Zarathustra The Laughing Prophet ~ 12

event type	discourse
date & time	13 Apr 1987 pm
location	Chuang Tzu Auditorium, Pune
language	English
audio	Available, duration 1h 57min. Quality: good. Live music after the discourse.
online audio	free download from OshoWorld purchase from Osho.com
video	Available, duration 2h 8min. Quality: good, but a slight constant audio-noise.
online video
see also	timeline : Osho Timeline 1987 first edition : Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet (1987) other editions, translations and links
online text	find the PDF of this discourse
shorttitle	ZARA212

notes

synopsis: Reader of the sutra: Ma Prem Maneesha. During leaving (video from 1:56:48) Osho is leading a Stop! Meditation.

The sutra

Of the apostates

He who is of my sort will also encounter experiences of my sort, so that his first companions must be corpses and buffoons.

His second companions, however, will call themselves his believers: a lively flock, full of love, full of folly, full of adolescent adoration.

He among men who is of my sort should not grapple his heart to these believers; he who knows fickle-cowardly human nature should not believe in these springs and many-colored meadows!...

'We have grown pious again' -- thus these apostates confess; and many of them are still too cowardly to confess it....

But it is a disgrace to pray! Not for everyone, but for you and me and for whoever else has his conscience in his head. For you it is a disgrace to pray!

You know it well: the cowardly devil in you who would like to clasp his hands and to fold his arms and to take it easier: -- It was this cowardly devil who persuaded you: 'there is a god!'

Through that, however, have you become one of those who dread the light, whom light never lets rest; now you must stick your head deeper every day into night and fog!

... The hour has arrived for all people who fear the light, the evening hour of ease when there is no -- 'ease' for them....

And some of them have even become night-watchmen: now they know how to blow horns and to go around at night and awaken old things that have long been asleep.

I heard five sayings about old things last night beside the garden wall: they came from such old, distressed, dried-up night-watchmen:

'For a father he does not look after his children enough: human fathers do it better!'

'He is too old! He no longer looks after his children at all' -- thus the other night-watchman answered.

'Has he any children? No one can prove it, if he doesn't prove it himself! I have long wished he would prove it thoroughly for once.'

'Prove it? As if he has ever proved anything! He finds it hard to prove things; he thinks it very important that people should believe him.'

'Yes, yes! Belief makes him happy, belief in him. Old people are like that!...'

... Has not the time for all such doubts long since passed?...

With the old gods, they have long since met their end -- and truly, they had a fine, merry, divine ending!

They did not 'fade away in twilight' -- that is a lie! On the contrary: they once -- laughed themselves to death!

That happened when the most godless saying proceeded from a god himself, the saying: 'There is one God! You shall have no other gods before me!' -- an old wrath-beard of a god, a jealous god, thus forgot himself:

And all the gods laughed then and rocked in their chairs and cried: 'Is not precisely this godliness, that there are gods but no God?'

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

... Thus spake Zarathustra.

(source:CD-ROM)