From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 4. DANGER: TRUTH AT WORK
we cannot lose that professor. So do one thing.... I will not expel you; I will make arrangements in
another college. You do not have to do anything else, just do me a favor: I will make arrangements
in another college, and you move to that other college. Jabalpur University has at least twenty
colleges, so you can choose any college you want.”
I said, ”It is not a question of my choosing any college. You phone all these principals to see if
anybody is ready to accept me, because now everybody knows about this S.N.L. Shrivastava thing:
that the best professor of philosophy in the university is ready to resign. Then who is going to take
me? You try; I am ready.” Out of twenty colleges, only one principal was ready to accept me – on the
condition that I would never go to the class. He would give me the percentage needed, but I should
never go to the class.
I said, ”That is a perfect arrangement. I myself don’t like unnecessarily bothering to go and then
finding idiots there who don’t know what they are doing, what they are teaching. So this is a good
arrangement; you can make it. But remember, I am not going to pay the fees. I am doing you a
favor, so you arrange for the fees for two years. I will never go to that college; you arrange for the
fees, and you take care of everything. After two years I will come to you. If anything goes wrong,
then you will be responsible.”
He said, ”I will take every responsibility” – and he took every responsibility.
After two years I went to him and said, ”Give me my permission card to enter the examination. I am
not going to that college; I have not even seen that college.”
This is the way of the common masses – even the educated people belong to the common masses
– they don’t have integrity, intelligence or even the courage to say, ”I don’t know.” Now this condition,
I know, had come from the professor. The principal had asked the professor, ”Can we accept this
student? This is the trouble....”
And the professor said, ”I don’t want any trouble in my class. You can accept him only on the
condition that he never comes to the class.”
And now, just before I left India, I read an article by the same professor, Soleri is his name, proudly
declaring that I was his student. I have not seen his face, he has not seen my face; I have never
been in his class or on his college campus or around there. And now he is proud that I have been
his student and that he always knew that I am going to be somebody special. These fools! They can
lie so easily. But their whole lives are full of lies.
The common masses are, in a way, innocent. But the pedagogues, the priests, the politicians –
these are the people who go on poisoning the common masses and keep them at the level of a
mob.
What we call democracy has not yet come to the point of being a democracy. It is still, everywhere,
only a mobocracy, because the mass that elects the people is a mob; it is not yet alert or aware.
Just a few days ago was the president’s election here. What I heard was, that before the election
on the sixth of November, on the night of the fifth of November, before the Wasco County Court, all
From Ignorance to Innocence 52 Osho