Osho on Nisargadatta Maharaj

Osho on Nisargadatta Maharaj

You can get stuck in the middle and you cannot do anything.

 

With a ladder, you are absolutely free! You are the master: you can take the ladder wherever you want, you can leave the ladder wherever you want. The ladder will not cling to you and the ladder will not ask you for any kind of surrender. I love the idea! I am certainly an old-fashioned ladder.

 

My whole effort is to make masters of you. Krishnamurti has not even been able to make disciples of you.

 

I have called Amrito tonight to ask, "What other nonsense have you been listening to from these so-called enlightened people? You are my disciple and you have to finish your book with my declaration that you are now a master! Without that, the book will remain incomplete. But first tell me what all these idiots have been telling you so I can answer them; otherwise your book will remain incomplete."

 

There was a man in Bombay, Nisargadatta Maharaj. Nobody knew this big name; he was known to the masses as "Beedie Baba" because he was continuously smoking beedies. You can find in every village such kinds of beedie babas. I think India has seven hundred thousand villages and each village must have at least one; more is possible. And Amrito wrote a few days ago to me, because another young Dutchman became very much involved with Beedie Baba… The man seems to be very sincere, but the trouble is that the people who come from the West have a very childlike heart, very trusting, and they are unaware that in India spirituality is just a routine. Everybody talks about great things and their lives are as ugly as possible.

 

When Beedie Baba said that he would speak only to this young Dutchman, naturally his ego must have felt tremendously vast. The crowd that surrounded Beedie Baba was also of the same quality… rickshaw wallahs waiting for their passengers, sitting by the side of Beedie Baba. And when he said he would not speak to anybody unless it was this Dutchman… So he spoke to the Dutchman, who has now compiled books on Beedie Baba.

 

Now in India it is almost parrot-like, but to the Westerner it seems to be a tremendous revelation -- when Beedie Baba said, "Aham brahmasmi; I am God, I am that" the young Dutchman immediately wrote a book: I AM THAT! Because for the West, spirituality is a foreign affair, just as for the East, science is a foreign affair.

 

I have heard: In a factory in Bombay, they installed a very costly mechanism. Two days it worked, and then it stopped. It worked for two days because the expert was present, and the moment the expert was gone the mechanism stopped. They phoned the expert -- "What to do?"

 

He said, "I will have to come and it will cost a lot of money, ten thousand dollars."

 

But to keep the factory closed was even more costly, so they had to allow the man to come. And the man came and just hit the machine and it started working! The industrialist asked him, "Just for this hitting you are costing me ten thousand dollars?"

 

He said, "It is not for the hitting. For hitting it is only one dollar, but to know where to hit it costs money."

 

When Amrito's letter came to me about this Dutchman, saying that "Many sannyasins are going to him, and I am also going to him," I talked about it. He heard it, and he took the tape to the man. The man heard it, and he was very grateful but baffled also, because he was gathering a big crowd of disciples. But because he felt baffled and he was grateful that I had talked about him… I would like Amrito, when he goes back, either to bring the man to me or send him to me. Because I know where to hit!

 

Even the poorest beggar knows more about metaphysics, about great ideologies… And when the Western man comes -- he may be well educated but his education is of science, his education is of logic, his education makes him a great intellectual. But in the heart he remains very naive. Then any Beedie Baba, any idiot can make a great impact on him. This Dutch man lived for months together with Beedie Baba. He does not mention his well-known name, Beedie Baba; he mentions only his legal name, Nisargadatta Maharaj. He has written many books on Nisargadatta Maharaj; he has made Nisargadatta famous all over the world. I have looked through those books -- sheer nonsense.