Osho: Take Yourself Out of the Crowd [To Be Yourself Ignore People Who Want You to Be Something Else]
/By Osho Rajineesh. From [HERE]
Nobody is what he was meant by existence to be. The society, the culture, the religion, the education have all been conspiring against innocent children. They have all the powers -- the child is helpless and dependent. So whatsoever they want to make out of him, they manage to do it. They don't allow any child to grow to his natural destiny. Their every effort is to make human beings into utilities. Who knows, if a child is left on his own to grow, whether he will be of any use to the vested interests or not? The society is not prepared to take the risk. It grabs the child and starts molding him into something that is needed by the society.
In a certain sense, it kills the soul of the child and gives him a false identity, so that he never misses his soul, his being. The false identity is a substitute. But that substitute is useful only in the same crowd which has given it to you. The moment you are alone, the false starts falling apart and the repressed real starts expressing itself. Hence the fear of being lonely.
Nobody wants to be lonely. Everybody wants to belong to a crowd -- not only one crowd, but many crowds. A person belongs to a religious crowd, a political party, a rotary club...and there are many other small groups to belong to. One wants to be supported twenty-four hours a day because the false, without support, cannot stand. The moment one is alone, one starts feeling a strange craziness. For so many years you believed yourself to be somebody, and then suddenly in a moment of loneliness you start feeling you are not that. It creates fear: then who are you?
And years of suppression... it will take some time for the real to express itself. The gap between the two has been called by the mystics "the dark night of the soul" -- a very appropriate expression. You are no more the false, and you are not yet the real. You are in a limbo, you don't know who you are.
Particularly in the West -- and Surabhi comes from the West -- the problem is even more complicated. Because they have not developed any methodology to discover the real as soon as possible, so that the dark night of the soul can be shortened. The West knows nothing as far as meditation is concerned. And meditation is only a name for being alone, silent, waiting for the real to assert itself. It is not an act, it is a silent relaxation -- because whatever you do will come out of your false personality. All your doing for twenty-six years has come out of it; it is an old habit.
Habits die hard. So many years of a false personality imposed by people who you loved, who you respected... and they were not intentionally doing anything bad to you. Their intentions were good, just their awareness was nil. They were not conscious people -- your parents, your teachers, your priests, your politicians -- they were not conscious people, they were unconscious. And even a good intention in the hands of an unconscious person turns out to be poisonous.
So whenever you are alone, a deep fear -- because suddenly the false starts disappearing. And the real will take a little time. You have lost it twenty-six years back. You will have to give some consideration to the fact that twenty-six years' gap has to be bridged.
In fear -- that "I am losing myself, my senses, my sanity, my mind -- everything" because the self that has been given to you by others consists of all these things -- it looks like you will go insane. You immediately start doing something just to keep yourself engaged. If there are no people, at least there is some action. So the false remains engaged and does not start disappearing.
Hence people find it the most difficult on holidays. For five days they work, hoping that on the weekend they are going to relax. But the weekend is the worst time in the whole world -- more accidents happen on the weekend, more people commit suicide, more murders, more stealing, more rape. Strange... and these people were engaged for five days and there was no problem. But the weekend suddenly gives them a choice, either to be engaged in something or to relax -- but relaxing is fearsome; the false personality disappears. Keep engaged, do anything stupid. People are running towards the beaches, bumper to bumper, miles-long traffic. And if you ask them where they are going, they are getting away from the crowd -- and the whole crowd is going with them. They are going to find a solitary, silent space -- all of them.
In fact, if they had remained home it would have been more solitary and silent -- because all the idiots have gone in search of a solitary place. And they are rushing like mad, because two days will be finished soon, they have to reach -- don't ask where!
And on the beaches, you see... they are so crowded, not even marketplaces are so crowded. And strangely enough, people are feeling very much at ease, taking a sunbath. Ten thousand people on a small beach taking a sunbath, relaxing. The same person on the same beach alone will not be able to relax. But he knows thousands of other people are relaxing all around him. The same people were in the offices, the same people were in the streets, the same people were in the marketplace, now the same people are on the beach.
