Osho on Humiliation, If one is humble, humiliation is impossible

Question : Beloved Osho, I love the way you demonstrate at every turn just how absolutely untouchable you are. The americans imprison you, torture you, destroy your commune and clearly assume that you will be humiliated by their treatment of you; but instead, that untouchability shines through, and it is they who are left humiliated — this is so clear from all their continuing anger at you. You are an impossible enemy! You are that simple truth — that only without ambition is one free to embrace the stars

Osho : One can be humiliated only if one is thinking of oneself as higher than another, holier-than-thou — such a person can be pulled down. You cannot humiliate a humble person. There is no way at all.

America has done everything — and is continuing to do it. That simply shows utter foolishness. If they could not humiliate me in their jails, how can they humiliate me outside America? I will turn all their efforts of humiliation upon themselves because there is no other way. I simply don’t accept it.

I have told you many times the story of Gautam Buddha. He was passing by the side of a village. His enemies had gathered, and they wanted to humiliate him — they were shouting ugly words, four-letter words at him. He remained silent. They looked a little awkward because he was not saying anything.

And finally he said, “If you are finished, can I move on because I have to reach the other village before sunset. And if you are not finished, I will be coming again after few days — I will inform you — on the same route; then I will have enough time for you. Then you can do as much as you want, say as many things as you ever wanted to.”

One of the men in the crowd said, “We are not just saying things, we are insulting you.”
Gautam Buddha said, “You can insult me, but if I don’t accept it, that is not in your power. You can try to humiliate me, but I simply don’t accept these things. You should have come ten years before when I used to get caught in anybody’s net — somebody would insult me and I would feel insulted. At that time I was a slave to anybody; now I am a free man. I choose: whatever is right I take, whatever is not right I give it back.

“In the last village people had brought sweets, flowers, to present to me. I said, `We eat only once a day and we have taken our meal. So please — we don’t store things, we cannot keep them. We are sorry. You will have to take them back.’ I ask you, what could they do with all those sweets and flowers and fruits that they had brought?”
Somebody said from the crowd, “They could have distributed it in the village.”

Buddha said, “You are intelligent. Do the same. Whatever you have brought — for ten years I have stopped accepting such things. Now go back home and distribute these things to whomsoever you want.”

Humiliation is impossible when you are not living as an ego. It is the ego that is humiliated. And America had to take its humiliation back. That’s why they are still angry and still trying their hardest to harm me in every possible way. They have not learned a simple lesson.

I was in chains — they had done everything illegally — without an arrest warrant. At the point of a gun they arrested me, without even showing the cause, with handcuffs, with chains on my legs, another chain on my waist — exactly arranged because they knew my whole medical history.

We had presented my medical history to the government — that my back is bad. So the chain was kept on continually, because it was chained on every time I changed jails: five jails in twelve days. But it remained exactly on the point where it hurts. It was absolutely not accidental, because not even a single time was it in another place — and it could have been. I told them, “Just keep it loose.”
They said, “No. We will keep it the way we have been ordered.”

And they were worried that I would wave to people, even with handcuffs, so they tied my handcuffs with the chain on my waist so I could not move my hands either. And the cars… the way they took me — I have never seen cars driven in such a way. Suddenly they would take speed, and suddenly they would stop, just to hurt my back.

The first time Devaraj was with me and he was telling them, “This is not right. There is just no need to do this.” They wouldn’t listen. And this continued for twelve days. Everywhere there were instructions, it seems, how the car should be driven: for no reason, suddenly the car would take speed to a hundred miles an hour, and suddenly it would stop; then again it would speed and stop just to give me as much of a jolt as possible, to hit the painful back with the thick chain they had put on it.

But it does not humiliate me. It was simply showing their stupidity. They could not prevent me from smiling. Everywhere people were standing by the side of the road to greet me. It doesn’t matter that I could not wave my hand to them, but I smiled at them.

In the court when the magistrate comes, they declare that the magistrate is coming, “Stand up” — so everybody stands up. When the magistrate sits on the chair, then everybody is allowed to sit. When I was coming into the court, people were standing up on their own. There was no declaration — you don’t declare for a prisoner.

And that was a clear humiliation of the magistrate and all the police officials and all the court people, that all the people… even those who were not sannyasins, even those who had never seen me, had never heard of me except that just then they had seen me on the television and seen the brutality of the American government.

They tried in every way. They were thinking that I would be humiliated; but whenever the press inquired of me, I said, “I am feeling great. As far as I am concerned, I am feeling perfectly great. They can torture my body, but they cannot touch me.”

And because I exposed their whole thing … and they are not even capable of replying to it, to all the facts that I have told to the world news press. They have not been able to reply to a single point because I have simply described the story as it was. They are feeling humiliated, and they are trying to harass me — but they are again wrong.

They have arranged a world travel for me. I may not have traveled around the world without their help! I may not have been able to see all my people in their own countries, and I may not have been able to expose that political imperialism has ended, but its place has been taken by economic imperialism — which is far more dangerous. Now, as with themselves, they are arranging humiliation for other countries.

