From Darkness to Light Chapter 1 contd...

In India it is not any legal problem to urinate anywhere, wherever you can manage: there is freedom of urination. When I was nearabout ten or eleven years old my father became very sick so we had to take him to a very good hospital, far away in Indore.

The hospital in Indore was famous all over the country. We had to live there for six months. Just at the entrance of the hospital was a board: ”No Urination Permitted. Anybody Disobeying Will Be Prosecuted.” And there used to stand a policeman. To me that was even more provocative. The board was enough but a policeman with a gun standing there!

The very first day my father entered hospital and we were given quarters in the hospital to live in, I could not resist; it was impossible. The board alone was enough but to put a policeman there with a gun – this was too much. I went directly.

The policeman was standing there; he looked at me. He could not believe it because it had never happened: I pissed!

He said, ”What are you doing? Can’t you read?”

I said, ”I can read – better than you.”

And he said, ”Can’t you see me with this gun?”

I said, ”I can see that too. It is because of your gun and this board – otherwise I had no need.

My house is just a two-minute walk from here, and I have just come from the bathroom. It is really difficult to piss because my bladder is empty. But I cannot avoid the temptation.”

He said, ”You will have to come with me to the chief administrator of the hospital” – it was a big hospital.

So I said, ”Okay, I will come.” I went there. The administrator was very angry.

He said, ”You have just entered – the first day, and you do such a thing?”

I said, ”But what can I do? This policeman was pissing there!”

He said, ”What!”

I said, ”Yes, he was pissing there, and when I saw that a policeman was pissing there I thought perhaps it is absolutely legal, this board is nonsense.”

The policeman said, ”Who says I was pissing? This is absolutely wrong!”

The administrator said, ”This is strange. Let us see.”

What I had done, I had pissed in two places and I showed him those two. The administrator said, "Two places!” He said to the policeman, ”Your services are finished! And that innocent boy – he is not wrong. If you are pissing here ... you are supposed to prevent people.”

I said, ”I saw him, with his gun, pissing here, so I said, ‘Perhaps this is perfectly okay.’ And I am new anyway, I don’t know much.” And the policeman could not deny it; there was no way to deny.

I said, ”If you were not pissing you can deny it, but that simply means that you were not here, you were not on duty; somebody else has pissed. Either way you are finished.”

He was thrown out of his job. When we came out he said, ”Just listen, how did you manage that second place? You know that I was not pissing.”

I said, ”I know, you know, but that does not help. The question is the administrator: he does not know. And you were in every way caught: Either you were not on duty – somebody else has pissed there – or if you were on duty then you had pissed.”

He said, ”How did it happen? Perhaps when we were inside somebody else did it.”

I said, ”To be true to you now that you are finished – you are no longer a policeman and I feel pity for you – I had to do both the things before we left. You were not observant enough to see that I moved two feet.”

He said, ”Yes, I remember. You moved, and I was thinking, Why have you moved? Now I know. But that administrator won’t let me even inside the house; he is a very strict man.”

I said, ”He may be a strict man, but he has become a friend to me” – and he remained a friend to me for six months. I did every kind of thing in that hospital, but whenever I was brought to him, he said, "This boy is innocent. From the very first day I have known this boy is innocent and unnecessarily people are harassing him; for all kinds of things people are harassing him.

”Somebody else does something and he is being caught. And I know the reason: he is innocent, simple, from a small village. He knows nothing about the city and the cunningness of the city and all kinds of ruffians so you go and get hold of him: he has become the target.” And I would stand before him very peacefully.

He remained a friend to me all those six months, just because of that one case in which the policeman was thrown out. But to me it was a simple case of provocation.

God could not see a simple thing? – that to these innocent Adam and Eve He is giving a challenge?

In the uncorrupted souls, utterly innocent, He is putting the seed of corruption. But to save Him the priests have managed to bring the serpent in, and thrown the whole responsibility on the serpent – that he is the sole cause of man’s original fall. But I don’t see him as the original cause. If anything he is the original incentive to man’s growth.

The devil is the original rebel. And what he said to Adam and Eve is the beginning of a true religion, not what God said – that is the beginning of suicide, not religion.

In the East the serpent is worshiped as the wisest animal in the world; and I think that is far better.

If the serpent really did this then he is certainly the wisest animal in the world. He saved man from eternal slavery, ignorance, stupidity.

This is not the original fall, this is the original rise.

 

From Darkness to Light Chapter 1 contd...

If God Himself becomes useless, futile, by man becoming wise and having eternal life, what about the priests? What about all the religions, the churches, the temples, the synagogues? What about these millions of people who are just parasites sucking humanity’s blood in every possible way?

They can exist only with that kind of God. Naturally the person who should be condemned as the devil is praised as God, and the person who should be praised as God is condemned as the devil.

