From Darkness to Light Chapter 7 contd...

In India there is an organization of Hindu monks. It has been founded by one of the politicians who
has been twice prime minister of India, for a few days only. His name is Guljarilal Nanda. Whenever a prime minister dies this man is put as acting prime minister. Before the second one comes, for a
few days, a few weeks, he remains a prime minister. He has no support but he is a person who can
be relied on not to create any trouble. And he is not even courageous enough to create any trouble
– he is a weakling.
Sometimes your weakness proves of great help. When Jawaharlal died, Morarji was hoping to
become immediately the acting prime minister, but he was not chosen because he is, although very
mediocre, also very stubborn. If once he becomes acting prime minister then it will be difficult to
recall him, to tell him to get down. He will not get down so easily once he gets up.
Some weakling has to be chosen for the interim period so you put him up like a puppet; and when
you want him down, he comes down. The same man did it twice: when Jawaharlal died he became
the prime minister, and when Lal Bahadur Shastri died he became the prime minister. Both times
Morarji was hoping, and both times he was denied, because everybody was afraid that once he got
up, he would not come down.
But this man was cowardly, weak; hence, naturally, he could not manage to be a great political force.
Guljarilal Nanda turned towards religion. Many weaklings turn towards religion, many cowardly
people turn towards religion, because here you don’t need much guts. He founded an organization
of Hindu monks; he was the president of the organization.
When I started initiating people into sannyas, he told me, ”You are creating trouble.”
I said, ”What trouble?”
He said, ”You are giving them the same robe. Now it is going to be a very confusing thing: who is
who?”
I said, ”That is what I want to do. And I am going to fill your whole organization with my sannyasins,
you cannot prevent it. And soon you will see, my sannyasins will be the president, the secretaries,
in your organization.”
They became freaked out so much! I was just joking – I was not interested; who bothers about these
idiots and their organizations? They became so freaked out they immediately made a resolution that
anybody wearing my mala should not be allowed in the organization as a member – ”He is not really
a Hindu sannyasin.”
I said, ”That’s true, he is not. He is neither a Hindu sannyasin nor a Mohammedan sannyasin, nor
a Christian sannyasin. He is just himself. The orange robe I have chosen is just to destroy this
monopolistic idea.”
But Ramateertha was subdued so much by those mere intellectuals that he dropped his orange
robe. These are all ways of the ego. Now he would learn Sanskrit; he would prove to himself that
he was a scholar in Sanskrit too – and with grace and honor he would receive the robe from them.
These are the ways of the ego. Who are they? On what authority ...? Just because they are
crammed with rotten knowledge? So I said to his followers, ”To me his saying that ‘Ramateertha is hungry’ rather than saying, ‘I am hungry’ does not change his ego; it simply makes it more
complicated. And the greatest problem is, he may be deceived by it. If others are deceived, that
is not much of a trouble; he himself may be deceived. He may himself start thinking that he has
dropped the ego because now he never uses the word ‘I’.”
So the question is not of using the word. The question is of understanding how you are using it. Use
it as a utility, don’t make it a psychological trip.
Now you are asking me – how are we going to raise the consciousness of the world? Why should
we raise the consciousness of the world? Are you nuts or something? Can’t you let the world alone?
You just raise your consciousness.
No, but this is how the world is. Nobody is interested in raising his own consciousness. Everybody
is interested in raising the world’s consciousness – that seems to be easier, more fun. To raise one’s
own consciousness is arduous. To raise the consciousness of the world is just fun, no problem to
you. Whether it is raised or not, you are not losing anything.
Yes, by trying to raise it suddenly you become a great sage, you become a great religious leader,
you become world famous. You are raising the consciousness of the world – as if consciousness
is just lying down there asleep and you just have to wake it up. Just pour cold water over it and
consciousness rises up and says, ”What is the matter? Who is troubling me?”
It is not so easy. Consciousness is not there in any collective sense, there is no world consciousness.
There are only trees, no forest. Forest is only a word – convenient, useful, but non-existential. If you
go in search of a forest you will never find it. Standing in the middle of it still you will not find it. What
you will find always is an individual tree, and of course an individual tree is not the forest.
This consciousness of the world, consciousness of humanity, is just a word. Don’t fall into linguistic
games.

From Darkness to Light Chapter 7 contd...

