Osho on Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Prize for her charitable work in India, which Osho criticizes. At the end of December 1980, Mother Teresa writes to Osho.

The politicians and the priests have always been in deep conspiracy, they have divided man. The politician rules the outside and the priest rules the inside: the politician the exterior and the priest the interior. They are joined in a deep conspiracy against humanity—they may not even be aware of what they are doing. I don't suspect their intentions; they may be absolutely unconscious.Just the other day I received a letter from Mother Teresa. I have no intention of saying anything against her sincerity; whatsoever she wrote in the letter is sincere, but it is unconscious. She is not aware of what she is writing; it is mechanical, it is robot-like. She says, 'I have just received a cutting of your speech. I feel very sorry for you that you could speak as you did. Reference: the Nobel Prize. For the adjectives you add to my name I forgive you with great love.'


She is feeling very sorry for me…I enjoyed the letter! She has not even understood the adjectives that I have used about her. But she is not aware, otherwise she would have felt sorry for herself.


The adjectives that I have used—she has sent the cutting also with the letter—the first is 'deceiver', then 'charlatan' and 'hypocrite'….


Now I have criticized her and said that the Nobel Prize should not have been given to her, and she feels offended by it. She says in her letter, 'Reference: the Nobel Prize.'
This man Nobel was one of the greatest criminals possible in the world. the First World War was fought with his weapons; he was the greatest manufacturer of weapons….
Mother Teresa could not refuse the Nobel Prize. The same desire to be admired, the same desire to be respectable in the world—and the Nobel Prize brings you the greatest respect. She accepted the prize….


That's why I have called the people like Mother Teresa 'deceivers'. They are not deceivers knowingly, certainly, not intentionally, but that does not matter; the outcome, the end result is very clear. Their purpose is to function in this society like a lubricant so that the wheels of the society, the wheels of exploitation, oppression can go on moving smoothly. These people are lubricants! They are deceiving others and they are deceiving themselves.


And I call them 'charlatans' because a really religious person, a man like Jesus…Can you conceive of Jesus getting the Nobel Prize? Impossible! Can you conceive of Socrates getting the Nobel Prize or Al-Hillaj Mansoor getting the Nobel Prize? If Jesus cannot get the Nobel Prize and Socrates cannot get the Nobel Prize—and these are the true religious people, the awakened ones—then who is Mother Teresa?…


The really religious person is rebellious; the society condemns him. Jesus is condemned as a criminal and Mother Teresa is respected as a saint. There is something to be pondered over: if Mother Teresa is right then Jesus is a criminal, and if Jesus is right then Mother Teresa is just a charlatan and nothing else. Charlatans are always praised by the society because they are helpful—helpful to this society, to this status quo.


Whatsoever adjectives I have used I have used very knowingly. I never use a single word without consideration. And I have used the word 'hypocrites'. These people are hypocrites because their basic life style is split: on the surface one thing, inside something else.
She writes: 'The Protestant family was refused the child not because they are Protestant but because at that time we did not have a child that we could give them.'


Now, the Nobel Prize is given to her for helping thousands of orphans and there are thousands of orphans in the homes she runs. Suddenly she ran out of orphans? And in India can you ever run out of orphans? Indians go on creating as many orphans as you want, in fact more than you want!


And the Protestant family which has been refused was not refused immediately. If there was no orphan available, if all the orphans had been disposed of, then what is Mother Teresa doing with seven hundred nuns? What is their work? Seven hundred nuns…then whom are they mothering? Not a single orphan—strange!—and that too in Calcutta! You can find orphans anywhere on the road—you find children in the dustbins. They could have just looked outside the place and they would have found many children. You can just go outside the ashram and you can get orphans. They will come themselves, you need not find them!


Suddenly they ran out of orphans…And if the family had been refused immediately it would have been a totally different matter. But the family was not refused immediately; they were told, 'Yes, you can get an orphan. Fill in the form.' So the form was filled in. Till they came to the point where they had to state their religion, up to that moment, there were orphans, but when they filled in the form and wrote 'We belong to the Protestant Church,' immediately they ran out of orphans!


