From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 16. LET’S NOT FACE IT – YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY ALONE
When you have touched the rock bottom of fear you will simply laugh, there is nothing to fear.
And when fear disappears there is innocence, and that innocence is the summum bonum, the very
essence of a religious man.
And that innocence is power.
That innocence is the only miracle there is.
Out of innocence anything can happen, but you will not be a Christian out of that, and you will not
be a Mohammedan out of that. Out of innocence you will become simply an ordinary human being,
totally accepting your ordinariness, and living it joyously, thankful to the whole existence – not to
God, because that is an idea given by others to you.
But existence is not an idea.
It is there all around you, within and without.
When you are utterly innocent, a deep thankfulness – I will not call it prayer because in prayer you
are asking for something, I will call it a deep thankfulness – a gratitude arises. Not that you are
asking for something, but thanking for something that has already been given to you.
So much has been given to you.
Do you deserve it? Have you earned it?
Existence goes on pouring so much over you that to ask for more is just ugly. That which you have
received, you should be grateful for it.
And the most beautiful thing is that when you are grateful, more and more existence starts pouring
over you. It becomes a circle: the more you get, the more you become grateful; the more you
become grateful, the more you get... and there is no end to it, it is an infinite process.
But remember – the hypothesis of God is gone; the moment you called it a hypothesis the idea of
God has been already dropped. Whether you are afraid or not, you cannot take it back; it is finished.
Now the only way left is to go into your fear.
Silently enter into it, so you can find its depth.
And sometimes it happens that it is not very deep.
A Zen story is: a man walking in the night slipped from a rock. Afraid that he would fall down
thousands of feet, because he knew that place was a very deep valley, he took hold of a branch that
was hanging over the rock. In the night all he could see was a bottomless abyss. He shouted; his
own shout was reflected back – there was nobody to hear.
You can think of that man and his whole night of torture. Every moment there was death, his hands
were becoming cold, he was losing his grip... and as the sun came out he looked down and he
From Ignorance to Innocence 227 Osho