From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 13. ECSTASY IS KNOWING THAT NOBODY IS HOLDING YOUR HAND
Then my father said, ”Look! It was better that you were a girl. Now I am dead! You grow your hair as
fast as you can. Go to your Kaka, that opium addict, and ask him if he can help somehow; otherwise
this is going to create more trouble for me. The whole town will go on coming. You will be moving
around the whole city and everybody will think that your father is dead. They will start coming.”
And they did start coming. That was the last time he did anything to me. After that he said, ”I am not
going to do anything because it leads into more trouble.”
I said, ”I had not asked – I simply go on doing my thing. You interfered unnecessarily.”
But I never allowed him to give me advice. And soon everybody understood in my family that I was
very averse to advice, because whatsoever they would say I would do just the opposite, to prevent
them giving me any advice. I told them, ”If you give me advice I will do just the reverse, so just don’t
give me any advice. I don’t want to carry these voices all my life within myself – please leave my
mind clean. I want to listen to my own voice, if there is any. If there is none, I am perfectly happy
with that. I am happy with my authenticity.”
Then slowly, slowly they understood that I should not be interfered with, and there was no point, it
created more trouble: I would find out a way which was more troublesome for them. Then a time
came when I would be sitting in the room, and my mother would look around and say, ”Nobody is
here. I wanted somebody to go to the market to fetch some vegetables.”
I said, ”I don’t see anybody either. There is nobody; only I am sitting here, there is nobody.”
I was not counted as anybody at all – just nobody. She would see me in front of her and say, ”I don’t
see anybody.” And she would agree with me: ”Neither do I see anybody, the room is empty” – and
she would go back to find somebody else somewhere, to send to the market.
The moment they recognized me as nobody... I can see in myself that since that moment I don’t
hear any voices. And it must have been at the age of nine or ten that they recognized – they had to
recognize me as nobody; not to count on me in any way, not to depend on me for any work. Small
things....
My mother would say, ”Go and bring a dozen bananas,” so I would go. The market was not far away,
just two furlongs; it was a small place. But in these two furlongs I would meet so many people and
there would be so many discussions that by the time I reached the market, I would forget what I had
come for. And moreover the time was also finished. I had to pick up something quickly because the
sun was setting or had gone down long before.
I would come home to ask, ”What was it that you wanted?”
And my mother would say, ”You are good for nothing. I asked for a simple thing, one dozen bananas,
and it took you five hours to come back empty-handed to enquire!”
I said, ”What to do? There were so many people on the way, so many problems, questions,
arguments. By the time I reached the market I had forgotten, so I have come to ask.” They dropped
the idea that I could be of any use; but it helped me tremendously. Slowly, slowly in my own house I
From Ignorance to Innocence 176 Osho