11/01/2025
Once I am gone, the serious people are dangerous. They can take possession, because they are always in search of taking possession of things. They can become my successors, and then they will destroy. So remember this: even an ignorant person can become my successor, but he must be able to laugh and celebrate. Even if somebody claims that he is enlightened, just see his face: if he is serious, he is not going to be successor to me! Let this be the criterion: even a fool will do, but he should be able to laugh and enjoy and celebrate life. But serious people are always in search of power. People who can laugh are not worried about power — that is the problem. Life is so good, who bothers to become a pope? Simple people, happy in their simple ways, don’t bother about politics.
Immediately, when an enlightened person disappears from the body, the people who are serious are fighting to become the successors. And they have always destroyed, because they are the wrong people, but the wrong people are always ambitious. Only right people are not ambitious, because life is giving so much, there is no need for ambition to become a successor, or to become a pope, or to become this and that. Life is so beautiful that more is not asked. But people who have no enjoyment, they enjoy power; people who have missed love, they enjoy prestige; people who have somehow missed the celebration of life and the dance, they would ike to be popes -- high powered, controlling people. Beware of them; they have been always the destroyers, the poisoners. They destroyed Buddha, they destroyed Christ, And they are always around, and it is difficult to get rid of them, very, very difficult, because they are so seriously there... you cannot get rid of them...”
O-sho, "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 3, #10, Q3"