And instead of Ramateertha having a red-carpet welcome, a letter was handed to him from the
highest Hindu committee of pundits, scholars. The letter said, ”Before you speak anywhere else,
first you have to face the committee, the supreme committee of the scholars of Hinduism, because
the way you have been talking about Hinduism is not orthodox, it is not traditional.” More shocking!
He was almost court-marshaled. In front of the scholars he had to answer why he said this, why he
said that. This he had never thought was going to be, but this is how it happened. He had to appear
before the scholars – and there is the point that I wanted to make to the conference in Lucknow.
As he was just going to speak, one old Hindu scholar stood up and said, ”First tell me, do you know
Sanskrit?” Unfortunately Ramateertha did not know Sanskrit at all, for the simple reason that he was born near Lahore, which is now in Pakistan. In that part even Hindi was not spoken; Urdu,
a Mohammedan language, was the spoken language. And those who wanted to become great
scholars of course had to read Persian and Arabic. They had to go to the roots of Urdu; that is,
Persian and Arabic. Sanskrit has nothing to do with Urdu.
Mohammedans or Hindus was not the question: the area where Ramateertha was born was Urdudominated;
in schools, in colleges, in universities, Persian and Arabic were the exalted languages.
So he was a scholar of Persian, Arabic and Urdu, but he had never thought that religion had anything
to do with language.
You can be a Hindu without knowing Sanskrit, you can be a great Hindu sage without knowing
Sanskrit; Sanskrit is not something absolutely necessary. And that was one of the questions those
scholars were asking him: ”While speaking around the world you were not quoting the upanishads,
the vedas, the shankaracharyas. You were quoting Sufi mystics – Jalaluddin Rumi, Farid, Sarmad.
You can befool in the West because people don’t know what you are quoting, but these are not
Hindus, these are not our people.”
The truth is Ramateertha had quoted exactly rightly. It does not matter whom he was quoting, what
matters is the meaning. He had no knowledge of Sanskrit but he understood. He had read the
upanishads in Urdu, he had read the vedas in Urdu, and naturally he had the understanding of
the essential message. And that message was so clearly expressed by Sufi mystics – Rumi, Al-
Hillaj-Mansoor, Junnaid, Rabiya Al Adabiya; they have expressed the same thing. Of course their
language was different. But here he found that he was being treated as a criminal.
Another scholar stood up and said, ”Before you speak in front of us, first go and learn Sanskrit.” And
he was completely shattered. Now, only an ego can be shattered.
If I was in his place, in the first place I would not have expected any overwhelming reception. If they
were not throwing stones at me, that would have been enough – a great reception. If they allowed
me to enter Varanasi that would have been more than one could hope. And then I would not have
gone to their scholars to be examined, interrogated. I should have torn up that letter then and there,
and thrown it on the platform and said to them, ”Tell all of them to go to hell! What business have I
got to do with your scholars? If they want to do anything, they have to come to me.
”And I have not come here to be certified that I am really a Hindu sage. I myself say that I am not a
Hindu, neither am I a sage. So what is the problem? How can you shatter me? – I don’t have any
claim. Can’t you even accept me as a human being? If even that is difficult for you, then that is your
problem, don’t accept. But that is not going to shatter me either.”
You are shattered only when you are living in a glass house. Then anybody can throw a stone and
that’s enough. But I am not living in a glass house. The ego is a glass house: it is continuously
afraid of being shattered. Somebody does not say ”Hello” to you on the road, and that’s enough. He
has not done anything, he has not even said ”Hello” – but this man used to say ”Hello” every day.
It pinches, it hurts: ”What happened? Have I fallen in his eyes, or what?” He will disturb your sleep
because he has not said ”Hello” to you.
Expectations always lead to frustrations.

Expectations are the seeds, and frustration is the crop that sooner or later you will have to reap. It
is your own doing.
So I asked the followers of Ramateertha, ”What was shattered? If there was no ego there was
nothing to be shattered. If you throw a stone into empty space, nothing will be shattered, only the
stone will look silly – falling with a thud, no obstruction, no joy of destroying something, no excitement
of shattering something; just falling with a thud on the ground like a fool.
”A man without an ego is like an empty house. You can throw stones from this side to that side, they
will go across him without finding any obstruction. Nothing can be shattered.”
So I said, ”Note this point, but this is not the whole story. Ramateertha left Varanasi and went to the
Himalayas. He had a follower and a friend who was a king of Gadhwal in the Himalayas, a small
state. He went there and told his friend, the king of Gadhwal, ‘I would like to learn Sanskrit, so
please arrange for a scholar to teach me Sanskrit.’”
Now, is this the way of a sage? Who could not say to these fools in Varanasi, ”Enlightenment does
not come through a language. It comes when all languages are left behind. It comes when even
thinking exists no more. There is no Arabic, no Hebrew, no Greek, no Sanskrit, no Latin. Only then
that light shines within yourself.”
Yes, when you start communicating of course you will have to use some language. And you will use
the language which you know best. In Ramateertha’s place I would have said, ”I will continue to use
Urdu, Persian, Arabic because those are the languages I know best, and I am not going to follow
your dictation that I should start learning Sanskrit. For what? to get your recognition? to be certified
by you that I am really a saint? Does sainthood need anybody’s recognition?”
Who recognized Gautam Buddha, that he is enlightened? Who has recognized anybody in the whole
world, in the whole of history? In fact it is impossible. The unenlightened people cannot recognize
or certify an enlightened one; he has to declare himself, there is no other way. Whether you believe
it or not, that does not matter, and that does not shatter him.
Nobody may believe it, not even a single human being. Do you think that makes any difference to
the status of a man of enlightenment? He remains still the same, his enlightenment not even a little
bit less because you have not recognized him.
Why did Ramateertha agree to learn Sanskrit?
And the story is really strange. He started learning Sanskrit – not only that, he dropped his orange
robe and started using white clothes. Asked why, he said, ”Because if Hindu scholars do not
recognize me then I am not yet capable of using the traditional robe of a Hindu sannyasin.”
When I decided to give my sannyasins the same robe, it was for one reason – to destroy this whole
idea that anybody has a monopoly.

