osho's biography

Osho and his father

But the first seven years are the most important in life; never again will you have that much opportunity. Those seven years decide your seventy years, all the foundation stones are laid in those seven years. So by a strange coincidence I was saved from my parents - and by the time I reached them, I was almost on my own, I was already flying. I knew I had wings. I knew that I didn't need anybody's help to make me fly. I knew that the whole sky is mine.

I never asked for their guidance, and if any guidance was given to me I always retorted, "This is insulting. Do you think I cannot manage it myself? I do understand that there is no bad intention in giving guidance - for that I am thankful - but you do not understand one thing, that I am capable of doing it on my own. Just give me a chance to prove my mettle. Don't interfere."
In those seven years I became really a strong individualist: hard-core. Now it was impossible to put any trip on me.
I used to pass through my father's shop, because the shop was in front - at the back was the house where the family lived. That's how it happens in India: house and shop are together so it is easily manageable. I used to pass through my father's shop with closed eyes.
He asked me, "This is strange. Whenever you pass through the shop into the house, or from the house" - it was just a twelve foot space to pass - "you always keep your eyes closed. What ritual are you practising?"

I said, "I am simply practicing so that this shop does not destroy me as it has destroyed you. I don't want to see it at all; I am absolutely uninterested, totally uninterested." And it was one of the most beautiful cloth shops in that city - the best materials were available there - but I never looked to the side, I simply closed my eyes and passed by!
He said, "But in opening your eyes there is no harm."
I said, "One never knows - one can be distracted. I don't want to be distracted by anything." misery01
When I was very small I had long hair like a girl. In India boys don't have that long hair - at least at that time it was not allowed. I used to have very long hair, and whenever I used to enter, and the entrance was from the shop.... The house was behind the shop, so to enter I had to pass through the shop. My father was there, his customers were there, and they would say, "Whose girl is this?"
My father would look at me and say, "What to do? He does not listen." And he felt offended.
I said, "You need not feel offended. I don't see any problem. If somebody calls me a girl or a boy, that is his business; what difference does it make to me?"

But he was offended that his boy was being called a girl. Just the idea of a boy and girl.... In India when a boy is born, there are gongs and bands and songs, and sweets are distributed in the whole neighborhood. And when a girl is born, nothing happens - nothing. You immediately know that a girl is born because no gongs, no bells, no band, no singing - nothing is happening, no distribution of sweets - that means a girl is born. Nobody will come to ask because it will be offending you: you will have to answer that a girl is born. The father is sitting with his face down...a girl is born.
So he said, "This is strange. I have a boy, and I am suffering from having a girl." So one day he really became angry because the man who had asked was a very important man; he was the collector of the district. He was sitting in the shop, and he asked, "Whose girl is this? It is strange, the clothes seem to be a boy's - and with so many pockets and all full of stones?"

My father said, "What to do? He is a boy, he is not a girl. But today I am going to cut his hair - this is enough!" So he came with his scissors and cut my hair. I didn't say anything to him. I went to the barber's shop which was just in front of my house and I told him.... He was an opium addict, a very beautiful man, but sometimes he would cut half your mustache and would forget the other half. You would be sitting in his chair, with his cloth around your neck and he was gone, so you would search - where had he gone? It was difficult; nobody knew where he had gone. And with a half mustache, where would you go to search for him? But he was the only one I liked, because it took hours.

He would tell you a thousand and one things, unrelated to anything in the world. I enjoyed it. It is from that man, Nathur - Nathur, that was his name - that I learned how the human mind is. My first acquaintance with the human mind came from him, because he was not a hypocrite. He would say anything that came to his mind; in fact, between his mind and his mouth there was no difference! - he simply spoke whatsoever was in his mind. If he was fighting with somebody in his mind, he would start fighting loudly - and nobody was there. I was the only one who would not ask, "With whom are you fighting?" So he was very happy with me, so happy that he would never charge me for cutting my nails or anything.

That day I went there and I told him - we used to call him "Kaka", kaka means uncle - "Kaka, if you are in your senses, just shave my whole head."
He said, "Great." He was not in his senses. If he had been, he would have refused because in India you shave your head only when your father dies; otherwise it is not shaved. So he had taken a good dose of opium and he shaved my head completely.

I said, "That's good."
I went back. My father looked at me and said, "What happened?"
I said, "What is the point? You cut my hair with the scissors; it will grow again. I am finished with that. And Kaka is willing, I have asked him. He said he is willing: 'Whenever there is no customer you can come and I will shave your head completely, and no question of money.' So you need not be worried. I am his free customer because nobody listens to him; I am the only person who listens."