The crowd is an essential for the false self to exist.The moment it is lonely, you start freaking out. This is where one should understand a little bit of meditation.
Don't be worried, because that which can disappear is worth disappearing. It is meaningless to cling to it -- it is not yours, it is not you.
You are the one when the false has gone and the fresh, the innocent, the unpolluted being will arise in its place. Nobody else can answer your question "Who am I?" -- you will know it.
All meditative techniques are a help to destroy the false. They don't give you the real -- the real cannot be given.
That which can be given cannot be real. The real you have got already; just the false has to be taken away.
In a different way it can be said: the master takes away things from you which you don't really have, and he gives you that which you really have.
Meditation is just a courage to be silent and alone. Slowly slowly, you start feeling a new quality to yourself, a new aliveness, a new beauty, a new intelligence -- which is not borrowed from anybody, which is growing within you. It has roots in your existence. And if you are not a coward, it will come to fruition, to flowering.
Only the brave, the courageous, the people who have guts, can be religious. Not the churchgoers -- these are the cowards. Not the Hindus, not the Mohammedans, not the Christians -- they are against searching. The same crowd, they are trying to make their false identity more consolidated.
You were born. You have come into the world with life, with consciousness, with tremendous sensitivity. Just look at a small child -- look at his eyes, the freshness. All that has been covered by a false personality.
There is no need to be afraid. You can lose only that which has to be lost. And it is good to lose it soon -- because the longer it stays, the stronger it becomes.
And one does not know anything about tomorrow.
Don't die before realizing your authentic being.
Only those few people are fortunate who have lived with authentic being and who have died with authentic being -- because they know that life is eternal, and death is a fiction.
The Politics of Numbers
In a society, there is a deep expectation that you will behave exactly like others. The moment you behave a little bit differently you become a stranger, and people are very much afraid of strangers.
That’s why everywhere if two persons are sitting in the bus, in a railway train, or just at a bus stop, they cannot sit silently – because silently they are both strangers. They immediately start introducing each other – ”Who are you? Where are you going? What do you do, your business?” A few things...and they settle down; you are another human being just like them.
People are continuously wanting to be in a crowd in which they fit. The moment you behave differently the whole crowd becomes suspicious; something is going wrong. Now your situation is that something is going better – you are becoming more calm, more peaceful, more accepting of yourself. And you are not saying this to anybody, but there is no need to say it. They know you, and they can see the change. They have known you when you never accepted yourself, and now they suddenly see that you accept yourself.
In this society nobody accepts himself. Everybody is condemning himself. This is the lifestyle of the society: condemn yourself. And you are not condemning yourself, you are accepting yourself; you have fallen away from the society. And the society does not tolerate anybody who falls out of the fold because the society lives by numbers; it is a politics of numbers. When there are many numbers people feel good. Vast numbers make people feel that they must be right – they cannot be wrong, millions of people are with them. And when they are left alone great doubts start arising: Nobody is with me. What is the guarantee that I am right?”
That’s why I say that in this world, to be an individual is the greatest courage.
The most fearless grounding is needed to be an individual: ”It does not matter that the whole world is against me. What matters is that my experience is valid. I don’t look at the numbers, at how many people are with me. I look at the validity of my experience – at whether I am just repeating somebody else’s words like a parrot, or the source of my statements is in my own experience. If it is in my own experience, if it is part of my blood and bones and marrow, then the whole world can be on one side; still, I am right and they are wrong. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need their votes for me in order to feel right. Only people who have the opinions of others need the support of others.”
But that’s how human society has functioned up to now. That’s how they keep you within the fold. If they are sad, you have to be sad; if they are miserable, you have to be miserable. Whatever they are, you have to be the same. Difference is not allowed because difference ultimately leads to individuals, uniqueness. And society is very much afraid of individuals and uniqueness because that means somebody has become independent of the crowd, he does not care a bit about the crowd. Your gods, your temples, your priests, your scriptures, all have become meaningless for him.
