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Part IV : Osho’s friend and professor, Dr. S.S. Roy
I am reminded of one of my professors. He is a very beautiful
man: Professor S.S.Roy. Now he is retired as head of the department
of philosophy from Allahabad University. The first day I joined
his class, he was explaining the concept of The Absolute. He was
an authority on Bradley and Shankara. Both believe in The Absolute - that
is their name for God.
I asked him one thing which made me very intimate to him, and
he opened his whole heart to me, in every possible way. I just
asked, "Is your 'absolute' perfect? Has it come to a full
stop or is it still growing? If it is still growing, then it is
not absolute, it is imperfect - only then can it grow. If
something more is possible, some more branches, some more flowers - then
it is alive. If it is complete, entirely complete - that's
the meaning of the word absolute: now there is no possibility
for growth - then it is dead." So I asked him, "Be
clear, because 'absolute' represents to Bradley and Shankara,
God; that is their philosophical name for God. Is your God alive
or dead? You have to answer me this question."
He was really an honest man. He said, "Please give me time
to think." He had a doctorate on Bradley from Oxford, another
doctorate on Shankara from Benares, and he was thought to be the
greatest authority on these two philosophers because he had tried
to prove that Bradley, from the West, and Shankara, from the East,
have come to the same conclusion. He said, "Please give me
time to think."
I said, "Your whole life you have been writing about Bradley
and Shankara and 'the absolute' - I have read your books,
I have read your unpublished thesis. And you have been teaching
here your whole life - has nobody ever asked you such a simple
question?"
He said, "Nobody ever asked me; not only that, even I have
never thought about it - that, certainly, if something is
perfect then it has to be dead. Anything alive has to be imperfect.
This idea has never occurred to me. So please give me time."
I said, "You can take as much time as you want. I will
come every day and ask the same question." And it continued
for five, six days. Every day I would enter the class and he would
come shaking, and I would stand up and say, "My question."
And he said, "Please forgive me, I cannot decide. With both
the ways there is difficulty. I cannot say God is imperfect; I
cannot say God is dead. But you have conquered my heart."
He removed my things from the hostel to his house. He said,
"No more, you cannot live in the hostel. You have to come
and live with my family, with me. I have much to learn from you - because
such a simple question has not occurred to me. All my degrees
you have canceled."
I lived with him for almost six months before he moved to another
university. He wanted me to move with him to another university,
but my vice-chancellor was reluctant. He said, "Professor
Roy, you can go. Professors will come and go, but we may not find
such a student again. So I am not going to give him his certificates
and I am not going to allow him to leave the university. And I
will write to your university, where you are going, that my student
should not be taken in there either."
But he remained loving to me. It was a rare phenomenon: he used
to come almost every month to see me from his university, almost
two hundred miles away from my university. But he would come at
least once every month just to see me, just to sit with me. And
he said, "Now I am getting a better salary and everything
is more comfortable there, but I miss you. The class seems to
be dead. Nobody asks questions like you, which cannot be answered."
And I had told him, "This is an agreement between me and
you, that I only call a question a question which cannot be answered.
If it can be answered, what kind of a question is it?"
God - perfect, absolute, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent;
these are the words used for God by all the religions - is
dead, cannot be alive, cannot breathe. No, I reject such a god,
because with such a dead god, this whole universe will be dead.
Godliness is a totally different dimension.
Then the greenness in the tree, then the flowering of the rose,
then the bird in flight - all are part of it. Then God is
not separate from the universe. Then he is the very soul of the
universe. Then the universe is vibrating, pulsating, breathing...godliness.
So I am not an atheist, but I am not a theist either. And there
is a third term also, which is 'agnostic'. Socrates, Bertrand
Russell, people like this are agnostic. An agnostic means one
who says, "I don't know whether God is, or God is not."
unconc03
One of my professors, Professor S.S. Roy, did not agree with
me, that something can be created by other people when it is not
there at all. So I said, "I will show it to you."
I was very much loved by the man; his wife was also very loving
towards me. I went to his wife and told her, "Tomorrow morning
when the professor gets up, you have to pretend that you are shocked,
and say to him, `What has happened to you? When you went to bed
you were perfectly okay; now your face is looking pale. Are you
sick or something?'"
The next morning the professor simply denied it. He said, "What
nonsense are you talking? I am perfectly okay."
I had told his gardener, "When he comes into the garden,
you simply say, `My God! What has happened to you? You cannot
walk, you are wobbling. Something is wrong with you. Just go inside
and rest and I will go and call the doctor.'"
And I had said to both these people, "Whatsoever he says,
exactly in his own words, you write it down. I will collect those
notes."
To the gardener he said, "Yes, it seems something is wrong.
Perhaps I should rest, I should not go to the university. But
I don't see any need to call the doctor." He was perfectly
healthy and there was no problem, so finally he decided that at
least for half an hour or an hour he would go to the university.
