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Osho’s early experiences as story-teller and public speaker
I love stories, and all this started with my Nani. She was a lover
of stories too. Not that she used to tell me stories; just the
contrary, she used to provoke me to tell her stories, all kinds
of stories and gossips. She listened so attentively that she made
me into a story teller. Just for her I would find something interesting,
because she would wait the whole day just to listen to my story.
If I could not find anything, then I would invent. She is responsible:
all credit or blame, whatsoever you call it, goes to her. I invented
stories to tell her just so she would not be disappointed, and
I can promise you that I became a successful story teller just
for her sake.
I started winning in competitions when I was just a child in
primary school, and that continued to the very end, when I left
university. I collected so many prizes, medals and cups and shields
and whatnot, that my grandmother became just a young girl again.
Whenever she would bring someone to show them my prizes and awards,
she was no longer an old woman, she became almost young again.
Her whole house became almost a museum because I went on sending
her my prizes. Up till high school, of course, I was almost a
resident in her house. It was just for courtesy's sake that I
used to visit my parents in the daytime; but the night was hers,
because that was the time to tell the stories.
I can still see myself by the side of her bed, with her listening
so attentively to what I was saying. Each word uttered by me was
absorbed by her as if it were of immense the beggar dropped all
that made him look like a beggar; now he was a king. Every day
I had to promise her, and even though I told her everything that
happened, she would insist, "Tell me something more,"
or "Tell me that one again."
Many times I said to her, "You will spoil me; both you
and Shambhu Babu are spoiling me forever." And they really
did their job well. I collected hundreds of awards. There was
not a single high school in the whole state where I had not spoken
and won - except once....
In fact my grandmother's house had become, by and by, just a
museum for my shields, cups and medals. But she was very happy,
immensely happy. It was a small house to be cluttered with all
this rubbish, but she was happy that I went on sending her all
my prizes, from college and from the university. I went on and
on, and every year I won dozens of cups, either for debate or
for eloquence or for story-telling competitions.
But I tell you one thing: both she and Shambhu Babu spoiled
me by their being so attentive. They taught me, without teaching,
the art of speaking. When somebody listens so attentively, you
immediately start saying something you had not planned or even
imagined; it simply flows. It is as if attention becomes magnetic
and attracts that which is hidden in you.
My own experience is that this world will not become a beautiful
place to live in unless everybody learns how to be attentive.
Right now, nobody is attentive. Even when people are showing that
they are listening; they are not listening, they are doing a thousand
other things. Hypocrites just pretending...but not the way
an attentive listener should be - just all attention, just
attention and nothing else, just open. Attention is a feminine
quality, and everybody who knows the art of attention, of being
attentive, becomes, in a certain sense, very feminine, very fragile,
soft; so soft that you could scratch him with just your nails.
My Nani would wait the whole day for the time when I would come
back home to tell her stories. And you will be surprised how,
unknowingly, she prepared me for the job that I was going to do.
It was she who first heard many of the stories that I have told
you. It was her to whom I could tell any nonsense without any
fear.
The other person, Shambhu Babu, was totally different from my
Nani. My Nani was very intuitive, but not intellectual. Shambhu
Babu was also intuitive, but intellectual too. He was an intellectual
of the first grade. I have come across many intellectuals, some
famous and some very famous, but none of them came close to Shambhu
Babu. He was really a great synthesis. Assagioli would have loved
the man. He had intuition plus intellect, and both not in small
measure, but high peaks. He also used to listen to me, and would
wait all day until school had finished. Every day after school
was his.
The moment I was released from the prison, my school, I would
first go to Shambhu Babu. He would be ready with tea and a few
sweets that he knew I liked. I mention it because people rarely
think of the other person. He always arranged things with the
other person in mind. I have never seen anybody bother about the
other as he did. Most people, although they prepare for others,
they do it according to themselves really, forcing the other person
to like what they themselves like.
That was not Shambhu Babu's way. His thinking of the other was
one of the things I loved and respected in him. He always purchased
things only after asking the shopkeepers what my Nani used to
buy. I came to know this only after he died. Then the shopkeepers
told me, the sweetmakers too, that "Shambhu Babu always used
to ask a strange question: 'What does that old woman, who lives
there alone near the river - what does she purchase from you?'
