From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 27. BAPTISM: WADING FOR GODOT
Seeing the boats, one of the friends said, ”It will be good if we go in the boat, on the river. Just look!
The moon is reflected in the river, and when something, a waterfowl, runs over the water or takes a
dip into the water, the whole water becomes silver. The moon spreads all over the river.”
They were just a little bit awake the way man is: ninety-nine percent they were drunk. They went
into a boat, they took the oars and started moving out into the river. The others who were just sitting
went on telling the people who were rowing the boat, ”Go faster, it is so beautiful. Don’t move so
slowly, make speed.” And the oarsmen were trying hard and perspiring.
As the morning was coming closer, one of them said – because a cold wind started blowing and
they came back to their senses a little bit – one of them said, ”We must have come miles away from
our place. Somebody should get out and have a look where we are, so that we can go back home.
Soon the sun will be rising, and before that we have to get back; otherwise that boatman whose boat
we have picked up without asking will create trouble.”
One man got out and started laughing madly. They said, ”Why are you laughing?”
He said, ”Just come here and you also will laugh.”
They all climbed out – and then they sat there laughing, because they had forgotten to unchain the
boat! The whole night they had rowed and had tried to go faster and faster and they were exactly
where they had started. Not a single inch... the boat was tied on the bank, it was locked.
This is the story of man as he is.
Now, Mother Teresa must be thinking that she is doing good. I have no doubt about her intentions,
but I have tremendous doubt about her wakefulness. She is not awake, she is fast asleep. In sleep
at the most you can go on dreaming good dreams, or bad dreams; but what does it matter? If it is a
dream, whether you dream of heaven or hell, what does it matter? In the morning you will find both
were dreams.
In a dream you can be a thief, or you can be a monk. And of course in the dream you will enjoy
being a monk and the ego that comes with it; it is part and parcel of a very polished, cultured ego.
And if you are a thief, certainly, even in your dream you will feel bad that unfortunately you have to
become a thief. You don’t want to become one, but situations are forcing you to become a thief even
though it is a sin.
You ask me, is there something like sin?
There is only one sin: that is not recognizing your sleep, not recognizing your state of deep hypnotic
slumber. That’s the only sin. There is no other sin.
Out of this one sin millions of things can arise, but this is the root. And if this sin is there you cannot
do anything right. Even if you try to do anything right you will do it for the wrong reasons, the wrong
motives. The action may look right, but the motivation will be wrong. You are wrong; so from where
can you get the right motivation?
From Ignorance to Innocence 397 Osho