From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 18. ONE GOD, ONE MESSENGER, ONE BOOK – ONE BIG LIE
You must have heard the story of the five blind men who went to see an elephant. In the first place,
blind people should not go to see something; that is an absurdity. But they were curious, and the
whole village was agog because for the first time an elephant had come to the village. So they also
decided, ”Let us go.”
They could not see but they said, ”We can at least touch and feel, and we will see what this elephant
is.” And they all five touched the elephant, of course from different angles. Somebody touched the
leg of the elephant; he said, ”I have found it. The elephant is just like a pillar, the pillars that we have
in the temple, exactly like a marble pillar.”
Another man said, ”You idiot, you must be touching some pillar, because what I see is totally
different.” He was touching the ear of the elephant, and he said, ”It looks like a fan.”
In India, in the hot summer, before electricity came into being there used to be fans hanging from
the ceiling. And one person, a poor person, would go on pulling the fan with a rope the whole day,
and the fan would give you, at least for the few rich people, cool air the whole day. Or people would
be standing on both sides with two big fans the shape of an elephant’s ear, and they would both be
fanning you.
So the second man said, ”This is impossible what you are saying.”
A third one contradicted them both, and the fourth one contradicted all three. Then the fifth one said,
”You are idiots; I should not have come with you, because it is nothing but a brush – he was holding
the tail. ”And so much ado about nothing; just a brush hanging with something... I don’t know what
it is hanging with because I can’t see.” They were all quarreling the whole way back home.
But how can you decide when you are blind? You should accept one thing, that you cannot see. If
you don’t accept that then there is going to be trouble.
These cults have no eyes. I have asked bishops, rabbis, shankaracharyas, Jaina monks, Buddhist
bhikkus, ”Have you experienced it? And at least, for once, be sincere and be truthful.”
And they have all told me, ”In private we can say we have not experienced it, but in public, if you
ask us, we will absolutely deny that we have ever said it. Because in public we have to pretend. We
have studied....”
When I spoke for the first time in Bombay, in 1960, a Jaina monk also spoke with me. We were
the two to address the meeting. He spoke before me because he was a well-known person; I was
absolutely unknown. And when he finished and I stood up, people from the hall started leaving
because nobody knew me. I had to tell those people, ”Just for five minutes, stand still wherever you
are. After five minutes you are free to leave or to sit down.” Of course they stopped because I was
asking for just five minutes and it wouldn’t have looked good to go out just like that.
I said, ”Just for five minutes – you look at the clock and after five minutes you just empty the hall;
there is no need to be here. But I have just a few things to say in five minutes. First: this man who
spoke before me knows nothing; he is just a dodo!” Many who were standing sat down. I said, ”For
five minutes, stand up! For five minutes you keep standing then you can either sit or go out.”
From Ignorance to Innocence 253 Osho