From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 4. DANGER: TRUTH AT WORK
centuries – and there will be no conclusion. If you depend on them, you will repent; you just escape!
Leave these people here; let them argue and I will be listening to their arguments.”
The king simply slipped away, took his fastest horse and rushed as fast as it was possible, away
from the palace where the dream had happened. By the evening he had gone hundreds of miles,
and he was very happy that he had come so far away: ”Now it will be difficult for death to find me at
the place, at the fixed time.”
The sun was setting. He had reached the outskirts of the city of Damishk. Just to rest... because
the whole day he had not eaten, he had not even taken a cup of water. Time was so precious! Thirst
is not going to kill you just in one day, hunger is not going to kill you just in one day. He was going
to rest in a garden just outside of the city. He went into the garden and was tying the horse to a
tree, and was thanking the horse, because the horse was really perhaps the best horse in the world.
He was thanking the horse and saying to him, ”You really proved your mettle today. Even I was not
aware that you can go so fast. Now rest, and I will arrange for your food and for your water.”
Just then, he felt a hand on one of his shoulders. He looked back. The same black figure was
standing there, laughing. The king was shocked; he said, ”Why are you laughing?”
Death said, ”This is the place and this is the time. I was worried whether you will be able to make it
or not – but your horse certainly is the best horse in the world. I also thank him!”
Where can you escape? Perhaps wherever you are going, there is the right place and the right time.
In fact every place is the right place for death, and every time is the right time.
Now, facts like death.... Religions have been trying to console you, giving you ideas that can help
you to create a buffer between you and the fear of death – shock absorbers – so that you don’t
get shocked continually; otherwise life would become impossible. So all kinds of fictions have been
woven into mythologies, into theologies. Anybody saying the truth is bound to cut through all these
cobwebs, these mythologies, these fictions.
And when you see suddenly the naked truth, you are going to be against the person who has brought
you such a shocking gift.
You would like to believe that it is not true, but you know it is. Hence the anger; otherwise there is
no need to kill Socrates.
If you are right, and you know that you are right, then let this man befool himself with his ”truth” – it
does not matter to you. The people of Athens believed in an afterlife, as did the people of the whole
earth. Everybody, except the atheists, believed in an afterlife of some kind. The Greek mythology
was rich, but Socrates said, ”Nothing can be said about death because nobody has ever returned.
So we have to keep our minds open. We cannot accept any fiction about death and life after death,
because there has not been a single eyewitness. Until I die, I cannot say whether one lives after
death or not. If I die, then there is no question, no problem arises – I am simply not there.
”What was the problem when you were not born?” His argument was solid. In what trouble were
you when you were not born? – what anxiety, what anguish, what suffering? You know that there is
From Ignorance to Innocence 44 Osho