---
section: Library
booktitle: "From Bondage to Freedom"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "BONDAG"
dategiven: "09 October 1985 am"
place: " in Rajneeshmandir"
chapternum: "Chapter #25"
chaptertitle: "The buddhafield remains"
acode: "8510090"
shorttitle: "BONDAG25"
audio: "Yes"
video: "Yes"
esttime: "100mins"
displaytitle: "From Bondage to Freedom: Chapter #25"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
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<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
PLEASE COULD YOU TELL ME THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INNOCENCE AND STUPIDITY?</p>


Innocence is the ultimate flowering of your consciousness. Even a child is not innocent; he is simply ignorant. He does not know, but he is not aware that he knows not. The child most probably will become stupid, because the society needs stupid people, the religions need stupid people, the politicians need stupid people. All vested interests need the masses to remain stupid. Their stupidity is the opportunity for all vested interests to exploit them.


It is very rare that somebody rebels against religions, politics, social structure, and tries to retain his individuality; chooses ignorance rather than to be knowledgeable, because ignorance at least is natural. In being knowledgeable you have gone far away from your nature.


The person who rebels against all these vested interests and discovers that he knows nothing, that he only knows one thing, that he knows nothing -- he is the innocent man.


When Bodhidharma was asked by Emperor Wu of China, "Who are you?," Bodhidharma said, "I do not know." It was not ignorance. Bodhidharma is one of those few people who have come to innocence.


Socrates' last statement is, "I know only that I know nothing."


Stupidity is common. It comes in all sizes, all shapes: Christian stupidity, Hindu stupidity, Mohammedan stupidity, Buddhist stupidity, communist stupidity. One thing about stupidity: it never looks inwards. It can see outside -- for example, a Hindu can see that Jesus cannot be enlightened, for the simple reason that he drinks wine and moves with prostitutes. It is impossible for Hindu stupidity to recognize Jesus as enlightened. The Christian cannot see Krishna as enlightened. He had sixteen thousand wives, all forcibly taken from their husbands, from their children -- and the man is the perfect incarnation of God! It is difficult for the Christian to see how Krishna can be the incarnation of God. He forces Arjuna to go to war, convinces him -- against his will -- to go into a war which is known in India as the Great War, which destroyed India forever. It broke India's spine; since then India has never been able to reach any heights. It was available to all kinds of invaders, easily available to become enslaved. The whole responsibility goes to Krishna.


Now, a Christian who believes, "Love your enemy, love even your neighbor"... I am always wondering why Jesus has not said, "Love your wife too, love your husband too" -- because the enemy is far away, to love the enemy is easy. To love the neighbor is more difficult, and to love the wife or the husband is almost impossible.


The Christian teaching seems to be of peace, and Krishna's teaching seems to be of war, violence. No, it is not possible for Christians to accept Krishna. They can see the stupidity of Indians who believe in Krishna.


The Christian cannot accept even Gautam Buddha, for the simple reason that he never healed sick people, he never gave eyes to the blind, he never raised the dead back to life. Then what kind of a savior is he? He never served anybody, and service is religion to the Christian mind.


Just look from the other side. If you ask the Buddhist, "Do you think Jesus Christ is a savior?" he will simply laugh. He will say, "Saviors are not crucified. Jesus could not save himself; he is a pretender, a hypocrite, claiming that he can save the whole humanity."


And the Hindus, the Jainas, the Buddhists, all the Indian religions, believe that if a certain person is crucified, that means in his past life he must have committed really grave crimes, perhaps murders. Otherwise crucifixion is impossible; it has to be related to his life.


Jainas say that when Mahavira, their savior, walks on the road, even thorns move away. Because Mahavira has not committed any crime in his past life, he cannot suffer even a thorn. Hindus say, if Meera is given poison, the poison turns into nectar, because she has not committed any sin in her past life. So Jesus' crucifixion, which is very significant to the Christian, is simply a proof for Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists, that this man was simply a pretender.


Stupidity has this trait: it can see in others, but it cannot look withinwards. No Christian can see anything wrong in Jesus Christ, no Hindu can see anything wrong in Krishna, no Buddhist can see anything wrong in Gautam Buddha. Suddenly their intelligence disappears; they become immediately retarded, they fall back. This is one of the characteristics of stupid people.


