I do not intend to die like Vivekananda saying I could not find them

In his last moments Vivekananda said he had been calling for one hundred people to come forward to work with him, but that they had not come and that he was dying a very unhappy and disappointed man. Vivekananda was convinced that he could have changed the world if those hundred men had come forward. But they never came. And Vivekananda died.

I have decided not to call but to go to the villages and search out those hundred men. I will look deep into their eyes to fathom the depths of their souls. And if they do not heed my call I will bring them forward by force, by compulsion. If I am able to bring together one hundred such men I assure you that the souls of those hundred men will stand out like Mount Everest, casting their brilliance on an erring mankind and leading it to the right path.

Those who accept my challenge and have the strength and courage to walk that difficult path with me must remember that the path is not only difficult, it is also unknown. It is like a tremendously vast sea, and we have no map, no chart of its depths. But the man who has the courage to enter the deep water should realize that he only has that strength and power because God himself has called on him. Otherwise he would never be so brave. In Egypt it was believed that when a man called on God for strength and guidance it was because God has already called on him and that there would have been no call otherwise.

Those who have this inner urge have a responsibility towards mankind. And today it is of the utmost urgency to go to the four corners of the world, to sound the call for men to step forward to sacrifice their whole lives to reaching the heights of spirituality and enlightenment.

All life's truths, all the experiences which were real at one time are now turning into blatant lies. All the heights that were once reached are now becoming myth, fantasy. They are becoming legends, fairy tales. After another hundred or two hundred years, people will not even know that Buddha or Christ were actually born and really lived in this world. They will think that tales of their lives are only made-up stories from the past.

Someone has already written a book in the West wherein he as openly stated that Christ never existed, that the story of his life is nothing but a drama. In his book he also says that people eventually forgot that is was a drama and began to believe in it as a real historical fact.

At present in India we enact the Ram-Leela pageant because we believe Ram lived and walked upon this earth – but future generations will say that Ram-Leela was really just written by someone and that the idea was eventually created amongst the people that Ram actually existed. They will think that Ram was just a character in a drama. And it is only natural that people of the future will think like this, that Ram-Leela was nothing but a pageant, nothing but a drama enacted generation after generation. When personalities like Buddha, Christ or Ram are nowhere to be found, how can people ever believe that men of such outstanding knowledge and wisdom and stupendous spirituality ever lived, ever walked in this ordinary mundane world?

The workings of man's mind are rather odd. He can never believe that anyone higher than him can ever exist. He can never readjust his thinking to accept the idea that a higher being than himself can live and breathe on this earth. On the contrary, his mind is always bent upon looking on himself as the highest and loftiest of all.

A man will only accept the existence of a being superior to himself under great pressure, and even then he will seek loop-holes in the other's character so that he can prove to himself the other man is really of a very low level of consciousness. Whether the defects he imagines he sees in the other give him any inner satisfaction is doubtful, but outwardly he will try very hard to prove the other is lower than him. And as soon as he is able to find the slightest flaw he will immediately shout to the world that his former idol has fallen, that the man no longer holds the same place in his heart because he has uncovered failings in his character. The search is always for shortcomings. And if he is unable to find such a flaw then he will either make one up or take for granted that one must exist; then he can have the false satisfaction of feeling he has been right.

And so, with the passage of time, mankind will gradually refuse to accept the possibility of the existence of superior beings, because there will be no signs of their ever having lived. After all, how long can idols of stone declare to the world that Buddha and Mahavira actually existed and lived wonderful lives of utter simplicity and lofty spirituality? How long can the world of the Bible bear witness to the fact that Christ really existed and walked this earth in all his glory? How many years can the Bhagavad Gita go on telling the world that Krishna was born as a human being and that in human voice he expounded the Gita to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra? No, it is not possible for too many years!

It is just not possible for future generations to maintain their faith through words alone, through scriptures alone. We need something substantial to support our faith. We need men like Christ, like Krishna, like Buddha, like Mahavira. If we are unable to have such men among us, mankind will have to face the calamity of a very dark age indeed, one full of ignorance and misery. And so there is hardly any prospect at all for the future.

I am throwing out a great challenge to those who feel they have something good to offer humanity. I intend to wander through as many villages as necessary, and if I encounter eyes that can serve as lights for others, or eyes in which I feel I can kindle the burning flame of conviction, I will take those people with me and I will work on them. I will make them able. I will impart to them all the faculties necessary to enable them to hold high the torch and illumine the dark path men tread to a brighter future, to a future full of knowledge and light.

As for myself I am fully prepared, I do not intend to die like Vivekananda saying I spent my life searching for a hundred men and could not find them.

- Osho, The Long, the Short and the All