Nixon's Question pt 2: Osho's answer

I cross posted this piece to Sevenfatcow. I first became aware of it through Josh Lauffer some three or four years ago, but only saw it in it's entirety this past month.
It has to do with Nixon's question: Why are Jews so into marijuana legalization?

Beloved Osho, are all minds Jewish?

Abhiyana, there is some truth in it, it is so.

To be a Jew has nothing to do with any race. Jewishness is really a quality --
the quality that calculates, the quality that thinks always in terms of business. That's why the other day I said to you that it is really unbelievable how the Italians could snatch the greatest business from the Jews. It is really unbelievable, it is a miracle, because the Vatican is the greatest business on the earth. All the Rockefellers and all the Morgans and all the Fords put together still fall short.

Jewishness is a quality; it can be found in a Hindu, it can be found in a Jaina, it can be found in a Christian, in a Buddhist. It is the quality of calculation.

It can become great intelligence, it can also become great cunningness -- both alternatives are there.

Jews have given the greatest minds to the world; the people who have dominated this century were all Jews. Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, the three great minds who have dominated, who have left their immense impact on modern humanity, were all Jews. Jews snatch more Nobel prizes than anybody else. That is one part: the mind can become very intelligent. But the other part is, it can become very cunning, mean, calculative.

On his way home from the market, where he bought a beautiful horse at a very good price, Moses is surprised by a storm -- and the Siberian storms are really frightening!

"My God,
if you grant me safety," he prays,
"I promise to sell my horse and give the money to the poor."
As soon as he uttered these words, the snow stopped and the sky cleared up. So Moses arrived home safely.

The following week,
with a heavy heart,
he went to the market to sell his horse.

But he took a goose with him.

"How much for the horse?" Old Isaac asked him.
"The horse is sold with the goose," answered Moses. "Two rubles for the horse, and a hundred rubles for the goose! "

That calculativeness, that cunningness -- now he is even deceiving God!

One small boy --
must have been Jewish -- was going to the synagogue.

His mother had given him two small coins,
one for himself
and one to be offered to God in the synagogue.

On the way he was playing with the coins,
and one coin slipped from his hand, went into a hole.
The boy stood there, looked at the sky and said,

"So take your coin!
Here goes your coin, God!
You are omnipotent,
so you can find it anywhere.

It will be a little difficult for me."

Just a small boy -- but he finds a way out of the problem. This quality is Jewishness.
This quality, wherever it is found, is Jewishness.

If you try to watch your own mind
you will find a Jew hidden there.

Whenever you calculate and whenever you start living mathematically, whenever your life becomes just a business, just a logic; whenever you lose love, whenever you lose the quality to share, to risk, to gamble; whenever you lose the quality of giving wholeheartedly for the sheer joy of giving, beware of the Jew within.

But the Jew is very difficult to destroy, because it pays you. It helps you to succeed in the world, it helps you to become famous in the world, it offers you the whole world. If you are really calculative, the whole world is yours. The temptation is great. If you are tempted by the world and all that it can offer, you cannot get rid of the inner Jew.

And unless you get rid of the inner Jew you will never be religious, you will never have innocence -- and without innocence there is no beauty, no benediction.

Of course, of course, of course, that's not what I identify with being a Jew. I identify it almost with the opposite, faith and hope, humanity, warmth, and passion for sweetness. Osho is not for trusting, that's not what his zen truth-lies are about... but as he says above, "there is truth in it."

Jews in general don't understand what gentiles mean when they use the term "Jew" derisively.
Their definition is close to the talmudic definition in Tractate Megillah:

Who is called a Jew? Whoever rejects Idolotry.

Which is to say, whoever rejects other people's God? Whoever sets boundaries on what G-d is and what G-d Must Not Be? Whoever takes responsibility for and control of their lives and their God?

This rejection of Idolotry can liberate us from slavery, but can also be used to deny whatever we wish to deny, and change whatever we wish to change. G-d's voice can speak and we are free to say "Fuck you! you're not the real God!" And then we don't have to listen. Don't it break your heart when people find a way to ignore what you're trying to tell them?

