“Although they were blind, they started finding that this man walks in a different way, talks in a different way, knows things that they don’t know. He says, ‘Now it is sunrise.’ He says, ‘Now the whole sky is full of stars’ – and those blind eyes could not see any star.”
A man of truth is bound to be condemned, because our whole lives are lived on consolations, which are lies. We are all under the opium that religions have been supplying to us. The moment a man comes out of this state of sleepiness, the whole crowd will be against him, because his behavior will change so totally from the crowd’s.
The crowd cannot tolerate anybody who behaves differently. The reason is a great fear that perhaps he may be right. And he looks right: his beauty is changed, his grace has changed, his words have an authority which they never had before. His silences are deep. He is surrounded by an aura of a new energy.
This makes people very much afraid – afraid that “this man may be right; then we have missed our whole lives. This man somehow has to be destroyed.” It is not for no reason that Socrates and Anagoras were poisoned and al-Hillaj Mansoor was crucified. Sarmad and Jesus… and there are hundreds of others who have been stoned to death or burned alive, and their only crime was that they had attained the truth.
Now this reminds me that in South America in the early part of this century a small tribe was discovered living in the deep forest – only three hundred people, but all blind. They had no idea that they were blind because they had never seen anybody with eyes – and there was no question of seeing because they had no eyes.
A scientific researcher heard about this tribe, so he went into the forest, lived with the tribe to understand them, did not offend them by saying that they are blind, pretended that he was also just like them. He found that the reason why they were all blind was a certain fly. When the child is less than six months old, if that fly stings the child, he will become blind.
So there were children who had eyes, but the fly was a common fly in every house everywhere, so it was impossible for any child to get away. And nobody can remember the past beyond the fourth year or the third year at the most; nobody can remember what happened when they were six months old.
So the whole tribe lived and they lived perfectly well. They managed to farm something, they managed to bring wood for winter. They managed to bring water from the well. They became adapted to the life of blind people. And because the whole society was blind, only this young researcher could find the fly. If after you are six months old that fly bites you, you will not become blind, so only for six months a child has to be protected. But there was no question of protection in the tribe; they had no idea what was happening. A six-month-old child cannot say, “Protect me from the fly.”
He remained so long there that he fell in love with a woman. He wanted to marry her, but by and by the tribe became suspicious of the man. Although they were blind, they started finding that this man walks in a different way, talks in a different way, knows things that they don’t know. He says, “Now it is sunrise.” He says, “Now the whole sky is full of stars” – and those blind eyes could not see any star.
Slowly, slowly they found that this man had some way which was different from them. They forced him, saying, “You have to be honest with us. What is the difference between us and you? – because we don’t see any sunrise, we don’t see any sunset, and you talk about flowers and colors, and you talk about stars. Where are these things? There must be some difference between us and you.”
He had to be honest with those poor blind people. He said, “I have eyes and you don’t have eyes. Although you are born with eyes, a common fly here destroys the eyes before the child passes the six-month limit. I can be of much help; I can bring medical help to kill these flies and perhaps some way to cure you also, so you can see.”
But they refused. They said, “We are so happy as we are, we don’t want any disturbance. And as far as your marriage – the condition is that we will have to destroy your eyes; otherwise we cannot believe a man with eyes…. You can do any harm to us and we will be absolutely vulnerable.”
So they gave him time: “You can think for twelve hours. If you want to marry the woman, we will destroy your eyes. We will find them. And if you want your eyes, then you cannot live with us and you cannot marry the woman.”
That night he thought many times, “What to do? These idiots don’t want to be helped. They are perfectly happy in their blindness.” One can understand that there will be trouble if three hundred blind people suddenly get eyes…. You see your wife and you say, “My God! This buffalo is my wife?!” And you see your own face in the mirror and you cannot believe that this is you, because you have never seen your face. Everything is going to be disturbed.
That researcher escaped in the night, dropping the whole idea of helping them, dropping the idea of getting married to the woman. His idea had been that he should get married and then take away the woman to the civilized world where she could be treated, and if he succeeded in treating her, then he could bring a medical team and treat all those three hundred people.
The same is the situation with every buddha. He brings a new light, a new life, a new eye. But you start stoning such people. The only crime of Socrates was that he wanted to teach people how to find the truth. The only crime of al-Hillaj Mansoor was that he declared, “Ana’l haq! I myself am God” – but he was not declaring it as part of an ego-trip, because he was saying, “You are also God, you simply don’t know it. I know it.”
Osho, Rinzai: Master of the Irrational, Ch 2 (except)
Series compiled by Shanti
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales
Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash
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