Stupid people can become very knowledgeable. They can become great scholars, popes, shankaracharyas, Ayatollah Khomeiniacs, great rabbis full of knowledge, but no knowing of their own. All knowledge is borrowed. In themselves they are just empty; they are covering that emptiness with borrowed knowledge. It is not their own intelligence that has become sharpened, it is only their intellectuality that has become too full of information.


Remember, a computer has no intelligence, but it has memory. It can have as much information as you feed to it. The stupid person can become a great scholar, a world-famous scholar, but he is just a computer. All knowledge is information; it is his memory, not his experience. In his experience he proves very stupid. I will give you two instances of two very great scholars.


One is a great Greek scholar, thought to be one of the greatest mathematicians; he discovered many things in mathematics. He discovered the principle of averages -- that is his greatest contribution to the world. Before him nobody had ever thought about the principle of averages.


One Sunday morning he took his family for a picnic. They had to cross a small river. The wife said, "Take the children on your shoulders" -- they had four children. "Two I will take, two you take."


He said, "Wait. I am a mathematician, and no ordinary mathematician. Let me first see the average height of the children and the average depth of the river."


Naturally, the river somewhere was very shallow, somewhere very deep. The bigger children were taller, the smaller children were shorter. But the average... he figured it out on the sand with his finger and found that the average height of the children was enough that the average depth of the river could not drown them.


The wife insisted, "You keep your average: I don't understand mathematics, I can only see that there is danger."


He said, "Don't be afraid. You just follow me." And then the children started drowning, because the average is just a pure mathematical concept. It does not exist, it is not found in reality.


And when the wife shouted, "The children are drowning!" do you know what he did? He did not go to save the children, he rushed back to the bank. He said, "Then there must have been some mistake in my calculations; otherwise, how is it possible? Their average height is greater than the average depth of the river." This is stupidity. The man is a great mathematician, but if you put his mathematics aside, he is simply retarded.


The second example I give you is about Karl Marx. He was a chain-smoker, and one day he found a cheaper brand of cigarette. He was an economist, and certainly one of the great economists of the world. And if you think of his influence, he is the greatest economist because he has influenced more than half the world. Communism is his philosophy, his economic theory.


Seeing the cheaper brand, he purchased as many boxes as he could carry home. When the wife saw him carrying so many boxes of cigarettes, she said, "What are you doing? Doctors are saying to you, 'Stop smoking!' Your friends are saying to you, 'Stop smoking!'"


And Karl Marx with a big smile said, "You don't know -- I have found a way. Now there is no need to be worried about earning money. If I smoke one cigarette, so much money is saved in comparison to the older brand; the more I smoke, the more money is saved. So now I am not going to do anything except smoke, because you have always been asking me for money, money, money. Now have as much money as you want!"


The wife could not understand how the money could be saved by smoking. But this is an economic theory, it does not correspond to reality. She had to inform his closest friend, Friedrich Engels, "He has gone mad. In his room he is sitting and smoking continuously -- to save money!"
Engels came, and he asked, "What is the matter?"


Marx said, "Now I can explain to you, you are an intelligent man. My wife cannot understand higher economics. I was smoking up to now a brand which was costly. Now this is a cheaper brand; with each cigarette so much money is saved. The natural consequence is: the more you smoke, the more money is saved."


This is sheer stupidity. He may have been a great economist, but that is only scholarship, computer scholarship. As far as his own experience is concerned, he is behaving stupidly. So stupidity can become very knowledgeable. That does not mean that it has disappeared; you have simply covered it up.


Innocence is not knowledgeable. Innocence simply means a clean clarity, insight with no preconceived ideas, knowledge. Innocence simply means just to be a mirror, which is empty but able to reflect anything that comes before it. Innocence is the greatest achievement. Only a very few people have been able to become innocent.


It is said, when a person becomes so innocent, he is just like a child. Remember the words "like a child." He is not a child. There is a certain similarity. The child is ignorant, without knowledge, a clean slate, a tabula rasa -- but he will soon gather knowledge, because he is ignorant and it hurts to remain ignorant.