One of the original sins of Judaism is the Iconoclasm that destroys idols rather than "just" liberating from their slavery. Violence has been nessesary before, whenever we need to get away in a hurry, but if we believe in God, what's the hurry?

Marijuana is a mind drug, can be used that way, and i'd argue, even tends that way strongly. This is why it's not really relaxing, only liberating-- the mind is expanded, awakened and allowed to be with itself, out loud, within, and the In-sights can flow. We don't always use it this way, but this is the best thing it does for me. If you want to stop thinking, stop thinking! Drugs might not help, maybe opiates---

Marijuna maybe be flexible in the power it grants, it may depend alot on intention and constitution, just like bread, but y'klnow what? It has tendancies. The melatonin/Jing/Ojas is released from the Kidney, into the brain, and the creative links between davka the unconcious mind and the concious mind are bridged, in the aspect of the kavanos for Elul, where Chochma and Binah are bridged, and the unconciously stressed in brought into view and able to be dealt with.

The thought that became life essence returns to the brain and burns a light into mind, and this can be useful and appreciated when it is, and only exhausting and debilitory when it's not.

And one of the hallmarks of the occasional toker is the inspiration. This is a hallmark of the psychedelic experience n genral, ideas! Big Ideas, that come down seemingly from no where, about how to fix this, resolve that, accept or understand why someone is the way they are and how to deal with them... Mind people really love marijuana, and this is one of the proofs that Blacks and Mexicans think alot more than some might assume.

What Jews call the "pintele yid" the inner little Jew point in all life is rather the opposite of what Osho's talking about, but what could he know of Judaism from the inside? He was certainly curious, infatuated, and when he came to the west, his first request from one of his followers was for "Academic Jewish women who like to fuck." I know how he feels.

I was once confessing to a rebbe in Jerusalem about my desire for different women, the absurdity of it. He responded: "you're not interested in the women. You're just interested in the revelation of secrets." He was projecting.

Christians don't tend to think of themselves as Goyim either, identifying with Jacob and not with Esau. Very few cultures really identify themselves according to other people myths, if they can help it. Louis Farrakkan hates the legend of Ham.

Why do gentiles hate Jews? Because we keep secrets. When do they appreciate Jews, and Christians for that matter? When we share the wealth and bring good water. As said before, there's less anti-semitism where Israeli agriculture companies are irrigating the barren wasteland, less anti-christianity where the missionaries are saving the lives as opposed to enslaving. This is one of the climaxes of Apocalyto, so i've heard. The local religion is concerned only with exctatic drug use and power politics, not with caring, and the people on the altar know it.

And the Jews can take you out of that, is what the Jews think, or at least take themselves out. The great crime and virtue of Christians is how much they insist on taking you out too.

So, anyway, that's why Jews want to decriminalize Marijuana, why poor Lenny Bruce was so sure that it would be legalized in his life time: because they believe that the law exists, matters, and is not mystically untoucheable, just like religion, just like God. That it is powerful, divine and useable for our purposes. That is The Misnagged god: Law.

What Osho calls Jew, Chasseedim call Misnagdim, "snags"; i.e. people who are trying to outsmart G-d and themselves out of life, for the sake of reward in the world to come. In the more antinomian hasidic communities, that title describes anyone concerned with the rule itself, and not with the love behind it. And unless you get rid of, or at least circumcise, the inner snag, you will never be religious, you will never have innocence -- and without innocence there is no beauty, no benediction.

As if the labels were really who any of us were AT ALL. Another conflicting Oshoism: "it's the labels, and who you think you are, that keep you from the present, and keep you from What Is"

But they say, why was Jerusalem destroyed? Because Israelites didn't make the blessing to The Holy Blessed One over the Torah. What does that mean? R Tzadok HaKohen (I think that's who it was! It sounds like him.) says that it means they treated the Torah as if it WAS g-d, a divinity to be worshipped by itself, as opposed to What It Is.

What IS the Torah? It started as water, and grew from there.

Next: The End of Cannabis Chassidis-- an epilogue to wrap it all up.

So now is your last chance: any unresolved threads? undiscussed topics? questions or requests for what to deal with? LAST CHANCE TO MAKE IT INTO THE BOOK, FLOKS!