“I don’t need anyone’s certificate. These idiots should shut up!” Osho

I have been reading the work of a man, now deceased, called "Osho." He has been heavily criticized, but I like him a great deal. I am cutting and pasting below, not exactly in the order that he presents his ideas. I got these quotes from his book The God Conspiracy but his books are all transcribed from his talks and I believe that these ideas and words appear elsewhere.

Feel free to make what meaning you will. And yes, I was thinking of the Feldenkrais certification process when I pasted these citations below.

"In Christianity you cannot be a saint on your own account. The word saint comes from sanction. You have to be sanctioned by the church that you are a saint; it is a certificate. It is such an ugly idea that the church can give you a certificate that you are a saint. Even a man like Francis of Assisi, a beautiful man, was summoned by the pope: "People have started worshipping you like a saint, and you don't have any certificate." And that's where I feel Francis missed the point. He should have refused, but he knelt just like a Christian and asked the pope, "Give me the certificate." Otherwise he was a nice man, a beautiful man, but I don't mention his name because he acted in a very stupid way. This is not the way of a saint.

I don't need anybody's certificate for my enlightenment or for my buddhahood. I declare it! I don't need anybody's certificate. Who can give me the certificate? Even Gautam Buddha cannot give me the certificate. Who gave him a certificate?"

"After twenty-five centuries, I am not going to be a replica of Gautam Buddha. I have nothing to learn from him. If anything has to be, he has to learn something from me. Twenty-five centuries have not been a mere wastage. Just as everything is progressing and evolving, so is consciousness. But every scholar gets completely fucked-up! He thinks only in terms of his scripture, and the scripture is twenty-five centuries old. I am a contemporary man, and I do not belong to any category. I am a category in myself. I decide according to my spontaneous response, not according to any commandments, not according to any discipline. Whether the discipline is given by Buddha or Mahavira or Christ or Krishna, it does not matter; they are all old. But these people are living in the past.

I am moving moment to moment into the future. I have left Gautam Buddha twenty-five centuries behind. His enlightenment also is twenty-five centuries old. So much dust has gathered on it. But my mirror of consciousness is absolutely fresh, and I am not going to listen to anybody. Nobody is my master! And nobody has the right to tell me what character is and what is wisdom and what is enlightenment. Nobody has that right.

I am a man absolutely free. I live my life according to my own light. I am nobody's follower, and I don't live my life according to any scripture. These idiots should shut up!