From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 4. DANGER: TRUTH AT WORK
no question of any suffering or any anguish when you were not born. Who was going to suffer, and
who was going to be in anxiety and anguish? – you were not there!
Socrates just simply looked at death with the same vision. If you are simply finished, as the atheists
say; if you completely disappear, if nothing of you will remain, then there is no problem because you
are not there. With you, all problems, all anxieties disappear. This is one possibility.
The other possibility is that perhaps the theists are right, and you survive. But then too, he said,
”I don’t see any problem. You are surviving right now, and somehow you are managing your
misery, your anxiety, your problems; somehow you are managing. And if you are there, you will
be experienced, more experienced; you will be able to manage.”
So he said, ”I don’t see any problem to be bothered about. Either I die, then there is no question;
or I will be there, more experienced, more wise. And I can trust myself: if I could pass through life,
I will pass through death too. But I cannot say anything before I have experienced it. And I cannot
promise you either, that when I have experienced it I will be able to come back and tell you, because
up to now nobody has come back. Perhaps there is no way to come back. Perhaps the very bridge
falls as you pass, all communication becomes impossible. But nothing can be said about it.
He would not say anything definitely, and that was the problem that he was creating in people’s
minds. He was creating anxiety. That was one of the points raised against his being in Athens:
”He should be expelled or sentenced to death, because this man has been creating anxiety and
anguish in people’s minds. People who were perfectly happy doing their work, comfortably.... This
man meets them, and once he has met them, they are never at ease again.”
And this was a routine thing for Socrates: just to go around the town, to catch hold of anybody and
ask him any question. Even if the other person wanted to escape, Socrates wouldn’t allow it: ”You
have to answer!” And then, once you had answered a question, he would hammer your answer from
every possible angle and soon you were left without any answer. Then he would tell you, ”You can
come to my school” – he had a school – ”if you want to learn, because your answer was absolutely
bogus. Some idio0t has sold that answer to you and cheated you. You have been living a lie.”
Yes, lies can be comfortable can be very convenient.
Truth, in the beginning, is very inconvenient, is very uncomfortable, but in the end it is the ultimate
blessing.
We can summarize: a lie is always sweet in the beginning, bitter in the end; the truth is bitter in the
beginning, sweet in the end.
But you need patience for the end. If you are impatient, then you are going to buy some lie.
The common masses have no mind of their own. For centuries they have been conditioned,
hypnotized, brainwashed continuously.
So when a man like me says something, it needs guts in the first place even to hear it. Then it needs
tremendous courage to absorb it, because it is bitter, it goes against all your conditioning.
From Ignorance to Innocence 45 Osho