Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 5. FOLLOW NO ONE BUT YOURSELF
understand the difference between life with purpose and life as play. Someone walks a street in the
morning in order to reach somewhere, say his office. And the same person walks the same street
in the evening for a stroll; he does not have to reach anywhere. Though the person is the same and
the street is the same, there is a great difference between the two walks. While going to the office is
an effort, a drudgery, the evening stroll is a play, a joy. Walking to the office he feels heavy and dull;
walking for walking’s sake he feels delight.
People like Krishna don’t live for a purpose; their life is like an evening stroll. Their life is just a play,
a leela. Of course, if he finds a thistle lying on the path, he removes it, which is a different matter.
This too is part of his joyful play; he does not do so with a motive to earning merit. He walks for the
love of walking, but walking, he will lovingly help someone who has lost his way. The man should
not go away with the impression that Krishna is a traffic policeman deputized especially to help him.
People like Krishna don’t do things with a purpose, with a motive. They do not conform to the law of
cause and effect.
I do not think men like Krishna, Buddha, Christ and Mahavira are products and parts of our traditions;
they are outside every tradition. They happen without a cause. Or you can say that the cause of
their being is totally inner; it has nothing to do with any social or external conditions.
I have heard about a famous astrologer whose townsmen had become scared of him because
whatever he predicted came true. So two young men of his town conspired to do something so that
for once the astrologer would be proved false. As it was winter time, one of them put on an overcoat
and hid a pigeon inside it. Together they went to the astrologer’s house to test him. They told the
astrologer that they had a pigeon hidden inside the overcoat and they wanted him to say if it was
alive or dead. They had settled among themselves that if the astrologer said the pigeon was alive,
the pigeon would be throttled and killed before being taken out, and in case he said it was dead the
live pigeon would be taken out. The astrologer would have no way to be right, so the two friends
thought.
But the answer of the astrologer was one they could not have conceived. He said, ”It is in your
hands.” He said, ”The pigeon is neither alive nor dead; it is in your hands. It depends on you.” They
were flabbergasted and they said, ”You have defeated us, sir.”
Our life is in our hands, and for people like Krishna it is utterly in their hands. They live the way they
want to live. Society as such, its social and political conditions, or any kind of external pressures,
do not make a difference to them; they go their own way. Their beings are exclusively their own.
Of course, they do make some adjustments with the societies they live in, but they do so out of
compassion for those societies. Such adjustments are made not for fear of punishment or for reward.
And many things happen just because of their living in a particular time, things that would not take
place without their presence. But these things are insignificant and irrelevant, they have nothing to
do with their inner lives as such.
Please listen. Men like Krishna do not come to this world for the sake of a particular society or for
the sake of some particular social and political condition. Nor do they come to protect some kind of
special people. It is true some people receive guidance, and even protection at their hands, but it
is a different matter altogether. Krishna flowers out of his own ecstasy and this happens without a
cause. It is as causeless as the dance of the stars in the heavens and the blossoming of the flowers
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 85 Osho