From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 24. IMITATION IS YOUR CREMATION
So he went. Now, he must be at least sixty, not less than that – not somebody immature who can
be easily converted, programmed, deprogrammed. But you will be surprised: his family immediately
went to a deprogrammer. The first thing, hearing his ideas they were shocked, they were angry;
they could not believe that a man of sixty years old who earns one thousand million dollars per year
can be so easily converted by a cult. He has to be deprogrammed.
These people are not special; it’s just the common mind. And the deprogrammer suggested, of
course, the right thing to do. He said, ”He is not a child so you have to be very careful. You are not
to be angry, you are not to show that you are against his new ideology, because your anger and your
clear disappointment in him will take him farther away from you. You have to be very supportive,
very loving.”
The deprogrammer is really cunning but he understands one thing, that a sixty-year-old man cannot
be treated like a child, that you deprogram him in two days. And we have not programmed him at all.
We have not tried to make him become a sannyasin, he was asking to become a sannyasin. Now
the family is pretending to be loving and very supportive. And the old man finds it very strange. The
message has come, ”Very strange things are happening. My family has never been so loving.”
But deep down they are all boiling inside. I don’t think that by their lovingness and supportiveness,
which is all phony and American, the man can be prevented from coming here. In fact he will think
– which the deprogrammer has not thought about – that my ideology is so beautiful that just hearing
about it the family has become so loving and so supportive. It would have been perfectly right to go
as a sannyasin. And next time he is going to become a sannyasin.
But they will make every effort: this is just trying the first deprogrammer. If it doesn’t work they may
try saying, ”This man is mad, he cannot be in a responsible post like the chairman of a company.
He should be put into a mental asylum or into some nursing home where he needs to be treated
psychiatrically.” They will not leave him so easily. That’s why I said unfortunately he is a billionaire.
If he were a poor man, the family would have been happy: ”Get lost Who cares! It is good that we
get rid of you. Why have you come back? You should have become a sannyasin there.”
I have not given you any discipline. The questioner says, ”... the discipline of sannyas”. Can’t you
understand a little bit of humor? What discipline of sannyas have I given to you? That you have to
wear red clothes – does that mean anything? It is simply to annoy the old traditional sannyasins, just
to give them a good headache. And that’s what we were doing in India, because I had thousands of
sannyasins and it was becoming difficult for people to decide who was my sannyasin, and who was
the old traditional sannyasin.
They would even touch the feet of my sannyasins. But when they looked at my picture on the mala,
they were shocked! That mala and picture are just to shock people. What discipline have I given to
you? You don’t know discipline. You should go and look in a Trappist monastery and then you will
understand what discipline is.
I am reminded of a story. In a Trappist monastery you enter for ever; you cannot get out unless you
are thrown out. Unless you become a nuisance and the monastery decides to throw you out, you
cannot get out on your own. That freedom is not allowed; about that, you have to decide before you
enter. You can take your time, but once you enter the monastery it is for your whole life, it is lifelong.
Only your dead body will come out of the monastery.
From Ignorance to Innocence 345 Osho