I am addicted to telling lies. Why do I do it?

Osho - Vimal, it may be just to feel superior! People start telling lies because that gives them a speciality: they can pretend that they know things which nobody else knows. Truth is universal, the lie is private. It is your own creation, nobody else knows about it; you become very special, the knower. If you say the truth you will not be special.

I have heard that in a village there was a wise man. Once it happened that from the palace of the king some very precious diamonds were stolen and the king's people were searching for the stolen treasure. The king had loved those stones so much that at any cost they had to be brought back, but no clue was available.

Then somebody suggested, "We have an old wise man in the town; maybe he can be of some support, some help, some insight he can give. Whenever we are in trouble -- we are poor people, we cannot go to very learned scholars, we cannot go to the experts -- we always go to our old wise man. It has never been a disappointment; he always finds some beautiful advice for us."

So the authorities went to the wise man. The wise man closed his eyes, meditated a little, and then he said, "Yes, I know who has done it. But before I can tell you, a few promises from you. First, nobody should ever know that I have told you who has stolen the diamonds."

The promise was of course given. Then the wise man said, "You come with me. We will have to go very far away from people, deep in the forest, so nobody can hear something or even guess. And just the chief of you has to come with me." He took the chief, and the chief was very excited: he was just on the verge of discovering the treasure and he was hoping to be rewarded by the king immensely. It was a long walk into the forest. Again and again he said, "Now there is nobody," but the old man said, "Just a little more."

Finally the chief was tired and he said, "Why do you go on making me walk more and more? I am tired, utterly tired. If you know, please say. If you don't know, say it!"

The wise man said, "I know it. Come close to me. I will whisper in your ears, so nobody hears."

The chief said, "You seem to be almost mad. There is nobody here, we have left people miles away."

But the wise man said, "Just in case." And he whispered in the ears of the chief, "It is absolutely certain some thief has done it."

Now, if you say such universal truths you will not be very special. People love gossiping, people love telling lies, inventing lies. By inventing lies they have some special knowledge that nobody else in the world has; it is their own invention, so nobody knows about it. They can decorate it in such a way, they can rationalize, they can create many many strategies to protect it. And it always brings joy to people when they can befool others; then they know they are wiser than others.

This is an ego trip. The ego is the greatest lie in the world, and the ego always feels good whenever it can feel special. And it is not a question whether you are telling a lie or not; the whole question is whether the other is believing it or not. If the other is believing, at least for the moment it looks like the truth. And when you create many believers in you, it gives you power.

Truth needs no believers. Let me remind you: truth needs no believers. The sun rises in the morning -- you don't believe in it, do you? Nobody asks anybody, "Do you believe in the sun, sir? Do you believe in the moon?" If somebody comes and asks, "Do you believe in the sun, do you believe in the moon, do you believe in the trees?" you will think him mad. What is he asking these things for? They are, so there is no question of believing in them.

People believe in lies; truth needs no believers. And when you invent lies you become a great leader. That's how on the earth three hundred religions exist. Truth is one -- and three hundred religions! People have shown great inventiveness. When lies are such that nobody can detect them and there is no way to prove for or against, you are protected. So many people go on talking spiritual lies; that is safer.

Vimal, if you really want to enjoy telling lies, tell spiritual lies -- that the earth is hollow, that inside the earth there is the real civilization, that ufo's come from the hollow earth. Tell lies, supernatural, spiritual -- that God has not three faces but four. Nobody can prove or disprove how many faces God has; all that will be decisive is with what confidence you can lie. Your confidence will be catching people, it will become contagious. You can look, down the ages it has been happening.

Adolf Hitler has written in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, that a lie repeated again and again becomes a truth. And he knows -- in fact nobody else knows it so well as he knows; it is his own experience. His whole life he lived on lies, lies so blatant that on the surface of it nobody would have thought that anybody would believe in them.

For example, "The whole world is deteriorating, the whole world is going down to hell because of the Jews." How do the Jews come in? When for the first time he started talking about the Jews, even his friends laughed, even his friends told him, "This is stupid." He said "You simply wait. Go on repeating it, and not only non-Jews are going to believe it, even Jews will believe it. You just go on repeating it."

Beliefs are created by constant repetition. And he made the whole German race believe -- one of the most intelligent races on the earth, and it became victim to this stupid man. But he had a few qualities. For example, he was capable of repeating something continuously for years with confidence, from the housetops, with absolute certainty, with no hesitation. It was contagious.

People don't believe in what you say, people believe in the way you say it. And once you have learned the art of telling lies it becomes an addiction, because people start believing in you, you start becoming powerful. And then, if you can manage a few more things, your power will be immense.

