The first experience of freedom is always embarrassing. The first ray of light to the blind is bound to be embarrassing. One who has always lived in chains, a sudden message from the king that he is freed… it is always embarrassing. He had become accustomed to live a certain kind of life, he had evolved a certain style of life. There was security in the prison; he had settled. Now everything unsettles. It is not only the question that the chains are being taken away; now he will have to face the great wide world again. He will have to learn all that he has forgotten, he will have to relearn. It is going to be difficult, and he will look a little amateur compared to others. Even walking on the street without the chains to which he has become accustomed will be a little odd; he will not feel at ease.
When the French revolutionaries freed the prisoners from the great French prison of Bastille, they were surprised: the prisoners were not ready to go out. That was the biggest prison of France, where only people who had been sentenced for their whole life were kept. There were people who had been in the prison for thirty years, forty years, even fifty years.Now, just think of a person who had come to the prison when he was only twenty, and had lived in the prison for fifty years. He has completely forgotten about the world, how it looks. Fifty years living in a dark cell with heavy chains….
Those chains had no lock because there was no need ever to unlock them. They were chained for his whole life; they were permanent, heavy. For fifty years he has slept with those chains on hands and feet; he has become utterly accustomed to that life. And the food comes at the right time, he has not to worry about it. It is not much of a food, but still, something is better than nothing. He has no responsibility, he need not care about anything, everything is being done for him.Maybe, slowly slowly, he had started thinking that he is not a prisoner but a king whose every need is fulfilled. Others take every care. Maybe, slowly slowly, he had convinced himself that the people who stand on guard are not there to prevent him from going out, but they are his bodyguards. And this is natural. When you live fifty years in a prison you have to create such rationalizations, such hallucinations, such beautiful theories. We all have done things like this.
Then one day suddenly the revolutionaries came and forced the prisoners to get out. The prisoners fought back — they were not ready. This is something to be understood. Even when they were freed against their will, fifty percent of them came back in the night to sleep at least in their cells. Where else should they sleep?One more important thing — a very important thing — happened. They demanded their chains, because they could not sleep without them. Fifty years sleeping with that heavy load of chains, it may have started sounding like music. Turning in the night, and the chains and the sound… now without chains they must be feeling so light that sleep was impossible.
This is the situation of all human beings. We are brought up in such a way that we only believe that we are free, but we are not. While nations exist, no man is really free. While politicians go on dominating humanity, the world will remain in slavery. They go on persuading you that you are free. You are not.
There are a thousand and one walls around you — maybe very transparent so that you can look through the walls, and that gives you a feeling that you are free, but you are not. While there are religions in your head — Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism, Buddhism — you are not free. A mind cannot be free.
Freedom means freedom from the mind. Only a no-mind knows the taste of freedom.?
OSHO
