From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 21. PERSONALITY: THE CARBON COP-OUT
A strange thing happened – and if you trust life, strange things go on happening. He gave me
ninety-nine percent out of a hundred. He wrote a special note on the paper that he was not giving
a hundred percent because that would look a little too much; that’s why he had cut the one percent,
”But the paper deserves one hundred percent. I am a miser,” he wrote on his note.
I read the note; Karpatri showed it to me saying, ”Just look at this note: ’I am a miser, I have never
gone above fifty in my whole life; the best I have given is fifty percent.’”
But what appealed to him were my strange answers, that he had never received before. And that
was his whole life’s effort – that a student of philosophy should not be like a parrot, just repeating
what is written in the textbook. The moment he would see that it was just a textbook thing, he was
no more interested in it.
He was a thinker and he wanted you to say something new. And with me the problem was I had
no idea of the textbooks, so anything that I was writing could not be from the textbooks – that much
was certain. And he loved it for the simple reason that I am not bookish. I answered on my own.
He appointed, for my viva voce, one Mohammedan professor of Allahabad university. He was
thought to be a very strict man. And even Doctor Karpatri told me, ”He is a very strict man, so
be careful.”
I said to him, ”I am always careful whether the man is strict or not. I don’t care about the man, I
simply am careful. The man is not the point: even if there is nobody in the room, I am still careful.”
He said, ”I would love to be present and see it because I have heard about this man that he is really
hard.” So he came. That was very rare. The head of my department was there, the vice-chancellor
was there, and Doctor Karpatri. He asked special permission from the Mohammedan professor, Sir
Saiyad, ”Can I be present? I just want to see this, because you are known as the hardest examiner,
and I know this boy – he is also, in his way, as hard as you are. So I want to see what happens.”
And my professor, Doctor S.K. Saxena, who loved me so much, just like a son, and cared for me
in every possible way.... He would even go out of his way to take care of me. For example every
morning when the examinations were on, he would come to the university, to my hostel room, to
pick me up in his car and leave me in the examination hall, because he was not certain – I may go, I
may not go. So for those few days while the examinations were on... and it was very difficult for him
to get up that early.
He lived four, five miles away from the hostel, and he was a man who loved drinking, sleeping late.
His classes never began before one o’clock in the afternoon because only by that time was he
ready. But to pick me up, because the examination started at seven-thirty, at seven exactly he was
in front of my room. I asked him, ”Why do you waste thirty minutes? – because from here it is just a
one-minute drive to the examination hall.”
He said, ”These thirty minutes are so that if you are not here then I can find where you are – because
I am not certain about you. Once you are inside the hall and the door is closed, then I take a deep
breath of relief, that now you will do something, and we will see what happens.”
From Ignorance to Innocence 298 Osho