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Part V : Osho's interaction with Aboriginals
Just in the middle of India there is a state, Bastar. It used
to be an independent state under British rule, and the king of
Bastar was my friend. And he became my friend by a strange coincidence....
We both were traveling in the same train compartment, and we
both looked alike. He had a beard exactly the same size as I had
at that time, and he used to wear the same kind of long robe with
a lunghi wrapped around. So we were sitting in the same compartment
looking at each other, thinking, "This is strange."
And he was also looking at me and watching, thinking, "What
is the matter?"
Finally, he said to me, "We both look so alike. From where
are you coming?" I told him. He said, "Strange...and
where are you going?"
So we were going to the same place, Gwalior. And we were going
to be the guests at the same palace of the Gwalior maharani, the
queen of Gwalior. We were both going to participate in an annual
conference she used to call a World Conference of All Religions.
He was going to represent the aboriginal idea. They are pagans,
they don't have any organized religion or dogma; they don't have
any holy scripture, they don't have any priest. And because he
was an educated person, he was going to represent pagans.
I was invited by some misunderstanding. The maharani must have
read some of my books and thought that I was a religious person.
On the first day of the meeting, she became so worried, because
at least fifty thousand people were there in the palace grounds....
It is a beautiful palace, and it has a huge ground where fifty
thousand people can sit every year. But when I spoke, she was
completely shattered. She could not sleep. At twelve o'clock in
the night she knocked on my door. I had left her at ten o'clock
after the meeting. I could not think who would be knocking on
my door, so I opened the door, and it was the queen herself.
She said, "I cannot sleep. You have shattered my whole
mind. And now I cannot allow you to speak tomorrow." The
conference was going to continue for seven days, I spoke only
one time. And she said, "My son wants to see you, but I have
prohibited him." She said, "Whatever you said feels
to be true, but it goes against all our beliefs, all our religious
feelings."
I said, "Do you think about truth, or do you think about
lies and consolations?"
She said, "I can understand, but my young son who is going
to be the head of the state is too young, and he will be impressed
by you immediately." She requested me, "Just for my
sake - even if he comes, don't allow him in."
So I said, "If I am not going to speak, then I don't have
to stay here. You have asked me for seven lectures, and just one
lecture and you are finished. Let me do my job. Those fifty thousand
people will ask for me."
She said, "I know it, because you were the only one they
seemed to be interested in, and there was absolute silence. I
have never seen such silence in the crowd. The priests go on speaking,
who cares? They are telling the same thing again and again, year
after year, the same dogmas. For the first time," the queen
said to me, "I understood what it means to have pindrop silence.
So they will be asking, but it is difficult, because all the other
participants are absolutely against you."...
She said, "You are going to create trouble, and I want no
trouble."
I said, "Then if you want to keep those people, you don't
understand. You will be in trouble."
At that moment the Bastar maharajah also came in. He was staying
in the next room in the guest house with me. And he said to me,
"You have done a great job, and if you have to leave, I am
coming with you."
That's how we became friends. And he invited me to his state.
So from Gwalior I went directly to Bastar. It is far away from
Gwalior. And he introduced me to the people of Bastar. They are
aboriginals, and they live almost naked. They put only a small
piece of cloth around them when they come to the main capital,
Jagdalpur - otherwise, in the forest, in the mountains they live
naked....
And the aboriginal children who don't have any dreams at all.
Freud could not have conceived that there are people who don't
have any dreams, because the Christian-Judaic religion is so repressive.
People who have been brought up in that culture cannot conceive
that there are still aboriginal people around the world, hidden
in deep forests, who are absolutely natural beings. Those people
have never heard that there is anything to be repressed.
You can ask a woman, even by touching her breast, "What is
this?" - and she will not feel embarrassed, she will not
feel offended. She will say, "This is just to give milk to
my child," with no idea that "you are being offensive,
you are touching my breast." She is not going to scream,
and she is not going to any police station; in fact, there is
no police station there.
The people are so innocent, that rarely does it happen that somebody
kills someone. It has happened perhaps twice in this maharajah's
lifetime. Then the person who has killed comes to the capital
himself, because only the capital has the police station and the
court. He goes to the police station and informs them: "I
have killed a man and I need to be punished." Otherwise no
one would ever have known that he had killed anybody. Nobody goes
into those deep forests. They live in caves; nobody goes there.
And they have such beautiful caves.
And they are such beautiful people. You will not find anybody
fat, you will not find anybody thin - they all look alike. They
live long, and they live very naturally. Even about sex they are
very natural, perhaps the only natural people left in India.
And exactly what they do, has to be done all over the world if
you want people not to be perverted. Behind all kinds of mental
sicknesses is sexual perversion. In Bastar I found for the first
time, people totally natural.
After a girl and a boy come of age - that is thirteen and fourteen...They
have in their villages, in the middle of the village, a small
hall just made of bamboos, as their huts are made. The moment
a girl starts having periods, she has to stay in the central hall.