My father said, "But you know perfectly well that now this will create more trouble."
And immediately one man came and asked, "What happened? Has this boy's father died?" Without that, nobody....
Then my father said, "Look! It was better that you were a girl. Now I am dead! You grow your hair as fast as you can. Go to your Kaka, that opium addict, and ask him if he can help somehow; otherwise this is going to create more trouble for me. The whole town will go on coming. You will be moving around the whole city and everybody will think that your father is dead. They will start coming."
And they did start coming. That was the last time he did anything to me. After that he said, "I am not going to do anything because it leads into more trouble."
I said, "I had not asked - l simply go on doing my thing. You interfered unnecessarily." ignor13
One day I was playing - I must have been five or six years old... A man used to come to see my father, an utterly boring man. And my father was growing tired of him. So he called me and told me, "I see that man is coming; he will waste my time unnecessarily and it is very difficult to get rid of him. I always have to go out, and say to him, `Now I have some appointment' - unnecessarily I have to go out, just to get rid of him. And sometimes it happens that he says, `I am coming with you. So on the way we can have a good talk.' And there is no talk, it is a monologue. He talks, and tortures people."
So my father said, "I am going inside. You just remain playing outside. And when he comes, you simply say to him that your father is out."

And my father used to teach me continuously, "Never speak an untruth." So I was shocked. This was contradictory.
So when the man came and asked me, "Where is your father?" I said, "He is in, but he says that he is out."
My father heard this from inside, and the man entered with me, so he could not say anything in front of him. When the man had gone, after two or three hours my father was really angry with me, not with the man.

He said, "I told you to tell him, `My father is out.'"
I said, "Exactly, I repeated the same thing. I told him the same thing: `My father says to tell you that he is out. But he is in, the truth is he is in.' You have been teaching me to be true whatever the consequence. So I am ready for the consequence. Any punishment, if you want to give me, give. But remember, if truth is punished, truth is destroyed. Truth has to be rewarded. Give me some reward, so I can go on speaking the truth whatever happens."

He looked at me and he said, "You are clever."
I said, "That you know already. Just give me some reward. I have spoken the truth."
And he had to give me some reward; he gave me a one rupee note. At that time one rupee was almost equal to twenty-five rupees today. You could live with a one rupee note for almost half a month. And he said, "Go and enjoy whatever you want to purchase."
I said, "You have to remember it. If you tell me to speak a lie, I am going to tell the person that you have told me to. I am not telling a lie. And each time you contradict yourself, you will have to reward me. So stop lying. If you don't want that man, you should tell him directly that you don't have any time and don't like his boring talk because he says the same things again and again. Why are you afraid? Why do you have to tell a lie?"
He said, "The difficulty is, he is my best customer."

My father had a very beautiful cloth shop, and this man was rich. He used to purchase a huge lot for his family, relatives, friends. He was a very generous man - just being boring was his problem.
So my father said, "I have to suffer all the boredom because he is my best customer and I cannot lose him."
I said, "That is your problem, that is not my problem. So you are lying because he is your best customer, and I am going to say this to him."
He said, "Wait!"
I said, "I cannot wait because he must be told immediately that you go on suffering all his boring talk just because he is a good customer - and you will have to give me some reward."

He said, "You are so difficult. You are destroying my best customer. And I will have to give you a reward too. But just don't do that."
But I did it. And I got two rewards, one from that boring man because I told him, "Truth should always be rewarded, so give me some reward because I am destroying one of the best customers of my father."

He hugged me and he gave me two rupees. And I said, "Remember, don't stop buying from my father's shop, but don't bore him either. If you want to talk, you can talk to the walls, to the trees. The whole world is available. You can just close your room and talk to yourself. And then you will be bored."
And I told my father, "Don't be worried. Look, one rupee I have got from you, two rupees I have got from your customer. Now one more rupee I am owed; you have to give it me, because I have told the truth. But don't be worried. I have made him a better customer and he will never bore you again. He has promised me."

My father said, "You have done a miracle!" Since that day that man never came, or even if he did come he would stay just for one or two minutes to say hello and he would go away. And he continued to purchase from my father's shop.

And he said to my father, "It is because of your son that I continue. Otherwise I would have felt wounded, but that little boy managed both things. He stopped me boring you and he asked me, requested me, `Don't stop shopping from my father's shop. He depends on you.' And he got two rupees from me and he was saying such a shocking thing to me. Nobody has ever dared tell me that I am a boring man."

He was the richest man in the village. Everybody was in some way connected with him. People borrowed money from him, people have borrowed lands from him to work on. He was the richest man and the biggest landowner in that village. Everybody was somehow or other obliged to him, so nobody was able to say to him that he was boring.

