From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 16. LET’S NOT FACE IT – YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY ALONE
house went to his house. Just at the end of my house was a very big neem tree. He taught Sanskrit
and was continually teaching about God and prayer and worship. In fact he was indoctrinating
everybody’s minds.
I asked him, ”My grandfather does not believe in
God, and whenever I ask him why, he says,’Because I am not afraid.’ Are you very afraid? You seem
to be continually hammering this word’god’ into our heads, and I see you every morning in your
house chanting so loudly for three hours that the whole neighborhood is disturbed. But nobody can
say anything because it is religious chanting.” If you do something like modern dancing, jazz music,
then everybody will be on your neck, that you are disturbing them. He was disturbing everybody,
every morning from five to eight – and he had a really loud voice – but it was religious....
I said, ”Are you very afraid? Three hours every day you have to pray. It must be a great fear if for
three hours every day you have to persuade God to protect you.”
He said, ”I am not afraid. Your grandfather is a rascal.” They were almost the same age.... ”He is a
rascal, don’t listen to him. He will spoil you.”
I said, ”It is strange: he thinks you will spoil me, and you think he will spoil me; and as far as I am
concerned nobody is going to spoil me. I believe my grandfather when he says that he is not afraid
– but about you, I am not certain.”
He asked, ”Why?”
I said, ”Because when you pass the neem tree in the night you start chanting” – because it was
known that the neem tree had ghosts in it, so people ordinarily never went near that tree in the night.
But he had to go that way because his house was there; otherwise he had to go almost half a mile
round by the main road and then reach his house. Going that way round each time was too difficult,
so he had found a religious strategy: he would start chanting. As he entered the path, he started
chanting. I said, ”I have heard you; although you don’t chant as loudly as you chant in the morning,
you do chant, I have heard you. And I know there are ghosts so I cannot say you are doing anything
wrong.”
He said, ”How did you come to know?”
I said, ”Many times I am there by the side of the neem tree in the darkness; your chanting becomes
louder and you start walking faster – that much I know. Why do you chant there if you are not afraid?
And if you are afraid of ghosts, then that three-hour morning chanting with God is useless. Can’t he
save you against ghosts?”
He said, ”From today I am not going to chant.” Certainly he kept his word. He was not chanting.
Although he was walking faster than usual. And all that I had to do was to sit in the tree with a
kerosene can – empty, so I could beat it like a drum. I simply drummed the can and threw it on top of
him. You should have seen the situation! He ran away screaming and shouting, ”BHOOT! BHOOT!
BHOOT! BHOOT!” BHOOT is the Hindi word for ghost.
From Ignorance to Innocence 221 Osho