By the time a boy is fourteen, sexually potent, he has to live...All
the girls and the boys who have become sexually mature, they start
living together, sleeping together, with one condition - and that
is a beautiful condition - that no boy should sleep with a girl
for more than three days. So you have to become acquainted with
every girl of the village, and every girl has to become acquainted
with every boy of the village.
Before you decide to marry someone, you must know every woman
of the village, so there is no question arising afterwards that
you start feeling lustful for some woman. You have lived with
all the women of your age, and it is your choice after the experiment
with all the woman.
And there is no jealousy at all, because from the very beginning
everybody is living with every girl. Every boy has the chance
to be acquainted with every girl of the village, and every girl
has the chance to be acquainted with every boy of the village.
So there is no question of any jealousy, there is no competitive
spirit at all. It is just an experiment, an opportunity for every
child to know sex with different people, and then find out who
suits you, and with whom you were the most happy, with whom you
settle harmoniously, with whom you felt your heart. Perhaps this
is the only scientific way to find a soul mate.
But these people are called uncivilized, and missionaries are
doing a great job of civilizing them: opening schools, hospitals.
They don't need hospitals. They are such healthy people, and these
missionaries bring all kinds of diseases to them. They have never
heard about gonorrhea, they have never heard about all kinds of
perverted diseases. The missionaries bring the diseases, and then
the hospital.
The missionaries bring the idea to them that you are poor. They
have never thought about it - they are all equal, equally poor.
There is no question of comparison, and they are living perfectly
well, and healthy, on one meal a day. They are more healthy than
anybody else in the world.
Just recently scientists have been experimenting on rats, and
they were puzzled. They kept two categories of rats, the same
kind. To one category they were giving as much food as they wanted
- American rats. And to the other category, the Bastar rats, they
were giving food only one time. And they were surprised. The rats
who were given whatever they wanted, lived to be only half of
the age of the rats who were fed only one time. They were double
the age - twice the American fellows!
So Bastar people live longer, although they don't know how long
they have lived, because they cannot count. They live up to one
hundred years very easily, one hundred and twenty very easily.
If you search deeper in the forests, perhaps you can find a person
who has lived one hundred and fifty years. They don't know it
- you have to figure it out. And they don't look that old either.
Even the oldest person goes on working. Life is hard, but it is
beautiful. Every night - particularly when it is fullmoon nights
- they dance to abandon. The whole day they have been working
hard, and in the night they dance. All the women, all the men
together...no question that you have to dance with your wife.
People go on changing partners. It is a social phenomenon, it
is not a question of possessiveness that you should dance with
your own wife. And if she is dancing with somebody else, then
you are looking jealous, you are looking murderous.
I have watched their dances. They look so beautiful. There is
no question of any lust, because they are fulfilled, sexually
fulfilled, physically fulfilled.
They don't have dreams. I have asked many. I have asked the maharajah.
He said, "They don't have dreams, but I have because I am
an educated person. They destroyed me. I was born in these hills,
and I would have loved to remain just as uneducated, as uncultured
as these people. Their joy is infectious, their laughter is infectious.
But they don't have any dreams."
There is no need for dreams. A dream is a need created by a repressive
morality, by a repressive God, by a repressive priesthood. These
are the people who have created dreams. And then another priesthood
has come into being, the psychoanalyst. They exploit your dreaming.
One priesthood has created the dreams, another priesthood...and
both were Jews. celebr06
I may have told you: I was staying in Central India - there is
a small aboriginal tribal land, Bastar. I used to go there often
just to see how man was ten or twelve thousand years ago, because
they are that far back. They live naked; they eat raw meat.
I used to study how man must have been and how he must have evolved.
I was staying.... In those days Bastar was a state, and the king
of Bastar was my friend. He was a very courageous man, and he
loved me so much that just because of me, he was killed.
The government became afraid because he was a king of a state,
and he was too much under my influence. He was allowing me to
use all his resthouses in the mountains, in the jungles of Bastar,
and they thought that if he wanted...because he was worshipped
by the aboriginals as God, just as in the old way every nation
in the past worshipped kings as gods. They are still in the past,
they are not contemporary people, and if he said anything about
me, they would accept it without any question.
The chief minister of Central India was very much against me.
He was a Brahmin, and he wanted that I should be prevented from
reaching Bastar. He told the king; the king refused. He said,
"He is my friend, and I love what he says - and I am not
under anybody's power." Finding some excuse, police action
was taken and the king was killed...thirty-six bullets; no chance
was taken that he would be left alive. His name was Bhanjdeo.
Because of him I enjoyed absolute freedom in his state.
I was staying in one of his guesthouses, and I saw a bonfire in
the middle of the tribe - the tribe make their beautiful huts
in a circle. So I went there - it must have been nine or ten o'clock
in the night - and a Christian missionary was teaching them that
the real religion, the only real religion, is Christianity.
So I sat just there with the crowd, and the missionary was not
aware that somebody else from the outside was present. He had
a bucket full of water, and the bonfire was there - it was a cool
night. He brought from his bag two statues; one was of Rama, the
Hindu god, and one was of Jesus Christ.