And this reason was not given to the Protestant family itself. Now, this is hypocrisy! This is deception! This is ugly! The reason given to the family itself was that because these children…because the children were there, so how could she say, 'We don't have any orphans'? They are always on exhibition!She has invited me also: 'You can come any time and you are welcome to visit our place and see our orphans and our work.' They are constantly on exhibition!In fact, those Protestants had already chosen the orphan, the child that they wanted to adopt, so she could not say to those people, 'It is because there are no more orphans. We are sorry.'
She said to them, "These orphans are being raised according to the Roman Catholic Church and it will be bad for their psychological growth because it will be such a disruption. Now, giving them to you will make them a little disturbed and it will not be good for them. That's why we cannot give the child to you, because you are Protestant."


Exactly that was the reason given to them. And they are not stupid people. The husband is a professor in a European university—he was shocked, the wife was shocked. They had come from so far away just to adopt a child, and they were refused because they are Protestants. Had they written 'Catholic' they would have been given the child immediately.


And one thing to be understood: these children are basically Hindu. If Mother Teresa is so concerned about their psychological welfare then they should be brought up according to the Hindu religion, but they are brought up according to the Catholic Church. And then to give them to Protestants, who are not different at all from Catholics…What is the difference between a Catholic and a Protestant? Just a few stupid things!…


Just a few days ago there was a bill in the Indian Parliament Freedom of Religion. The purpose of the bill was that nobody should be allowed to convert anybody to another religion: unless somebody chooses it out of his own free will no conversion should be allowed. And Mother Teresa was the first one to oppose it. In her whole life she has never opposed anything; this was the first time, and maybe the last. She opposed it. She wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, and there was a heated controversy between her and the Prime Minister: 'The bill should not be passed because it goes against our whole work. We are determined to save people, and people can be saved only if they become Roman Catholics.' They created so much uproar all over the country—and the politicians are always concerned about votes, they cannot lose the Christian votes—so the bill was dropped, simply dropped….


If Mother Teresa is really honest and believes that converting a person disturbs his psychic structure, then she should be against conversion unless a person chooses it by himself.
For example, you have come to me, I have not gone to you. I don't even go outside the door….
I have not gone to anybody, you have come to me. And I am not converting you to any religion either. I am not creating any ideology here, I am not giving you any catechism, any doctrine. I am simply helping you to be silent. Now, silence is neither Christian or Hindu nor Mohammedan; silence is silence. I am teaching you loving. Now, love is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan. I am teaching you to be aware. Now, awareness is simply awareness; it belongs to nobody. And I call this true religiousness.


To me Mother Teresa and people like her are hypocrites: saying one thing but doing something else behind a beautiful facade. It is the whole game of politics—the politics of numbers.
And she says, 'For the adjectives you add to my name I forgive you with great love.' First of all, love need not forgive because in the first place it is not angered. To forgive somebody first you have to be angry; that is a prerequisite.I don't forgive Mother Teresa at all, because I am not angry at all. Why should I forgive her? She must have been angry. This is why I want you to start meditating on these things. It is said that Buddha never forgave anybody for the simple reason that he was never angry. How can you forgive without anger? It is impossible. She must have been angry. This is what I call unconsciousness: she is not aware of what she is writing,…she is not aware of what I am going to do with her letter!


She says, 'I forgive you with great love'—as if there is small love and great love, and things like that. Love is simply love; It cannot be great, it cannot be small. Do you think love is a quantitative thing?—one kilo of love, two kilos of love. How many kilos of love makes it great? Or are tons needed?


Love is not a quantity at all, it is a quality. And quality is immeasurable: it is neither small nor great. Whenever somebody says to you, 'I love you very greatly,' beware! Love is just love; it cannot be less than that, it cannot be more than that. There is no question of less and more.
And what crime have I committed that she is forgiving me for? Just old Catholic stupidity—they go on forgiving! I have not confessed any sin, so why should she forgive me?