Just try to see the story without any prejudice; just try to understand it from many aspects. This is only one of the aspects but it is of tremendous importance – because if God becomes the devil, the devil becomes God: then there is no original fall. If Adam and Eve had declined the devil’s wise advice, that would have been the fall, and then there would have been a need to save man. But they did not decline. And the serpent was certainly wise, certainly wiser than your God.

Just see. Anybody knows, even a very mediocre person knows, that if you say to children, ”Don’t eat that fruit: you can eat anything that is available in the house but don’t eat that fruit” – the children will become absolutely disinterested in all kinds of foods; their only interest will be in that fruit which has been prohibited.

Prohibition is invitation.

The God of this story seems to be absolutely a fool. The garden was huge, with millions of trees.

If He had not said anything about these two trees I don’t think even by now man would have been able to find those two trees. But He started His religious sermons with this sermon. This is the first sermon: ”Don’t eat from these two trees.” He pointed out the trees: ”These are the two trees that you have to avoid.” This is provocation.

Who says that the devil seduced Adam and Eve? It was God! Even without the devil, I say to you Adam and Eve would have eaten those fruits. The devil is not needed; God has done the work Himself. Sooner or later it would have been impossible to resist the temptation. Why should God prevent them?

All efforts to make people obedient simply lead them into disobedience. All efforts to enslave people make them more and more strong to rebel, to be free.

Even Sigmund Freud knows more psychology than your God, and Sigmund Freud is a Jew, just in the same tradition of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are his forefathers’ forefathers’ forefathers, but somewhere the same bloodstream is flowing. Sigmund Freud is more intelligent; and in fact there is no need for much intelligence to see a simple fact.

In my childhood, in my neighborhood, lived the richest man of the city. He had the only palatial building – all marble. Around his house there was a beautiful garden, lawn. One day I was standing just outside his fence, and he was telling something to his gardener. I told him, ”Dada” – he was known as dada; dada means big brother. The whole town called him Dada, even people who were older than him, because he was rich.

I said to him, ”You should remember one thing. Put a few posters around the garden that nobody should urinate here, because I have seen a few people urinating around your house.” And it was a good place to urinate because a big garden, trees ... you could go behind them.

He said, ”That’s right!” The next day he painted a few instructions around the garden: ”No Pissing Allowed” – and since that day the whole town has been pissing around his house! He came to see my father. He said, ”Where is your boy? – he has made my house hell. And who has said to him that he has to advise me?”

My father said, ”But what advice has he given to you? If you had asked me I would have told you never to listen to him; it always leads into some trouble. What happened?”

He said, ”Nothing. I was just talking to the gardeners. He said, ‘Dada, I have seen a few people urinating.’ I have never seen them myself, my gardeners said, ‘We have never seen anybody,’ but the idea struck me that it is true: huge trees, bushes ... people may be urinating in my garden or around my garden. This is not to be allowed anymore. So he suggested to me to make a few posters around the house: ‘No Pissing Allowed.’ So I did that, and since that day the whole town is pissing around my garden. Where is your boy?”

My father said, ”It is very difficult to know where he is. Whenever he comes, he comes; whenever he goes, he goes. He is not under our control. But if he has started giving advice to you, he will come to give more advice – don’t be worried. If his one piece of advice has worked, he will come; you just wait. And if he comes and I find him, I will bring him to you.”

My father caught hold of me in the evening and he said, ”You come. Why did you give this advice?”

I said, ”My advice was to prohibit people. Nobody can say that my advice is wrong – I have seen it written in many places. And yes, it is true I have seen people pissing there; that’s how I got the idea.

And I have enquired why people have started pissing.

”They say, ‘When we read the board suddenly the urge ... we remember that the bladder is full; otherwise we were engaged in other kinds of things and other thoughts were there. Who thinks of the bladder? When it becomes absolutely necessary, then only one thinks of it.

”‘But when we look at these boards suddenly the bladder becomes the most important thing, and one feels the place is good, that’s why the board has been put there – people must be pissing here.

And we see that there are many marks, many people have pissed already, so we feel it is perfectly right.’”

It is a simple thing: If you prohibit anything, you provoke, you give a challenge.

From Darkness to Light Chapter 1 contd...

A father preventing his children from being wise, from living forever, is certainly insane. Even the worst father would like his children to be wise, intelligent. Even the cruelest father would like his children to live forever.

But God prevents man from eating of two trees – the tree of knowledge and the tree of eternal life.

This seems to be a strange kind of God; it is not in any way possible to conceive Him as fatherly.

He seems to be the enemy of man. Who needs saving? Your God is jealous: that’s what was the argument of the devil who came in the form of a serpent and seduced the mind of Eve.

To me, there are many significant things to be understood. Why did he choose Eve and not Adam?