Now he has his own being and his own way, his own style – to live, to die, to celebrate, to sing, to dance.
He has come home. And nobody can come home with a crowd. Everybody can come home only alone.
Listen To Your Inner Sense
A boy was constantly scratching his head. His father looked at him one day and said, ”Son, why are you always scratching your head?”
”Well,” the boy responded, ”I guess because I am the only one who knows it itches.”
THIS IS INNER SENSE. Only you know. Nobody else can know. It cannot be observed from the outside. When you have a headache, only you know. You cannot prove it. When you are happy, only you know – you cannot prove it. You cannot put it on the table to be inspected by everybody, dissected, analyzed.
In fact, the inner sense is so inner that you cannot even prove that it exists. That’s why science goes on denying it, but the denial is inhuman. Even the scientist knows that when he feels love, he has an inner feeling. Something IS there! And it is not a thing, and it is not an object; and it is not possible to put it before others. And STILL it is.
Inner sense has its own validity. But because of the scientific training, people have lost trust in their inner sense. They depend on others. You depend so much that if somebody says, ”You are looking very happy,” you start feeling happy. If twenty people decide to make you unhappy, they can make you unhappy. They just have to repeat it the whole day whenever you come across them, they have to say to you that ”You are looking very unhappy, very sad. What is the matter? Somebody died or something?” And you will start suspecting: so many people are saying that you are unhappy, you must be.
You depend on people’s opinions. You have depended on people’s opinions SO much that you have lost all track of inner sense. This inner sense has to be rediscovered, because all that is beautiful and all that is good and all that is divine can only be felt by the inner sense.
Stop being influenced by people’s opinions. Rather, start looking in... allow your inner sense to say things to you. Trust it. If you trust it, it will grow. If you trust it you will feed it, it will become stronger.
Vivekananda went to Ramakrishna, and he said, ”There is no God! I can PROVE it – there is no God.” He was a very logical, skeptical man, well-educated, well-educated in the Western philosophical thinking. Ramakrishna was an uneducated, illiterate person. And Ramakrishna says, ”Okay, so prove!”
Vivekananda talked much, all the proofs that he had. And Ramakrishna listened, and then he said, ”But my inner sense says he is – and that is the final authority. All that you are saying is argumentation. What does your inner sense say?”
Vivekananda had not even thought about it. He shrugged his shoulders. He had read books, he had collected arguments, proofs for and against, and he had tried to decide whether God exists or not according to these proofs. But he had not looked in. He had not asked his inner sense.
It is so stupid, but the skeptical mind IS stupid, the logical mind is stupid.
Ramakrishna said, ”Your arguments are beautiful, I enjoyed. But what can I do? I KNOW! My inner sense says he is. Just as my inner sense says I am happy, I am ill, I am sad, my stomach is hurting, that today I am not feeling well, so my inner sense says God is. It is not a question of debate.”
And Ramakrishna said, ”I cannot prove it, but if you want, I can show you.” Nobody had told Vivekananda before that God can be shown. And before he could say anything Ramakrishna jumped – he was a wild man – he jumped and put his feet on Vivekananda’s chest. And something happened, some energy jumped, and Vivekananda fell into a trance for three hours. When he opened his eyes, he was a totally different man.
Ramakrishna said, ”What do you say now? God is or God is not? What does your inner sense say now?”
He was in such tranquility, such stillness, as he had never known before. There was such jubilation inside, such well-being such overflowing well-being.... He had to bow down and touch his feet and say, ”Yes, God is.”
God is not a person but the ultimate sense of well-being, the ultimate sense of being at home, the ultimate sense that ”I belong to this world and this world belongs to me. I am not alien here, I am not an outsider.” The ultimate sense – existential – that ”This whole and I are not separate.” This experience is God. But this experience is possible only if you allow your inner sense to function.
