misunderstanding of Buddha, not on what Buddha was. So every religion is the
enemy of its own founder. And it is very difficult to sort it out because there are
two thousand years of misunderstanding and accumulation and argument. Now it
is almost impossible to sort out what Jesus was like, what exactly he was saying. It
is so distant and the interpretations are so many. Thick is their crowd… centuries
of tradition. They have prestige and they have power — they are the authority.
In India there has been a great mystic, Kabir. He says, ‘Never believe in the ears
— just believe in the eyes. All that you have heard is false. All that you have
seen is true.’
That is the difference between belief and trust. Belief Is through the mind. Trust
is through your own experience. Belief is just intellectual. Trust is total.
– OSHO
[A Rose is a Rose is a Rose(Chapter 6)]