From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 7. SHAME IS THE NAME OF THEIR GAME
be no longer in the world. All your teachers, they have their compartments in you; and all the priests
you came across, all the monks, all the do-gooders, the moralists – they all have made places in
you, strongholds of their own.
Whomsoever you have been impressed with has become a fragment in you. Now you are many
people: dead, alive, fictitious... from the books that you have read, from the holy books – which are
just religious fiction, like science fiction. If you look inside yourself, you will find yourself lost in such
a big crowd. You cannot recognize who you are amongst this whole crowd, which is your original
face. They all pretend to be you, they all have faces like you, they speak the language like you, and
they are all quarrelsome with each other. You become a battlefield.
The strength of the single individual is lost. Your house is divided against itself, you cannot do
anything with wholeness: some parts within you will be against it, some parts will be for it, and some
parts will be absolutely indifferent. If you do it, the parts which were against will go on telling you that
you have done wrong; they will make you feel guilty. The parts that remain indifferent will pretend to
be holy, telling you that you are just third rate to listen to these people who don’t understand.
So whether you do something or you don’t do something, in any case you are condemned. You are
always in a dilemma. Wherever you move you will be defeated and major portions of your being will
always be against you. You will be always doing things with minority support. That certainly means
the majority is going to take revenge – and it will take revenge. It will tell you, ”If you had not done
this you could have done that. If you had not chosen this, you could have chosen that. But you
are a fool, you won’t listen. Now suffer. Now repent.” But the problem is, you cannot do anything
with wholeness so that there is nobody later on to condemn you, to tell you that you are stupid,
unintelligent.
So the first thing: the pseudo-religions have destroyed the integrity, the wholeness, the strength of
man.
That is very necessary if you want to enslave people – strong people cannot be enslaved. And this
is a very subtle slavery, psychological and spiritual. You don’t need handcuffs and chains and prison
cells, no; the pseudo-religions have created much improved arrangements. And they start working
from the moment you are born; they don’t miss a single moment.
In Hinduism, the brahmin gets hold of the child the moment he is born, and the first thing he does
is make a birth chart; and he will follow the child his whole life. On every important occasion he is
there to guide him: about marriage he will decide, in death he will decide. After death he will be
the first to be the guest of the family... because in Hinduism, after a death, on the third day there
is a feast. So all the brahmins and all the relatives and all the friends come to the feast just to give
solace to the soul of the departed.
The priest gets your neck in his hands, and he does not leave go even when you are dead.
In Hinduism, every year after a death there is a certain festival and ceremony when you pray for
the dead: your father, your forefathers, all the people that you represent in some way – the whole
long line of generations. In the very orthodox Hindu homes you will find a family tree, a map of the
generations. It used to be so in my family but I burned it. My father was very angry. I said, ”You burn
From Ignorance to Innocence 88 Osho