Question : Bhagwan, you have said that you love to disturb people because only by disturbing them can you make them think. To what extremes would you go to disturb people?
Osho : It depends on the people, not on me. For example, I will not have to go far to disturb Avirbhava. It is easy. She tries, but again and again she gets disturbed. So it depends on the people.
There are people with very thick skins: they really need Zen hits; perhaps then they may open their eyes and see what is going on. But I can go to any length. If the person is stubborn and has decided not to be disturbed, then I can go to any length. Until he is disturbed, I don’t stop. I don’t have any limitation, and I am disturbing him only so that he can wake up. And I know, once he wakes up he will be grateful. In his sleep he may be angry.
I am reminded of Immanuel Kant, one of the great philosophers of Germany. He was very particular about his routine. People used to fix their clocks just seeing him, because at an exact time he would go for a morning walk, up to the exact mile, and he would come back every day at the same time. At the same time he would take his food, at the same time he would go to the university, at the same time go back home, at the same time he would go to bed. And people knew — it was a small place — that Kant is going to the university, so what should be the time? And immediately everybody would set his clock right. Your clocks can be wrong, but Kant cannot be.
Once it happened that it had just rained, and there was too much mud outside. One of his shoes got caught by the mud when he was going to his classroom. He did not wait to take his shoe out. He entered his class with one shoe on and one foot naked. The students were puzzled because he was walking as if he were lame or had got his leg fractured.
Everybody gathered and they asked, “What has happened? We don’t see any fracture or anything, just one of your shoes is missing.” He said, “I know. It got stuck in the mud, but I did not want to be late. If I had taken the shoe out, I would have been a few seconds late. And this I cannot allow. I will take the shoe while going back.”
This man Immanuel Kant had a servant. No other servant remained with him because he was such a difficult man. If his tea was even one second late, he would make so much fuss. Every night at ten o’clock he would go to bed. Even if he was talking to somebody, he would not say goodnight to him; he would just jump into the bed and pull the blanket over him.
And the visitor could not believe what was happening. The servant would come and say, “The master has gone to sleep. You can go now. It is the exact time. He cannot even say goodnight, that will make him late; so you can just go.” He gave strict orders for his servant to wake him early in the morning, at four o’clock. And it was cold….
He was a hard worker, working the whole day writing treatises — one of Germany’s most significant thinkers. The orders were, “You have to wake me, and pull me out of the bed. I may shout, I may scream, I may beat you. You can beat me, but don’t leave me. You have to wake me up, because at that time I want to sleep. So I am making you aware beforehand: at that time I will make every effort to go to sleep, and you have to make every effort to wake me up.”
Only one servant remained with him for many years. He was really a strong man. Kant used to hit him, but he was also good at hitting. He would hit even better. And every morning this wrestling would happen. But till Kant said, “Enough!” the servant would say, “No, you go into the bathroom, and I will take up your blanket and your mattress, so you cannot go back to sleep again while I’m working outside in the kitchen.” And after the bath he would come to his senses and come to the servant and thank him, and would be very grateful. “You are the only man. So many servants… just one day and they are finished.”
They would say “This is not the kind of job that we want to do. You yourself say ‘Wake me,’ and then you start beating us. And it does not look right to beat the master — we are just servants — and when we allow you to sleep, you wake up later on and start shouting and screaming and making the whole neighborhood gather, asking, ‘What is the matter?’ And Kant would say, ‘The matter is that this man deceived me. For what am I paying him?'”
The situation is the same whatever you do. I am going to wake you up.You yourself have asked me; it is not my own decision to wake you up. I never interfere in anybody’s life. You became sannyasins; that was an agreement that you are going to be with me and I am going to wake you up whatsoever happens. So just keep on remembering the agreement. And I can go to any length, there is no limit for my efforts. It all depends on you.
For example, I told Avirbhava that she will wake up very soon. It won’t take much time. But there are people who think they are already awake; then it is very difficult to wake them up, then it is going to be a hard struggle. But I will create every device. Howsoever hard I may look, whatever I am doing is just out of my love for you. It is not out of hardness but out of my softness.
Source – Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol3”