Osho - From Ignorance To Innocence

From Ignorance to Innocence
Answers to the Seekers on the Path
Talks given from 29/11/84 pm to 29/12/84 pm
30 Chapters
Year published: 1984
Originally published as "The Rajneesh Bible Volume 2". Title changed 1991.

OSHO,
WHY IS HUMANITY TODAY BECOMING MORE AND MORE MISERABLE?
THE cause is very simple, perhaps too simple. It is very close, very obvious, and this is the reason why most of the people go on missing seeing it. When something is very obvious you start taking it for granted. When something is too close to your eyes you cannot see it. For seeing, some distance is needed. So the first thing I would like you to remember is that it is not only today that humanity is miserable. It has always been miserable. Misery has almost become our second nature. We have lived in it for thousands of years. That closeness does not allow us to see it; otherwise it is so obvious. But to see the obvious you need a child's vision. And we are all carrying thousands of years in our eyes. Our eyes are old; they cannot see afresh. They have already accepted things, and forgotten that those things are the very cause of misery. The religious prophets, the political leaders, the moral lawgivers -- you have respected them, not even suspecting that they are the cause of your misery. How can you suspect them? Those people have served humanity, sacrificed themselves for humanity. You worship them; you cannot relate them to your misery. The causes of misery are camouflaged behind beautiful words, holy scriptures, spiritual sermons. It happened when I was a student, the first prime minister of India came to visit the city. In Jabalpur, just in the middle of the city flows all the dirt of the city. The city is very big -- ten times bigger than Portland -- and just in the middle of the city, the whole dirt flows like a river. There is a bridge over it, and to pass that bridge is to know something about hell. I have never seen any place so stinking.

Most of us have quoted The Bible, been quoted at from The Bible, sworn on The Bible, doubted The Bible - but how many of us have really questioned its basic premise, that God exists? How much of what we have accepted as our religion is related to our own experiences and has any relevance to our day to day lives? Looking for the answers, we find our minds so full of ideas instilled from birth - sin and guilt, reward and punishment, this world and the other, somebody out there bigger than us who we should obey - it's almost impossible to untangle the mess and start from scratch. In this series of discourses Osho exposes our conditioned beliefs as a means of challenging us to experience life and its inherent religiousness from a fresh perspective, with our own, individual eyes. A must for the thinking Christian.