And he said, "You can see these statues: one is Rama - the
Hindu god you worship - and one is Jesus Christ; he is our god.
And I will put them to a test to show you." He put both of
them in the bucket of water. Rama drowned, and Jesus remained
floating.
And he said, "You can see! - this fellow cannot even save
himself; how can he save you? And look at Jesus Christ: while
he was alive he used to walk on water; even in his statue he is
floating! He can save you."
And many poor aboriginals nodded their heads, "That is true.
You can see - there is no question."
I said to myself, "This is something I had never imagined
- that these aboriginals are being converted to Christianity in
this way." I stood up, I went close, and took both out of
the bucket - Rama and Jesus - and as I took them I immediately
felt that the Rama statue was made of steel, painted exactly the
same way as Jesus' statue; and Jesus' statue was made of very
soft wood, very light wood. So I asked the aborigines, "Have
you ever heard in your scriptures about a water test?"
They said, "No."
"Have you heard about a fire test?"
They said, "Yes!"...because in Hindu scriptures, the
fire test is a well-known fact. A water test nobody has heard
of.
I said, "So you can see now.... " I threw both of them
into the bonfire. Jesus immediately started burning! The missionary
tried to escape. I said, "Hold this man, don't let him go!
Let him see the whole scene. Now Rama is safe even in the fire;
Jesus is gone."
The aboriginals were very happy, and they said, "This is
the real test, and this man was cheating us; a water test we have
never heard of. But we never thought - we are poor people, we
don't think - we agreed with him. If you had not been here he
would have made us all Christians. This is his way; he has converted
many tribes here in the forest to Christianity. This is his only
game."
I said,"What do you think? - should we put him also to the
fire test?"
They said, "That will be great, but that will be dangerous
because he will be caught in it; he will not be able to save himself."
And he was in such fear, trembling, that these people...and if
I had told them to, they would certainly have put him in the fire!
And he said, "I will never do such a thing again."
"But," I said, "this is absolutely ugly. It is
not religion that you are practicing; you are cheating poor people,
innocent - and you call it conversion."
Any dignified philosophy does not believe in conversion. Jainism
does not believe in it. It simply makes available to you all its
treasure, and if you are interested you can join the caravan,
but nobody wants you to be converted. transm25
One man has been opening schools in India for aboriginal children
his whole life. He is a follower of Gandhi. Just by chance he
met me, because I had gone into that aboriginal tribe. I was studying
those aboriginals from every view, because they are living examples
of days when man was not so much burdened with all kinds of morality,
religion, civilization, culture, etiquette, manners. They are
simple, innocent, still wild, fresh.
This man was going and collecting money from cities, and opening
schools and bringing teachers. Just by the way he met me there.
I said, "What are you doing? You think you are doing great
service to these people?"
He said, "Of course!"
So arrogantly he said, "Of course!" I said, "You
are not aware of what you are doing. Schools exist in the cities,
better than these: what help have they provided for human beings?
And if those schools cannot provide, and colleges and universities
cannot provide any help to humanity, what do you think? - your
small schools are going to help these poor aboriginals?
"All that you will do is, you will destroy their originality.
All that you will do is, you will destroy their primitive wildness.
They are still free: your schools will create nothing but trouble
for them."
The man was shocked, but he waited for a few seconds and then
said, "Perhaps you are right, because once in a while I have
been thinking that these schools and colleges and universities
exist on a far wider scale all over the world. What can my small
schools do? But then I thought it was Gandhi's order to me to
go to aboriginals and open schools, so I am following my master's
order."
I said, "If your master was an idiot, that does not mean
that you have to continue following the order. Now, stop - I order
you! And I tell you why you have been doing all this - just to
escape from your own suffering, your own misery. You are a miserable
man; anybody can see it from your face. You have never loved anybody,
you have never been loved by anybody."
He said, "How did you manage to infer that? - because it
is true. I was an orphan, nobody loved me, and I have been brought
up in Gandhi's ashram where love was only talked about in prayer;
otherwise, love was not a thing to be practiced. There was strict
discipline, a kind of regimentation. So nobody has ever loved
me, that's true; and you are right, I have never loved anybody
because in Gandhi's ashram it was impossible to fall in love.
That was the greatest crime.
"I was one of those whom Gandhi praised because I never
fell in his eyes. Even his own sons betrayed him. Devadas, his
son, fell in love with Rajgopalchary's daughter, and then he was
expelled from the ashram; they got married. Gandhi's own personal
secretary, Pyarelal, fell in love with a woman and kept the love
affair secret for years. When it was exposed it was a scandal,
a great scandal."
I said, "What nonsense! But Gandhi's personal secretary...that
means, what about others?" And this man was praised because
he never came in contact with any woman! Gandhi sent him to the
aboriginal tribes and he had been doing what the master had said.
But he said to me, "You have disturbed me. Perhaps it is
true: I am just trying to escape from myself, from my wounds,
from my own anguish."
So all these people who become interested in saving humanity,
in the first place are very egoistic. They are thinking of themselves
as saviors. In the second place, they are very sick. dark01
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