For example, if you can manage a certain character, that gives you credibility. If your character is such that people can believe in you more easily, that will help you. The people who live on lies always create a character around themselves; if not a character, then at least an appearance of it.

Hitler was a MAHATMA. He was not a drinker, he would not touch any intoxicant. How can you not believe in such a person? He would eat only vegetarian food, he would not touch nonvegetarian food. How can you not believe in such a person? He would not drink even tea or coffee, he would not smoke. How can you not believe in such a person? He was a greater mahatma than Morarji Desai, because he would not even drink his own urine. How can you not believe in such a person? You have to believe! He has all the credibility.

He would get up early in the morning, as has been taught down the ages; he would go early to bed. He remained a bachelor almost to the end -- I say almost, because only three hours before he died, committed suicide, he got married. I think that is the only thing that he ever did which can be called wise -- just three hours before! He must have thought, "Now what can marriage do to me? I am going to die anyway."

Just three hours before... in the middle of the night, when he decided to commit suicide, he called the priest. The priest was awakened, was brought to his underground cell. Just three, four friends were present, the marriage ceremony was done quick and fast, and the only thing that they did after the marriage ceremony was commit suicide -- that was their honeymoon. He had remained a bachelor his whole life.

These things give credibility. If you really want to be a liar, if you really want to go on lying, then you have to create proofs that you are a man of character, how can you lie? People will believe you. That's why your saints, who live on so-called spiritual lies, depend on character.

A man who lives on truth need not depend on anything else; truth is enough. But truth does not create belief in people -- in fact, truth offends people. People love lies and are always offended by the truth. Vimal, that is the cause, not only of your addiction -- millions are addicted to lies, for the simple reason that people are never offended by lies. In fact they want to hear more and more. They say, "What is new?

Truth is never new. If you are thinking about truth, then there is nothing new under the sun. When you say, "What is new? What is the news?" you are inquiring, "Give me a few more lies, a few more gossips, a few more rumors." And you are ready to believe. In fact the greater the lie is, the greater is the possibility of its belief, because if there is only a small lie it can be detected by people; they have that much intelligence. But if the lie is very big, bigger than their intelligence, they will never be able to detect it. That's why great lies live for centuries.

Now, hell is a lie; there is no hell. And heaven is a lie; there is no heaven. But they have lived for centuries and centuries, and I don't think they are going to disappear. They will live. God as a person is a lie. There is godliness, but there is no God. Whenever I use the word god I simply mean godliness, remember it. Translate it always as godliness. There is a quality of godliness in existence, but there is no God. But people want a God, not godliness; they are not interested in godliness.

That's why people like Buddha could not influence much. Buddha and his whole religion disappeared from this country. One of the most fundamental reasons was this: that he emphasized godliness and not God. If godliness is there, then it is a difficult task. You have to grow into godliness; it is not something readymade there that you can possess. It is not something that you can pray to, it is not something that you can desire anything from. It is not already there, it has to be created in the innermost core of your being. It is like love -- it has to bloom in you, you have to release the fragrance of it. You have to become godly, only then there is God; otherwise there is no God.

But this is too much. Nobody wants to pay so great a price. Why not believe in a simple lie, that there is a God -- a very very old ancient man with a white beard, sitting on a golden throne, ready to fulfill any of your demands if you truly ask? And that is the trick. If your prayer is fulfilled, the priest can say, "You really asked"; if it is not fulfilled, "There was no trust in your prayer."

In fact there is never trust in your prayer, because when there is trust there is no need to pray. All prayers arise out of doubt. But sometimes -- it is just a coincidence -- some prayers happen to be fulfilled. It is just a happening, it is just a chance; there is nobody to fulfill them. But when they are fulfilled, the priest can exploit the situation. He can say, "Look -- you prayed deeply, trustfully, your prayer is fulfilled."

But this happens only once in a while. Ninety-nine times in a hundred your prayer is not fulfilled. But you know yourself that there was not trust; doubt was there. Even when you were praying, there was doubt whether there is a God, whether he will hear, whether he will listen, whether he will oblige -- all kinds of doubts. In spite of all these doubts you say, "Why not try? What you are going to lose? Give it a try. Maybe, perhaps...." You know it. So when it is not fulfilled, the priest can always say to you, "Your trust was not total."

God is a lie as a person. God is a quality, not a personality. You cannot pray to God. You can be in prayer, but when the prayer is really there it is only a quality of love, nothing else. No words to express it, nobody to address it, it is simply a song, a wordless song in the heart, just a stirring of the deepest in you.