Start allowing it! Give it as many opportunities as possible. Don’t look always for outside authorities, and don’t look for outside opinions. Keep yourself a little more independent. Feel more, think less.
Go and look at the rose flower, and don’t just repeat parrot like, ”This is beautiful.” This may be just opinion, people have told you; from your very childhood you have been hearing, ”The rose flower is beautiful, is a great flower.” So when you see the rose, you simply repeat, like a computer, ”This is beautiful.” Are you really feeling it? Is it your inner feeling? If it is not, don’t say it.
Looking at the moon, don’t say that it is beautiful – unless it is your inner sense. You will be surprised that ninety-nine percent of the stuff that you carry in your mind is all borrowed. And within that ninetynine percent of stuff, useless rubbish, the one percent of inner sense is lost, is drowned. Drop that knowledgeability. Recover your inner sense.
It is through the inner sense that God is known.
There are six senses: five are outer; they tell you about the world. I say something about the light; without eyes you will not know light. Ears say something about the sound; without ears you will not know anything about the sound. There is a sixth sense, the inner sense, that shows and tells you something about yourself and the ultimate source of things. That sense has to be discovered.
Meditation is nothing but the discovery of the inner sense.
The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom.
Buddha has actually called it the lion's roar. When a man reaches an absolutely silent state he roars like a lion. For the first time he knows what freedom is because now there is no fear of anybody's opinion. What people say does not matter. Whether they call you a saint or a sinner is immaterial; your whole and sole judge is God. And by 'God' a person is not meant at all, God simply means the whole universe.
It is not a question of having to face a person; you have to face the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the stars -- the whole universe. And this is our universe, we are part of it. There is no need to be afraid of it, there is no need to hide anything from it. In fact, even if you try you cannot hide. The whole knows it already, the whole knows more about you than you know.
And the second point is even more significant; the second is, God has already judged. It is not something that is going to happen in the future, it has already happened: he has judged. So even the fear of that judgment withers away. It is not a question of some Judgment Day at the end.
You need not tremble. The judgment day happened on the first day; the moment he created you he already judged you. He knows you, you are his creation. If something goes wrong with you he is responsible, not you. If you go astray he is responsible, not you. How can you be responsible? -- you are not your own creation. If you paint and something goes wrong you cannot say that the painting is the cause of it -- the painter is the cause.
So there is no need to be afraid of the crowd or of some imaginary god at the end of the world asking you what you have done and what you have not done. He has already judged -- that is really significant -- it has already happened so you are free. And the moment one knows that one is totally free to be oneself, life starts having a dynamic quality to it.
Fear creates fetters, freedom gives you wings.
I have been a misfit my whole life -- in my family, in my religion, in my country -- and I have enjoyed it all the way, because to be a misfit is to be an individual.
To fit with the existing established order is to lose your individuality. And that's your whole world.
The moment you compromise and lose your individuality, you have lost everything. You have committed suicide. The people who fit in the world are people who have destroyed themselves.
Certainly it needs courage, a tremendously strong sense for freedom; otherwise, you cannot stand alone against the whole world. But to stand against the whole world is the beginning of such a great joy, rejoicing and blessing, that those who have never been misfits cannot understand it.
All the great names in the history of man were just misfits in their society. All the people who have contributed to the happiness of man and the beauty of the earth have been misfits. To be a misfit is a tremendously valuable quality.
Never compromise on any point. The very compromise is the beginning of your destruction.
I do not mean that you have to be stubborn; if you see something is right, go along with it. But the moment you realize that something is not right, then even if the whole world feels it is right, it is not right for you. And then stick to your position -- that will give you stamina, strength, a certain integrity.
And to be a misfit does not mean to be an egoist. If you are an egoist, sooner or later you will compromise. When you find any group of people, any society, any country, which helps you to be more egoistic, you will immediately fit with that society. The real misfit is a humble man, that's why nobody can absorb him. He is free because he is free of the ego.