We never bothered why he asked, but now we know: he was inquiring
about what you liked."
I was also amazed that he was always ready with the very things
that I liked. He was a man of the law, so naturally he found a
way. From school I would rush to his house, take my tea and sweets
that he had bought; then he was ready. Even before I had finished,
he was ready to listen to what I had to tell him. He would say,
"Just tell me anything you like. It's not a question of what
you say, but that you say it."
His emphasis was very clear. I was left absolutely free, with
not even a subject to talk about, free to say anything I wanted.
He always added, "If you want to remain silent, you can.
I will listen to your silence." And once in a while it would
happen that I would not say a single thing. There was nothing
to say.
And when I closed my eyes he too would close his eyes, and we
would sit like the Quakers, just in silence. There were so many
times, day after day, when I either spoke or else we stayed in
silence. I once said to him, "Shambhu Babu, it looks a little
strange for you to listen to a child. It would be more appropriate
if you spoke and I listened."
He laughed and said, "That is impossible. I cannot say
anything to you, and will not say anything ever, for the simple
reason that I don't know. And I am grateful to you for making
me aware of my ignorance."
Those two people gave me so much attention that in my early
childhood I became aware of the fact, which only now psychologists
are talking about, that attention is a kind of food, a nourishment.
A child can be perfectly taken care of, but if he is not paid
any attention there is every possibility that he will not survive.
Attention seems to be the most important ingredient in one's nourishment.
glimps25
I have been fortunate in that way. My Nani and Shambhu Babu
started the ball rolling, and as it rolled on, it gathered more
and more moss. Without ever learning how to speak, I became a
speaker. I still don't know how to speak, and I have reached thousands
of people - without even knowing how to begin. Can you see
the amusing part of it? I must have spoken more than any man in
the whole of history, although I am still only fifty-one.
I started speaking so early, yet I was not in any way what you
call a speaker in the Western world. Not a speaker who says, "Ladies
and Gentlemen," and all that nonsense - all borrowed
and nothing experienced. I was not a speaker in that sense, but
I spoke with my whole heart aflame, afire. I spoke not as an art
but as my very life. And from my early schooldays it was recognized,
not by one but by many, that my speaking seemed to be coming from
my heart, that I was not trying parrotlike to repeat something
I had prepared. Something spontaneous was being born, then and
there. glimps25
I have never proved myself superior to anybody. I have never
been assertive in that sense, of dominating. But I started speaking
very early in my life, when I was in high school, and the principal
was amazed. He could not believe that a student could speak in
such a way.
Then I was speaking continuously throughout my whole university
career. I had won so many shields, cups, inter-university competitions
around India, that my mother started asking me, "Where are
we going to keep all these things you go on bringing again and
again?" But I have never learned speaking in a school, or
oratory. I have never read a single book on how to speak, simply
because I want to be just myself. Why should I read somebody else's
book? I can speak in my own way.
And what is the problem? Everybody speaks, and everybody speaks
beautifully. But something happens; if you are brought to the
podium before the microphone, something strange happens. You forget
speaking - which you have been doing since your very childhood.
Standing before an audience of thousands of people, so many thousands
of eyes on you, you become afraid whether you will be able to
perform according to their expectations or not. It is, somewhere,
your inferiority complex that gives you trouble. Otherwise, it
is just the same whether you are talking to one person or you
are talking to one million people.
If you are clean inside, having no wounds of inferiority, then
who cares what people expect of you? You have never fulfilled
anybody's expectations. You have been simply living your life
according to your own insight, intuition, intelligence. And that's
the way it should be. A healthy human being will not have an inferiority
complex. bond31
I remember my first lecture.... It was in high school. All
the high schools in the district had sent a speaker there. I was
chosen to be the representative of my school, not because I was
the best - I cannot say that - but only because I was
the most troublesome. If I had not been chosen there would have
been trouble, that much was certain. So they decided to choose
me, but they were not aware that wherever I am, trouble starts
anyway.
I started the speech without the normal address to "Mister
President, Ladies and Gentlemen...." I looked the president
up and down, and said to myself, "No, he does not look like
a president." Then I looked around and said to myself, "No,
nobody here seems to be either a lady or a gentleman, so unfortunately
I have to begin my speech without addressing anybody in particular.
