From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 17. JESUS, THE ONLY FORGOTTEN SON OF GOD
three days. And I see so much love coming from you towards me. I would like to know the exact
truth. What is the situation?”
Now, he is throwing all his lust, all his desire on the poor woman; and what the woman said was a
great shock. She said, ”I simply love your eyes, they are so beautiful and so silent, and I would pray
you that you go on coming. We are not poor, but I want to see your eyes at least once a day. I have
never seen such eyes.” She was not concerned with Surdas at all. She was talking about the eyes
as you would talk about a flower, a rose; she wanted to see those beautiful eyes – there was nothing
else.
Surdas – that was not his name at that time. In India you don’t call a blind man a blind man, because
that looks bad, unmannerly; so all blind men in India are called surdas – Surdas means blind man.
That was not his name before; but he went home, took both his eyes out, went back with the help of
another monk and presented those two eyes to the woman. He said, ”You keep these eyes, because
soon we will be moving and I will not be able to come every day. You can see these eyes, you can
keep them, and for me anyway it is good that I don’t have them.”
That day he expressed his heart, ”I was also feeling a certain desire arising in me. Now I will never
see beauty. Now these eyes are closed. The world of beauty is no more there.”
I will not support such a thing because you can be blind but you can still dream of beautiful women,
which is more dangerous. Because no real girl is a dream girl, but all dream girls are real when you
are dreaming, remember – very real.
You will get frustrated with any beautiful woman. She may be Cleopatra, Amrapali, anyone, but
you will get fed up, actually fed up, because this desire for beauty is also a kind of hunger; you are
feeding on it. It is a kind of food, a nourishment, but you cannot eat the same food every day. Sooner
or later you are going to be fed up. That word fed up is very beautiful. The same food can bring
nausea if it is given every day to you.
So just by destroying your eyes you cannot go beyond your desire – that is stupid. But Surdas did
that, and he was writing only poetry about Krishna’s childhood, because how can this man, who has
taken his eyes out to avoid desire, think of his god dancing with girls, other people’s wives, and living
the life of the most materialist person possible? So for him, Krishna never goes beyond seven years;
he remains just below seven. And in India many temples are called Balaji’s temple, which means
Krishna in his childhood.
This Balaji’s mandir was just in front of the house of the man who had made it. Because of the
temple and the man’s devotion, continuous devotion.... He would take a bath – just in front of the
temple was a well – he would take a bath there first thing. Then he would do his prayers for hours;
and he was thought to be very religious. By and by people started also calling him Balaji. It became
so associated that I don’t remember his real name myself because by the time I had any idea that
he existed, I only heard his name as Balaji. But that cannot be his name; that name must have come
because he made the temple.
I used to go to the temple because the temple was very beautiful and very silent – except for this
Balaji who was a disturbance there. And for hours – he was a rich man so there was no need for him
From Ignorance to Innocence 237 Osho