So he said, "It was a very great shock, but it was true. I know I am boring. I bore myself with my thoughts. That's why I go to others to bore them, just to get rid of my thoughts. If I am bored with my thoughts, I know perfectly well the other person will be bored, but everybody is under an obligation to me. Only this boy has no obligation and is not afraid of the consequences. And he is daring. He asked for the reward. He said to me, `If you don't reward truth, you are rewarding lies.'"

This is why this society is in such a mad space. Everybody is teaching you to be truthful, and nobody is rewarding you for being truthful, so they create a schizophrenia. gdead07

Living two or three blocks away from my family was a brahmin family, very orthodox brahmins. Brahmins cut all their hair and just leave a small part on the seventh chakra on the head uncut so that part goes on growing. They go on tying it and keeping it inside their cap or inside their turban. And what I had done was, I had cut the father's hair. In summertime in India, people sleep outside the house, on the street. They bring their beds, cots, on the streets. The whole town sleeps on the streets in the night, it is so hot inside.

So this brahmin was sleeping - and it was not my fault...he had such a long choti; it is called choti, that bunch of hair. I had never seen it because it was always hidden inside his turban. While he was sleeping, it was hanging down and touching the street. From his cot it was so long that I was tempted, I could not resist; I rushed home, brought the scissors, cut it off completely and took it and kept it in my room.

In the morning he must have found that it was gone. he could not believe it because his whole purity was in it, his whole religion was in it - his whole spirituality was destroyed. But everybody in the neighborhood knew that if anything goes wrong...first they would rush to me. And he came immediately. I was sitting outside knowing well that he would come in the morning. He looked at me. I also looked at him. He said to me, "What are you looking at?"
I said, "What are you looking at? Same thing."
He said, "Same thing?"
I said, "Yes. The same thing. You name it.
He asked, "Where is your father? I don't want to talk to you at all."
He went in. He brought my father out and my father said, "Have you done anything to this man?"
I said, "I have not done anything to this man, but I have cut a choti which certainly cannot belong to this man, because when I was cutting it, what was he doing? He could have prevented it."
The man said, "I was asleep."
I said, "If I had cut your finger while you were asleep, would you have remained asleep?"
He said, "How could I remain asleep if somebody was cutting my finger?"
I said, "That certainly shows that hairs are dead. You can cut them but a person is not hurt, no blood comes out. So what is the fuss about? A dead thing was hanging there...and I thought that you are unnecessarily carrying this dead thing inside your turban for your whole life - why not relieve you? It is in my room. And with my father I have the contract to be true."

So I brought out his choti and said, "If you are so interested in it, you can take it back. If it is your spirituality, your brahminism, you can keep it tied and put it inside your turban. It is dead anyway; it was dead when it was attached to you, it was dead when I detached it. You can keep it inside your turban."
And I asked my father, "My reward?" - in front of that man.

That man said, "What reward is he asking for?"
My father said, "This is the trouble. Yesterday he proposed a contract that if he speaks the truth, and sincerely... He is not only speaking the truth, he is even giving the proof. He has told the whole story - and even has logic behind it, that it was a dead thing so why be bothered with a dead thing? And he is not hiding anything."
He rewarded me with five rupees. In those days, in that small village, five rupees was a great reward. The man was mad at my father. He said, "You will spoil this child. You should beat him rather than giving him five rupees. Now he will cut other people's chotis. If he gets five rupees per choti, all the brahmins of the town are finished, because they are all sleeping outside in the night; and when you are sleeping you cannot go on holding your choti in your hand. And what are you doing? - this will become a precedent."

My father said, "But this is my contract. If you want to punish him, that is your business; I will not come into it. I am not rewarding him for his mischief, I am rewarding him for his truth - and for my whole life I will go on rewarding him for his truth. As far as mischief is concerned, you are free to do anything with him." ignor14

My father only punished me once because I had gone to a fair which used to happen a few miles away from the city every year. There flows one of the holy rivers of the Hindus, the Narmada, and on the bank of the Narmada there used to be a big fair for one month. So I simply went there without asking him.

There was so much going on in the fair....I had gone only for one day and I was thinking I would be back by the night, but there were so many things: magicians, a circus, drama. It was not possible to come back in one day, so three days.... The whole family was in a panic: where had I gone?
It had never happened before. At the most I had come back late in the night but I had never been away for three days continuously...and with no message. They enquired at every friend's house. Nobody knew about me and the fourth day when I came home my father was really angry. Before asking me anything, he slapped me. I didn't say anything.