From Darkness to Light Chapter 7

Time is very short but my methods are very quick


Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
HOW DO YOU INTEND TO RAISE THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE ENTIRE PLANET? DO WE
HAVE ENOUGH TIME? DO WE HAVE A CHANCE?
I can only answer for myself. I cannot use the word ”we.”
That word is used by political leaders and religious priests. I am neither of them. I do not represent
anybody in the world except myself.
The politician represents a certain crowd; hence his use of the word ”we” has some meaning. He
is no more than the total sum of the crowd. Withdraw the crowd and the politician disappears into a
vacuum, into nothingness.
The same is true about a pope, a shankaracharya, or any other religious leader. The pope is simply
the sum total of all the Catholics of the world. But remember, he is not a man but only a sum total –
a number in arithmetic, but not an individual.
The individual can never use the word ”we,” he can only use the word ”I” – and that too with a very
specific condition. His ”I” is not equivalent to the ego. His ”I” is not to be written in capital letters, his
”I” should be written in lower case letters. It is not something extraordinary: he is simple, an ordinary human being. I am using the word ”i” in the same way. ”We” is impossible for me because I don’t
belong to any crowd, any mob.
My commune is not a crowd.
It is a communion of individuals.
Yes, one can misunderstand it as a crowd. From far away you see a forest, but as you come close
there are only trees, no forest. Exactly that is the case with my commune. Those who never come
close to it will think of it as a cult, a creed, a certain society. But those who come close will find only
trees, no forest – each individual so absolutely unique, alone. The question of ”we” does not arise
at all.
So when I am saying that I cannot use ”we,” I am also trying to help you understand that you cannot
use ”we” either. You will have to be very alert.
And the ”I” that you have to be has not to be the ”I” of the egoist. The egoist uses ”I” in the sense that
he is superior to you, that you are nothing compared to him. His ”I” is big, and his whole effort in his
whole life in only one: how to make the ”I” bigger and bigger, higher and higher, so that it becomes
an Everest; no other peak can ever come even close to it.
This is the way Muhammad Ali uses ”I” – Muhammad Ali, the Greatest. This is the way Alexander
used his ”I” – Alexander the Great. Just Alexander won’t do, ”the Great” is needed to make him
stand separate from thousands of other Alexanders.
I am suggesting to you to use ”I” just in a utilitarian way – not to impose yourself on others, not to
project yourself as bigger than others, but as an absolutely human necessity. You have to use some
word. There have been people who have tried not to use the word ”I” for the simple reason that it
may be misunderstood as being used in the same way as everybody uses the ”I.” Or perhaps they
were deep down afraid themselves that if they used the word ”I” the ego would come following it; it
would be standing just behind it. Perhaps that is the case.
I recall one person, one very important Hindu sage of this century, Swami Ramateertha. He
has been to America; and he was an influence wherever he went; he was a man of charismatic
personality. He never used the word ”I.” But that makes no difference at all – he had to use something
else. If he was feeling thirsty, instead of saying, ”I am thirsty,” he would say, ”Ramateertha is thirsty”
..., ”Ramateertha wants to go to sleep.”
New people who had no idea what he was talking about could not understand it. They looked here
and there and they asked, ”Were is Ramateertha who is thirsty?” And then he would have to point to
himself: ”This is Ramateertha who is feeling thirsty.” But this seems to be such a stupid procedure.
Rather than catching your ear directly, you go around the head and make such weird gestures, and
finally you catch the ear – nothing special.
I am a lazy man, I cannot do that. If I have to catch hold of my ear I will catch it directly, rather
than moving my hand around my head and then catching hold of my ear – that looks ludicrous.
But Ramateertha made a great impression by this. People are foolish; if you try to see what things people get impressed with you will be surprised. That will show you what kind of humanity exists on
the earth. They were very much impressed by Ramateertha: ”Here is a man who is egoless.”
He was not egoless. There is enough proof in his life to show that he was not egoless. When for the
first time in India I said that, there was great anger amongst Hindus because they always believed
that Ramateertha was one of the greatest souls born in this century. He was respected around
the world, and nobody has said anything against him. But the problem was that the Ramateertha
League – it is an international organization, its headquarters are in Lucknow, India – invited me to
speak on Ramateertha.
Now, it was not my fault. I even inquired of them, ”Are you sure you want me to speak on
Ramateertha?” And they were not aware ... because nobody had spoken about him. He was a nice
man, but to be nice is not enough. I went to speak at their annual conference, a world conference,
and I said, ”To me Ramateertha befooled himself and nobody else” – and I gave the instances from
his own biography published by the league ... authoritative, approved by Ramateertha himself. I
said, ”I will simply be quoting, there is no need even to interpret. If you are just a little bit intelligent,
you will see the point.”
Ramateertha toured all over the world and then he came back to India. Everywhere, he was received
with great honor as a sage from the Himalayas. First he went to Varanasi, the center of Hinduism for
thousands of years. He was shocked because, naturally, deep down he must have been expecting
.... The biography says he was shocked because there was no overwhelming reception. The
same way, just a few days ago the pope was shocked in a Catholic country because there was
no overwhelming reception.
But unless you are expecting something, I don’t see the possibility of being shocked. Ramateertha
must have been expecting an overwhelming reception, a welcome – the welcome that is given to
a man who has conquered the whole world. He comes back to the citadel of Hinduism, and he
has been talking about Hinduism around the world, praising Hinduism around the world, making
Hinduism appear the highest religion in the world. Naturally, it is human – he must have been
expecting ....
But out of eight shankaracharyas, the heads of Hinduism, not a single one was present to receive
him. Forget about shankaracharyas, because they are the heads, and Ramateertha was still a
monk, not a head of Hinduism; but there were no other monks either to receive him. A few people
had come who looked more curious than receptive or welcoming.