The innocent man is also a tabula rasa, but he will never again accumulate knowledge. It has already been too hard to drop it. It has been too hard to get rid of the mind and its accumulations.


The child is bound to get lost in the world of knowledge. Socrates or Bodhidharma are not corruptible; nobody can corrupt them. They have passed through all the dark stages of corruption, and they have survived. Now their state is of pure silence. They know nothing as far as knowledgeability is concerned.


Socrates makes a beautiful distinction; it is worth remembering. He says, "There is knowledge which is ignorant, and there is ignorance which knows." It looks contradictory, what he is saying: knowledge which is ignorant, and ignorance which knows. He is talking about innocence.


Innocence has no claim to knowledgeability, but it is open, available, capable of responding spontaneously, just like a mirror reflecting. It is tremendous freedom, and tremendous individuation.


Now you can commune with the flowers, with the mountains, with the clouds. You are so innocent that there is even a possibility of communion with existence.
Knowledge is a barrier.


I used to have a very famous man once in a while as my guest, Mahatma Bhagwandin. He was the only one, other than Mahatma Gandhi, who was known as "mahatma"; only two persons in India were known as "mahatma." Mahatma means the great soul, the great saint.


Whenever he was my guest, I used to take him for a morning walk. And he was so full of knowledge about everything -- he was an old man -- he knew the name of every flower, its uses, what diseases it can help cure; he knew all the different trees and their uses.


He would continuously talk, and I had to tell him, "You please shut up! -- because I have come for a morning walk. I want to enjoy the flowers, I don't want to become knowledgeable about them. I don't want even to know their Latin names. And your knowledge is a barrier -- you can't see the rose. Your whole knowledge stands between you and the rose -- its Latin name, its properties, its uses in different diseases. The roseflower is lost, far away; you start moving into your knowledge."


I said, "If you want to come with me, then please keep your mouth shut. You can do whatever you want in your mind -- that is your business -- but I don't want to know the names of the trees and the plants and the flowers and the leaves and the trunk and the bark. You destroy my whole morning! I want to remain completely available to this beautiful sunrise, the flowers dancing, the beautiful breeze blowing. I don't want to be hindered by knowledge. My experience of their beauty is enough."


He would remain silent for a few minutes -- but you cannot say to computers, "Shut up!" After a few minutes he would forget again. Seeing something new, he would say, "Look at that plant. This is very good for people who are suffering from migraine."


I said, "You are giving me migraine! Please give me a few leaves of that plant too. You are my migraine. I come every day, I never suffer from migraine." I asked him, "Can't you enjoy at all the beauty, the radiant morning, the freshness of it all? Have you to bring your knowledge in?"


The last time I saw him, he was almost dying. I asked him, "What about your knowledge? You know about all the kinds of plants which can cure everything. Now why are you bothering about allopathy? And I can see that allopathy is not helping."


He was continuously coughing; he had become just bones. And I said, "What happened to your knowledge? You missed your whole life, you never lived it. Your knowledge became a bondage to you, and now you are dying and that knowledge is of no use. Perhaps if you had lived totally, intensely, that experience might have transformed the experience of death too."


To those who do not live, death seems to be an end. To those who live totally, death is not an end but a new beginning: an old house is abandoned, and a new form, a new world opens up. But that depends on whether you have lived or you have just been hung up in your head.


I saw tears in his eyes. He said, "Perhaps you are right. I never lived, I was always accumulating knowledge -- and it has not helped me. My whole life has been just a desert without any oasis. But now it is too late."


I call this stupidity. The man was known as a great sage, but to me he was a great idiot. And he confirmed before dying, with his tears, that he had missed.


Innocence comes as you become more conscious, more alert, and you start dropping unnecessary luggage. Have you ever thought how much unnecessary luggage you are carrying within yourself? A conscious man slowly starts dropping everything, because the most precious treasure in you is to be absolutely unburdened, clean, pure, innocent.


The innocent man is the only wise man. The knowledgeable man is the only stupid man. All your universities and colleges and schools create stupid people.


My effort here is to undo what your universities and colleges and schools have done to you -- to deprogram you. And I don't have any other program to replace theirs. I deprogram you and simply leave you deprogrammed.


