When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 7. AUTUMN FLOODS
All interpretations come from conditioning – and only one who is unconditioned can know the real,
can know the true. A Hindu cannot know God, a Christian cannot know, a Jew cannot know –
because these are minds. Only someone who has come to realise that he is neither a Hindu, nor a
Mohammedan, nor a Christian – only he can know.
An Indian cannot know the truth, a Japanese cannot know the truth, a Chinese person cannot know
the truth, because truth has no boundaries. Nationalities create conditionings, they have to be
dropped. One has to become absolutely naked before the truth, with no clothes, no conditionings;
neither a Hindu, nor an Indian, nor a Mohammedan, nor Chinese – just a being, a pure being with
nothing to cling to. Then you are out of the well. And if you cling to the well, how can you reach the
ocean? And if you carry the conditionings of the well, even if the ocean is there you won’t believe it,
you won’t see it, because your eyes will be closed to this vastness. They can know only that which
is narrow, like a well.
The third thing to be remembered is that mind always wants to live with inferiors, it is always afraid
of the superior. So everybody goes on searching for the inferior – friends, wife, husband – just the
inferior to you, so you can feel superior.
In India, they have a proverb that a camel never wants to come to the Himalayas. That is why he
lives in deserts – there he is the Himalayas. If he comes near the Himalayas then what will happen
to the ego? That’s why you escape whenever there is any fear for the ego. If you come to a Buddha
you will escape, because a camel never wants to come to a Himalaya. You like your desert – at
least you are somebody there. George Bernard Shaw is reported to have said: If I am not the first
in heaven I would not like to go there. Even hell is preferable if I am first. If I am to be second in
heaven, it is not for me.
He is saying something about you. Just think, will you be at ease in heaven where you are not
the first, and you cannot be? Because Jesus will be there, Buddha will be there, they are already
occupying the queue, you will be far behind. But in hell there is a possibility of your being first –
and it is also easier. You can be in misery, but you would like to be first, the foremost, somebody –
you would not like to be blissful and nobody. And this is the problem: only nobodies can be blissful,
somebodies will always be in misery because the very feeling that ’I have to be somebody’ creates
misery. Then you are in competition and conflict, then there is continuous tension with everybody –
everybody else is the enemy. And the mind always seeks the inferior, it surrounds itself with inferiors.
Then you become the supreme most.
Look at this tendency. If it persists you will go on falling and falling and falling, and there is no end
to it. Always seek the superior if you are really seeking the truth, because truth is the superior most.
If you are seeking the inferior then finally you will end with some ultimate lie.
If you really want to go to the Divine, then seek the superior, because the superior is the glimpse of
it. Always seek the superior. But then you have to be humble, then you have to bow down, then you
have to surrender. This is the problem for the ego, for the mind.
Mind tends to seek the inferior, that is why mind can never reach the superior-most, the highest peak
of life. Mind will finally reach hell – mind is the hell, and no mind is heaven.
Now we will try to penetrate this beautiful parable:
When the Shoe Fits 97 Osho