From Darkness to Light Chapter 6 contd..

So he said, ”Great!” And that’s how later on he did it for the rest of his life: ”Doctor (Seth)
Govindadas.” He could not leave out that seth either. And when Jawaharlal saw those brackets,
he said, ”Who has suggested these brackets to you? Can’t you leave out that seth, or put it at the
end?”
He said, ”I cannot leave it out. It is one of my great friends who has suggested it to me, and he
cannot be wrong. The brackets are perfectly right.”
Jawaharlal said, ”To me there is no problem. You write whatsoever you want, but two titles in front
simply make you a laughingstock.”
Govindadas again asked me what to do. I said, ”You don’t be bothered by Jawaharlal; the
brackets are meaningless. The brackets simply mean ”underground”: doctor aboveground and seth
underground – and you are both. Tell Jawaharlal clearly, ‘I am both. If people don’t write two titles in
front, the simple reason is they don’t have them. There is no other reason; they don’t have them. I
have got two titles so I have to write them.’”
What is the difference? But so much attachment to names, titles, professions, religions – and this is
all your identity. And behind all this brown bag is lost your original face.
You are asking me how, in our commune, we can save the original face of our children.
You don’t have to do anything directly.
Anything done directly will be a disturbance.
You have to learn the art of non-doing.
That is a very difficult art.
It is not something that you have to do to protect, to save, the original face of the child. Whatever
you do will distort the original face. You have to learn non-doing; you have to learn to keep away,
out of the way of the child. You have to be very courageous because it is risky to leave the child to
himself.
For thousands of years we have been told, if the child is left to himself he will be a savage.
That is sheer nonsense. I am siting before you – do you think I am a savage? And I have lived
without being interfered with by my parents. Yes, there was much trouble for them and there will be
much trouble for you too, but it is worth it.
The original face of the child is so valuable that any trouble is worth it. It is so priceless that
whatsoever you have to pay for it, it is still cheap; you are getting it without paying anything. And
the joy on the day you find your child with his original face intact, with the same beauty that he had
brought into the world, the same innocence, the same clarity, the same joyfulness, cheerfulness, the
same aliveness .... What more can you expect?

