From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 15. THEY SAY BELIEVE; I SAY EXPLORE
they were caught and imprisoned. One uncle was just here for the festival. He was only in his
matriculation class when he was caught, because he was part of a conspiracy to destroy a train, to
bomb a bridge. They were making a bomb – and he was a student of chemistry, so he used to bring
from the chemistry lab things needed to make the bomb. He was caught when he was just going
to take the examination, just ten days before. And his education was finished, because after three
years when he came back it was too late to start again.
So he went into business. My elder uncle was in his B.A. final when he got caught, because he was
also part of a conspiracy group against the government. My whole family was political, except my
father. So they were all asking me, ”Why don’t you register, why don’t you vote? – and why are you
wasting your energies? If you move in the direction of politics you can become the president of the
country, you can become the premier of the country.”
I said, ”You have completely forgotten with whom you are talking. I don’t suffer from any inferiority,
so why should I be interested in becoming the president of the country? Why should I waste my life
in becoming the president of the country? It is almost as if I have no cancer and you want me to be
operated on for cancer – it is strange. Why should I be operated on unnecessarily?
You suffer from some inferiority complex, and you are projecting your inferiority complex on me. I
am perfectly okay as I am. I am absolutely grateful to existence wherever I am. Today whatsoever
happens is good. More than that I have never asked, so there is no way to disappoint me.”
They said, ”You talk of strange things. What is this inferiority complex and what has this inferiority
complex to do with politics?”
I said, ”You don’t understand simple psychology and neither do your great politicians understand
simple psychology.” All these politicians on top in the world are sick people, so one way is to go on
covering their wound. Yes, they can deceive others. When Jimmy Carter smiles you are deceived,
but how can jimmy Carter deceive himself? He knows it is just an exercise of the lips. There is
nothing else inside, no smile.
People reach to the highest rung of the ladder, then they become aware that their whole life has
been a wastage. They have arrived, but where? They have arrived to the place for which they had
been fighting – and it was not a small fight; it was tooth and nail – and destroying so many people,
using so many people as means, and stepping on their heads.
You have arrived at the last rung of the ladder but what have you gained? You have simply wasted
your whole life. Now even to accept it needs tremendous courage. It is better to go on smiling and
go on keeping the illusion: at least others believe that you are great. You know who you are. You
are exactly the same as you were – perhaps worse, because all this struggle, all this violence has
made you worse.
You have lost all your humanity.
You are no longer a being.
It is so far away from you that Gurdjieff used to say that not every person has a soul, for the simple
reason... not that it is literally true, but he used to say, ”Not everybody has got a soul, only a very few
From Ignorance to Innocence 205 Osho