---
section: Library
booktitle: "Glimpses of a Golden Childhood"
booktype: "Miscellaneous"
bookcode: "GLIMPS"
place: "1984in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, USA"
chapternum: "Chapter #40"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "0"
shorttitle: "GLIMPS40"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "Glimpses of a Golden Childhood: Chapter #40"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
<!--This file is automatically generated. Do not edit!-->


I am standing... strange, because I am supposed to be relaxing  --  I mean in my memory I am standing with Masto. Of course there is nobody with whom I would rather stand. After Masto, with anybody else it would be poor, bound to be.


That man was really rich in every cell of his being, and in every fiber of his vast net of relationships that he slowly made me aware of. He never introduced me to the whole, that was not possible. I was in a hurry to do what I call not-doing. He was in a hurry to do what he called his responsibility towards me, as he had promised Pagal Baba. We were both in a hurry, so as much as he wanted to he could not make all his relationships available to me. There were other reasons also.


He was a traditional sannyasin, at least on the surface, but I knew him underneath. He was not traditional, only pretending to be because the crowds wanted that pretense. And only today can I understand how much he must have suffered. I have never suffered like that because I simply refused to pretend.


You cannot believe, but thousands of people were expecting from me something of their own imaginations. I had nothing to do with it. The Hindus, among my millions of followers  --  I am talking about the days before I started my work  --  they believed that I was Kalki. Kalki is the Hindu avatar, the last.


I have to explain it a little, because it will help you to understand many things. In India, the ancient Hindus believed in only ten incarnations of God. Naturally  --  those were the days when people used to count on their fingers  --  ten was the ultimate. You could not go beyond ten; you had to begin again from one. That's why the Hindus believed that each cycle of existence has ten avatars. The word avatar means literally "descending of the divine." Ten, because after the tenth, one cycle, or circle, ends. Another immediately begins but then there is again a first avatar, and the story continues up to the tenth.


You will be able to understand me easily if you have seen poor Indian farmers counting. They count on their fingers up to the tenth, then they start again from one, two.... Ten must have been the primitive ultimate. It is strange that as far as languages are concerned, it still is. Beyond ten there isn't anything; eleven is a repetition. Eleven is just putting one behind one, making them married, putting them in trouble, that's all. After ten, all your numbers are just repetitions.


Why are the numbers up to ten so original?  -- because everywhere man has counted on his fingers.


I should mention, by the way, before I go on-just a little distraction before I settle  --  your words in English for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten are all borrowed from Sanskrit.


Mathematics owes much to Sanskrit, because without these numbers there would have been no Albert Einstein, no atomic bomb either; no PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA by Bertrand Russell and Whitehead. These numbers are the basic bricks.


And the foundations were laid down nowhere else but in the valleys of the Himalayas. Perhaps they encountered the immeasurable beauty and tried to measure it. Perhaps there was some other reason, but one thing is certain: that the Sanskrit word tri becomes three in English. It has just traveled the long, dusty journey of a word. The Sanskrit sasth becomes six in English; the Sanskrit asth becomes eight, and so on and so forth.
What was I saying?


"You were talking about the Hindus thinking you were the tenth incarnation of the avatar Kalki."
Yes. You are doing well.


Kalki is the tenth and the last Hindu incarnation of God. After him the world ends  --  and of course begins again; just as you demolish a house made of playing cards, then start afresh. Perhaps before starting you reshuffle the cards just to create a little enthusiasm in yourself. Otherwise what does it matter to the cards? But by reshuffling them you feel good.


Exactly like that, God reshuffles and starts thinking, "Perhaps this time I will do a little better." But every time, whatever He does, out comes Richard Nixon, Adolf Hitler, Morarji Desai.... I mean God fails every moment.


Yes, once in a while He does not fail, but perhaps the credit should go to man, because he succeeds in a world where everything is failing. Certainly the credit cannot be given to God. The world is enough proof that God is utterly discredited.


Hindus have continued to use ten as the ultimate since before the time of the RIG VEDA, that is about ten thousand years ago. But Jainas, who are far more mathematical and logical and also older than the Hindus, never believed in the sanctity of ten. They had their own idea. Of course they also derived it from some source. If you cannot derive it from your own fingers somebody must have done it some other way, from some other source.


What the Jainas did has never been discussed clearly, and I cannot support it from any scripture, because I am mentioning it perhaps for the first time. I am adding "perhaps," in case somebody may have done it before and I do not know about it. But I know almost all the scriptures that are worth knowing. I simply ignored the others. But still, I may have ignored somebody in the crowd who should not have been ignored. Hence I used the word "perhaps," otherwise I am certain that nobody has said it before. So let us say it now.


