From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 14. SOCIETY CROWDS YOU OUT; RELIGON OUTS YOUR CROWD
What can be done is: you can force me to lie, and I can lie. And I can lie with such a face that
you will think I am absolutely truthful. I will learn. If that is the way, then let that be the way, but
remember, you have been responsible for distracting me from truth because you were rewarding
lies and punishing the truth. You can think it over. I am not in a hurry. You are asking me.”
What had happened was that, living two or three blocks away from my family was a brahmin family,
very orthodox brahmins. Brahmins cut all their hair and just leave a small part on the seventh chakra
on the head uncut so that part goes on growing. They go on tying it and keeping it inside their cap
or inside their turban. And what I had done was, I had cut the father’s hair. In summertime in India,
people sleep outside the house, on the street. They bring their beds, cots, on the streets. The whole
town sleeps on the streets in the night, it is so hot inside.
So this brahmin was sleeping – and it was not my fault... he had such a long choti; it is called choti,
that bunch of hair. I had never seen it because it was always hidden inside his turban. While he
was sleeping, it was hanging down and touching the street. From his cot it was so long that I was
tempted, I could not resist; I rushed home, brought the scissors, cut it off completely and took it and
kept it in my room.
In the morning he must have found that it was gone. he could not believe it because his whole
purity was in it, his whole religion was in it – his whole spirituality was destroyed. But everybody
in the neighborhood knew that if anything goes wrong... first they would rush to me. And he came
immediately. I was sitting outside knowing well that he would come in the morning. He looked at
me. I also looked at him. He said to me, ”What are you looking at?”
I said, ”What are you looking at? Same thing.”
He said, ”Same thing?”
I said, ”Yes. The same thing. You name it.
He asked, ”Where is your father? I don’t want to talk to you at all.”
He went in. He brought my father out and my father said, ”Have you done anything to this man?”
I said, ”I have not done anything to this man, but I have cut a choti which certainly cannot belong to
this man, because when I was cutting it, what was he doing? He could have prevented it.”
The man said, ”I was asleep.”
I said, ”If I had cut your finger while you were asleep, would you have remained asleep?”
He said, ”How could I remain asleep if somebody was cutting my finger?”
I said, ”That certainly shows that hairs are dead. You can cut them but a person is not hurt, no blood
comes out. So what is the fuss about? A dead thing was hanging there... and I thought that you are
unnecessarily carrying this dead thing inside your turban for your whole life – why not relieve you?
It is in my room. And with my father I have the contract to be true.”
From Ignorance to Innocence 184 Osho