From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 15. THEY SAY BELIEVE; I SAY EXPLORE
Alexander asked him, ”How would you like to be treated?”
Poras said, ”What a question! An emperor should be treated like an emperor What a stupid
question.”
Alexander says in his notes, ”I have never come across a man like Poras. He was in chains,
imprisoned – I could have killed him immediately, then and there – but the way he walked, the
way he talked....” Alexander was really impressed. He said, ”Take away his chains; he will remain an
emperor anywhere. Give his kingdom back to him. But,” he said to Poras, ”before we leave I would
like to ask you one question. When the chance was there when you could have killed me, why did
you pull your spear back? – just one more second and I’d have been finished – or your elephant
could have crushed me, but you prevented it. Why?”
Poras said, ”Don’t ask that. You know it; you are a politician, I am not. This thread – do you recognize
it? You had sent this thread with your wife; now she is my sister, and I cannot kill my own brother-inlaw.
It is not possible for me to make her a widow. I chose to be defeated rather than to kill you. But
there is no need for you to feel obliged towards me; this is just how a really centered man should
behave.”
So in the past it was possible because of the monarchy. But with the monarchy, idiots also became
kings, madmen also became kings, everything was possible. So I am not supporting monarchy, I
am simply saying that it was possible with the monarchy for a religious man, by accident, to become
an emperor.
In the future, democracy is not going to last long, because the politician already is ignorant before
the scientist; he is already in the hands of the scientist.
The future belongs to the scientist, not to the politician.
That means we will have to change the word ”democracy”. I have a word for it, ”meritocracy”.
Merit will be the decisive factor. Not whether you can gather votes by canvassing all kinds of
promises and hopes, but your merit, your real power in the scientific world will decide. And once
government comes into the hands of the scientist, then everything is possible because I have called
science, objective religion; and religion, subjective science.
Once it comes into the hands of science, the world map will be different, because what is the
fight between the Soviet scientist and the American scientist? They are both working on the same
projects; it will be far quicker if they are together. This is sheer stupidity, that all over the world the
same experiments are being repeated in every nation; it is unbelievable. All these people together
can do miracles. Divided, it becomes more expensive.
For example, if Albert Einstein had not escaped from Germany then who would have won the second
world war? Do you think America and Britain and Russia would have won the second world war?
No. A single man’s escape from Germany, Albert Einstein escaping from Germany, has shaped
history. All these bogus names: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Hitler – they don’t mean anything. That
man did the whole thing because he created the atom bomb. He wrote a letter to Roosevelt: ”The
atom bomb is ready with me, and unless you use it there is no way to stop the war.”
From Ignorance to Innocence 211 Osho