I stick to all the adjectives, and I will add a few more: that she is stupid, mediocre, idiotic! And if anybody needs to be forgiven it is she, not I, because she is committing a great sin. She is saying in this letter, 'I am fighting through adoption the sin of abortion.' Abortion is not a sin; in this overpopulated world abortion is a virtue. And if abortion is a sin then the Polack Pope and Mother Teresa and company are responsible for it because they are against contraceptives, they are against birth control methods, they are against the pill. These are the people who are the cause of all the abortions; they are responsible. To me they are great criminals!
In this overpopulated world where people are hungry and starving to be against the pill is just unforgivable! The pill is one of the most significant contributions of modern science to humanity—it can make the earth a paradise….


I would like to destroy poverty, I don't want to serve poor people. Enough is enough! For ten thousand years fools have been serving poor people; it has not changed anything. But now we have enough technology to destroy poverty completely.


So if anybody has to be forgiven it is these people. It is the Pope, Mother Teresa, etcetera, who have to be forgiven. They are criminals, but their crime is such that you will need great intelligence to understand it.


And see the egoistic 'holier than thou' attitude. 'I forgive you,' she says. 'I feel sorry for you,' she says. And she asks, 'May God's blessings be with you and fill your heart with his love.' Just bullshit!

I don't believe in any God as a person, so there is no God as a person who can bless me or anybody else. God is only a realization, God is not somebody to be encountered. It is your own purified consciousness. And why should God bless me? I can bless all your gods! Why should I ask for anybody's blessing? I am blissful—there is no need! And I don't believe that there is any God. I have looked in every nook and corner and he does not exist! It is only in ignorant people's minds that God has existence. I am not an atheist, remember, but I am not a theist either.
God is not a person to me but a presence, and the presence is felt when you reach to the climax of your meditativeness. You suddenly feel a godliness overflowing the whole existence. There is no God, but there is godliness.I love the statement of H. G. Wells about Gautam the Buddha. He has said that Gautam the Buddha is the most godless person yet the most godly too. You can say the same thing about me: I am the most godless person you can find, but I know godliness.
Godliness is like a fragrance, an experience of immense joy, of utter freedom. You cannot pray to godliness, you cannot make an image of godliness, you cannot say, 'May God's blessings be with you'—and that too with a condition: 'May God's blessings be with you during 1981.' Such misers! And what about 1982? Great courage! Great sharing! Such generosity!


'…and fill your heart with his love.' My heart is full with love! There is no space for anybody else's love in it. And why should my heart be filled with anybody else's love? A borrowed love is not love at all. The heart has its own fragrance.But this type of nonsense is thought to be very religious. She is writing with this desire that I will see how religious she is, and all that I can see is simply that she is an ordinary, foolish person, just the same as you can find anywhere among the mediocre people.


I have been calling her Mother Teresa, but I think I should stop calling her Mother Teresa because I am not very gentlemanly but I have to respond adequately. She calls me Dear Mr Rajneesh, so from now onwards I will call her Dear Miss Teresa—just to be gentlemanly, mannerly!


The ego can come in from the back door. Don't try to throw it out. I have received a newscutting from Calcutta. The reporter says that he went to Mother Teresa with a cutting from a newspaper about my statement that she is idiotic. She became so mad she tore the cutting and threw it away. And she was so angry that she was not even willing to make any comment. But she has made the comment, tearing the newspaper cutting.


And the reporter said, "I was puzzled. I asked that, 'the cutting belonged to me. I had just come to show it to you and to know your comment?'"


And these people think they are religious people. In fact, by tearing the cutting she simply proved what I have said was right: she is idiotic—this is idiotic. I receive so many "compliments"—in inverted commas—from all over the world that if I start tearing them it will be enough exercise for me—and I hate exercise!