You cannot give anything to the child, you can only take. If you really want to give a gift to the child,
this is the only gift possible: don’t interfere. Take the risk and let the child go into the unknown, into
the uncharted. It is difficult. Great fear grips the parents – who knows what will happen to the child?
Out of this fear they start molding a certain pattern of life for the child. Out of fear they start directing
him into a particular way, towards a particular goal, but they don’t know that because of their fear
they are killing the child. He will never be blissful. And he will never be grateful to you; he will always
carry a grudge against you.
Sigmund Freud has a great insight in this matter: he says, ”Every culture respects the father. No
culture on earth exists, or has ever existed, which has not propounded, propagated the idea that
the father has to be respected.” Sigmund Freud says, ”This respect for the father arises because
sometime back in prehistoric times the father must have been killed by the children just to save
themselves from being crippled.”
It is a strange idea, but very significant. He is saying that the respect is being paid to the father out of
guilt, and that guilt has been carried for thousands of years. Somewhere ... it is not a historical fact,
but a meaningful myth, that young people must have killed their father and then repented – naturally,
because he was their father; but he was driving them into ways where they were not happy.
They killed him, but then they repented. Then they started worshipping the spirits of the ancestors,
fathers, forefathers, out of fear, because the ghosts of those can take revenge. And then slowly,
slowly, it became a convention to be respectful towards the elders. But why?
I would like you to be respectful to the children.
The children deserve all the respect you can manage, because they are so fresh, so innocent, so
close to godliness. It is time to pay respect to them, not to force them to pay respect to all kinds of
corrupted people – cunning, crooked, full of shit – just because they are old.
In my commune I would like to reverse the whole thing: respect towards the children because they
are closer to the source, you are far away. They are still original, you are already a carbon copy. And
do you understand what it can do if you are respectful to children? Then through love and respect
you can save them from going in any wrong direction – not out of fear but out of your respect and
love.
My grandfather .... I could speak a lie to anybody – even if I met God I could speak a lie without any
trouble – but I could not speak a lie to my grandfather because he respected me so much. When
the whole family was against me I could at least depend on the old man. He would not bother about
all the proofs that were against me. He would say, ”I don’t care what he has done. If he has done it,
it must be right. I know him, he cannot do wrong.”
And when he was with me of course the whole family had to shrink back. I would tell him the whole
thing, and he would say, ”There is no need to be worried. Do whatsoever you feel is right, because
who else can decide? In your situation, in your place, only you can decide. Do whatsoever you feel
is right, and always remember that I am here to support you, because I not only love you, I respect
you too.”

His respect towards me was the greatest treasure I could have received. When he was dying I was
eighty miles away. He informed me that I should come immediately because there was not much
time. I came quickly; within two hours I was there.
It was as if he was just waiting for me. He opened his eyes and he said, ”I was just trying to continue
to breathe so that you could reach me. Just one thing I want to say: I will not be here now to support
you, and you will need support. But remember, wherever I am, my love and my respect will remain
with you. Don’t be afraid of anybody, don’t be afraid of the world.”
Those were his last words:
”Don’t be afraid of the world.”
Respect the children, make them fearless.
But if you are yourself full of fear, how can you make them fearless?
Don’t force respect on them towards you because you are their father, you are their daddy, their
mom, this and that.
Change this attitude and see what transformation respect can bring to your children.
They will listen to you more carefully if you respect them. They will try to understand you and your
mind more carefully if you respect them. They have to. And in no way are you imposing anything;
so if by understanding they feel you are right and they go on that way, they will not lose their original
face.
The original face is not lost by going on a certain way. It is lost by children being forced, forced
against their will.
Love and respect can sweetly help them to be more understanding about the world, can help them
to be more alert, aware, careful – because life is precious, and it is a gift from existence. We should
not waste it.
At the moment of death we should be able to say that we are leaving the world better, more beautiful,
more graceful.
But this is possible only if we leave this world with our original face, the same face with which we
have come into it.

From Darkness to Light Chapter 6 contd..

