From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 14. SOCIETY CROWDS YOU OUT; RELIGON OUTS YOUR CROWD
I was always interested in many things, trying to find out whether they were really based in knowing
or were only hypothetical – because if they were hypothetical then they were not really true, they
were just pragmatic, helpful, convenient. For example, Euclidian geometry – that’s the class he was
teaching when he allowed me for the first day.... Now Euclid’s definitions – even a child can see that
they are wrong. Euclid says: ”A line has length but no breadth.” Now, without breadth, how can a
line be? It is so simple, one does not need to be a mathematician; I am not a mathematician, and
I was not at all at that time. And I asked him, ”This is stupid what you are saying, that it has length
but no breadth – it does have breadth. Draw a line on the board without breadth, just with length,
then I will accept your hypothesis.”
He said, ”Now I know what you mean by being alive. I have done post – graduation mathematics and
this question never came to my mind. Euclid says it; every school, every college, every university
teaches it, so I never thought... but perhaps you are right. I can see, there is....”
And I said, ”It is measurable. With the chalk you draw a line on the blackboard, and still you’re saying
that it has no breadth. And’the point’ Euclid says,’has neither length nor breadth.’ Then how can it
be? It may have a very, very small length, a very, very small breadth, but that does not mean that
it has none. You just need a magnifying glass. You just wait and I will run to the chemistry lab and
bring the magnifying glass and show you.
He said, ”There is no need to go – I can understand. But then, what am I to teach? Euclid is finished,
because these are basic definitions.”
I said, ”These are hypotheses. Just one thing you have to accept, that these hypotheses are
practical, but not truth.” So you have to find out about whatsoever you know – whether it is
just hypothetical, useful in life, or really a truth that you know, that you have felt, that you have
experienced. If it is only a hypothesis, put it aside and you will feel such an unburdening. All
hypotheses, all borrowed knowledge that has gathered there and which you are carrying – you are
dragging a mountainous load, you are being crushed under it – just put it aside.
Be ignorant, accept that ”I am ignorant.” And from that point you can start the search.
Every child is going to be burdened. I hope that someday it will not be so. In fact there is no
need, because when you are teaching Euclid, you can teach very simply that this is not truth, it
is only a hypothesis. With this hypothesis it becomes easier to understand the triangle, the circle
and everything. But remember that at the base there is a hypothesis, and the whole palace is
hypothetical.
Similarly, your God is a hypothesis and the whole pyramid of theology is based on nothing but that
hypothesis. If you start looking into things it does not need great intelligence, it needs only simple
innocence to see.
That principal called me into his office and he said, ”You are not to come again to my classes
because now it will be difficult for me to deal with the children. They have seen me as ignorant. up
to now I was an authority – you destroyed that.” But he was a sincere man in a way. He said, ”I can
understand you, but don’t do it to any other teacher because they may not understand it. And now I
know why so many complaints go on coming against you, that you are a disturbance. But this was
From Ignorance to Innocence 192 Osho