I said, "Do you want to slap me more? You can, because I have enjoyed enough in three days. You cannot slap me more than I have enjoyed, so you can do a few more slaps. It will cool you down, and to me it is just balancing. I have enjoyed myself."
He said, "You are really impossible. Slapping you is meaningless. You are not hurt by it; you are asking for more. Can't you make a distinction between punishment and reward?"

I said, "No, to me everything is a reward of some kind. There are different kinds of reward, but everything is a reward of some kind."
He asked me, "Where have you been for these three days?"
I said, "This you should have asked before you slapped me. Now you have lost the right to ask me. I have been slapped without even being asked. It is a full stop - close the chapter. If you wanted to know, you should have asked before, but you don't have any patience. Just a minute would have been enough. But I will not keep you continually worrying where I have been, so I will tell you that I went to the fair."

He asked, "Why didn't you ask me?"
I said, "Because I wanted to go. Be truthful: if I had asked, would you have allowed me? Be truthful."
He said,"No."
I said, "That explains everything, why I did not ask you - because I wanted to go, and then it would have been more difficult for you. If I had asked you and you had said no, I still would have gone, and that would have been more difficult for you. Just to make it easier for you, I didn't ask, and I am rewarded for it. And I am ready to take any more reward you want to give me. But I have enjoyed the fair so much that I am going there every year. So you can...whenever I disappear, you know where I am. Don't be worried."

He said, "This is the last time that I punish you; the first and last time. Perhaps you are right: if you really wanted to go then this was the only way, because I was not going to allow you. In that fair every kind of thing happens: prostitutes are there, intoxicants are available, drugs are sold there" - and at that time in India there was no illegality about drugs, every drug was freely available. And in a fair all kinds of monks gather, and Hindu monks all use drugs " - so I would not have allowed you to go. And if you really wanted to go then perhaps you were right not to ask."

I told him, "But I did not bother about the prostitutes or the monks or the drugs. You know me: if I am interested in drugs, then in this very city...." Just by the side of my house there was a shop where all drugs were available: "and the man is so friendly to me that he will not take any money if I want any drug. So there is no problem. Prostitutes are available in the town; if I am interested in seeing their dances I can go there. Who can prevent me? Monks come continually in the city. But I was interested in the magicians."...

So I told my father, "I was interested only in the magic, because in the fair all kinds of magicians gather together, and I have seen some really great things. My interest is that I want to reduce miracles into magic. Magic is only about tricks - there is nothing spiritual in it - but if you don't know the trick, then certainly it appears to be a miracle."

I have been punished, but I have enjoyed every mischief so much that I don't count those punishments at all. They are nothing.
I have a certain rapport with women, perhaps that's why mischief - if it was Mister Chief or Master Chief, perhaps I would have avoided it, but Miss Chief! - the temptation was so much that I could not avoid it. In spite of all the punishment I continued it. And I still continue it! ignor25
I was in constant trouble in my childhood. Anybody who was older, a distant relative - in India you don't know all your relatives - my father would tell me, "Touch his feet, he is a distant relative."

I would say, "I will not touch his feet unless I find something respectable in him."
So whenever any relative was to come, they would persuade me to go out, "because it is very embarrassing. We are saying to you, `Respect the old man,' and you ask, `Let us wait. Let me see something respectable. I will touch his feet - but without knowing, how do you expect me to be honest and truthful?'"

But these are not the qualities society respects. Smile, honor, obey - whether it is right or wrong does not matter. You will have respectability. 1seed04
In my childhood...there were many children in my family. I had ten brothers and sisters myself, then there were one uncle's children, and another uncle's children...and I saw this happening: whoever was obedient was respected. I had to decide one thing for my whole life - not only for being in my family or for my childhood - that if I in any way desire respect, respectability, then I cannot blossom as an individual. From my very childhood I dropped the idea of respectability.

I told my father, "I have to make a certain statement to you."
He was always worried whenever I would go to him, because he knew that there would be some trouble. He said, "This is not the way a child speaks to his father - `I am going to make a statement to you.'"

I said, "It is a statement through you to the whole world. Right now the whole world is not available to me; to me you represent the whole world. It is not just an issue between son and father; it is an issue between an individual and the collectivity, the mass. The statement is that I have renounced the idea of respectability, so in the name of respectability never ask anything from me; otherwise I will do just the opposite.

"I cannot be obedient. That does not mean I will always be disobedient, it simply means it will be my choice to obey or not to obey. You can request, but the decision is going to be mine. If I feel my intelligence supports it, I will do it; but it is not obedience to you, it is obedience to my own intelligence. If I feel it is not right, I am going to refuse it. I am sorry, but you have to understand one thing clearly: unless I am able to say no, my yes is meaningless."