Just now my mother was saying that Doctor Sunderlal has become a member of parliament. The
new government ... after Indira’s assassination, Rajiv Gandhi chose him. He is rich and certainly
respected in the town because he is the only doctor – an honorary doctor! People get ... and
perhaps he believes it. Now you cannot tell him that he is not. He will drag you to the court.
Now, for almost thirty years he has been a doctor; that is enough. Nobody has objected, nobody
has raised a question. In his election campaign his name was Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt. – ”Vote for
Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt.” Perhaps – and he is a little nuts – he believes that he is. I know that even I
cannot persuade him that ”this doctorate I gave to you.” He will laugh and say, ”What are you saying?
I have been a doctor for thirty years. You were just a little kid when I became a doctor!”
He will not agree so easily to drop his doctorate. But even if you get a doctorate from a university,
what does it mean? There is not much difference.
I know one very famous Indian politician, Doctor Govindadas. Maitreya knows him because they
both were in parliament together. Doctor Govindadas was in the parliament perhaps the longest time
in the whole history of humanity: from 1914 till he died, I think in 1978, he remained continuously,
without a single gap, a member of parliament. He was the richest man in the whole state of Madhya
Pradesh.
His father was given the title of raja, king; although he was not a king, he had so much land, and so
many properties – one third of the houses of the whole city of Jabalpur, which is ten times bigger than
Portland, belonged to him. He had so much land that the British government thought it perfectly right
to give him the title. And he was helping the British government, so he was called Raja Gokuldas,
and his house was not called a house, it was called Gokuldas Palace.
Govindadas was Gokuldas’ eldest son – a very mediocre mind. It hurts me to say so but what can
I do? If he was mediocre it is not my fault. He was very kind and friendly to me and very respectful
too. He was very old but he used to come every day whenever he was in Jabalpur. Whenever the
parliament was not in session he was in Jabalpur; otherwise he was in New Delhi. Whenever he
was in Jabalpur, in the morning from eight to eleven, his limousine was standing in front of my door,
every day religiously.
Anybody wanting to meet him between eight and eleven need not go anywhere; he had just to
stand outside my gate. What was happening in those three hours? He used to come there with his
secretary, his steno. He would ask me a question, I would answer, and the steno would write it in
shorthand. Then he published in his own name everything that I said.
Govindadas has published books, two books; not a single word is his. Yes, there are a few words
from the secretary. I was puzzled when I saw those books – and he presented them to me. I looked
inside ... I knew that this was going to happen, it was happening every day – in newspapers he was
publishing my answers all over India.

He was president of the Hindi language’s most prestigious institution, HINDI SAHITYA SAMMELAN;
he was the president of that. Once Mahatma Gandhi was president of that, so you can understand
the prestige of the institution.
Govindadas was president for almost twenty years, and he was the main proponent in the parliament
that Hindi should become the national language. And he made Hindi the national language, at least
in the constitution. It is not functioning – English still functions as the national language – but he put
it in the constitution.
He was known all over the country. Every newspaper, every news magazine, was publishing his
articles – and they were my answers! But I was puzzled, because once in a while there would be a
quotation from Tulsidas, Surdas, Kabirdas. I could not believe that he had even the intelligence to
put the quotation in the right place, in the right context.
So I asked his steno one day when I was staying in Delhi in Govindadas’s house. I asked his
steno, ”Shrivastava, everything else is perfectly right; I just wonder about these – Surdas, Tulsidas,
Kabirdas – how Seth Govindadas manages to put them ...”
He said, ”Seth Govindadas? I put them in.”
I said, ”Who told you to put them in?”
He said, ”He says that at least something should be put from our side too.”
I said, ”I am not going to tell anybody, but just to deceive me, these two lines of Kabirdas in the
whole question? You have been putting them in and you think I will be deceived?”
He said, ”I had to work hard, looking into Kabirdas’ collection to find some lines which could fit
somewhere in your question.”
I said, ”You are a fool; you should have asked me. When your master can steal the whole article,
you, being his steno, should at least learn this much politics. You could have said to me, ‘Just give
me two or three quotations so that I can fit them in.’ In future don’t bother yourself.”
He was a poor man, and where would he find Kabirdas, and something very relevant to me? So I
used to give quotations to Shrivastava and say, ”These are the lines you fit in so Govindadas remains
happy.”
Why did I want him to remain happy? He was helpful to me in the same way that the boy was
helpful to me. I was continually out of town without any leave from the university. Govindadas’
limousine standing in front of my door was enough. The vice-chancellor was afraid of me because
Govindadas was a powerful man; the vice-chancellor could be immediately transferred, removed –
just a hint from me was enough. The professors were afraid. They were really puzzled why every
day Govindadas was hypnotized; he spent three hours with me every day.
And he started bringing other politicians. He introduced me to every chief minister, every cabinet
minister in the central government, because they all were his guests in Jabalpur. Jawaharlal used to

