From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

20 December 1984 pm in Lao Tzu Grove
Question 1
OSHO,
WHY WERE YOU SO MISCHIEVOUS IN YOUR CHILDHOOD?
CHAPTER 21
Personality: the carbon cop-out
Do you think I am different? Not a bit. I am still the same. I did not allow my childhood to be spoiled
by anybody. And what you think of as mischievous, I have never thought about it in that way. Even
today I don’t think that anything I have ever done was a mischief I had my reasons, and very valid
reasons.
For example: the first day I entered high school from my middle school.... In high school they used
to have a prayer at the beginning of the day. It was a very famous song of Mirza Iqbal, who was one
of the greatest Urdu poets of this age. As far as the language is concerned, it is certainly a great
piece of art, but the philosophy behind it is ugly. The song says: ”My country, my nation, is the best
of all the nations. My country is a beautiful garden and we are nightingales in this garden....” And
that’s the way it goes on.
I said to the principal who was standing in front of the two thousand students and fifty teachers, ”I
will not participate in this prayer because to me this is absolute rubbish. Every country thinks of itself
in the same way and every country has its ego in it.
”You ask the Chinese, you ask the Japanese, you ask the Germans, you ask the English, you
ask anybody – they all think the same. So what Iqbal has written is simply rubbish as far as the
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