And that's what obedience does: it cripples you - you cannot say no, you have to say yes. But when a man has become incapable of saying no, his yes is just meaningless; he is functioning like a machine. You have turned a man into a robot. So I said to him, "This is my statement. Whether you agree or not, that is up to you; but I have decided, and whatever the consequences, I am going to follow it."

It is such a world...In this world to remain free, to think on your own, to decide with your own consciousness, to act out of your own conscience has been made almost impossible. Everywhere - in the church, in the temple, in the mosque, in the school, in the university, in the family - everywhere you are expected to be obedient. psycho04

Trust is simply a very purified love. Love without sex, that is trust. They loved me. I was their eldest son, and in India it is traditional that the eldest son is going to inherit the whole family's property, money, everything. So the eldest son has to be trained, prepared for all the responsibilities that will be his sooner or later. He will be the head of the family, a joint family, and he will have to manage it.

Naturally they loved me. They tried their best to make me as capable, as intelligent as possible. I loved them because it was not only love from their side, but respect too - respect for my individuality. Soon they understood that nothing can be imposed on me. It took a little time for them to understand that they have a different kind of child; they cannot impose anything on me. At the most they can persuade, they can argue, and if they can convince me about something, I will do it. But they cannot just order and say, "Do it because I am your father."

I had made it clear to them that I am not going to accept anybody's order. "You may be my father, but that does not mean that you are going to be my intelligence, my individuality, my life. You have given birth to me, but that does not mean that you possess me. I am not a thing. So if you want me to do something, be prepared. Do your homework well. I am going to argue to the very end, til I feel convinced."

So on each small thing soon they recognized the fact that it is better to propose a thing and leave him to decide whether he wants to do it or not. Don't waste unnecessary time and don't unnecessarily harass him and be harassed by him. And because they gave me every freedom, my love became trust.
Love becomes trust when it is non-possessive. It does not reduce you into a thing. It accepts your individuality, your freedom, and it has every respect for you although you are just a child. Their respect towards me became my trust towards them. I knew that they are people who can be trusted, who cannot deceive me in anything.

And because I trusted so much - this is just a circle - because I trusted so much, they could not do anything or say anything which would disturb my trust in them. They never took me to the temple, they never gave me any religion. I have grown up on my own, and they allowed it. They protected me in every possible way. They helped me in every possible way, but they never interfered with me. And that's what every parent should do.
If these three things are the guidelines, we will have a totally new world and a new man. We will have individuals, not crowds, not mobs. And every individual is so unique that to force him to become part of a crowd is to destroy him, his uniqueness. He could have contributed immensely to the world, but that was possible only if he was left alone - supported, helped, but not directed.

Everywhere now there is a vast generation gap. The parents are responsible for it, because they have been trying to impose their ideologies, political, social, religious, philosophical - all kinds of things they are trying to impose on their children. last212

My father.... Yes, he was a simple man, just like anybody else. So was Buddha and so was Mahavira and so was Jesus - simple people, innocent people. He was not in any way extraordinary; that was his extraordinariness. I have known him from my very childhood - so simple, so innocent, anybody could deceive him.

He used to believe anybody. I have seen many people cheating him, but his trust was immense; he never distrusted human beings although he was cheated many times. It was so simple to see that people were cheating him that even when I was a small child I used to say to him, "What are you doing? This man is simply cheating you!"

Once he built a house and a contractor was cheating him. I told him, "This house is not going to stand, it will fall, because the cement is not in the right proportion and the wood that is being used is too heavy." But he wouldn't listen; he said, "He is a good man, he cannot cheat us."

And that's what actually happened; the house could not stand the first rains. He was not there, he was in Bombay. I sent him a telegram telling him, "What I have been telling you has happened: the house has fallen." He did not even answer. He came when he was supposed to come, after seven days, and he said, "Why did you unnecessarily waste money on the telegram? The house had fallen, so it had fallen! Now what can I do? That contractor wasted ten thousand rupees and you wasted almost ten rupees unnecessarily - those could have been saved.

And the first thing that he did was to celebrate that we had not moved - because we had been going to move within two or three weeks. He celebrated: "God is gracious, he saved us. He made the house fall before we had moved into it." So he invited the whole village. Everybody was just unable to understand: "Is this a moment to celebrate?" Even the contractor was called invited, because he had done a good job: before we moved, the house fell.
He was a simple man. And if you look deep down, everybody is simple. The society makes you complex, but you are born simple and innocent. Everybody is born a Buddha; the society corrupts you. bestil10