That is innocence, and it is tremendous intelligence. It is such a great insight that there is no need of knowledgeability.
<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
WHEN YOU WIPED OUT TEMPLES AND WORSHIP AND GACHCHHAMIS, I GOT A SINKING FEELING THAT MAYBE YOU HAD GIVEN UP ON US. THE MOST SHOCKING REVELATION OF THE PAST MONTH HAS BEEN THE GROSS STUPIDITY WE HAVE SHOWN WITH OUR PETTY GRIEVANCES AND DEMANDS. WE HAVE BEEN LIKE A BUNCH OF BOLSHEVIK MICE, ACTING LIKE WE WANT A REVOLUTION ALL BY OURSELVES. WE ARE NOT THE MATURE, RESPONSIBLE PEOPLE YOU ARE ENCOURAGING US TO BE, AND I FEAR WE ARE DESTROYING THE COMMUNE OURSELVES WITH OUR TINPOT FANTASIES OF FREEDOM.
PLEASE PROVIDE SOME GUIDANCE ABOUT THE ORDER OR DISCIPLINE WE NEED TO KEEP THE COMMUNE TOGETHER. AND PLEASE, DON'T GIVE UP ON US.</p>


Even without your asking, even if I want to give up, I cannot. My love does not allow it. Order and discipline you have to find. I would not like you to depend on anybody to give you order and discipline. Just make a little effort -- and it is not difficult.


If you go on depending on something, somebody, then any day there will be disorder. One day I may not be in my body. Then you will find yourself completely helpless. You don't have even a father figure in God to pray to. I have taken all those props from you. I want you to be responsible of your own accord.


I had said yesterday that I will withdraw the buddhafield. I cannot do it. Whatever you are, I have loved you unconditionally, and I will love you to the very end, without expecting anything from your side.


The buddhafield remains. It was just to give you a shock, so that you can wake up a little and see that freedom does not mean disorder, freedom does not mean no discipline. Freedom means more order, more discipline, because now you are the master of yourself; nobody is dictating to you.


I have destroyed all dependence. Dependence keeps you helpless, and I want you to be independent, absolutely independent.


So just a little awareness -- and whenever I find that you are missing that awareness, I am going to give you bigger shocks. I will not hesitate even to give you an electric shock.
I am determined to wake you up.
But it will be a joy if you wake up yourself.


So don't be worried about that. I know there are stupid people -- it is not their fault; they have been brought up in a stupid society, educated by stupid teachers, professors, priests, churches. They are victims. They need all the compassion possible.


I know you can start taking advantage of freedom. But while I am here, it is not possible to take advantage. I will hit you directly on the head. That you will remember even after your enlightenment!
<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
WHY DOES MY SADNESS FEEL MORE REAL THAN MY HAPPINESS? I WANT SO MUCH TO BE REAL AND AUTHENTIC, NOT TO WEAR ANY MASKS. BUT THIS SEEMS TO MEAN SO MUCH REJECTION BY OTHERS. IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE SO ALONE?</p>


It is important to understand. It is the case with most of the people. Your sadness is certainly more real because it is yours, it is authentic. Your happiness is shallow; it is not yours, it depends on something, somebody. And anything that makes you dependent -- however happy you can feel for a few moments, soon the honeymoon is over, sooner than you had ever expected.


You are happy because of your girlfriend, your boyfriend. But they are individual beings; they may not agree on all points with you. In fact, mostly what happens is that whatever the husband likes, the wife dislikes; whatever the wife likes, the husband dislikes. Strange... because it is almost universal. There is some reason in it. Deep down they hate each other, for the simple reason that they are dependent on each other for gaining happiness -- and nobody likes dependence. Slavery is not the intrinsic desire of human beings. If a woman or a man gives you joy, and you become dependent, you are at the same time creating a deep hate -- because of dependence. You cannot leave the woman because she makes you happy. And you cannot leave your hatred of the woman, because she makes you dependent.


So all so-called love relationships are very strange, complicated phenomena. They are love-hate relationships. The hate needs to be expressed some way or other. That's why whatever your wife likes, you don't like; whatever your husband likes, you don't like. On every small thing husbands and wives are fighting. Which movie to go to? -- and there is an immense fight. Which restaurant to go to? -- and immediately there is a fight. This is the hatred which is moving underneath the facade of happiness. Happiness remains shallow, very thin; just scratch it a little bit and you will find its opposite.