My understanding is that only people of intelligence, individuality, are rejected. The people who are obedient, who have no individuality, no freedom of expression, never say no to anything, are always ready to say yes, even against their wills -- these are the people who gain much respectability in the world. They become presidents, they become prime ministers, they are honored in every possible way, for the simple reason that they committed suicide. They are no longer living, they are simply fossilized. How can you fit living people into a certain pattern? Every individual is unique -- why should he fit into another's mold?
The whole misery of the world can be explained very simply: everybody has been cut, molded, arranged by others without their even bothering to find out what he was supposed to be by nature. They don't give a chance to existence. From the very moment the child is born, they start spoiling him -- with all good intentions, of course. No parent does it consciously, but he was conditioned in the same way. He repeats the same with his children; he knows nothing else.
The disobedient child is continuously condemned. The obedient child is, on the other hand, continuously praised. But have you heard of any obedient child having become world-famous in any dimension of creativity? Have you heard of any obedient child who has attained the Nobel prize for anything -- literature, peace, science? The obedient child becomes just the common crowd.
I have lived continuously as a misfit everywhere, and I have enjoyed it, every inch of it, every drop of it. It is such a beautiful journey, to be just yourself.
FREEDOM FROM, FREEDOM FOR
Never think in terms of being free from; always think in terms of being free for. And the difference is vast, tremendously vast. Don't think in terms of from -- think for. Be free for God, be free for truth, but don't think that you want to be free from the crowd, free from the church, free from this and that. You may be able to go far away one day, but you will never be free, never. It is going to be some sort of suppression.
Why are you so afraid of the crowd? ... If the pull is there, then your fear simply shows your pull, your attraction. Wherever you go you will remain dominated by the crowd.
What I am saying is, just look at the facts of it -- that there is no need to think in terms of the crowd. Just think in terms of your being. It can be dropped right now. You cannot be free if you struggle. You can drop it because there is no point in struggling.
The crowd is not the problem -- you are the problem. The crowd is not pulling you -- you are being pulled, not by somebody else but by your own unconscious conditioning. Always remember not to throw the responsibility somewhere on somebody else, because then you will never be free of it. Deep down it is your responsibility. Why should one be so much against the crowd? Poor crowd! Why should you be so much against it? Why do you carry such a wound?
The crowd cannot do anything unless you cooperate. So the question is of your cooperation. You can drop the cooperation just now, just like that. If you put any effort into it, then you will be in trouble. So do it instantly. It is just on the spur of the moment, of spontaneous understanding, if you can see the point that if you fight, you will be fighting a losing battle. In the very fighting you are emphasizing the crowd.
That's what has happened to millions of people. Somebody wants to escape from women -- in India they have done that for centuries. Then they become more and more engrossed in it. They want to get rid of sex, and their whole mind then becomes sexual; they think only of sex and nothing else. They fast, and they will not go to sleep; they will do this and that pranayama and yoga and a thousand and one things -- all nonsense. The more they fight with sex the more they are enforcing it, the more they are concentrating on it. It becomes so significant, out of all proportion.
That is what has happened to Christian monasteries. They became so repressed, just afraid. The same can happen to you if you become afraid too much of the crowd. The crowd cannot do anything unless you cooperate, so it is a question of your alertness. Don't cooperate!
This is my observation: that whatsoever happens to you, you are responsible. Nobody else is doing it to you. You wanted it to be done, so it has been done. Somebody exploits you because you wanted to be exploited. Somebody has put you into a prison because you wanted to be imprisoned. There must have been a certain search for it. Maybe you used to call it security. Your names may have been different, your labels may have been different, but you were hankering to be imprisoned because in a prison one is safe and there is no insecurity.
But don't fight with the prison walls. Look inside. Find that hankering for security, and how the crowd can manipulate you. You must be asking for something from the crowd -- recognition, honor, respect, respectability. If you ask them, you have to repay them. Then the crowd says, "Okay, we give you respect, and you give us your freedom." It is a simple bargain. But the crowd has never done anything to you -- it is basically you. So get out of your own way!