He could have chosen Adam directly, but men by nature are less sensitive, less vulnerable, more arrogant, egoistic. Adam may not even have liked to have a conversation with a serpent, may have thought it was below his dignity. And to be persuaded by a serpent’s argument would have been impossible for man. He would have argued against him; he would have struggled, fought – because to agree with someone seems to the ego as if you are defeated.

The ego knows only disagreement, struggle, victory or defeat – as if there is no other way, as if there are only two ways: victory and defeat. For the ego certainly there are only two ways.

But for a sensitive soul there is only one way – to understand whatever is true. It is not a question of me and you, it is not a question of somebody being defeated or victorious. The question is: What is the truth?

The woman was not interested in arguing. She listened and she found that it was perfectly right.

Wisdom was prohibited because, the serpent said, ”God does not want man to become godlike, and if you are wise you will be godlike. And once you are wise it will not be very difficult for you to find the tree of eternal life.”

It is really the other side of wisdom – eternity. And if you are wise and you have eternal life, then who bothers about God? What has He got that you have not got? Just to keep you a slave, eternally dependent – never allowing you to become a knowing being, never allowing you to taste something of the eternal – in this vast garden of Eden He has prohibited only two trees. The argument was simply a statement of the fact.

Now, the person who brings the truth to humanity is condemned as the devil; and the person who was preventing humanity from knowing the truth, from knowing life, is praised as God. But the priests can live only with this kind of God; the devil will destroy them completely.

From Darkness to Light Chapter 1 contd...

I was thinking about this third group for many days but I had no word for it. In India we call that group the chamchas. Chamcha means a spoon, and these people are suckers. Just the way you take, with a spoon, things out of a bottle, they go on taking things – power, money – from those who have.

Of course, they have to buttress these people, they have to praise these people.

But Devaraj has sent by coincidence today the right word – because chamcha cannot be exactly translated; ”spoon” loses all meaning. He has sent me a word which is Californian: the brownnose.

And he sent me the Webster’s dictionary also because I might not understand what a brownnose is; and certainly I would not have understood what a brownnose is.

He sent a note also, thinking perhaps that even the dictionary may not be helpful because Webster writes it in such a way that it does not look in any way obscene, dirty. So he sent me a note also: ”In Europe we call these people ‘arse-kissers’.” That’s exactly the meaning of chamchas.

The chief on the top, then the harem of the ladies whom he controls, then the brownnoses! And then you come down to lower categories of the hierarchy. On the lowest branches are the poorest monkeys, without girlfriends, boyfriends – servants. But perhaps from this very group humanity has grown.

Even in this group there may have been a few people who were so weak that they could not even manage to stay on the lowest branches. They were pushed, pulled, thrown, and somehow they found themselves fallen onto the earth. That is the original fall.

Monkeys still go on laughing at man. Certainly if you think from the monkey’s side, a monkey walking on two legs ... if you are a monkey and you think from its side, seeing a monkey walking on two legs, you will think, ”Has he joined a circus or something? And what happened to the poor guy? He just lives on the ground; he never comes to the trees, the wild freedom of the trees, the higher status of the trees. This is really the fallen one, the downtrodden.”

Except for this, religions don’t have any logical support for the idea of the original fall. Stories they have, but stories are not arguments, stories are not proofs. And stories can have just the opposite meaning to that which you wanted to give to them. For example, the original fall in Christianity makes God the real culprit, and if anybody needs saving it is the Christian God.

From Darkness to Light Chapter 1

Who says humanity needs saving?

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

HOW CAN WE SAVE HUMANITY FROM FALLING EVEN MORE?

It is one of the trade secrets of all the religions to propose propaganda that humanity has to be saved.

It is a very strange idea, but it is so old that nobody seems to look into the implications. Nobody asks why you are worried about saving humanity. And you have been saving humanity for thousands of years, but nothing seems to be saved.

In the first place, does humanity need any saving?

To answer this question all the religions have created an absolutely fictitious idea of the original fall, because unless there is a fall the question of saving does not arise. And the religious conception of the original fall is just rubbish.

Man has been evolving – not falling – in every possible way. The only way the original fall can be supported is by the idea of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin; but religions cannot use that – they are very much offended. Charles Darwin’s idea certainly can be put in such a way – at least by the monkeys if not by man – that it was an original fall. Certainly if man has evolved out of monkeys he must have fallen from the trees, and the monkeys who did not fall must have laughed at these idiots who had fallen. And there is a possibility that these were the weaker monkeys who could not survive in the trees.

In monkeys there exists a hierarchy. Perhaps the same mind and the same hierarchy are carried by man too; it is the same mind. If you see monkeys sitting in a tree you can know who’s the chief: he will be at the top of the tree. Then there will be a big group of ladies, his harem – the most beautiful, young. After that will be a third group.