Osho, Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language # 4 Question 5

Osho,

I have heard, a man in an orange robe entered the Vrindavan juice bar, barged up to the front of the line, and demanded tea and cake. He paid with a hundred-rupee note and complained about the cost and the long lineup. After choosing the biggest piece of cake and the biggest cup, he took over an old lady’s seat and proceeded to gobble the food. A bystander, puzzled by his behavior, asked the meaning of it.

“Why,” he explained,” Osho said that only a crystallized ego can be dropped.”

There is more possibility to misunderstand me than to understand me. And in misunderstanding, you will find much solace, much consolation.

15

Just the other day, Mulla Nasruddin came to me, and he said, “Enough is enough - I cannot trust you anymore.”

I said, “What happened, Nasruddin? You have been such a longtime obedient disciple to me.”

He said, “Now it is too much! Just the other day I was at the racetrack. Somebody’s change had fallen, so I was picking it up, and there comes a blind, or mad, or drunk guy, and he saddles me as if I were a horse.”

So I said, “Why didn’t you stand up to him?”

Nasruddin said, “But you have said to accept everything, so I said, ‘Osho says, “Accept totally,” so I will accept it and I try to see now what happens’ - and the madman jumped on me.”

I was intrigued. I said, “Then what did you do?”

He said, “What could I do? I had to run - and I came third in the race! Now this is too much! I cannot trust you anymore!”

There is every possibility to misunderstand me and there is every possibility to find rationalizations. This is how the mind goes on being foolish, the mind goes on playing around, fooling around. It always finds ways to protect itself. If I say drop the ego, you say okay, and you try to drop it; and then the ego becomes your humbleness and you start moving around with your nose up, looking at everybody as if everybody is condemned to hell. And you have that look of “holier than thou” and “I am the most humble man around here.” If I say the ego has to become big, only then it bursts, then you say, “Okay. That’s what we have been always trying. Now you are also supporting it - so far so good.”

When are you going to understand me? When you listen to me, always remember, your mind is there to corrupt it. Unless you are very, very watchful, your mind will pollute it. And mind is so cunning, it can always find a way out. And it is so clever, it can always make rationalizations look like reasons.

Osho, Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language