To Find Yourself You Must Find Your Original Face
Just be what you are and don’t care a bit about the world. Then you will feel a tremendous relaxation and a deep peace within your heart. This is what Zen people call your “original face” — relaxed, without tensions, without pretensions, without hypocrisies, without the so-called disciplines of how you should behave.
And remember, the original face is a beautiful poetic expression, but it does not mean that you will have a different face. This same face will lose all its tensions, this same face will be relaxed, this same face will be nonjudgmental, this same face will not think of others as inferior. This same face under these new values will be your original face.
There is an ancient proverb:Many a hero is a man who did not have the courage to be a coward.
If you are a coward what is wrong in it? You are a coward — it is perfectly good. Cowards are also needed, otherwise from where will you get heroes? They are an absolute necessity to give the background to create heroes.
To Find Yourself, Just Be Yourself, Whatever It Is.
The problem is that never before has anybody told you just to be yourself. Everybody is poking his nose in, saying that you should be this way, you should be that way — even in ordinary matters.
In my school… I was just a small boy, but I hated to be told how I have to be. Teachers started bribing me — “If you behave rightly, you can become a genius.”
I said, “To hell with the genius — I simply want to be myself.” I used to sit with my legs on the table, and every teacher was offended. They would say, “What kind of behavior is this?”
I said, “The table is not saying anything to me. It is something between me and the table, so why are you looking so angry? I am not putting my legs on your head! You should relax just as I am relaxing. And this way I feel better able to understand what nonsense you are teaching.”
Just on one side of the room was a beautiful window, and outside were trees and birds and cuckoos. Mostly I was looking out of the window, and the teacher would come and say, “Why do you come to school at all?”
I said, “Because in my house there is no window like this, which opens up to the whole sky. And around my house there are no cuckoos, no birds. The house is in the city, surrounded by other houses, so crowded that birds don’t come there, cuckoos don’t feel that these are the people to be blessed by their songs.
“Forget the idea that I come here to listen to you! I am paying my fee, you are simply a servant and you should remember that. If I fail I will not come to complain to you; if I fail I will not feel sad. But if for the whole year I have to pretend that I am listening to you, while I am listening to the cuckoos outside, that will be the beginning of a hypocritical life. And I don’t want to be a hypocrite.”
To Be Yourself, Ignore People Who Want You to Be Something Else
Buddha and Finding your Original FaceOn every matter, the teachers, the professors, wanted you to do it in a certain way. In my school in those days, and perhaps even today, using a cap was necessary. I have nothing against caps; since I have left the university I have started wearing caps but I never wore one until I left the university. The first teacher who was worried about me said, “You are disturbing the discipline of the school. Where is your cap?”
I said, “Bring the school code of behavior. Is there any mention that every boy should wear a cap? And if there is not, you are imposing something against the school code.”
He took me to the principal of the school and I told the principal, “I am absolutely ready, just show me where it is written that a cap is compulsory. If it is compulsory I may even leave the school, but first let me see where it is written.”
There was no written code and I said, “Can you give me any other reasonable arguments for using the cap? Will it increase my intelligence? Will it increase my life? Will it give me better health, more understanding?” I said, “As far as I know, Bengal is the only province in India where caps are not used, and that is the most intelligent part of the country. Punjab is just the opposite. There, for a cap, people use turbans — such big turbans, as if their intelligence is escaping so they are trying to keep hold of it. And that is the most unintelligent part of the country.”
The principal said, “There seems to be some sense in what you are saying, but it is a school discipline. If you stop wearing a cap, then others will stop.”
I said, “Then what is the fear? Just drop the whole convention.”
Nobody wants to allow you to be yourself on matters which are absolutely insignificant.
I used to have long hair in my childhood. And I used to come in and out of my father’s shop, because the shop and the home were connected. The home was behind the shop and it was absolutely necessary to pass through the shop. People would ask, “Whose girl is this?” — because my hair was so long, they could not imagine that a boy would have such long hair.