On the way I had said to many people whom I trusted.... On
the way there was the postmaster. I told him, "Even if you
are busy, don't miss: when the professor passes by you shout at
him, `What are you doing? Where are you going? Are you mad? Your
body is absolutely sick! You come into my house, rest. I will
call the doctor.'" I collected all these notes. The professor
said, "Yes, since last night I have this feeling that something
is going wrong. I am not exactly sure what is going wrong, but
something is wrong. I feel a certain trembling inside, a fear,
as if I am not going to last long."
His house and the university philosophy department were almost
one mile apart, and he had always walked - but that day, in
the middle, he stopped another professor's car and told him, "I
don't think I will be able to reach the university department."
The university was on a hilly place, up and down. From his house
it was an uphill task to reach the department; the department
was on the top of the hill and his house was in the valley.
He said, "I am huffing, huffing...my body is trembling.
I think there is fever, and there is much more which I cannot
figure out." So he wanted a lift.
And the professor who had passed him was sent by me: "Just
when he is in a very bad situation, you stop your car and ask,
`What is the matter?'" In the car he said, "You should
not have come, you should have called the doctor. Your eyes look
as if they have lost all luster. Your face looks dry, faded; you
look like a faded painting. Just in one night! Had you a heart
attack in the night? It must have been serious."
And he said, "It seems that I had a heart attack and I
was not aware because I was asleep, but now I know. All the symptoms
are showing that my life is at the very end."
When he entered the university department, the peon who used
to sit in front of the department.... I had told him, "When
he comes, you simply jump and hold him."
He said, "But he will be very angry. And what kind of thing
are you asking? You have never asked anything before."
I said, "We are doing an experiment - me and the professor.
Don't interfere, you simply do what I say. You just hold him and
tell him, `You are going to fall.'" He did that and the professor
thanked him. And the peon had no need to tell him that he was
going to fall; the professor said himself, "If you had not
been here I would have fallen."
Inside the department I was waiting for him. I said, "Jesus!
You look like a ghost! What calamity has happened to you?"
I took hold of him, put him in a reclining chair.
And he said, "Just one thing I want to tell you. My children
are small" - he had only two children - "my
wife is young, inexperienced. I don't have any family; my father
is dead, my mother is dead. I don't know anybody who can take
care of them when I am gone. I can think only of you."
I said, "You don't be worried. I will take care of your children,
your wife - better than you are doing. But before you decide
to leave the world, I have to show you a few notes."
He said, "A few...what notes?"
I said, "I will have to go and collect them."
He said, "From whom?"
I said "From your wife, from the gardener, from the postmaster,
from the professor who drove you here, from the peon who saved
you from falling."
He said, "But how do you know?"
I said, "It was all planned. And you say that man cannot
be deceived by something nonexistential?"
I went down, collected all the notes, and I showed him them one
by one. And I said, "Look how you are getting caught up.
To your wife you absolutely denied there was anything wrong. To
the gardener you said `Perhaps something is wrong.' But it was
"perhaps," you were not certain yet. But the idea was
getting in. To the postmaster you said, `Yes, something must have
happened. From the very evening I was feeling bad, sick, apprehensive.'
"With the professor in the car you accepted that you must
have had a heart attack while you were asleep. You were feeling
so weak" - and he was a strong man - "that you
could not conceive yourself walking uphill to the department.
And to the peon who jumped and took hold of you, you said, `I
am grateful to you. I was just going to fail, to collapse.' Now
this is a simple idea," I told him, "that has been implanted
in you."
Now do you see the point? This man can even die, you just have
to keep on going. I was only proving a point on which he was not
agreeing, so this was only an argument - I did not want him
to die. Otherwise, I would have talked to the doctor and had him
say to him, "Your days are finished, so whatever you want
to do - write your will or anything - do it quickly. It
is not something that I can help with, your heart is simply finished;
any moment it is going to stop." I could have killed that
man just by an idea.
Seeing the notes, immediately he was back, perfectly healthy.
He walked down the hill laughing, and told the peon, "You
should not listen to this man, he is dangerous. He almost killed
me!" He told the other professor, "This is not right,
that you suggested to me that I must have had a heart attack."
He told the postmaster, "You are my neighbor, and is this
right, to push me towards death?"
He was very angry with his wife. He said, "I can think
that he persuaded other people - he has everybody impressed
by him - but I cannot believe that my own wife deceived me,
listened to him. We were in an argument; it was a question of
my prestige, and you destroyed it!" But the wife said, "You
should be grateful to him. He has given proof that man can be
programmed for something which does not exist at all."
You think you are a Christian? It is just an idea implanted
in you. Do you think there is a God? An idea implanted in you.
Do you think there is a heaven and hell? It is nothing but programming.
You are all programmed.
My work with you is to deprogram you. And I am showing you all
the notes - day after day, continuously - that these are
the things that have made you almost dull, stupid, even attracted
towards suicide, towards death. My religion is unique in this
way: all the religions of the past have programmed people; I deprogram
you, and then I leave you alone, to yourself. false19
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