When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 2. THE TOWER OF THE SPIRIT
Only man is in suffering. Suffering exists nowhere else than in the heart of man.
The whole of nature is joyous; the whole of nature is always celebrating without any fear, without
any anxiety. Existence goes on existing, but man is a problem. Why is this so? And every man is
a problem. If only a few were problems we could call them ill, abnormal, but just the contrary is the
case – only a few are not problems. Rarely is there a man like Buddha, Jesus, or Chuang Tzu – one
who is at home, whose life is an ecstasy and not a suffering and an anxiety. Otherwise everybody
lives in suffering and in hell.
Somewhere man has gone wrong – not any particular man, but human society as such has gone
wrong. And this has gone to the roots. Whenever a child is born, the society starts changing the
child to the abnormal pattern – the unnatural pattern through which everybody else is suffering.
Psychologists have been trying hard to probe the mystery of where a child goes wrong and they
have stumbled upon the age of four. Somewhere near that age the child becomes part of society;
somewhere around that age he is no longer natural. Before the age of four he is still part of the
great world of trees, flowers, birds and animals; before the age of four he is still wild. After that he
is domesticated. Then the society takes over. Then he lives according to rules, morality, right and
wrong. Then he is not total. Then everything is divided. Now before he moves he has to decide
deliberately how to move, what to do, and what not to do. The ’ought’ has entered and that ’ought’
is the disease. Discrimination has come in. Now the child is no longer part of the Divine – he has
fallen from that grace.
This is the meaning of the biblical story of Adam’s fall. Before he ate from the Tree of Knowledge he
was natural, he lived in the garden of Eden. That garden of Eden is here. These trees are still living
in it; animals are still part of it; the sun and moon and stars are still moving in it; here and now is the
garden of Eden – but you are out of it. Why was Adam turned out? He ate the fruit of knowledge.
And at the age of four every Adam and every Eve are turned out again. It is not something that
happened in the past it happens every time a child is born – again the Adam comes into being,
again the Eve comes into being. Up to the age of four there is no knowledge. By the age of four the
child starts understanding what is what. Then he misses the path, then he is no longer natural, then
the spontaneity is lost. Now he will live according to the rules.
Once you start living according to the rules you will suffer. You will suffer because you cannot
love spontaneously, you cannot enjoy, you cannot dance, you cannot sing. Once you start living
according to the rules you have to move in a fixed pattern – and life is never a fixed pattern, it is
a fluidity, it is a liquid flexible flow. And nobody knows where it is moving. Once you start living
through rules then you know where you are moving. But deep down the movement has stopped.
Now you are simply vegetating, now you are simply dying – because you are imprisoned. And the
imprisonment is very subtle – unless you become absolutely alert you will not be able to see it, it is
like an unseen armour around you.
One of the greatest revolutionary thinkers of this age, Wilhelm Reich, stumbled upon this armour.
But he was proved by society to be mad and was thrown in jail. He died in jail in deep anguish.
The anguish was this: whatsoever he said was true but nobody was ready to even listen to him. He
came upon the same thing about which Chuang Tzu talks about in this sutra – the imprisonment.
Wilhelm Reich found that every mental disease has a bodily part to it, a parallel part in the body; in
the body something has gone dead, solid. And unless that part of the body is released, that block
When the Shoe Fits 22 Osho