be his guest in Jabalpur. He introduced me to almost all the politicians; I think Maitreya must have
come to me through Seth Govindadas. He even arranged for a small group of important members
to meet me in parliament house itself. Maitreya certainly must have been there.
Govindadas was helpful, so I said, ”There is no problem. And it does not matter whose name goes
on the articles. The question reaches to thousands of people. The answer reaches to thousands of
people. That is important; my name or Govindadas’s name, it does not matter. What matters is the
matter.”
This man remained continuously in contact with me for almost ten years, and when I told him, ”We
are strangers,” he said, ”What are you saying? We have known each other for ten years.”
I said, ”We don’t know each other. I know your name, Govindadas; it has been given by your father.
The doctorate you have received from the university. I know how much value that doctorate has, and
why you have been given that doctorate – because it was you who proposed the vice-chancellor.
Now the vice-chancellor has to pay you back with the doctorate. The vice-chancellor is your man,
and if he manages to give you a doctorate there is no wonder in it. Your D.Litt is absolutely bogus.”
First I used to hear .... He had written almost one hundred dramas. He was in competition with
George Bernard Shaw because George Bernard Shaw was the great drama writer and he had
written one hundred dramas. So Seth Govindadas was also a great drama writer of Hindi language
– a hundred dramas. And he was not capable of writing a single drama!
He was not capable of even writing a single speech – his speeches were written by that poor
Shrivastava. Govindadas has published one hundred dramas. By and by I came to know those
people who had written them – for money – poor people, poor teachers, professors. So I told
Govindadas, ”I know what your D.Litt is: one hundred dramas, and none is written by you. Now I can
say it authoritatively, because you go on publishing articles, and now you have published two books
without even telling me, ‘I am going to put your answers in these books.’ And they are nothing but
my answers – there is nothing else.”
So I said to him, ”Doctor Govindadas, I also have such a doctor in my village – Doctor Sunderlal.
I have given him the doctorate. He has not written one hundred dramas, neither have you. Just
the way you believe you are a doctor, he believes he is a doctor. And I don’t think there is much
difference of quality in your minds, because seth is a title ...”
Before he became a doctor he was known all over the country as Seth Govindadas. Seth is a title,
it comes from an ancient Sanskrit word, shreshth. Shreshth means the superior one; from shreshth
it became shreshthi and from shreshthi it became seth. In Rajasthani sethi, sethia – it went on
changing. But it is a title.
So when Govindadas became a doctor he started writing ”Doctor Seth Govindadas.” It was Pandit
Jawaharlal Nehru who told him, ”Govindadas, two titles are never written in front of a name. Either
you write ”Seth,” then you can write ”D.Litt” behind, but if you write ”Doctor” in front then you cannot
write ”Seth.”
So he asked me what to do. I said, ”There is no problem. You write ”Doctor (Seth) Govindadas.”

From Darkness to Light Chapter 6 contd..

The principal said, ”I don’t understand: why two persons? You alone are taking admission.”
I said, ”No, one of my friends is also. He is not expelled, but he never attends. He is not interested
in studying but his father is forcing him. And what can the poor chap do? It is just to console his old
man.”
The principal said, ”But why does he go with you? I see on the record that he follows you to every
college.”
I said, ”I am his only friend, that’s what he thinks. He is not interested in college, he is interested in
me. He comes with me – it is one package. If you accept me, you accept him. I promise you that
your college will get the gold medal. Attendance you will have to give for two persons.”
And all the principals and professors knew that I was continuously winning in their eloquence
competitions. Only once I got a second prize in one eloquence competition, and that became almost
a great scandal against the professor who was one of the judges.
He was in love with a girl, one of his students. The girl was a competitor, and he wanted the girl to
win the competition any way. All other judges had given me more marks but he had given to the girl
a hundred marks completely. She was not even worth ten – because others ... somebody had given
her five, somebody seven, somebody nine; nobody had gone beyond ten. But if one person gives
her a hundred .... She came first, but I immediately went to every newspaper and informed them of
the whole story.
The next day the professor had to resign and escape, because I said, ”He is in love, and it is just
a way of seducing the girl. I challenge – not the girl, I challenge the professor to compete with me
anywhere before any kind of judges. If he can win in the debate I will think it is perfectly okay, the
girl has won. The girl is nobody.”
The scandal became so hot that the principal told the professor, ”You please leave, because it is so
clear: no judges have given her more than ten, and you have given her a hundred, and she is your
student.” I was present when the principal said to him, ”I never thought that she was going to be
even third, and she came first. And you unnecessarily took the risk of making this boy angry: he will
not leave you alone.”
And the next day .... To all the papers I had given their pictures. That was done with my friend: he
was always carrying his camera and his transistor – he was that type. So I just told him, ”You get
me two pictures: one of this professor and one of that girl.”
He said, ”No problem, Together or separate?”
I said, ”Do you have them already?”
He said, ”I have got them together already.”
I said, ”That will do.”

