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Chapter 3 - Unhitch the Universe
achieve. He is doing it all out of his unconscious love, but unconscious love is not love -- it is blind. With all good intentions, it does harm. The child who is being forced to become a doctor, if he was left alone to grow according to his own nature ... one never knows what kind of beauty or joy, what kind of individuality, he would have contributed to the world.
Zen's whole approach is just to be yourself -- very ordinary, unknown, unnamed, but utterly content. To have faith in yourself you don't need to have faith in Jesus Christ or in Krishna or in Moses. To have faith in yourself is simple -- just to have faith in yourself. Know perfectly well that you are moving into an unknown territory. There may be dangers ahead, you are moving into insecurity, but to take the challenge of being yourself makes you really alive. And when you attain, when you discover yourself, you are on the highest peak of consciousness.
The presidents and the kings and the queens and the prime ministers will never know about it. Knowing it, being it, there comes a tremendous relaxation. You are not going anywhere, you are just here. You have been always here. Your consciousness is unpolluted.
Whatever has happened to you has not left any marks on your consciousness. All those marks are just on the mind, and the mind is not you.
BY LACK OF FAITH YOU FALL INTO A STATE OF UNCERTAINTY ...
Obviously --
if you don't have faith in yourself you will have to have faith in somebody else. How can you know that the other is right? How can you know that Jesus Christ is the only begotten son of God?
I have often told of a small incident that happened in Bhagdad. A man declared, "I am the latest prophet after Mohammed. I bring the latest dispensation from God himself."
Now it is impossible for Mohammedans to accept anybody after Mohammed. Before Mohammed you can talk about Buddha, about Jesus -- it doesn't matter.
But Mohammed is the last word. The man was caught and brought before the Khalif of Bhagdad. He repeated again,
"Nobody is listening to me, but I say unto you that I am the last prophet! Now times have changed, God sends new messengers. I bring the latest message. Mohammed is out of date."
In fact he was right. Mohammed is out of date, everybody is out of date. But his insistence that he is a prophet sent by God himself ... Mohammedans are not very liberal or compassionate people. They don't believe in argument either, they believe in the sword. That is their only argument: whoever can cut off the other's head is right.
Naturally Omar, the Khalif, said, "Take this man and put him in jail, and for seven days give him the real treatment. Unless he confesses that he is not the prophet, that Mohammed is the only and last prophet, torture him. After seven days I will come to visit."
They bound the man to a pillar and for seven days they beat him; blood was oozing out of his every pore. He was given no food or water. After seven days the Khalif came and asked the man, "Have you changed your mind or are you still insistent?"
The man said, "When I came here God's last message was, 'Remember, you will be beaten, you will be stoned, you may be crucified.' So all these seven days you have only been proving that I am the prophet! Only prophets are treated in such a way."
Omar said, "This is a difficult case." Osho - The Miracle
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