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Chapter 3 - Seek nothing outside
The general came to him and asked, "What is the matter, man? Why don't you do what you are told?"
He said, "What is the point? Finally everybody has to come here where I am standing. All this exercise ... can you tell me the point of it, where they are going? Because finally they fall in, in the line. So I am already standing here. Nothing new is going to happen out of this left and right -- I am watching."
The general said, "You are a very strange person. Who has recruited you into the army?"
He said, "I have said beforehand that I am not the type. All these idiots -- you included -- are unnecessarily doing things. I don't see any enemy here."
So he was taken to the man who had brought him -- he was the manager of the mess. He was asked, "What to do with this man? He does not listen to the orders; on the contrary, he argues. And he is dangerous because others laugh, and his arguments may spread around, others may start saying the same things. He is a very dangerous person; I don't want him in my regiment. He called me an idiot before everybody else. And in fact I cannot refute him, it is idiotic. So he was right, but I cannot have him, you put him to some other work."
The manager said, "I will put him in the mess."
There was a pile of peas, and he told him, "Sit down and sort out the peas -- the bigger ones on this side, and the smaller ones on this side." He said, "At least this I can do."
After one hour when the manager came, nothing had happened. The professor was simply sitting there, almost meditating. The manager said, "My god, what happened? You have not done anything, you have not even touched a single pea."
He said, "I am a man who never takes a single step without comprehending all the implications."
The manager had never heard the word 'implications'. He said, "Implications? It was such a simple task."
He said, "It is not simple. You don't understand the theory of relativity."
The manager said, "We don't need Albert Einstein here. Anybody can do that -- bigger ones on one side, smaller ones on the other side."
The professor said, "And what about those which are in the middle? That is the problem I've been meditating on -- where to put them? They have no place, and you never told me where to put the middle ones. And this is a very complicated problem because some are bigger, some are smaller, some are even smaller, and some are even smaller than that. If I do it accurately then I will have to make a line out of the peas, which will go for miles. If you want me to do that I can do it, but I don't see in what way it serves the country.
"I thought you were a sensible man, but it seems the whole company here is of idiots. The first idiot was saying, 'Left, right!' And you are telling me to do a thing that is almost impossible. The line will go for miles, and who will take care? -- I will be going with the line.
So without comprehending all the implications, I cannot touch anything. I had told you beforehand that my profession is philosophy."
It is a trouble. Either you hear and then interpret it wrongly, or you don't hear and then you think that drugs cannot help. Both are wrong, because both are thinking of the present day Osho - The Language of Existence
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