So the professor putting his hand on the girl’s shoulder – the picture was published. The professor
resigned, the girl escaped, and the competition had to be arranged again. I said, ”Just his resignation
does not mean anything; nor does the girl escaping from the city mean anything. I don’t believe in
being second. Either I am nobody or I am first; I don’t accept any mediocre position anywhere.”
Again the competition was arranged.
This boy was handy in many ways. This was a great coincidence that he managed to reach Sagar,
and he filled in the form just according to mine. For two years he continuously helped me. My help
was small: it came only in the end – at the examination time I had to write for him too.
In life I have tried, with all kinds of people to insist that everybody knows deep down that he is a
stranger, a stranger to everybody, even to his closest friend. I told this boy – his name was Umakant
Joshi .... He is now a professor.
That’s what makes me wonder ... this world is a strange place; this planet certainly must be the
weirdest planet in the whole universe. Now, Umakant Joshi is a professor who does not know even
the spelling of the word ”philosophy,” but he is doing perfectly well. When I last saw him in 1965, I
had just gone to inaugurate a social gathering. I had no idea that he was a professor in that college,
and when he greeted me there, I said, ”What are you doing here?”
He said, ”What am I doing here? – the same.”
I said, ”What, the same? Now nobody can help you.”
He said, ”Money can do everything. I never bother to teach, I pay people to teach for me. I never
examine people’s papers, I pay teachers to examine their papers. Money can do everything.”
Perhaps by now he may be a principal, one day may rise to become a vice-chancellor. If money can
do everything, there is no problem. And I have seen people ....
I told this boy when we were departing after six years of being together, ”Umakant, have you ever
realized that we are as much strangers as when we met on the first day, just by accident, in that
college office where you asked what subjects you should fill in on the form?”
He was in a way very innocent and nice. Tears came to his eyes, and he said, ”That’s true. We have
lived so closely that I had completely forgotten that we are still strangers. I don’t know you, you don’t
know me, and whatever we do know is irrelevant.”
If you enquire among your friends you will be surprised: everybody is a stranger in a strange world.
But we have managed deceptions, we have camouflaged ourselves. We have labeled everybody in
so many ways that the person starts thinking that he is that.
In my village there is one man, Sunderlal. I have been surprised ...sunder means beauty, sunderlal
means beautiful diamond; and he is anything other than a beauty. He is not even homely. I have
been surprised again and again that names are given to people which are just the opposite of their
qualities.

I have seen immensely rich people named Garibdas. Garib means poor, das means a slave. I have
been a guest to one Seth Garibdas in Hyderabad. Seth means very rich, super-rich, and garibdas
means a poor slave. I asked him, ”Have you ever thought about your name? Your father was rich;
richness is almost your family tradition – it is nothing new. You are not a newly rich person, that you
were poor and became rich. Then it would have been understandable: you were poor and people
called you Garibdas. But you were born rich; you were born with golden spoons in your mouth.
Then why Garibdas?”
He said, ”You ask strange questions. In my whole life nobody has asked me this. But my father is
alive; we both should go and ask him.”
We both went to his room and asked him. He said, ”It is a protection. The astrologers suggested
giving him a name which suggests poverty so that fate always remains compassionate to him.” They
were deceiving fate by giving him the name Garibdas – so fate thinks he is poor, don’t harass him –
and he remained rich.
This Sunderlal was really ugly. To talk to him meant that you had to look this way and that way;
to look at him made one feel a little sick – something went berserk in the stomach. His front two
teeth were out, and he had such crossed eyes that to look at him for a little while meant a certain
headache – and he was Sunderlal! He was the son of a rich man, and he was a little nuts too.
I used to call him Doctor Sunderlal although he was never able to pass matriculation. He failed
so many times that the school authorities asked his father to remove him because he brought their
average low every year – and he was not going to pass.
How they managed to get him up to matriculation, that is a miracle. But it is understandable, because
up to matriculation all examinations are local, so you can bribe the teachers. This was difficult to
do in the matriculation examination because it is not local, it is state-wide. So it is very difficult to
find out who is setting the papers, who is examining the papers. It is almost impossible; unless you
happen to be the education minister or some relative of the education minister, it is very difficult to
find out.
But I started calling him Doctor Sunderlal. He said, ”Doctor? But I am not a doctor.”
I said, ”Not an ordinary doctor like these physicians: you are an honorary doctor.”
But he said, ”Nobody has given me an honorary doctorate either.”
I said, ”I am giving you an honorary doctorate. It does not matter who gives it – you get the doctorate,
that’s the point.”
He said, ”That is true, ” and by and by I convinced him that he was an honorary doctor. He started
introducing himself to people as Doctor Sunderlal. When I heard this, that he introduces himself as
Doctor Sunderlal .... He was a relative of our sannyasin, Narendra.
One day I saw a letterhead with ”Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt., Honorary,” printed on it in golden letters,
embossed. I said, ”This is great!” And as time passed by people completely forgot: he is now known

as Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt. Nobody suspects, nobody even enquires who gave him a doctorate,
from what university? But the whole town knows him. And because he is an honorary doctorate he
inaugurates social gatherings in the school, in the college – now the town has a college – and he is
the most literary figure.