My father felt very ashamed and embarrassed to say, “He is a boy.”
“But,” they said, “then why all this hair?”
One day — it was not his normal nature — he became so embarrassed and angry that he came and cut my hair with his own hands. Bringing the scissors that he used to cut cloth in his shop, he cut my hair. I didn’t say anything to him — he was surprised. He said, “You don’t have anything to say?”
I said, “I will say it in my own way.”
“So what do you mean?”
I said, “You will see.” And I went to the opium-addict barber who used to have a shop just in front of our house. He was the only man I had a respect for. There were a row of barber shops, but I loved that old man. He was a rare variety, and he loved me; for hours we used to talk to each other. What he was saying was all nonsense! One day he was saying to me, “If all the opium addicts can be organized into a political party, we can take over this country!”
I said, “It is a good idea.”
“But,” he said, “because we are all opium addicts, I myself forget my own idea.”
I said, “You don’t be worried. I am here and I will remember. You just tell me what changes you want to have in the country, what kind of political ideology you want, and I will manage it.”
But I went to him and I told him, “Just shave my whole head completely.” In India the head is shaved completely only when your father dies. For a moment even that opium addict came to his senses. He said, “What has happened? Has your father died?”
I said, “Don’t bother about these things. You do what I am saying; it is none of your concern! You just cut my hair completely, shave it completely.”
He said, “Done! That is the easiest job. So many times I get into trouble. People say to me, ‘Shave the beard’, and I forget and I shave their heads. They say, ‘What have you done?’ And I say, ‘At the most I can say to you don’t pay for it — what is the problem?'”
I used to sit in his shop because there was always something ridiculous happening. He would cut half the mustache of somebody and would say, “Wait, I have remembered some urgent work.” And the man would say, “But I am caught here in your chair and half the mustache is gone. I cannot go out of the shop!” He would say, “Simply wait there.”
And then hours will pass and that man is sitting there…”What kind of idiot is this man?”
At one time I had to help by cutting the half mustache of a man. I said, “Now you are free. Just never come back here again… because that man has not done much harm to you, he just forgets.”
So the barber said, “That’s right. It is none of my concern. If he has died, he has died.”
He shaved my head completely, and I went home. I passed through the shop. My father looked and all his customers looked. They said, “What happened? Whose boy is this? His father has died.”
My father said, “He is my boy and I am alive! But I knew he was going to do something. He has answered me well.”
Wherever I went people would ask, “What happened? He was perfectly healthy.”
I said, “People die at any age. You are worried about him, you are not worried about my hair.”
That was the last thing my father ever did to me, because he knew that the answer could be more dangerous! On the contrary, he brought a certain oil that is used for growing hair. It is a very costly oil, wich comes from Bengal out of a certain flower, javakusum. It is very costly, rare, used only by the richest people — and not by men but by women — to keep the hair as long as possible. In Bengal I have come across women whose hair touched the earth — five feet long, six feet long. That oil simply functions powerfully on the hair.
I said, “Now you understand.”
He said, “I have understood. You use this oil quickly; in a few months your hair will be back.”
I said, “You created the whole mess. What was there to be embarrassed about? You could have said, ‘She is my girl.’ I don’t have any objection about that. But you should not have interfered with me the way you did. It was violent, barbarous. Rather than saying anything to me, you simply started cutting my hair.”
To Be Yourself, You Must Forget the Conditioning
Nobody allows anybody to be just himself. And you have learned all those ideas so deeply that it seems they are your ideas. Just relax. Forget all those conditionings, drop them like dry leaves falling from the trees. It is better to be a naked tree without any leaves than to have plastic leaves and plastic foliage and plastic flowers; that is ugly.
The original face simply means that you are not being dominated by any kind of morality, religion, society, parents, teachers, priests, not being dominated by anyone. Just living your life according to your own inner sense — you have a sensibility — and you will have the original face.