The Jainas believe in twenty-four Masters, tirthankaras as they call them. Tirthankara is a beautiful word; it means "one who makes a place for your boat from where it can take you towards the other shore." That is the meaning of tirth, and tirthankara means "one who makes such a place from which many, many people can go to the other shore; the further shore." But they believe in twenty-four. Their creation is also a circle, but a bigger one, naturally. Hindus have a small circle of ten; Jainas have a bigger circle of twenty-four. The radius is bigger.


Even Hindus, without knowing what they were doing, became impressed by the number twenty-four because Jainas would tell them, "You have only ten?  --  we have twenty-four." Just like a child's psychology: "How big is your daddy? Only five feet? My daddy is six feet. Nobody is bigger than my daddy"  --  and this "god" is nothing but a form of daddy.


Jesus was exactly right; he used to call Him Abba, which can only be translated as "daddy," not "God." You can understand it  --  Abba is just a word of love and respect; "father" is not.


The moment you say "father," something serious immediately happens to you, and even to the person you are calling father, because he has to be a father. Perhaps that is why the Christians call their priests father; daddy would not fit, and Abba makes children laugh  --  nobody would take him seriously.


The Hindus came from outside India. They are not original to this country. They are foreigners, without passports. And for centuries they went on coming from central Asia, from where all the European races have also come: the French, the English, the German, the Russian, the Scandinavian, the Lithuanian... and so on. All the "ians" came from Mongolia, which today is almost a desert. Nobody bothers about Mongolia. Nobody even thinks it is a country. Part of it belongs to China, most of it belongs to Russia; and they are continuously fighting a cold war about where to draw the line, because Mongolia is just a desert.


But all these people, particularly the Aryans, came from Mongolia. They came to India because Mongolia had suddenly started turning into a desert, and they were growing in population, in the Indian way. They had to move in every direction. It was good. That's how all these countries came into existence.


But before the Aryans reached India it was already a very cultured country. It was not like Europe. When the Aryans reached Germany, or England, they had nobody to fight there. They found beautiful land without anybody to be afraid of. But in India the story was different. The people who lived in India before the Aryans entered must have been really civilized. I mean really, not just living in cities.


Two cities of those days have been excavated: Mohanjodro in Pakistan, which was once part of India; and Harappa. These cities show strange things: they had wide streets, sixty feet wide; three storied buildings; bathrooms  --  yes, attached to the bedroom. Even today millions in India are not aware that such a thing exists. In fact, if you told them they would laugh, they would think you were a little insane  --  having a bathroom attached to your bedroom? Are you mad?


The latest designer would certainly look a little mad, even to you; because the latest design from Scandinavia is a bathroom with a bedroom included in it. The whole thing takes on a different meaning. It is basically a bathroom, and the bedroom is just in the corner, not even separated. The bathroom is more basic; it has a small swimming pool, and everything you need, and also a bed... but the bathroom is not attached to the bedroom, the bed is inside the bathroom.


Perhaps this may be the future shape of things, but if you tell it to the millions in India...! I was the only one in the whole village-my grandfather's village where I lived for so long  --  who had a bathroom attached to his bedroom; and people made jokes about it. They used to ask me, "Do you really have a bathroom attached to your bedroom?" And they would say it in a whisper.
I would say, "There is no need to hide it  --  yes, so what?"


They said, "We cannot believe it, because nobody in these parts has ever heard of a bathroom attached to a bedroom. This must be your grandmother. That woman is dangerous. She must have brought this idea. She does not belong to us, of course, she came from some faraway place. We have heard stories about her birthplace which we would not tell to a child. We should not tell them to you."


I said to them, "You need not worry. You can tell me, because she herself tells me."


They would say, "Look, we told you so! She is a strange woman from Khajuraho. That place cannot produce right people."


Perhaps something of my Nani has created in me what they called "wrong," and I call "right."


The Hindus are not, as they claim, the oldest religion in the world. The Jainas are, but they are a very small minority, and very cowardly. But they brought the idea of twenty-four. Why twenty-four? I have wondered. I discussed it with Masto, with my mother, and with my so-called mother-in-law, about whom I will talk sometime later. Nobody called her my mother-in-law in front of me, because both were dangerous. After my Nani, she was certainly the most daring woman I have known. Of course I cannot give her the first place.


It was a joke that she was called my mother-in-law, but if you look at the words, mother-in-law... she was almost a mother to me, if not by nature, then by law. It was not that I was married to her daughter, although her daughter was in love with me. Of that in some other circle, because that is a very vicious circle, and I don't want to start it right now.
What is the time?
"Ten-thirty, Osho."
That's great, just ten minutes for me. It has been beautiful.
<p class="sutra">(OSHO BEGINS TO CHUCKLE. HE TRIED TO EXPLAIN WHAT HE WAS LAUGHING AT... BUT HE WAS LAUGHING TOO MUCH.)</p>
			

> [!info]
> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>