But sadness is more authentic, because you are not dependent on anybody. It is yours, absolutely yours. This should give you a great insight, that your sadness can help you more than your happiness. You have never looked at sadness closely. You try to avoid seeing it -- in many ways. If you feel sad, you go to a movie. If you feel sad, you start the television. If you feel sad, you go and play with your friends, you go to a club. You start doing something so that you do not have to see the sadness. This is not the right approach.


When you are sad, it is a momentous phenomenon, very sacred, something of your own. Get acquainted with it, go deeper into it, and you will be surprised. Sit silently, and be sad. Sadness has its own beauties.


Sadness is silent, it is yours. It is coming because you are alone. It is giving you a chance to go deeper into your aloneness. Rather than jumping from one shallow happiness to another shallow happiness and wasting your life, it is better to use sadness as a means for meditation. Witness it. It is a friend! It opens the door of your eternal aloneness.


There is no way not to be alone. You can delude yourself, but you cannot succeed. And we are deluding ourselves in every way -- in relationship, in ambition, in becoming famous, in doing this, in doing that. We are trying to convince ourselves that we are not alone, that we are not sad. But, sooner or later, your mask wears out -- it is false, it cannot remain forever -- then you have to wear another mask. In one small life, how many masks do you wear? And how many have melted away, changed? But you go on continuing the old habit.


If you want to be an authentic individual, use sadness; don't escape from it. It is a great blessing. Sit silently with it, rejoice in it. There is nothing wrong in being sad. And the more you become acquainted with it and its subtle nuances, you will be surprised -- it is a great relaxation, a great rest, and you come out of it rejuvenated, refreshed, younger, livelier. And once you have tasted it, you will seek those beautiful moments of sadness again and again. You will wait for them, you will welcome them, and they will open new doors of your aloneness....


Alone you are born, alone you will die. Between these two alonenesses you can deceive yourself that you are not alone, that you have a wife, a husband, children, money, power. But between these two alonenesses you are alone. Everything is just to keep yourself engaged in something or other, so that you don't become aware of it.


From my very childhood I have never been associating with people. My whole family was very much concerned: I was not playing with children, and I have never played with them.


My teachers were concerned: "What do you go on doing when all the children are playing? You sit under the tree just by yourself." They thought something was wrong with me.


And I told them, "You need not be worried. The reality is that something is wrong with you, and wrong with all your children. I am perfectly happy to be alone."


Slowly slowly they accepted that that's how I am; nothing can be done about it. They tried in every way to help me to mix with other children of my age. But I enjoyed being alone so much that it looked almost neurotic to play football.


And I told my teacher, "I don't see any point in it. Why unnecessarily hit the football from here to there? There is no point. And even if you make the goal, so what? What is achieved out of it? And if these people love making goals so much, then rather than having one football, have eighteen footballs. Give everybody one, and he makes as many goals as he wants, nobody prevents him. Let them have goals to their heart's content! This way it is too difficult -- why make it unnecessarily difficult?"


And my teacher said, "You don't understand at all that that will not be a game, if eighteen footballs are given to the children, and everybody is making goals as many times as he wants. That will not help."


I said, "I don't understand, that creating hindrances, preventing people.... They fall and they have fractures and all kinds of nonsense. And not only that: when there are matches, thousands of people gather to see them. It seems these people don't know that life is so short -- and they are watching a football match! And they are so excited -- jumping, shouting. To me, it is absolutely neurotic. I would rather sit under my tree."


I had my tree, a very beautiful tree, behind my school building. It became known that it was my tree, so nobody would go there. I used to sit there whenever there was time for play, or time for any kind of neurotic activity -- "extra-curricular" activities.


And I found so much under that tree that whenever I used to go back to my town, I never went to the principal whose office was just close to the tree -- just behind his office was the tree -- but I used to go to the tree just to thank it, to show my gratitude.


The principal would come out, and he would say, "This is strange. You come to the town -- you never come to me, you never come to the school, but you always come to this tree."


