Jesus says: remember — those who are first in this world will be last in the Kingdom of God, and the last will be first. He gave you a fundamental law... he gave you an inexhaustible, eternal law: stop striving for preeminence. But remember one thing — this is very important, because the mind is so cunning that it can distort any truth... You may start trying to be last — but then you will miss the whole point. Then another competition arises: "I must be last" — and if someone else declares themselves last, the struggle begins again, the conflict begins again.
I heard a Sufi parable: The great Emperor Nadir Shah was praying. It was early morning, the sun had not yet risen, it was still dark. Nadir Shah was preparing to set out on a campaign to conquer a new country, and, of course, he was praying to God to bless him and make him victorious. He was saying to God: — I am nobody, only a servant, a servant of your servants. Bless me. I am doing your work, and this victory will be yours. But I am nobody, remember. I am only a servant of your servants. Beside him was a priest who helped him pray, a mediator between him and God. Suddenly they heard another voice in the darkness. A beggar from this city was also praying, also saying to God:
— I am nobody, a servant of your servants. The Emperor said:
— Just look at this beggar! A beggar himself, and he still tells God that he is nobody! Stop this nonsense! Who are you to say that you are nobody? I am nobody, and no one else can dispute that. I am the servant of God's servants! Who are you to say that you are a servant of his servants?
You see? The competition continues as before, the same competition, the same foolishness. Nothing has changed. The same calculation: "I must be last. No one else may be allowed to be last." The mind can keep playing such games with you if you do not possess great understanding, if you are not very intelligent.
Never try to be happy at the expense of another person's happiness. That is ugly, inhuman. It is violence in the full sense of the word. If you think you are becoming holy by condemning others as sinners, your holiness is nothing but a new journey of the ego. And if you consider yourself holy merely because you try to present others as sinners... and that is exactly what your saints keep doing. They tirelessly boast of their holiness and piety. Go to your so-called saints and look into their eyes. There is so much condemnation of you in them! They say that you are all doomed to hell; they tirelessly condemn everyone and everything. Listen to their sermons; all their sermons are full of condemnation. And of course, you listen to their condemnation in silence, because you know that there have been many mistakes and errors in your life. And they condemn everything — it is impossible to feel like a good person. You like to eat, you are a sinner; you do not get up early in the morning, you are a sinner; you go to bed late in the evening, you are a sinner. Everything is arranged in such a way that it is very difficult not to be a sinner.
Yes, they themselves are not sinners. They go to bed early and get up early in the morning... essentially, they have nothing else to do. They never make any mistakes, because they never do anything. They just sit idle, almost like dead men. But if you do something, of course — how can you be holy? That is why for centuries the holy man renounced the world and fled from it: being holy while remaining in the world seemed impossible.
My whole approach is that holiness has not the slightest value except in the very thick of the world. Be holy while remaining in the world! We must define holiness in a completely different way. Do not live at the expense of others' pleasure — that is what holiness is. Do not destroy the happiness of others; help others to be happy — that is what holiness is. Create a climate in which everyone can have a little joy...
Osho
Astrall
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