Free Gods and Godmen of India by Khushwant Singh Page B

It is not surprising he is the most popular deity in the Hindu pantheon.
    To the best of my knowledge, of the hundreds of godmen and god women we have had in recent years, it was only Osho Rajneesh who understood the message of Sri Krishna and propagated a religion full of fun, laughter and goodness. Every sermon he delivered (and they were most erudite and well-spoken), ended with a bawdy joke leaving the congregation in splits of laughter. All other preachers of religion were constipated with puritanism and most of what they had to say was in the negative: don’t do this, don’t do that, pray and lead as dull a life as you can. Not to Rajneesh. He said:
    “If you can decide that every year, for one hour, at a certain time, the whole world will laugh, I think it will help to dispel darkness, violence, stupidities … Just the touch of laughter can make something worth living, something to be grateful for.
    “Laughter is prayer. If you can laugh you have learnt how to pray. Don’t be serious. A serious person can never be religious. Only a person who can laugh, not only at others but at himself also, can be religious. A person who can laugh absolutely, who sees the whole ridiculousness and the whole game of life, becomes enlightened in the laughter.”
    He went on to make fun of people who can’t laugh:
    “You don’t see donkeys laughing, you don’t see buffaloes enjoying a joke. It is only man who can enjoy a joke, who can laugh.
    “My definition of man is that man is the laughing animal. No computer laughs, no ant laughs, no bee laughs; it is only man who can laugh.
    “One should go on laughing the whole of one’s life. I am not saying don’t weep. In fact, if you cannot laugh, you cannot weep. They go together, they are part of one phenomenon of being true and authentic.
    “Laughter brings strength. Now even medical science says that laughter is one of the most deep-going medicines nature has provided to man.”
    The opposite of song and laughter is seriousness. Osho ridiculed seriousness:
    “I have not seen a serious tree … a serious bird. I have not seen a serious sunrise. I have not seen a serious starry night.
    “Seriousness is illness. Spirituality is laughter, is joy, is fun.”
    Osho had little patience with people who complain of being bored with life:
    “The criterion (of right and wrong) is boredom. Whoever is bored is wrong. Whoever is dancing, singing having a good belly laugh is right.”
    I go along with Osho all the way except with technique he recommended:
    “Practised every morning upon awakening, it will change your whole day. If you wake up laughing you will soon begin to feel how absurd life is. Nothing is serious; even your disappointments are laughable, even your pain is laughable, even you are laughable. When you wake up in the morning, before opening your eyes stretch like cat. Stretch every part of your body. Enjoy the stretching; enjoy the feeling of your body becoming awake, alive. After three or four minutes of stretching, with your eyes still closed, laugh. For five minutes, just laugh. At first you will be doing it, but soon the very sound of your attempt to laugh will cause a very genuine laughter. Lose yourself in laughter.”
    This seems somewhat artificial to me. I recommend thinking of some politician. That will make you roar with laughter.
    15/1/1994

Fear of Dying
    T he only time I met Acharya Rajneesh I asked him about death. There was nothing very profound about our dialogue as it did not go beyond restatement of platitudes: knowing death is inevitable, why do we fear it? Is there any way of overcoming the phobia? Do we know anything about what happens to us after we die? And so on. The Acharya has now put all his thoughts on the subject together in a small 100-page booklet entitled Death: The Greatest Fiction. For once I am disappointed with his treatment of a serious and disturbing topic. Death is not a fiction; it is a profound reality, more real than anything in