I can only say, 'To whom it may concern.'"
Later on my principal called me, because I had still won the prize,
even after this.
He said, "What happened to you? You behaved strangely.
We prepared you but you never said a single word that you were
taught. Not only you completely forgot the prepared lecture, you
did not even address the president or the ladies or gentlemen."
I said, "I looked around, and there were no gentlemen. I
knew all those fellows very well, and not one is a gentleman.
As far as the ladies are concerned, they are even worse because
they are the wives of these same fellows. And the president...he
seems to have been sent by God to preside over all the meetings
in this town. I am tired of him. I cannot call him 'Mister President'
when in fact I would rather have hit him."
On that day, when the president had called me for my prize, I
said, "Okay, but remember you will have to come down here
and shake hands with me."
He said, "What! Shake hands with you! I will never even look
at you. You insulted me."
I said, "I will show you."
Since that day he became my enemy. I know the art of how to
make enemies. His name was Shri Nath Bhatt, a prominent politician
in the town. Of course he was the leader of the most influential
Gandhian political party. Those were the days when India was under
(the influence of) the British Raj. Perhaps as far as freedom
is concerned India is still not free. It may be free from the
British Raj, but not free from the bureaucracy which the British
Raj created. glimps38
I started saying in 1950 that birth control should be propagated,
and anybody who opposes it should be thought a criminal. I was
stoned, because I was speaking against religion, because children
come from God. At that time, India had a population of four hundred
million people. If they had listened to me, they would not have
been in such a mess. Now their population is more than double - almost
nine hundred million people.
But the politician is concerned only with his power. He is not
concerned that by the end of this century, fifty million people
will die of starvation in this country. Every street, every house
will be surrounded by rotting corpses. In fact it will be better
to die rather than to live amongst fifty million dead people - nobody
will be able to take them to the graveyard or to the funeral pyre.
mess123
When for the first time, somewhere in 1950, I entered a radio
station studio for a lecture to be recorded.... They wanted
to display it all over India, broadcast it, for the simple reason
that I was so young and the director of the radio station had
heard me speaking in a university debate. He could not believe
what I was saying, so he invited me to the studio sometime "to
record any subject you give me."
Obviously he was worried, because I was in a studio for the
first time. I had never spoken in an empty room just in front
of the microphone, so he said, "You will feel a little awkward,
but just once or twice in the beginning it happens. It happens
to everybody, so don't be worried."
I said, "I will not feel awkward, because I have been talking
to the walls."
He said, "What do you mean 'to the walls'?"
I said, "That day also when you were listening and you got
impressed and you brought me here - to you there were people,
to me there were only empty benches. The people were gone in all
directions. Nobody was there. It was absolutely empty; there were
only walls around. So don't be worried." He thought me a
little crazy, but he said, "Okay, you do it. I will be watching
you from the outside, giving you the signals when to start, when
to stop." I said, "Don't be worried. Just tell me the
time, and I will start and I will stop, because you will be a
constant disturbance standing there in the window" - it
was enclosed with glass. "And from outside you will be making
signs. Don't disturb me. You simply give me the time when I have
to start. Ten-thirty? - l will start then. At ten-forty I
will stop. You don't bother."
He watched from there, and he was very puzzled because it was
as if I was talking to people, the way I am talking to you! He
had seen many orators giving their speeches for records but he
had never seen people moving their hands and talking and looking
at people.
When he came in he said, "What were you doing?"
I said, "It is not a question of whether people are there
or not - they are never there. And I can't speak without my
hands. If you hold my hands I cannot speak a single word, because
it is not only that a part of me is speaking, it is my whole being
that is involved in it. My eyes, my hands, my whole body's involved.
My whole body is saying something, is supporting what I am saying
in words."
He said, "I don't understand you, because first you said
that you always talk to the walls. That, I was puzzling about.
And when I saw you talking here I saw that you are talking to
people. I actually looked into the room to see if there was somebody."
I have been talking, many have been hearing, a few have been listening;
and slowly slowly I have been sorting out those people who are
capable of listening. misery21
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