People love lies. Truth is arduous. And people also love lies because they make them feel good. You must lie about somebody else: you meet a and you lie about b and you make a feel good; then you meet b and you lie about a and you make b feel good. When you lie about others to people you give them the idea that they are better than others. You can play this game, and if you play it cleverly, cunningly, you can exploit very much.

Mulla Nasruddin and his friend Rahimtullah are standing on a street corner insulting one another. The one calls the other stupid, a cheat, a thief. The other says, "You are a coward, a miser, a hypocrite." Finally they begin insulting each other's families.

Mulla Nasruddin looks Rahimtullah straight in the eye and says, "Your sister is a stinking old whore; for twenty-five paisa she will let a one-eyed leper crawl over her."

Rahimtullah stands there, speechless. A bystander is amazed. He goes over to him and says, "For God's sake, man, how can you just stand there and let the Mulla insult your sister like that?"

Rahimtullah says, "I don't have a sister, I never had a sister, and now that my parents are both dead I never will have a sister."

So the bystander turns to Mulla Nasruddin and says, "Mulla, there is no point your insulting him like that, he does not have a sister."

"Sure," says the Mulla. "Of course not. I know it and he knows it, and now even you know it. But I ask you, how many of the people who had their windows open and were listening to our every word -- how many of them also know it?"

People are living in enormous ignorance; they have not lit the candle of light that is there in their hearts. Their interiority is full of darkness. They don't know even themselves -- what else can they know? Hence you can lie easily and they will believe it, and you can exploit their belief. The politicians have been doing it, the priests have been doing it, and it has been done down the ages. Exploit people. This is one of the most cunning businesses ever invented by man.

In the name of religion, only lies and lies are being propagated. Hence whenever a man of truth arrives, there is great confusion. Jesus creates confusion because he starts telling the truth as it is, and people have been accustomed to lies. They think their lies are the truth, and now here comes this man and he starts saying something else, something totally different. Either they have to believe in this man... then they have to drop their whole tradition, which is a long long investment, and only a very few courageous ones can do it. The easier way is to destroy this man, to make this man silent, so they can go on dreaming and believing in their lies.

You ask me, "I am addicted to telling lies. Why do I do it?"

You must have known the ancient art of the politicians and the priests; maybe you unconsciously have stumbled upon it. And now those lies are paying off for you. I know one man, a very good man in a way. He has never worked, he has never done anything, but he is very good at a few things; at playing cards, at playing chess, at gossiping and things like that he is perfect. Very cultured, very educated -- he is a Ph.D.; we had studied together. He has lived his whole life on lies and cheating people.

When I was a professor in the university, sometimes he would come and stay with me for a few days.

Once I asked him, "When are you going to stop all this business of telling lies?"

He said, "Never!"

I said, "But sooner or later you will be caught."

He said, "Never... because there are so many millions and millions of people in this world, and I cheat a person only one time; then I forget about him, then I find another victim." And he said, "I have only a small life, maybe seventy, at the most eighty years, and the world is big and victims are so many -- I can go on cheating."

He was very clever in making friends, he was very clever at creating a feeling in you that he is a man who can be trusted. Once the trust has arisen, he would immediately deceive you. But that much is certain: he never deceived a person twice. There is no need either, there are so many people.

You must have found some nourishment in telling lies to people. Maybe they pay you more attention, maybe they make you feel that you know more than they know. There are people who go on reading each other's hands. Nobody knows anything. There are people -- tarot card readers, experts in I Ching reading.... These are all basically games. You can invent your own game. And if you start playing these games you will become more and more efficient. And these things pay -- although what you are gaining is mundane, spurious, and what you are losing is very essential. You are losing your very soul, you are committing suicide, but it feels as if it is paying.

Stop enjoying it, unlearn the whole art! Of course you will feel many difficulties arising, because you must have become dependent on the art of telling lies. Take the risk, let it be hard. For a few days, it will be hard. Stop immediately! Listen to Atisha's advice: three difficulties.

First: if you become aware when you are lying to somebody, immediately, in the middle of it, ask to be forgiven. Say immediately, "This was a lie, and I was again getting into my old trick. Forgive me, please." It will be hard, but there is no other way. When a habit has become very deep-rooted, it has to be hammered.

Second: become aware when you are just preparing to tell a lie. Just as it is on the lips, just on the tongue... stop it then and there, abort it then and there.

And third: become aware when a lie starts arising in your feelings, in the heart.

If you can do these three awarenesses, lying will disappear. And the moment lying disappears, truth arrives. And truth is the only thing worth seeking and searching, because truth liberates.

Source - Osho Book "The Book of Wisdom"