I said, "I have experienced much more under that tree than under your guidance and that of all kinds of mad teachers that you have. They have not given anything to me -- in fact, whatever they gave to me I had to get rid of. But what this tree has given to me is still with me."


And you will be surprised -- it happened twice, so it cannot be just coincidence.... In 1970 I stopped going to the town, because I gave a promise to my grandmother: "I will come only while you are alive. When you are gone, I have nothing to come here for."


I was informed that when I stopped going to the town, the tree died. I thought it must have been an accident, just a coincidence; it could not be connected with me. But it happened twice....


When I became a professor in the university, there was a line of beautiful trees. I used to park my car under one tree. And it had always been my privilege -- I don't know why -- that wherever I sat in the common room for the professors, nobody would sit on the chair I used, nobody would sit even by the side of the chair. They thought me a little dangerous.


A man who has no friends, a man who has strange thoughts, a man who is against all religions, against all traditions, a man who can oppose single-handedly people like Mahatma Gandhi, who is worshipped by the whole country -- they thought, "It is better to keep away from this man. He can put some idea in your mind, and you may be in some difficulty."


I used to park my car under that one tree. Nobody else parked their cars in that place; even if I was not coming, the place remained empty. All the other trees died, only my tree -- it had become known as my tree -- remained gorgeous.


After I resigned from the university, the vice-chancellor said to me, one year later, "It is strange: that tree has died. Since you stopped coming to the university something has happened."


I understand that there is some synchronicity. If you silently sit with a tree... the tree is silent, you are silent... and two silences cannot remain separate, there is no way to divide them.


You are here. If you are all thinking thoughts, you are separate. But if you are all silent, then suddenly there is something like a collective soul.


Perhaps those two trees missed me. Nobody came close to them again, nobody with whom they could communicate. They died because they could not get any warmth from anybody. I had tremendous love and respect for those trees.


Whenever you feel sad, sit by the side of a tree, by the side of the river, by the side of a rock, and just relax into your sadness without any fear. The more you relax, the more you will become acquainted with the beauties of sadness.


The sadness will start changing its form; it will become a silent joy, uncaused by anybody outside you. That will not be shallow happiness, which can be taken away very easily.


And getting deeper into your aloneness, one day you will find not only joy -- joy is only midway. Happiness is very superficial, depends on others; joy is in the middle, does not depend on anyone. But going deeper you will come to the state of bliss -- that's what I call enlightenment.


Use anything and you will come to enlightenment. But use something authentic, which is yours. And then you have a bliss which is yours twenty-four hours a day. It is simply radiating from you. You can share it now, you can give it to whomsoever you love. But it is an unconditional gift. And nobody can make you miserable.


In this commune, this is my effort: to make you independently blissful. That does not mean that you have to renounce the world. That does not mean that you have to leave your wife, your girlfriend, your love for food -- even for ice cream; it has nothing to do with that.


Your blissfulness is with you whatever you are doing. It will enhance every activity, it will enrich every act that you do. Your love will have a totally different flavor. Now there will not be any hate hiding behind it; it will be simply love. There will not be even the expectation that something should be returned to you. You don't need anything. Giving is such a benediction, there is no need. You are so rich inside that nothing can make you richer.
And you can go on sharing bliss.


The more you share it, the more you have it, so nothing can make you poorer.
This is the only miracle that I know of.
<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
I FEEL I MISSED, THIS MORNING IN DISCOURSE, WHEN YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT WEARING RED AND THE MALA AND NO MORE BUDDHAFIELD. WHEN YOU SAID, "CLAP!" PART OF ME WANTED ME TO CLAP, NOT BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU HAD BEEN TALKING ABOUT -- WHICH MADE ME WANT TO CRY -- BUT JUST BECAUSE OF THE WAY YOU SHOUTED "CLAP!" THAT ONE WORD WAS LIKE A COMMAND, A CHALLENGE TO TAKE THE JUMP AND CLAP AND SEE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT.
LATER I REMEMBERED THE STORY OF RINZAI AND HIS GREAT SHOUT AND CLAP, "THE GOOSE IS OUT!" DID WE MISS YET AGAIN?</p>


Yes. You go on missing again and again. But no need to be worried. I will not allow you to miss forever. One day you are bound to catch the train!
Okay?
			

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