I was in Ireland for fifteen days. The man who gave the visa must have taken too much beer — just the Irish way of living — so he did not look whose visa it was, whose passport it was. He simply stamped it. We were asking for only a one night stay. He stamped it with a seven-day seal — perhaps it was the closest to his hand! We said, “That’s good.”

We moved into a hotel; and as America’s information reached them, that our plane had landed in Ireland, immediately the police went to the airport and found that we had already entered the country. So next morning the police officers came and canceled all the visas for seven days. But we said, “You can cancel it; we are not going to go. We have been here only one night. What crime have we committed that you are canceling them?”

They said, “No crime.” They were afraid — because the first man had made the mistake of giving us seven days. “You can live here silently and leave silently.” This is the police. Without our having a visa, they were allowing us to live in the country silently and to leave silently, just to hide their mistake. We lived there for fifteen days, and after fifteen days, when we left, the minister concerned said, in the parliament, that I had never been in Ireland, that it was just gossip. He knew perfectly well that for fifteen days my group had been there.

And the day we moved, the press was there, the photographers were there; they took my photograph in front of the hotel. Perhaps they took away all those photographs and all that material from the press before declaring in the parliament that I had never been here. So now America is degrading every country. In Greece, within fifteen days, they arrested me — and the passport and the visa was given to me by the son of the president, who is a minister. He had issued the visa for four weeks himself, and he himself canceled it.

And they wouldn’t allow me even to stay in the hotel for the night. But at the airport the whole news media was there — all the television channels and newspapers and magazines and the radio — and at least forty top police officers. I cannot understand what they were afraid of — I don’t carry nuclear weapons with me.

And when I was talking to the press, the chief of the police stepped in front of me to stop me. And I said to him, “Shut up and go back and stand in your place!”

Perhaps in his whole life nobody has said that. And he was wise enough to simply move back and stand in his place — because he saw the situation, that if he said something, I was going to hammer him then and there. And everything would be in the reports, on the television, on the radio; it was better just to….

But this much was on the television, that he came up to prevent me because I was talking against the police, that they wanted to dynamite the house, to burn me alive, that they were threatening my people. Because I was asleep, John came to me; and when he woke me up, I said, “Just tell them to sit and wait five minutes so I can change my clothes and get ready to get arrested again.”

Now I am an experienced man, there is no problem. But they wouldn’t listen. They started throwing rocks at the windows, at the doors. From my bathroom I heard explosions as if somebody was throwing bombs. I said, “This is strange.” And when I came down I was informed that they were threatening that if I didn’t come down they would dynamite the house. And I had not left the house for the whole fifteen days I was there. And after I left Athens, the same minister who had given me the visa and who canceled the visa, lied before the parliament again. So it has been a tremendous experience. What I have been saying about politicians has proved one hundred percent correct.

Hasya, my secretary, had been with that minister for one hour, and he denied in parliament that he had seen my secretary at all. He said that he had been deceived, and that somebody else managed to arrange the visa and his signature. These are your leaders upon which the whole destiny of humanity depends.

We are going to sue every politician. For example, this minister we are going to sue. And Hasya has to be in the court to testify that she has been with the minister for one hour explaining about me, everything that he asked, and he had given the visa only after being fully satisfied. And he simply denies that he has ever seen my secretary.

And the same thing has been happening all around the whole civilized world of the West. A few countries are so afraid that I have not even applied for visa and they have decided already that the visa should not be given. I have not even applied… the visa should not be given.

They have informed all their embassies that I am a dangerous man and no visa should be granted. If my application comes then it should be rejected immediately. They are so afraid that almost all the parliaments of Europe have discussed me, and on strange things.

The Dutch minister for foreign affairs has said that I have been denied entry into Holland because I have spoken against homosexuality, I have spoken against Mother Teresa, the pope, the Catholic religion. And each democracy contends that it is secular.

The pope can criticize any religion and he is welcome — I cannot criticize the pope. If he has any guts he should reply to my criticism rather than pulling the strings of these politicians — he has a Catholic majority in these countries so the politicians are afraid of losing votes.

I can understand catholicism, the pope, Mother Teresa; but homosexuality is a totally new thing. I was not aware that homosexuality is Holland’s official religion — criticize homosexuality and you cannot enter Holland. That minister has condemned the whole of Holland as homosexual. If the people of Holland have any sense, they should force that minister and his ministry to resign, because he’s abusing the whole country.
And I am dangerous because I have criticized homosexuality. I am criticizing every perversion, and I will continue to criticize them.

And America is trying in every way…. It is a humiliation for America. Now they are trying to make every other country also feel humiliated. All the countries which are with America will be humiliated in the same way. And a single individual can put the whole world against himself, and still you cannot humiliate him.

The truth is simple. If one is humble, humiliation is impossible. Truth cannot be humiliated. You can crucify it, but you cannot humiliate it.

Source – Osho Book “The Transmission of the Lamp”